Is Mrs. Besant a Foreigner?

THE extent to which party and personal feeling runs high in certain quarters in India is shown by the attempt that has been made, in connection with Mrs. Besant's resolution at the Conjeeveram Conference, to minimise her activities on the ground of her being a foreigner. The attempt is not only extremely ungrateful but absurdly stupid. That she is by birth a foreigner to India, no man, who has anything better to do, would care to affirm. But in everything except as regards the place of her birth, she is as much an Indian as any son or daughter of the Motherland and is far more an Indian than the majority of Indians. For years India has been her adopted motherland, and the energy, devotion and single-mindedness with which she has served her could not have been excelled if she had been her real motherland.