TIMED DOCUMENT ANALYSIS FORM
NAME: _________________________________ PERIOD: _______ DATE: _______________
Directions: Using the document provided, attempt to analyze it with no more than one sentence. You will
have no more than five minutes per document. Write your answers below.
Sir Thomas Munro, British East India Company Governor of Madras, official comments in the minutes
of council, 1824
Liberal treatment has always been found the most effectual way of elevating the character of any people, and we
may be sure that it will produce a similar effect on that of the people of India. The change will no doubt be slow,
but that is the very reason why no time should be lost in commencing the work. We should not be discouraged
by difficulties, nor, because little progress may be made in our own time, abandon the enterprise as hopeless,
and charge upon the obstinacy and bigotry of the nations the failure occasioned by our own fickleness in not
pursuing steadily the only line of conduct on which any hope of success can be reasonably founded. We should
make the same allowances for the Hindus as for other nations and consider how slow the progress of
improvement has been among the nations of Europe and through what a long course of barbarous ages they had
to pass before they attained their present state. When we compare other countries with England, we usually
speak of England as she now is. We scarcely ever think of going back beyond the Reformation, and we are apt to
regard every foreign nation as ignorant and uncivilised, whose state of government does not in some degree
approximate to our own, even should it be higher than our own was at no distant date.
We should look upon India not as a temporary possession but as one to be maintained permanently until the
natives shall in some future age have abandoned most of their superstitions and prejudices and become
sufficiently enlightened to frame a regular government for themselves and to conduct and preserve it. Whenever
such a time shall arrive it will probably be best for both countries that the British control over India should be
gradually withdrawn. That the desirable change contemplated may in some after age be effected in India there is
no cause to despair. Such a change was at one time in Britain itself at least as hopeless as it is here. When we
reflect how much the character of nations has always been influenced by that of governments, and that some,
once the most cultivated, have sunk into barbarism, while others, formerly the rudest, have attained the highest
point of civilisation, we shall see no reason to doubt that if we pursue steadily the proper measures, we shall in
time so far improve the character of our Indian subjects as to enable them to govern and protect themselves.
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