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Appendix A

MR. HUME'S ARTICLE IN India, 1893 (see p. 30).

'The election of Babu Surendra Nath Banerjea by the Calcutta Corpora- tion, to a seat on the Bengal Legislative Council, completes happily. the first act of a drama of real life which at one time threatened to evolve in a painful tragedy.

'Mr. Surendra Nath, the greatest of our Indian orators, was many years ago recognized by his tutors in England, which he visited to compete for the Indian Civil Service, as one of the most talented and at the same time amiable and lovable young men with whom they had ever had to deal. He passed the examination with great credit and in due course re- turned to India as a member of the Covenanted Civil Service. All for a time went well. Then, certain charges of rendering untrue returns of the state of his files, with a view to concealing a certain laziness which was alleged to be his leading foible, were considered by the local Government to be of sufficient importance to require investigation by a special official Commission. The special Commission, thus appointed, found that certain irregularities were proved against him, and the Government then and there dismissed him from the service.

'Now in the first place, many then in India, ourselves among the num- ber, who had the opportunity of seeing all the papers, while not dissen- ting as regards most of the facts that the Commission found to be estab- fished, differed altogether as to the interpretation to be placed upon them, and held, and still hold, that Babu Surendra Nath was guilty of nothing more than a certain carelessness and laziness, that might well have been passed over, in a quite young officer, with a mild rebuke, and an exhorta- tion to be more zealous in future. But putting this aside, the judges them- selves—and one of these repeated this to us only last week—considered that even for the faults that they held to have been established, suspen- sion from promotion for a year would have been an adequate punishment, and no one, not even Suredra Nath himself, was more astonished than were these judges when the terrible sentence of expulsion from the service was pronounced against him by the Government.

'To English readers it is necessary to explain that Mr. Surendra Nath was one of the pioneers of the Indians into the Covenanted Civil Service. Almost throughout the bureaucracy, the admission of Indians within their sacred pale was viewed with the utmost jealousy and disapproval, and this summary expulsion of one of the most distinguished of the invaders was utilized as the basis for pacans glorifying the British officials and their foresight in opposing the introduction of Indian colleagues. Virtually, what all the Anglo-Indians said was this, "Oh yes, clever enough, but just as we told you, a d———d set of rogues, utterly unfit for the Civil Service, the

noblest, most upright, and most essentially gentlemanly service in the world.