y
the religious beliefs or immemorial social usages of India. Such
practices as thagi, or meria sacrifices, or female infanticide, or,
above all, sati, had been left undisturbed by the earlier rulers of
British India, because they feared that interference with them would be
resented as an infraction of Indian custom or religion. They were now
boldly attacked, and practically abolished, without evil result.

Alongside of this new courage in measures that seemed to be dictated by
the moral ideas of the West, there was to be seen growing throughout
this period a new temper of respect for Indian civilisation and a
desire to study and understand it, and to safeguard its best features.
The study of early Indian literature, law, and religious philosophy had
indeed been begun in the eighteenth century by Sir William Jones and
Nathaniel Halhed, with the ardent encouragement of Warren Hastings. But
in this as in other respects Hastings was ahead of the political
opinion of his time; the prevalent idea was that the best thing for
India would be the introduction, so far as possible, of British
methods. This led to the absurdities of the Supreme Court, established
in 1773 to administer English law to Indians. It led also to the great
blunder of Cornwallis's settlement of the land question in Bengal,
which was an attempt to assimilate the Indian land-system to that of
England, and resulted in an unhappy weakening of the village
communities, the most healthy features of Indian rural life. In the
nineteenth century this attitude was replaced by a spirit of respect
for Indian traditions and methods of organisation, and by a desire to
retain and strengthen their best features. The new attitude was perhaps
to be seen at its best in the work of Mountstuart Elphinstone, a great
administrator who was also a profound student of Indian history, and a
very sympathetic observer and friend of Indian customs and modes of
life. But the same spirit was exemplified by the whole of the
remarkable generation of statesmen of whom Elphinstone was one. They
established the view that it was the duty of the British power to
reorganise India, indeed, but to reorganise it on lines in accordance
with its own traditions. Above all, the principle was in this
generation very definitely established that India, like other great
dependencies, must be administered in the interests of its own people,
and not in the interests of the ruling race. That seems to us to-day