but on the good of all, and it is exactly in this channel that the strongest social movements of Hinduism are running. Enlightened Hindus recognise the injustice and unreasonableness of the existing social chasms. They see the ridiculous nature of the scriptural or quasi-scriptural injunctions of pollution, and are striving to give their more unfortunate fellow-beings a human status such as they themselves possess.

Then, again, there is the need for co-operation and mutual help, a lesson gradually being learnt. It would be ridiculous to expect new ideas of communal service to develop all at once. Citizenship in Hindu India has up till now been the citizenship of the family and caste. Patriotism has been loyalty to a group or sect. With a widening horizon the Hindu is gradually appreciating the existence of a new type of citizenship, a citizenship which does not conflict with the intenser feelings of family or caste. This new citizenship only alters the old perspective; it does not abolish it. It gives new relationships in life and a new meaning to the community. It alters the meaning of rights and duties alike, but does not supersede what the traditions of the Hindu tell him to love and respect.

The substitution of new forms of government, again, particularly in local self-government, will gradually raise the self-respect of the individual Hindu. It must not be expected that new forms of government will at once make him a good citizen. The process will be gradual and must be accompanied by an education which will enable the ignorant to understand the primary relations of things. Nor will his intenser patriotism to the family yield quickly to the vaguer interest of the district, province or Empire. To him as to everyone else the intensity of his interest in the community will vary in inverse ratio to the extent of the area. Gradually, however, with new institutions he will appreciate the new basis of rights. Democratic institutions will bring democratic ideas. Even now equality before the law is appreciated by the unlettered

ryot. When he has a vote, and can use that vote without fear of consequences, he will still further feel himself to be a man with a stake in an interest which is beyond his family and caste.

But democracy must not kill caste. Caste is necessary as the basis of Hindu society. To abolish it without replacing it would be to superimpose Bolshevism on autocracy. It would mean ruin to Hindu society. Even when it is replaced, caste will not be killed. Only those essentials must go which stand in the way of greater development. Its institutions will survive, for no institution so deeply ingrained can be killed in a day. Were it for nothing else than its picturesque historicity caste should survive. Its survivals will likely tend to be those general class distinctions universal in human society, but at the same time there will be a large mass of concomitant variations peculiar to the habits and thought of Hinduism.

A new system of common rights, the appreciation of new ethical ends, a new citizenship based on the common welfare distinct from family welfare, the good of all in front of the good of the individual—these are the bases on which the new Hindu nationalism will build.

One word more. In the development of Hindu nationality other elements must enter. The great mass of influences from the West, the co-existing culture of Mohammedanism and of other religions-these must fuse with Hinduism before Hindu nationality can become Indian nationality. It is of less than no avail-it is positively harmful to hark back to what may be fundamental unity of India in the past and to decry the facts of the present. What is necessary is balance. Extremism, resulting in wholesale condemnation of everything non-Hindu, will only raise to antagonism what otherwise may lie dormant. Here again the path of salvation lies in forgetting differences and concentrating on unity, in leaving the religious life to its own and not mixing it up with the political. The

balance, too, of the moderating, non-religious, casteless power of the British Government is necessary till the realisation of complete responsibility is made possible by the new basis of rights. Equable development will extract the best from all the cultures of India and let them be added to the world's store of good.

CHAPTER VII

ROME AND INDIA

In the previous chapters I have examined race, language and religion as national'unities' of India. In examining them I have mentioned the constructive possibilities of each. The final construction of Indian unity depends ultimately on the various political unities. I do not propose to examine the various sub-headings of the more general political' unities separately. To do so would mean much unnecessary repetition, for the unities of political history, of traditions and culture, of political and commercial interests, are inextricably bound up together. They may best be examined without any specific separation. The unity of traditions and culture, indeed, is contained by implication in what I have already said on religion and caste. Another unity-geographical unity— will be mentioned in its apposite place later.

It is unnecessary for me to furnish the historical evidence that India till the advent of the British Raj possessed no unity of political history. The many centuries of Indian history are honeycombed with the rise and fall of dynasties, factions, sects or invaders. From the times of Asoka—the nearest approach to all-Indian unity before the British-to the organisation of India under Britain, we find a complete lack of adhesion. The course of these centuries is marked by attempts here and there at personal or sectarian supremacy, but in no case was there an attempt at Indian unity. If invaders found resistance in one part they easily found support in another.

Mohammed Ghori was resisted by Prithiraj, but the Indian enemies of Prithiraj were only too ready to help the invading conqueror. If, as with the Marathas or the Sikhs, success attended military force, the results of victory were destroyed by the growth of factions. A handful of English merchants and soldiers became supreme over three hundred million people because the people were not united and their jealousies could be used to further the interests of foreigners.

In dilating on the weaknesses of India we must not forget that India is a sub-continent, and in the days of foreign conquest the communications were so bad that conjoined action by India might have been as reasonably expected as joint action by Europe against Asia or Africa. Common sentiment, moreover, could not be expected where the basis of common sentiment was wanting. The common Indian sentiment we know to-day is a result of British rule in India, for only by the organisation which followed British rule were the new bases of unity able to supersede the previously existing elements of diversity.

The effect of British rule in India as an agent in national fusion can best be brought out by a comparison between the methods of the Roman Empire and the British Raj in India. The parallels, as we shall see, are exceedingly significant, even though many centuries have elapsed since Rome made her Imperial experiments. The parallel was suggested by Sir John Seeley in several essays in his Expansion of England,' and later was more completely worked out by Lord Bryce in his first essay in his wellknownStudies in History and Jurisprudence' on 'The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India.' Lord Bryce's Essay, written after a tour in India in 1888-9, though many of its general theories are still true, is an excellent index of the extraordinarily rapid political development of India in the last thirty years. Many of Lord Bryce's statements about India, though perhaps true of India as she was thirty years ago, are completely inapplicable to India as she is now. Sir Herbert Risley