R.S.A. AND ASIATICS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 311, 25 September 1920, Page 7

R.S.A. AND ASIATICS

Sir,—l am afraid from the contents of )>er letter in your issue of 7th instant, that Mrs. Donaldson's knowledge of India and its various conditions is somewhat of the slightest. For she asks your readers to believe that the Indians aro Aryftiis. This statement of hers hardly agrees, with the facts. The population of India to-day is between 315 millions and 320 millions. Of this number only the Brahmins and the Rajputs, a total of less than 25 millions, aro pure Aryans. No doubt, a good many millions of the population ha\-o a strain of Aryan blood in them, as (hey have of many other races. " For as each of the many waVes of conquerors swept over the land, they conquered the women as well as the men. But this does not make their dcscendanls Aryans, or anything like it. Probably tiie only true Indians surviving tc-day aro the Santals, Knrias, ICols, Blieels, Mehtos, and llhairs, numbering, in all, about 10 millions.. As a matter of fact, India is not a nation. She never has been a nation, so far as history can definitely say. But she may havo been one, prior to 3000 8.C., which is rather a long time ago. She is a geographical expression, peopled by alwut 200 different races, without any cohesion or any sense of nationality, for they are fiercely divided by caste, colour, religion.i occupation, and temperament. The present unrest in India i 9 engineered entirely by a small section of ,tho Brahmins,'" mostly priosts' or lawyers.,lis only object is to give control of tho country to them. But no sect is more lmted and moro feared by Hindu aiid jioliammeclan alike than the Brahmin. Nor is any raco moro heartily despised by the Hajputs and other warlike races •of'the-North-West than the Brahpiin and tho Bengalee generally. To quote

their saying: "When God made.a haw ho made a Bengalee." .* If Donaldson were to study soma of the modern standard books on India, for instance, "India and its Problems," by the late W. S. Lilly, the "Oxford History of India," Lord Sydenham's publications, and evon only an article "Is India a Nation" (J. 11. Burrell), Quarterly, October, 1918, 6ho would then learn that mischievous and un-infonned , associations such as the one to which i she has, with the 'best of intentions, at- , tnched herself, are unwittingly helping not "to free a young nation struggling : to bs free," but to hand over 800 millions of peaceful, illiterate pecjile, chiefly agricultural labourers, to the dominance of one of the cruellest priestly ' oligarchies that the modern world has known.—l am, etc., TRAVELLER. ■; September !), 1920.