AWAKENING OF THE EAST	407
Curzon : " India is the pivot of our British Empire,
[f this Empire loses any other part of its Dominions, we
:an survive. But if we lose India, the sun of our Empire
jrill have set."
But, if Imperialism invaded India, neither could the wave
Df Liberalism be dammed within the countries of its origin.
Steamships, railways, and telegraphs were not calculated
to keep the world divided into oases and deserts. British
Liberalism was bound to leaven the conquests of British
Conservatism. This was the significance of the simultaneous
extinction in India of Indian feudalism and the English
East India Company's rule. The. anomaly of His Majesty's
subjects holding sovereign rights (though it be over coloured
peoples) was an anachronism that could not be sustained
in the nineteenth century. So the Regulating Act (1763)
culminated in Her Majesty's Proclamation; the Reforms
of 1833 were to end in the demand for Swaraj. If Eng-
land fed on India, she could not also prevent India from
feeding on Burke, Bright, and Mazzini. England, while
she deliberately destroyed the Old Order in India, also in-
evitably paved the way of the Indian: Renaissance.
We can touch here only on a few phases of the Indian
Awakening in the nineteenth century. It was significant that
the year of the Great Rising also witnessed the foundation
of- the three modern Universities of Bombay, Madras, and
Calcutta. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the
Indian Renaissance has been the product of Western educa-
tion alone. It has been the resultant of several forces act-
ing at the same time. The Rising of 1857 was more a social
revolt than a mere mutiny of the army or even a political
rebellion. Its suppression was necessary not only for the
security of British rule, but also for the creation of a
New- India. It was an event as epoch-making for India