Sunderland’s stimulating book

IT was one of the crowned heads of Europe who, on the publication of Edmund Burke’s memorable work on the French Revolution, exclaimed, “It is a good book, a very good book; every gentleman ought to read it.” In a very different sense and from a very different point of view, one may say, with regard to the stimulating volume (India, America and World Brotherhood) which Messrs Ganesh and Co of Madras have just brought out from the pen of Dr JT Sunderland: “It is a good book, a very good book; every Indian and every Englishman ought to read it.” A book of more absorbing interest to India in the state of transition through which she has been passing has, indeed, never yet been written by a foreigner or even by an Indian. Within the brief compass of scarcely more than 150 pages, the author has managed to present the whole case for Indian self-government in the most unanswerable form that anyone has presented it so far. He has advanced every single argument that can be adduced in favour of India self-government, and has given an effective reply to every single argument that has been or could ever be urged by those opposed to Indian national demand. And he has done all this in a language the sobriety of which is not its least charming feature, and what is equally important, not as England’s enemy, but as her friend. In his own words, he has not written a word “in a spirit of hostility to England”. “Although I am a citizen of America,” he writes, “I was born in England, where I have many relatives and dear friends, and where I have spent much time.”