Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Havell Ernest Binfield
Title : The history of Aryan rule in India From the earliest times to the death of Akbar
Year : 1918

Link download : Havell_Ernest_Binfield_-_The_history_of_Aryan_rule_in_India.zip

The Eastern Question is always with us, for the fate of the British Empire is bound up with it ; and the kernel of the Eastern Question lies in India, the country which has contribtited most to the wealth, prosperity, and power of the Empire. But neglect of the study of Indian history, or ' colossal ignorance ' of it, has never been regarded as a disqualification for the highest positions in the Government of India. The Imperial Parliament takes it for granted that a capable British Minister is as well qualified for dealing with the problems of Indian administration as he is for any other office of State. It is a significant fact that Indians generally prefer an administrator who has not been through the mill of the Indian Civil Service, from the idea that he will be likely to treat high political questions in a more liberal and unbiased spirit. And in this matter the Indian has intuitively understood the secret of the astonishing success of British rule in the East. Indian philosophy has always discriminated between two kinds of knowledge — intuitional or divinely inspired wisdom, and traditional, or that which is acquired by training and experience ; and the former has always been held to be in the highest plane. It is not the educational equipment or administrative efficiency of the bureaucracy which makes the vast majority of Indians accept British rule as the best possible one, and brings Hindu and Musalman to rally round the flag of the Empire at the most critical time of its existence. It is that they recognise that the present Aryan rulers of India, in spite of ' colossal ignorance ' and the mistakes which are the result of it, are generally animated by that same love of justice and fair-play, the same high principles of conduct and respect for humanitarian laws, which guided the ancient Aryan statesmen and lawgivers in their relations with the Indian masses. Our Indo-Aryan brothers have perhaps more than most Britons of that deep veneration for true knowledge which has always been characteristic of the Aryan race. They recognise in modern European scientific research, so far as it is disinterested and not prostituted for base purposes, the culmination of the quest which their own divinely inspired rishis followed for thousands of years, and they eagerly desire to have the doors of this new temple of Sarasvati opened to them wider. I/ord Macaulay, in spite of his contempt for Indo-Aryan culture, is still regarded by them as a great statesman and benefactor of India — and from their point of view rightly so, for, though profoundly ignorant of Indo-Aryan history, his intuitive genius showed him the path leading to an Indian Renaissance, though he himself totally miscalculated the direction it would take. ...