12 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

per's rule in India, that the ruler has not attempted to
remain in his own distant country and rule the conquered
-country from afar, farming it like an absentee landlord,
but has identified himself with it. The beneficent rule of
Elala, a Tamil usurper in Ceylon two centuries before
•Christ, was so notorious that deep respect was paid to the
.site of his tomb more than 2,000 years later; and to men-
tion a more modern case, the 18th century Tamil (Hindu)
ruler, Kirti Sri and his two brothers, so identified them-
selves with the Sinhalese (Buddhist) people as to have
•deserved the chronicler's remark that they were " one with
•the religion and the people." To show that such a situa-
tion is still possible, it will suffice to cite the States of
Hyderabad, Baroda and Gwalior.

Even suppose the differences that separate the Indian
•.communities to be twice as great as they are said to be,
.they are nothing compared with the difference between the
Indian and the European. "Western rule is inevitably
.alien rule, in a far deeper sense than the rule of Hindus by
Muhammadans or the reverse could be. And what does
alien rule mean ? " The government of a people by itself,"
-says John Stuart Mill, " has a meaning and a reality, but
such a thing as the government of one people by another
<loes not and cannot exist. One people may keep another
.as a warren or preserve for its own use, a place to make
money in, a human farm to be worked for the profit of its
-own inhabitants." "No cant of the " white man's burden J>
alters the stern logic of these facts ; to us it appears that
the domination of the East by the West is a menace to the
-evolution of the noblest ideal of humanity; the " white
man's burden" translated into the language of Asiatic
thought becomes " the white peril"; and this is not
•because we despise the achievements of "Western civilisa-