n if the improvement be more rapid than we
have any right to expect, do not let us throw away our surgical
instruments, but rather preserve them against any possible relapse. We
have to remember not only what we owe to ourselves, but what we owe
equally to the many well-meaning but timid Indians who look to us for
protection against the insidious forms of terrorism to which the
disaffected minority can subject them[24]. The number of our active
enemies may be few, but great is the number of our friends who are of
opinion that we are more anxious to conciliate the one sinner who may or
may not repent than to encourage the 99 just who persevere.

We want the Western-educated Indian. We have made him, and we cannot
unmake him if we would. But we must see that he is a genuine product of
the best that Western education can give, and not merely an Indian who
can speak English and adapt his speech to English ears in order to lend
plausibility to the revival in new forms of ancient religious or social
tyrannies. We must remember also that even the best type of
Western-educated Indian only speaks at present for a minute section of
the population of India, and that, when he does not speak, as he often
naturally does, merely in the interests of the small class which he
represents, he has not yet by any means proved his title to speak for
the scores of millions of his fellow-countrymen who are still living in
the undisturbed atmosphere of the Indian Middle Ages. One of the dangers
we have to guard against is that, because the Western-educated Indian is
to the stay-at-home Englishman, and even to the Englishman whose
superficial knowledge of India is confined to brief visits to the chief
cities of India, the most, and indeed the only, articulate Indian, we
should regard him as the only or the most authoritative mouthpiece of
the needs and wishes of other classes or of the great mass of his
fellow-countrymen with whom he is often in many ways in less close touch
than the Englishman who lives in their midst.

The weak point of the recent political reforms is that they were
intended to benefit, not wholly, but mainly, that particular class. In
so far as they may help to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of the
moderate Indian politician they deserve praise; and in that respect, as
far as one can judge at this very early stage, they are not without
promise. In effect they have also helped to give other important
interests opportunitie