oth have effected a
temporary and unnatural alliance on the basis of an illusory
"Nationalism" which appeals to nothing in Indian history, but is
calculated and meant to appeal with dangerous force to Western sentiment
and ignorance.

It rests with us to break up that unnatural alliance. We may not
reconcile aggressive Brahmanism to Western civilization, but we can
combat the evil influences for which it stands and which many
enlightened Brahmans have long since recognized; and we can combat them
most effectively by rallying to our side the better and more progressive
elements which, in spite of its many imperfections, Western education
and the contact with Western civilization have already produced. To that
end we must shrink from no sacrifices to improve our methods of
education. The evils for which we have to find remedies have been of
slow growth, and they can only be slowly cured. But they can be cured by
patient and sustained effort, and by carrying courageously into practice
the principle, which none of us will challenge in theory, that the
formation of character on a sound moral basis, inseparable in India from
a sound religious basis, is at least as important a part of the
educational process as the development of the intellect.

That, however, is not all. If we are to save and to foster the better
elements, we must stamp out the worse. Do not let us be frightened by
mere words. To talk, as some do, of the Indian Press being "gagged" by
the new Press Act is absurd. It is as free to-day as it has always been
to criticize Government as fully and fearlessly, and, one may add, often
as unjustly, as party newspapers in this country are wont to criticize
the Government of the day. It is no longer free to preach revolution and
murder with the cynical audacity shown in some of the quotations I have
given various Nationalist organs. "Repression" in India, whether of the
seditious press, or of secret societies, or of unlawful meetings, means
nothing more cruel or oppressive than the application of surgery to
diseased growths which threaten to infect the whole organism--and
especially so immature and sensitive an organism as the
semi-Westernized, semi-educated section of Indian society to-day
represents. This surgical treatment will probably also have to be
patient and sustained, for here too we have to deal with evils of no
sudden growth, though some of their worst outward manifestations have
come suddenly upon us. Eve