large increase in the number of young Indians who
went to England to complete their studies--especially technical studies
for which only tardy and inadequate facilities were provided in their
own country--and many of them, left to their own devices in our large
cities, brought back to India a closer familiarity with the unedifying
rather than the edifying aspects of Western civilisation, the
development of European industries and the railway and telegraph
services, which at first at least required the employment of Europeans
in subordinate capacities, imported into India a new type of European,
with many good qualities, but rather more prone than those of better
breeding and education to glory in his racial superiority and to bring
it home somewhat roughly to the Indians with whom he associated. The
ignorance of European and American globe-trotters who were finding their
way to India also often offended Indian susceptibilities. Add to many
causes of friction, almost inevitable sometimes between people whose
habits and ideas are widely different, the effect of a trying climate
upon the European temper--never, for instance, even at home at its best
when travelling--and one need hardly be surprised that unpleasant
incidents occurred in which, sometimes under provocation and sometimes
under none, Englishmen who ought to have known better were guilty of
gross affronts upon Indians. Such incidents were never frequent, but,
even if there had been no tendency on the part of Indians to magnify and
on the part of Englishmen to minimise their gravity, they were frequent
enough to cause widespread heartburning, and in not a few cases
political hatred has had its origin in the rancour created by personal
insults to which even educated Indians of good position have
occasionally been subjected by Englishmen who fancied themselves, but
were not, their betters. That Indians also could be, and were sometimes,
offensive they were generally apt to forget, as they forgot in their
denunciations of Lord Curzon at the time of the Partition of Bengal that
he had not shrunk from incurring great unpopularity in some Anglo-Indian
circles by insisting upon adequate punishment of all Europeans guilty of
violence towards Indians. Apart from such collisions nothing rankled
more with Indians of the better classes than their rigid exclusion from
the European clubs in India. Even the few who were members of, or had
been admitted at home as visitors to, the