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and I do not see much reason for thinking that he himself wishes for
anything of the kind. For if someone is genuinely working for Indian
independence, what is he likely to do? Obviously he will start by deciding
what forces are potei)tially on his side, and then, as cold-bloodedly as
any
t~othpaste
advertiser, he will think out the best method of appealing
to them. This is not Mr. Fielden's manner of approach. A number of
motives are discernible in his book, but the immediately obvious one is
a desire to work off various quarrels with the Indian Government, All–
India Radio and various sections of the British Press. He does indeed
marshal a number of facts about India, and towards the end he even
produces a couple of pages of constructive suggestions, but for the most
part his book is simply a nagging, irrelevant attack on British rule, mixed
up with tourist-like gush about the superiority of Indian civilization. On
the fly-leaf, just to induce that matey atmosphere which all propagandists
aim at, he signs his dedicatory letter 'among the European barbarians',
and then a few pages later introduces an imaginary Indian who denounces
Western civilization with all the shrillness of a spinster of thirty-nine
denouncing the male sex:
'... an Indian who is intensely proud of his own traditions, and
regards Europeans as barbarians who are continually fighting, who use
force to dominate othe_r peaceful peoples, who think chiefly in terms of
big business, whisky, and bridge; as people of comparatively recent
growth, who, while they put an exaggerated value on plumbing, have
managed to spread tuberculosis and venereal disease all over the world
... he will say that to sit in the water in which you have washed, instead
of bathing yourself in running water, is not clean, but dirty and dis–
gusting; he will show, and I shall agree with him absolutely, that the
English are a dirty and even a smelly nation compared with the Indians;
he will assert, and I am not at all sure that he is wrong, that the use of
half-washed forks, spoons and knives by different people for food is
revoltingly barbaric when compared with the exquisite manipulation of
food by Indian fingers; he will be confident that the Indian room, with
its bare walls and beautiful carpets, is infinitely superior to the European
clutter of uncomfortable chairs and tables,' etc. etc. etc.
The whole book is written in this vein, more or less. The same nag–
ging, hysterical note crops up every few pages, and where a comparison
can be dragged in it is dragged in, the upshot always being that the East
is Good and the West is Bad. Now before stopping to inquire what service
this kind of thing really does to the cause of Indian freedom, it is worth
trying an experiment. Let me rewrite this passage as it might be uttered
by an Englishman speaking up for his own civilization as shrilly as Mr.
Fielden's Indian. It is important to notice that what he says is not more
dishonest or more irrelevant than what I have quoted above:
' ... an Englishman who is intensely proud of his own traditions,
and regards Indians as an unmanly race who gesticulate like monkeys, are
