Page:Young India.pdf/32

dent in India.” Professor Pratt’s remarks about the “average European resident,” who has been “twenty-two years” in India, are prefaced by an eulogistic tribute to the British administration of justice in India, which may be accepted with a little salt. The administration of justice in India is impartial and as fair as it can be under the circumstances, except when one party is a native and the other a Britisher. What concerns us here, is Professor Pratt’s opinion about the resident Englishman’s knowledge of India. In his opinion “most of the Englishmen” whom he met seemed to him “singularly lacking in curiosity or interest” about “Indian thought, religion, traditions and ways of viewing things.” “The Anglo-Indian,” adds he, “is surprisingly indifferent towards almost everything native.” Professor Pratt illustrates his conclusions by actual facts which came under his observation. One English gentleman who had lived in Calcutta and other parts of the East for many years, said to the professor: “The natives are all just a lot of animals, don’t you think so?” No wonder that the professor had to say that his impression was quite different. For him it was hard to conceive how one “could stay any time among them without finding them a truly lovable people, and without imbibing genuine respect and admiration for the simple dignity of their lives, the quiet courtesy of their manners, their uncomplaining endurance of hardships, their unbounded hospitality, and the feeling for spiritual value, which in spite of gross superstitions is unmistakable in the Indian