Even assuming that these prophets of woe are right, I still think that it is good for India to start governing herself. The essential injury which the rule of one nation over another causes is the injury to the self-respect of the subject nation. No amount of practical benefit can compensate the latter for this vital loss. Once a nation ceases to rule itself, a subtle psychological alteration begins to work in the minds of the individuals of that nation. In the processes of time they persuade themselves that in every respect, whether in the field of administration or outside it, they are inferior to the members of the ruling nation.

It is not good for the ruling nation either. They begin to believe that Providence has endowed them with a bigger brain and bigger character. Read Rudyard Kiplings’s “Plain Tales from the Hills” or the novels by lesser Anglo-Indian writers who are not to be mentioned in the same breath. Their implicit belief that “white blood” instinctively commands obedience from “brown blood” will be laughable if it were not so insolent...