Equality of opportunity

Lahore, Sunday, August 31, 1924

IF only the gods at Whitehall practised half of what they preached, the millions of human beings whom they have taken under their “care” would entrain sentiments quite different from what they now do about them. But words slip much easier from the tongue than the heart agrees to actions. Replying as the head of the Empire Parliamentary delegation (which is visiting parts of the British Empire) to the welcome address presented to the delegation on behalf of the citizens of Cape Town, Mr Thomas, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, declared that “the British Empire was the greatest factor in the peace of the world. It was for them to see that the great sacrifices of war were not in vain. They must kill the war spirit and breathe the spirit of reconciliation. It was necessary to eliminate hate, not only between nations, but between classes. Equality was impossible, but equality of opportunity should not be impossible.” These words are calculated to impress one uninitiated in the ways and methods of imperialism as an indication of a most noble ideal that a statesman, who holds the destinies of millions of subject people in his hands, can place before him regarding their moral and material advancement. The actual practice of imperialistic statesmen, however, tells a different and a sad tale. As an instance of this, one has only to look to the treatment meted out to Indians in the particular colony, in the capital of which Mr Thomas indulged in these platitudes, and in Kenya. Where is there the “equality of opportunity” which we are told should not be impossible?