o, but exactly the reverse.

On the deficiencies of the system, from the moral point of view, a new
and terribly lurid light has been shed within the last few years. There
has been no more deplorable feature in the present political agitation
than the active part taken in it by Indian schoolboys and students. It
has been a prominent feature everywhere, but nowhere more so than in the
Bengal provinces, where from the very outset of the boycott movement in
1905 picketing of the most aggressive character was conducted by bands
of young Hindus who ought to have been doing their lessons. That was
only the beginning, and the state of utter demoralization that was
ultimately reached may be gathered from the following statements in the
last Provincial Report on Education (1908-9), issued by the Government
of Eastern Bengal:--

On the 7th of August [1908] most of the Hindu students
abstained from attending the college and high schools at
Comilla as a demonstration in connexion with the boycott
anniversary. Immediately afterwards, on the date of the
execution of the Muzafferpur murderer, the boys of several
schools in the province attended barefooted and without
shirts and in some cases fasting.... At Jamalpur the
demonstration lasted a week.... Later in the year, on
the occasion of the execution of one of the Alipur murderers,
the pupils of the Sandip Cargill school made a similar demonstration.

The report adds, in a sanguine vein, that, as a result of various
disciplinary measures, a marked improvement had subsequently taken
place, but quite recent events, during the great conspiracy trial at
Dacca, show that something more than disciplinary measures is required
to eradicate the spirit which inspired such occurrences.

The heaviest responsibility rests on those who, claiming to be the
intellectual leaders of the country, not only instigated its youth to
take part in political campaigns, but actually placed them in the
forefront of the fray. However reprehensible from our British point of
view other features of a seditious agitation may be, to none does so
high a degree of moral culpability attach as to the deliberate efforts
made by Hindu politicians to undermine the fundamental principles of
authority by stirring up the passions or appealing to the religious
sentiment of inexperienced youth at the most emotional period of
life.[19] Even the fact that political murders have been invariably
pe