Bande Mataram

Perishing Prestige

02-July-1907

Some time back a retired Anglo-Indian wrote a letter on the unrest in the Punjab in the Times. He said: "Many English officials live for weeks and months absolutely alone among Indians, far from others of their race, and their comfort and their safety are dependent on the prestige of the English name and on the good will of the cultivators for their English rulers." Mr. Newman the travelling editor of the Englishman has taken the cue from this gentleman and improved upon him. Writing on Mr. Crabbe's murder he comments: "It may be said that the solitary murder of a European committed evidently by a desperate man who would have killed anybody who interfered with him, has no bearing at all on the general political situation in this province. In one way of course it has not, but the non-official view is that the crime would not have occurred but for the fact that the European has entirely lost his prestige here." It is to maintain this lost prestige that Regulation lathis and bayonets have been sent to Eastern Bengal. But this prestige must be weak indeed to require more support. Threats cannot keep prestige intact when it has not the power to maintain itself nor can oppression ensure its safety. The origin of their prestige is not likely to touch the popular imagination and it cannot hope to hold its own when the people realise their own position in the land that is theirs. No amount of brandishing of the rusty sword will be able to take India back to the days gone by. The tide of progress cannot be turned back and the race-consciousness once awakened cannot be suppressed. The old superstitions must fall away and disappear and the English in India can no longer hope to effect a return to the old ways. It is the old vain attempt to turn back the wheel of Time and bring back the "good" old past that has gone for ever.

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