________________
5
Liberalism. Half-digested liberal ideas are now-a-days promiscuously hurled in the face of any one who in the least tries to draw public attention to the long-ignored claims of many sections of the Indian people. We are told to be ready to merge our class interests into the national good' that is professed to be the end of all public life in India. And whenever the present activity of our educated country-men is scrutinised and its true motives are exposed we are branded as unpatriotic and anti-national. But these critics of every one but themselves manage to forget and refuse to understand that their ideal of national life is either a dream or an imposture, as long as the essential groundwork of national ambitions is not prepared. There are actually before us, many centuries old and possessing the strongest vitality, a large number of castes based on differences of race, religion, profession, interest, history and civilization in general. For ages these sharply and radically divided people are struggling against one another for their very life. These struggles have blasted many a hope of national independence during the past decade of centuries. As a result, we have to-day among us several communities, proud of their past glory, and mourning a series of defeats and losses. Fortunately with the advent of British rule, an era of totally new influences has dawned upon us. Its advent naturally checked the broken down communities as well as those that were on the point of being broken down and thus temporarily destroyed the possibility of any one of the indigenous communities prevailing against all others, and at the same time it also infused new hope into the minds of the fallen and those who had lost all hope of success, and still more, brought about the existence of circumstances that gave birth to a far sounder and satisfactory hope of national life than was ever before conceived. Under the new regime new ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, were instilled into the minds of those who had the will and capacity to receive them. The middle of the last century in England was dominated by all-round liberalism whose basis was laid on conditions of life far different from those that prevailed in India during the period recorded in authentic history. But that
