But this
was not enough. At one blow the work I had devoted myself to for
years was brought to nothing. Everything seemed to me new; and as
I sat by my daughter's bedside, when she lay sick with the fever, I
had to think it all out again. Then I saw things in another light.
I saw that, though the white men were masterful and often hard, though
they had little regard for our customs, and viewed our beliefs as
superstitious, and scoffed at the notion of there being powers of
which they had no knowledge, yet that they were a great people.
Other conquerors, many of them, India has had, but none who have
made it their first object to care for the welfare of the people
at large. The Feringhees have wrung nothing from the poor to be
spent in pomp and display; they permit no tyranny or ill doing;
under them the poorest peasant tills his fields in peace.
"I have been obliged to see all this, and I feel now that their
destruction would be a frightful misfortune. We should be ruled
by our native lords; but as soon as the white man was gone the old
quarrels would break out, and the country would be red with blood.
I did not see this before, because I had only looked at it with
the eyes of my own caste; now I see it with the eyes of one whose
daughter has been saved from a tiger by a white man. I cannot love
those I have been taught to hate, but I can see the benefit their
rule has given to India.
"But what can I do now? I am in the stream, and I must go with it.
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