Indian Independence
should recognise perforce the impossibility of retaining her.”
I shall leave this passage to speak for itself. Does it not explain the psychology of the present movement? For what have we seen, on every side, as Mahatma Gandhi has gone from place to place and province to province? Have we not seen just that very "feeling of a common nationality," on which Sir John Seeley lays so much stress? Have we not seen the “notion created,” as Seeley says, “that it was shameful to assist the foreigner in maintaining his dominion?” Have we not begun to realise, in our humiliation, that we are regarded as a conquered nation? Surely, all these things have come to pass. May we not then hope that the end is not far distant; that Swaraj may be even now knocking at our very door, seeking to enter, and that it is we ourselves, and not the British, who are shutting it out? I shall take one other passage in conclusion, which has become almost equally famous. Sir John Seeley has been discussing
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