ABSTRACT

It has been justly said that the India of the present is no more like the India of Lord Ellen-borough than the England of to-day is like the England of Queen Anne. This remark is equally true in respect of moral, social, and intellectual advancement as in regard to material affairs. But, morally and socially at least, the change is far greater than this analogy would imply. In England there has been evolution, not revolution. The change has been the result of natural spontaneous progress brought about by the action of internal forces. In India the change has been artificial and forced from without. It is the product of the relationship between two civilisations at an unequal stage of development in immediate contact with one another. The question in India, therefore, is not one of progress only; the movement, so far as it has gone, is revolution pure and simple : in other words, it is the introduction of the complex 245machinery of Western civilisation into the simple society of the East.