the jealous
opposition of the Brahmans, who combined, as Hindu castes know how to
combine, against unwelcome intruders into a profitable field of which
they had secured early possession. When the Public Services Commission
was in Madras eight years ago, we heard many bitter complaints from
non-Brahmans that, whenever one of them did succeed in getting an
appointment under Government, the Brahmans with whom or under whom he
had to work would at once unite to drive him out, either by making his
life intolerable or by turning against him the European superior to
whose ear they had easy access. For it is one of the weaknesses of an
alien bureaucracy that, in regard to routine work at least, its weaker
members are apt to be far too much in the hands of their native
assistants. The Brahmans later on formed the bulk of the new
Western-educated and "politically-minded" class, and the Madrasee
Brahmans played a considerable part in the Indian National Congress
before it broke away from its constitutional moorings.

The non-Brahmans, nevertheless, under the leadership of such resolute
men as the late Dr. Nair, fought their way steadily to the front, and,
being of course in a large majority, they had only to organise in order
to make full use of the opportunity which a relatively democratic
franchise afforded them for the first time at the recent elections. They
can hardly themselves have foreseen how great their opportunity was, for
they regarded the reforms at first with deep suspicion as calculated
merely to transfer substantive power from a British to a Brahman
bureaucracy, and so deep was their dread of Brahman ascendancy even in
the new Councils that they clamoured to the very end for a much larger
number of seats than the sixteen that were ultimately reserved as
"communal" seats for non-Brahman electorates. They never needed such a
reservation, for they actually carried the day in so many of the
"general" constituencies that out of ninety-eight elected members of the
new Provincial Council only fourteen are Brahmans, and it is the
Brahmans now who complain, not without reason, that their representation
falls short of their legitimate influence in the State, and are already
demanding a reservation of "communal" seats for their own caste in
future. Lord Willingdon, as a constitutional Governor, chose from the
non-Brahman majority in the Council all the three Indian Ministers who
form part of the new Provincial Government and