hether they were Indian
born or foreigners, have hardly touched the vast masses except for
collecting revenue. The latter in their turn seem to have rendered unto
Caesar what was Caesar's and for the rest have done much as they have
liked. The vast organisation of caste answered not only the religious
wants of the community, but it answered to its political needs. The
villagers managed their internal affairs through the caste system, and
through it they dealt with any oppression from the ruling power or
powers. It is not possible to deny of a nation that was capable of
producing the caste system its wonderful power of organisation. One had
but to attend the great Kumbha Mela at Hardwar last year to know how
skilful that organisation must have been, which without any seeming
effort was able effectively to cater for more than a million pilgrims.
Yet it is the fashion to say that we lack organising ability. This is
true, I fear, to a certain extent, of those who have been nurtured in
the new traditions. We have laboured under a terrible handicap owing to
an almost fatal departure from the Swadeshi spirit. We, the educated
classes, have received our education through a foreign tongue. We have
therefore not reacted upon the masses. We want to represent the masses,
but we fail. They recognise us not much more than they recognise the
English officers. Their hearts are an open book to neither. Their
aspirations are not ours. Hence there is a break. And you witness not in
reality failure to organise but want of correspondence between the
representatives and the represented. If during the last fifty years we
had been educated through the vernaculars, our elders and our servants
and our neighbours would have partaken of our knowledge; the discoveries
of a Bose or a Ray would have been household treasures as are the
Ramayan and the Mahabharat. As it is, so far as the masses are
concerned, those great discoveries might as well have been made by
foreigners. Had instruction in all the branches of learning been given
through the vernaculars, I make bold to say that they would have been
enriched wonderfully. The question of village sanitation, etc., would
have been solved long ago. The village panchayats would be now a living
force in a special way, and India would almost be enjoying
self-government suited to its requirements and would have been spared
the humiliating spectacle of organised assassination on its sacred soil.
It is not too