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I returned home from my tour as quickly as I could, for I had important work in Calcutta. Our programme was, after securing absolute unanimity of opinion all over India, expressed through public meetings at various centres, to carry on the agitation in England and make the voice of India heard there, through our chosen representative, belonging to our own people and uttering our sentiments. Mr. Routledge, late Editor of the Friend of India, writing about this novel departure, said that it was ‘an inspired idea’. We claimed for it no special illumination. It was prompted by love of country, as pure and as warm as ever glowed in any human breast, and the sequel proved that it was a golden idea, fruitful of a rich harvest.
It may not be out of place here to pause for a moment, to consider the net result of the tour I had undertaken all over India. For the first time under British rule, India, with its varied races and religions, had been brought upon the same platform for a common and united effort. Thus was it demonstrated, by an object-lesson of impressive significance, that, whatever might be our differences in respect of race and language, or social and religious institutions, the people of India could combine and unite for the attainment of their common political ends. The lesson thus learnt was to be confirmed and deepened by subsequent events to which I shall refer later on, and it found its culminating expression in the Congress movement. The ground was thus prepared for this great national and unifying movement. The public men of the time were not forgetful cf the lesson thus taught; and a deputation of the Puna Sarvajanik Sabha, which visited Calcutta in 1878, pointedly referred to it at a conference held in the rooms of the British Indian Association, as opening the way for the united political efforts of an awakened India.
Sir Henry Cotton in his book, New India, which at the time created a unique sensation, thus referred to my tour:
‘The educated classes are the voice and brain of the country. The Bengalee Babus now rule public opinion from Peshawar to Chittagong; and, although the natives of North-Western India are immeasurably behind those of Bengal in education and in their sense of political independence, they are gradually becoming as amenable as their brethren of the lower provinces, to intellectual control and guidance. A quarter of a century ago there was no trace of this; the idea of any Bengalee influence in the Punjab would have been a conception incredible to Lord Lawrence, to a
Montgomery, or a Macleod; yet it is the case that during the past year