India of My Dreams

Chapter 67: An India Governor

1. An Indian Governor should, in his own person, and in his surroundings, be a teetotaler. Without this, prohibition of the fiery liquid is wellnigh inconceivable.
2. He and his surroundings should represent hand spinning as a visible token of identification with the dumb millions of India, a token of the necessity of 'bread labour' and organized non-violence as against organized violence on which the society of today seems to be based.
3. He must dwell in a cottage accessible to all, through easily shielded from gaze, if he is to do efficient work. The British Governor naturally represented the British might. For him and his was erected a fortified residence-a palace to be occupied by him and his numerous vassals who sustained his empire. The Indian prototype may keep somewhat pretentious buildings for receiving princes and ambassadors of the world. For these, being guests of the Governor, should constitute an education in what "Even unto This Last "equality of all -should mean in concrete terms. For him no expensive furniture, foreign or indigenous, plain living and high thinking must motto, not to adorn his entrance but to be exemplified in daily life.
4. For him there can be no untouchability in any from whatever no caste or creed or colour distinction. He must represent the best of all religious and all things Eastern and Western. Being a citizen of the India, He must be a citizen of the world. Thus simply, one reads, did the Khalif Omar, with millions of treasure at his feet, live; thus lived Janaka of ancient times; thus lived, as I saw him, the Master of Eton in his residence in the midst of, and surrounded by, the son of the Lords and Nabobs of the British Isles. Will the Governors of India of the famished millions do less?
5. He will speak the language of the province of which he is the Governor and Hindustani, the lingua franca of India written in the Nagari or Urdu script. This is neither Sanskritized Hindi nor Persianized Urdu. Hindustani is emphatically the language which is spoken by the millions north of the Vindhya Range.

This does not pretend to be an exhaustive list of the virtues that an Indian Governor should represent. It is merely illustrative.

Harijan, 24-8-47