Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/143
was laid before Sir Charles Elliott, and he vetoed it. As a result I did not move the Resolution, nor did I join the Institute. The Institute does not indeed encourage the discussion of political questions, but high officials like Mr. Lyon and Mr. Cumming have from its platform expressed their views upon the great problems of Indian administration and self-government.
The unwisdom of excluding students from the discussion of political questions is being recognized. Some sort of politics, good or bad, they are bound to have; and if you will not teach them the right sort of politics, and by discussion with them lead them to it, you must make up your mind for the wildest vagaries among them, in a matter of vital concern to the student community. In the Unions of Oxford and Cambridge political questions are not tabooed, and political leaders are invited to open discussions. India is not England; but the student mind is the same all the world over; and the discipline of knowledge and of healthy discussion is bound to be as fruitful in the East as in the West.
While I hold this view, I deprecate all demonstrations of rowdy- ism on the part of some of our young men, who have displayed an unpardonable intolerance of views opposed to their own. Tolerance has been the immemorial creed of the Hindu race; and discipline is the soul of student-life. These deviations from ancient practice and the deep-rooted instincts of the Hindu student consti- tute a serious menace to cur orderly political progress. I am afraid that both in our homes and in our educational institutions the bonds of discipline have been relaxed, and a spirit of disorder is gaining ground. I can only hope that it is a temporary phase, a short-lived development, which will pass away with the exciting causes that have given rise to it.
We returned home from Madras by the British India Steam Navigation Company's steamer Rewa. My friend, Mr. B. L. Gupta of the Indian Civil Service, and Miss Muller, who had adopted an Indian student, Mr. Ghose, were our fellow-passengers. Kali Prosanna Kabyavisarad, editor of the Hitabadi, was one of our party, and he used to entertain the European passengers on board with his card-tricks and his feats of jugglery. Visarad, whose versatility was wonderful, was a past master in this art. One of the most genial of men, a brilliant Bengalee writer, a poet of no mean order, a composer of songs of exquisite beauty and pathos, which thrilled the audiences at our Swadeshi meetings, it will be necessary for me to refer to him and his work at greater length later on. I