१८५७ का स्वातन्त्र्य समर (वीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर - अंग्रेजों द्वारा छपने से पूर्व प्रतिबन्धित महाग्रन्थ)

ADDING FUEL TO FIRE
and that they would be gathered together in the fold of
the Church, leaving their Temples and Musjids,—is fully
and unmistakably seen from the literature of that time
and from the writings and speeches of Englishmen of the
first half of the last century. The chairman of the Direc-
tors of the East India Company, Mr. Mangles, said in the
House of Commons, in 1857 :—
“ Providence has entrusted the extensive empire of Hindu-
sthan to England in order that the banner of Christ
should wave triumphant from one end of India to the
other. Everyone must exert all his strength that there
may be no dilatoriness on any account in continuing in
the country the grand work of making all India Christian.”
Macaulay, in 1836—when schools in which English edu-
cation was to be given were first opened in Bengal,
had expressed a hope amounting almost to a conviction
that, in thirty years, there would be no idol-worshipper
left in Bengal.¹
The mind of the Feringhi was filled with such contempt
and such hatred for the Hindu and Moslem faiths—
the two principal religions of India—that very prominent
writers, forgetting even ordinary conventionalities, con-
stantly heaped shameful abuse on the two religions when-
ever they got a chance.
The constant insistence by the East Indian Company to
make India Christian was due to a very obvious reason.
Once the religions in India died, the national feeling of the
people would also die ; individuality would die and it is
infinitely more easy to rule a nation whose individuality
is dead than to rule one which has a clearly marked

1. “ It is my firm belief that, if our plan of education is fol-
   lowed up, there would not be a single idolator in Bengal 30 years
   hence !”—Macaulay's letter to his mother, Oct. 12, 1836.
   55