extreme poverty. And there can never be political contentment without material prosperity, shared in by all classes of the people. What the District Administration Committee of Bengal quotes with approval as regards Bengal, that our industrial backwardness is a great political danger, applies in reality to the whole of India.
“ No one will be disposed to question the fact of this amazing backwardness. Rich in all the resources of nature, India continues to be the poorest country in the civilised world” [1]
VI
I do not propose to burden this preface with other complaints which the Indian politicians make against the British Government, but I can not refrain from giving one more quotation from my own pamphlet on the question of Education:
“ Let us look at education in India. India has been under British rule now for a century and a half in some parts, for over a century in others, and for at least 65 years in the Punjab. Yet the percentage of illiteracy is well nigh 95 per cent., taking the whole of India. Greatest ignorance prevails among the peasantry and the military classes, the two great bulwarks of British rule in India. What has the Government done to educate these classes? Nothing. Some maintain that they have been deliberately kept out of education because, once educated, they may no longer be such willing tools as they are now.
- ↑ The italics are mine
