l primacy to an extent
unknown in other parts of India with the Kayasthas, and also with
another high caste, the Vaidhyas, who formerly monopolized the practice
of Hindu medicine. The _nexus_ is education, and that _nexus_ has been
strengthened since the advent of British rule and of Western education.
When the educational enterprise of the early British missionaries was
followed up, under the impulse of Dr. Duff, the greatest figure in the
missionary annals of India, and of Ram Mohun Roy, the most learned and
earnest of all reforming Brahmans, by the famous Government Minute of
March 7, 1835, many distinguished members of all these three castes
responded to the call and began to qualify for employment under
Government and for the liberal professions that were opening out in the
new India we were making. They were first in the field, and, though
other castes have followed suit, it is they who have practically
monopolized the public offices, the Bar, the Press, and the teaching
profession. It was they who were the moving spirits of the Brahmo Samaj
and of Social Reform when progressive ideas seemed to be on the point of
permeating Hinduism. But when the reaction came which first found public
expression in the resistance provoked by the Age of Consent Act of 1891
for mitigating the evils of Hindu child marriage, and the spirit of
reform was deflected from the social and religious into the political
domain, it was they again who showed the most aptitude to clothe the new
political movement in all the forms of Western political activities. It
was Mr. W.O. Bonnerjee, an able Bengalee lawyer of moderate and
enlightened views, who presided over the first Indian National Congress
at Bombay and delivered an opening address of which the moderation has
rarely been emulated, and though the Congress movement originated in
Bombay rather than in Bengal, the fluent spokesmen of Bengal very soon
had the satisfaction of feeling that for the first time in Indian
history Bengal might claim to be marching in the van.

Owing to his greater plasticity and imagination, the Bengalee has
certainly often assimilated English ideas as few other Indians have.
None can question, for instance, the genuine Western culture and sound
learning of men like Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee, the Vice-Chancellor of the
Calcutta University, or Dr. Rash Behari Ghose, than whom the English Bar
itself has produced few greater lawyers; and it would be easy to quote
many oth