WESTERN EXPERIENCES WITH PRECEDENTS 457
also come to count for far more in the life of the ruling Western country.
When, on the i8th July, I947,1 Great Britain had completed the fulfil-
ment of a pledge, first made on the 2Oth August, 1917,* to grant full self-
government to India by stages at the fastest practicable pace, the Western
country that had carried out this transfer of political power on this scale
without having been constrained by any immediate force inajeure had
performed an act that was perhaps unprecedented and was certainly
auspicious for the future, not merely of the Western Civilization, but of
the Human Race.
In thus bestowing political independence on a sub-continent which
they had originally brought under their rule by force of arms during a
bout of anarchy at a late stage of a Hindu Civilization's disintegration,
the British people had been inspired by an indelible memory of their
disastrous failure in the eighteenth century to retain the allegiance of
then* own kinsmen and colonists in North America. This redoubtable
lesson had burnt into their souls a conviction that it was as unwise as it
was unwarrantable to attempt to rule other people by force when they
could no longer be governed with their own consent, and that the right
and statesmanlike course was always to grant self-government to a sub-
ject population that was demanding it in time to avoid the humiliation
of being forced at last to concede it at the bayonet's point. This was the
psychological background in British hearts and minds to the historic act
of the 18th July, 1947; but so novel and difficult a political undertaking
could hardly have been carried peacefully to success if the psychological
atmosphere had not been propitious on both sides. The transformation
of a British Raj into the three independent Asian states of India, Pakistan,
and Burma had been a joint achievement of the British people and their
former Continental Asian subjects; and the Asian contribution had been
a Hindu spirit of non-violence which had been blended with a Western
spirit of non-violence—the living tradition of the Society of Friends—
in the soul of the Mahatma Gandhi. The spiritual worth of this joint
achievement and the genuineness of the co-operation between Westerners
and Asians that had been the secret of its success were attested by the
immediate transformation of a previous bitterness on the Asian side and
a previous irritation on the Western side into a mutual esteem, and friend-
ship founded on a common sense of relief and satisfaction at having
found, in concert, a happy issue out of a strange and awkward, but per-
haps fatefully creative, encounter between the children of such diverse
civilizations as the Western, the Hindu, the Islamic, and the Indie.3
This notable reconciliation between an Asia represented by various
communities formerly subject to a British Raj and a Western Society
represented by British protagonists in the drama of Late Modern West-
ern imperialism opened up a prospect that—in spite of a Communist
1 This was the date on-which the Royal Assent was given, at Westminster, to an India
Independence Act enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The formal
assumption of authority by the Governments of the Ttvjjan Union and Pakistan followed
on the isth August, 1047.
a In the House of Commons at Westminster fay the Secretary of State for India, Mr.
Edwin Montagu.
3 For a diagnosis of the Hinayanian Buddhist communities in Ceylon. Burma, Siam,
and Cambodia as fossils of an otherwise extinct Indie Civilization, see I. i .35.
B 2915JX	Q 2