o longer remain
satisfied with inferior places of responsibility and lower posts of
emolument.... These people have little or no sympathy with the kind of
government which is gradually being extended to them. Ultimately they do
not ask for representative institutions, which will give them a share in
the government of their own land. What they really seek is absolute
control. The Brahmin (only five per cent. of the community) believes that
he has been divinely appointed to rule the country and would withhold
the franchise from all others. The Sudra--the Bourgeois of India--would
no more think of giving the ballot to the fifty million Pariahs of the
land than he would give it to his dog. It is the British power that has
introduced, and now maintains, the equality of rights and privileges
for all the people of the land."[123]

The apprehension that India, if liberated from British control, might be
exploited by a tyrannical Brahmin oligarchy is shared not only by
Western observers but also by multitudes of low-caste Hindus, known
collectively as the "Depressed Classes". These people oppose the Indian
nationalist agitation for fear of losing their present protection under
the British "Raj." They believe that India still needs generations of
education and social reform before it is fit for "home rule," much less
independence, and they have organized into a powerful association the
"Namasudra," which is loyalist and anti-nationalist in character.

The Namasudra view-point is well expressed by its leader, Doctor Nair.
"Democracy as a catchword," he says, "has already reached India and is
widely used. But the spirit of democracy still pauses east of Suez, and
will find it hard to secure a footing in a country where caste is
strongly intrenched.... I do not want to lay the charge of oppressing
the lower castes at the door of any particular caste. All the higher
castes take a hand in the game. The Brahmin oppresses all the
non-Brahmin castes. The high-caste non-Brahmin oppresses all the castes
below him.... We want a real democracy and not an oligarchy, however
camouflaged by many high-sounding words. Moreover, if an oligarchy is
established now, it will be a perpetual oligarchy. We further say that
we should prefer a delayed democracy to an immediate oligarchy, having
more trust in a sympathetic British bureaucracy than in an unsympathetic
oligarchy of the so-called high castes who have been oppressing us in
the past and will d