e too unrelated, too far apart, to
coalesce with ease....

"India, then, is in a state of economic revolution throughout all the
classes of an enormous and complex society. The only period in which
Europe offered even faint analogies to modern India was the Industrial
Revolution, from which even now we have not settled down into
comparative stability. We may reckon it as a fortunate circumstance for
Europe that the intellectual movement which culminated in the French
Revolution did not coincide with the Industrial Revolution. If it had,
it is possible that European society might have been hopelessly wrecked.
But, as it was, even when the French Revolution had spent its force in
the conquests of Napoleon, the Industrial Revolution stirred up enough
social and political discontent. When whole classes of people are
obliged by economic revolution to change their mode of life, it is
inevitable that many should suffer. Discontent is roused. Political and
destructive movements are certain to ensue. Not only the Revolutions of
'48, but also the birth of the Socialist Party sprang from the
Industrial Revolution.

"But that revolution was not nearly so sweeping as that which is now in
operation in India. The invention of machinery and steam-power was, in
Europe, but the crowning event of a long series of years in which
commerce and industry had been constantly expanding, in which capital
had been largely accumulated, in which economic principles had been
gradually spreading.... No, the Indian economic revolution is vastly
greater and more fundamental than our Industrial Revolution, great as
that was. Railways have been built through districts where travel was
almost impossible, and even roads are unknown. Factories have been
built, and filled by men unused to industrial labour. Capital has been
poured into the country, which was unprepared for any such development.
And what are the consequences? India's social organization is being
dissolved. The Brahmins are no longer priests. The ryot is no longer
bound to the soil. The banya is no longer the sole purveyor of capital.
The hand-weaver is threatened with extinction, and the brass-worker can
no longer ply his craft. Think of the dislocation which this sudden
change has brought about, of the many who can no longer follow their
ancestral vocations, of the commotion which a less profound change
produced in Europe, and you will understand what is the chief
motive-power of the politi