The “Educated Minority” in India.

ONE of the arguments advanced by the opponents of self-government for India is that if the powers of Government were transferred to the people, they would pass to the hands of the educated minority. These, it is said, would form an oligarchy and oppress the masses. This opinion was openly expressed by the Anglo-Indian Association in their address to the Secretary of State and supported by similar associations. “There is a wide-spread feeling,” says the address, “that the immediate grant of a large measure of Home Rule would mean handing over the Government of India to a class representing only a small minority of the peoples of India and that the effect would be to exchange government by a bureaucracy which is at any rate disinterested and efficient, for government by a bureaucracy that would be neither disinterested nor efficient. It would be a disaster of the first magnitude to make in politics.”