awyers, doctors, schoolmasters, newspaper men; an important
and influential class, no doubt, but one which itself only represents an
infinitesimal fraction--barely, perhaps, one-hundredth part--of the
whole population. To what extent it is really representative even of
that small section it is impossible to say, as the members are not
returned by any clearly defined body of constituents or by any formal
process of election. Originally it attracted the support of not a few
non-Hindus, though the Hindu element always largely preponderated, and a
small group of distinguished Parsees, headed by Mr. Dadhabai Naoroji,
together with a sprinkling of Mahomedans, helped to justify its claim to
be called National, in so far as that appellation connoted the
representation of the different creeds and races of India. But gradually
most of the Mahomedans dropped out, as it became more and more an
exponent of purely Hindu opinion, and the Parsees retained little more
than the semblance of the authority they had at one time enjoyed.

On broader grounds still the Congress could never be called National in
the Western democratic sense of the term, for whatever exceptions it may
have been willing to make in favour of individuals, there can be no
question of popular representation in India so long as the Hindu caste
system prevails, under which whole classes numbering millions and
millions are regarded and treated as beyond the pale and actually
"untouchable." From time to time a few enlightened Hindus recognize the
absurdity of posturing as the champions of democratic ideals so long as
this monstrous anomaly subsists, but, whilst professing in theory to
repudiate it, the Indian National Congress has during the whole course
of its existence taken no effective step towards removing it. Nor is the
Congress any more representative of the toiling masses that are not
"unclean." No measures have been more bitterly assailed in the Congress
than those which, like the Punjab Land Alienation Act of 1900, were
framed and have operated for the benefit of the agricultural and other
humbler classes--i.e., of the real "people of India," in whose name
the Congress speaks so loudly and with so little title.

An earlier generation of Hindus had fully recognized the urgency of
social problems, like that of the "depressed" castes, and had realized
that, until Indians had brought their own customs and beliefs to some
extent into line with the social customs and