failure or our success in coping with Indian unrest--that is, in
preventing its invasion of other classes than those to which it has been
hitherto confined. But the clue to the real spirit which informs Indian
unrest must be sought elsewhere.

Two misconceptions appear to prevail very widely at home with regard to
the nature of the unrest. The first is that disaffection of a virulent
and articulate character is a new phenomenon in India; the second is
that the existing: disaffection represents a genuine, if precocious and
misdirected, response on the part of the Western educated classes to the
democratic ideals of the modern Western world which our system of
education has imported into India. It is easy to account for the
prevalence of both these misconceptions. We are a people of notoriously
short memory, and, when a series of sensational dastardly crimes,
following on a tumultuous agitation in Bengal and a campaign of
incredible violence in the native Press, at last aroused and alarmed the
British public, the vast majority of Englishmen were under the
impression that since the black days of the Mutiny law and order had
never been seriously assailed in India, and they therefore rushed to the
conclusion that, if the _pax Britannica_ had been so rudely and suddenly
shaken, the only possible explanation lay in some novel wave of
sentiment or some grievous administrative blunder which had abruptly
disturbed the harmonious relations between the rulers and the ruled.
People had forgotten that disaffection in varying forms and degrees of
intensity has existed at all times amongst certain sections of the
population, and under the conditions of our rule can hardly be expected
to disappear altogether. Whether British statesmanship has always
sufficiently reckoned with its existence is another question. More than
30 years ago, for instance, the Government of India had to pass a Bill
dealing with the aggressive violence of the vernacular Press on