India under Western influence

Mr. Lowis Dickinson of King's College, Cambridge, who travelled in India, China and Japan during 1912-13 as a fellow of the Albert Khan Travelling Fellowship, has published his observations in a book recently issued in England. It is interesting to note that he regards Indian religion "is very much more in harmony with the spirit of western science than with that of western religion." As regards the future he writes: "I find also that in India the contact between East and West assumes a form peculiarly acute and irritating, owing to the fact that India has been conquered and is governed by a Western Power. But the contact none the less, is having the same disintegrating effect it produces in other Eastern Countries. And I do not doubt that sooner or later, whether or no British rule maintains itself, the religious consciousness of India will be transformed by the methods and results of positive science, and its institution by the economic influence of industrialism." In this transformation, Mr Dicknison concludes, something will be lost but his own opinion is that India has more to gain and less to lose by contact with the west than any other eastern country.