enemies of truth, the servants first of theology and then of
science--your European teachers.

You say that the English have enslaved your people and hold them
in subjection because the latter have not resisted resolutely
enough and have not met force by force.

But the case is just the opposite. If the English have enslaved
the people of India it is just because the latter recognized, and
still recognize, force as the fundamental principle of the social
order. In accord with that principle they submitted to their
little rajahs, and on their behalf struggled against one another,
fought the Europeans, the English, and are now trying to fight
with them again.

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred
millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will
fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that
thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary
people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever,
capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it
clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians,
but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it
is as if drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have
settled among them have enslaved them. You tell them that they
might give up drinking, but they reply that they are so
accustomed to it that they cannot abstain, and that they must
have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is it not the same thing