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In the mythical Indian rope trick, the rope stands straight up. Onlookers know, however, that the rope is staying up because the fakir wills it to stay up. India s democracy is much the same. Some observers have found it hard to see how it could support itself, and many have expected it to fall. But it will stand if Indians want it to, and use their collective will to give it strength.
When India shook off the chains of colonial rule in 1947, predictions abounded ...
Roderick Matthews re-examines British rule in India by concentrating on three central themes: its ability to defray the costs of its own maintenance; its impersonal and institutional qualities that gave it continuity and tenacity; and its commitment to a dual higher purpose – the uplift of the condition of the natives and the playing out of the superior moral character of the Englishman. At first, these ‘virtues’ gave the Raj viability, vitality ...