The whole Report was written "before the flood," and it
is now merely an antiquarian curiosity.
India, for all these reasons, was forced to see before her a future of
perpetual subordination: the Briton rules in Great Britain, the
Frenchman in France, the American in America, each Dominion in its own
area, but the Indian was to rule nowhere; alone among the peoples of the
world, he was not to feel his own country as his own. "Britain for the
British" was right and natural; "India for the Indians" was wrong, even
seditious. It must be "India for the Empire," or not even for the
Empire, but "for the rest of the Empire," careless of herself. "British
support for British Trade" was patriotic and proper in Britain.
"Swadeshi goods for Indians" showed a petty and anti-Imperial spirit in
India. The Indian was to continue to live perpetually, and even
thankfully, as Gopal Krishna Gokhale said he lived now, in "an
atmosphere of inferiority," and to be proud to be a citizen (without
rights) of the Empire, while its other component Nations were to be
citizens (with rights) in their own countries first, and citizens of the
Empire secondarily.
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