of, the foreigner who kept religion entirely outside
politics. And the British Government, when established, has so
carefully avoided offence to caste or creed that on one great occasion
only, the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, have the smouldering fires of
credulous fanaticism broken out against our rule.

I believe the British-Indian position of complete religious neutrality
to be unique among Asiatic governments, and almost unknown in Europe.
The Anglo-Indian sovereignty does not identify itself with the
interests of a single faith, as in Mohammedan kingdoms, nor does it
recognise a definite ecclesiastical jurisdiction in things spiritual,
as in Catholic Europe. Still less has our Government adopted the
Chinese system of placing the State at the head of different rituals
for the purpose of controlling them all, and proclaiming an ethical
code to be binding on all denominations. The British ruler, while
avowedly Christian, ignores all religions administratively,
interfering only to suppress barbarous or indecent practices when the
advance of civilisation has rendered them obsolete. Public
instruction, so far as the State is concerned, is entirely secular;
the universal law is the only authorised guardian of morals; to
expound moral duties officially, as things apart from religion, has
been found possible in China, but not in India. But the Chinese
Government can issue edicts enjoining public morality and rationalism
because the State takes part in the authorised worship of the people,
and the emperor assumes pontifical office. The British Government in
India, on the other hand, disowns official connection with any
religion. It places all its measures on the sole ground of reasonable
expediency, of efficient administration; it seeks to promote industry
and commerce, and material civilisation generally; it carefully avoids
giving any religious colour whatever to its public acts; and the
result is that our Government, notwithstanding its sincere professions
of absolute neutrality, is sometimes suspected of regarding all
religion with cynical indifference, possibly even with hostility.

Moreover, religious neutrality, though it is right, just, and the only
policy which the English in India could possibly adopt, has certain
political disadvantages. The two most potent influences which still
unite and divide the Asiatic peoples, are race and religion; a
Government which represents both these forces, as, for instance, in
Afghanist