Synopses & Reviews
INDIAN NATIONALISM - 1914-1918 - PREFATORY NOTES ONSIRIPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM - IT is my good fortune to have a friend. Pro foundly learned in the earliest mythologies, he lives for the more part in that remote and unfrequented darkness which we conveniently designate pre-history. The other day he came near to the haunts of modern men, and said to me something like this At first the Empire was a mere supremacy. This form of Imperialism became obsolete, -supremacy was given, not a moral content, but a moral objective. Of this half-moralised conception, Lord Milner is the principal representative. It marked a step in the right direction, but it is not sufficient unto. the needs of to-day, for it can hardly consist with the newly-emergent claims of Nationality. We must make it quite clear, in words and deeds, that the norm, the telos, of the Empire is something more than a benevolent supremacy, -is a vital synthesis of free peoples, an integration of Nationalities in and through Freedom. If we do not do this at once, we shall prepare for ourselves much trouble. I listened and I agreed. Years ago the new Imperialism which my friend desiderates had been the burden of an evenings talk with John MacNeill, and I had heard him say, We will listen to you me will not listen to any English politician. I had resumed the story in many a letter to another Irishman, -in letters which became unavailingly known in Downing Street. Whispers from a new life in West Africa had reached me. I had listened to Eastern men while they exhibited to me the difference between the England that spoke through Whitehall and the England they had been taught to trust. I had been told of a continent in mourning when Tilakwas imprisoned and ablaze with bonfires when he was released. I knew of disappointment in Burma, of resentment in Ceylon, of smothered dislike in Egypt. What could I do but agree with my friend 4 He had told the truth. Turning an occasional eye from let us say Attys to Tilak, he had discerned the Empires vital need. Now the opportunity has come to me to write a few words prefatory to this book on Indian Nationalism. My task is an easy one. I have to do little more than emphasise the large conception towards which the authors have worked. That conception makes the book much more than a plea for Indian Nationalism. It is virtually a plea for a new Imperialism, and it marks a new stage in the development of our doctrine of the Empire...
Synopsis
Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (or K. M. Panikkar) was an Indian scholar, journalist, historian, administrator and diplomat. He was born to Puthillathu Parameswaran Namboodiri and Chalayil Kunjikutti Kunjamma in the Kingdom of Travancore, then a princely state in the British Indian Empire on June 3, 1895. Primarily, this book is neither a defence nor a criticism of a policy, -it is an account of a people's awakening. There seems to be in human nature some original perversity which preordains, for every national movement that is a growth, three stages of maltreatment. At first it is treated with indifference, then it is ridiculed, then it is abused. Not until it has outlived these experiences of adolescence will men deal with it on its merits