INDIA: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
By SIR CHARLES CROSTHWAITE, K.C.S.I.
What is India? I make no apology for answering the question in the words used by Lord Dufferin at the St. Andrew's dinner, Calcutta, on November 80, 1888, for they give the most vivid picture of what we mean by India that has been drawn in a few lines. 'It is an Empire,' he said, 'equal in size, if Russia be excluded, to the entire Continent of Europe, with a population of 250,000,000 souls. This population is composed of a large number of distinct nationalities, professing various religions, practising diverse rights, speaking different languages … while many of them are still further separated from each other by discordant prejudices, by conflicting social usages, and even antagonistic material interests! Perhaps the most patent peculiarity of our Indian cosmos is its division into two highly political communities: the Hindus, numbering 100,000,000, and the Mohammedans, a nation of 50,000,000, whose distinctive characteristics, whether religious, social, or ethnological, it is, of course, unnecessary for me to refer to before such an audience as the present. But to these two great divisions must be added a host of minor nationalities, though "minor" is a misleading term, since most of them may be numbered by millions, who, although some of them are included in the two broader categories I have mentioned, are as completely differentiated from each other as are the Hindus from the Mohammedans; such as the Sikhs, with their warlike habits and traditions, and their
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