It is true that, compared with the enormous population of India, the disaffected people are a very insignificant minority, but, given time and opportunity, there exists the danger of this small minority spreading its tentacles all over the country and inoculating with its poisonous doctrines the classes and masses hitherto untouched by this seditious movement." The Maharana of Udaipur, speaking with the authority of his unique position amongst Hindus as the premier Prince of Rajputana, not only condemns an agitation "which is detrimental to all good government and social administration," but declares it to be "a great disgrace to their name as also to their religious beliefs that, in spite of the great prosperity India has enjoyed under the British _regime_, people are acting in such an ungrateful way." No less emphatic is the Mahratta ruler of Gwalior:--"The question is undoubtedly a grave one, affecting as it does the future well-being of India," and "it particularly behoves those who preside over the destinies of the people and have large personal stakes to do all in their power to grapple with it vigorously." The Maharajah of Jaipur, one of the wisest of the older generation of Hindu rulers, agrees that "only a small fraction of the population has been contaminated by the seditious germ," but he adds significantly that "that fraction has, it seems, been carefully organized by able, rich, and unscrupulous men," and he does not hesitate to declare that "an organized and concerted campaign, offensive and defensive, against the common enemy is what is wanted." According to the Rajah of Dewas, one of the most enlightened of the younger Hindu chiefs, "it is a well known fact that the endeavours of the seditious party are directed not only against the Paramount Power, but against all constituted forms of government in India, through an absolutely misunderstood sense of 'patriotism,' and through an attachment to the popular idea of 'government by the people,' when every level-headed Indian must admit that India generally has not in any way shown its fitness for a popular government." He goes so far even as to state his personal conviction that history and all "sound-minded" people agree that India cannot really attain to the standard of popular government as understood by the West.
It is another Hindu ruler, the Rajah of Ratlam, who points out the close connexion, upon which I have had to lay repeated stress, between religious revivalism and sedition.

He recognizes that "Hindus, and for the matter of that all Oriental peoples, are swayed more by religion than by anything else." Government have hitherto adopted, and rightly adopted, the policy of allowing perfect freedom in the matter of religious beliefs, but as the seditionists are seeking to connect their anarchical movement with religion, and the political _Sadhu_ is abroad, it is high time to change the policy of non-interference in so-called religious affairs.

The new religion which is now being preached, "with its worship of heroes like Shivaji and the doctrine of India for India alone," deserves, this Hindu Prince boldly declares, to be treated as Thuggism and Suttee were treated, which both claimed the sanction of religion.

"It pains me," he adds, "to write as above, but already religion has played a prominent part in this matter, and religious books were found in almost every search made for weapons and bombs.

The _role_ of the priest or the _Sadhu_ is most convenient, and rulers have bowed, and do bow, to religious preachers.