ractice of our Government in India. But we
have one difficulty in governing India that did not trouble the Romans
at the time when they first founded their empire by conquest. I think
that religion had then very little influence on politics. It was the
advent of two great militant and propagating faiths, first
Christianity, next Islam, that first made religion a vital element in
politics, and afterwards made a common creed the bond of union for
great masses of mankind. It has now become in Asia a powerful
instrument of political association. Therefore when we proclaim for
our government in India the principle of religious neutrality we do
indeed avoid collision with other faiths, but we are without the
advantage that is possessed by a State which represents and is
supported by the religious enthusiasm of a great number of its
subjects. I take the separation of the State from religion to be a
principle that is quite modern in Europe; and outside our Indian
empire it is unknown in Asia. Everywhere else the ruler is the head of
some dominant church or creed. On the other hand our neutral attitude
enables us to arbitrate and keep the peace between the two formidable
rivals, Islam and Hinduism, which in a large measure balance and
restrain each other. And it is easier to govern a great empire full of
diverse castes and creeds when you only demand from them obedience to
the civil law, than when the Government takes one side on religious
questions. Nevertheless, though in India we proclaim and practise
religious neutrality, we must always remember that India is, of all
great countries in the world, that in which religious beliefs and
antagonisms affect the administration most profoundly, and subdivide
the population with the greatest complexity. For the empire contains a
wonderful variety of races and tribes, especially on its frontiers; it
has the fierce Afghan tribes under our protectorate on the north-west,
a cluster of utterly barbarous tribes in the north-east, and in the
Far East beyond Burmah we have undertaken the control of a border
tract, full of petty rival chiefships, where the language, manners and
origins are related to the neighbouring population of China.

In China we have the true type of Asiatic empire, by far the oldest in
the world, a sovereignty that, with various changes of dynasty, has
governed the Far East of Asia from time almost immemorial; an immense
conglomeration of different races under the rulers