Empire

In "Pearls and Swine," Leonard Woolf writes about the English and their attempt to rule India. The English wish to "fix" the people of India by making India similar to England.

The idea of conformity has always fascinated me. If someone doesn't look a certain way or think a certain way, there is something "wrong" with them and they must be "fixed." Why must everyone be the same?

If you look at it in a positive way, you could say that the English enjoy their way of life and wish for everyone else to experience the benefits of a society with, as Woolf's stockjobber says, "schools, hospitals, roads, and raliways," and without "plague, fever, [and] famine" (Woolf, 31).
However, why does the stockjobber add, "let 'em know you are top dog. That's the way to run an eastern country: I'm a white man, you're black; I'll treat you well, give you courts and justice; but I'm the superior race, I'm master here" (Woolf, 31).

I'm all for helping others. Life isn't easy, and if one has the ability to help another, that's fantastic. It certainly is better to have schools, hospitals, roads, and railways instead of plague, fever, and famine, but what about the more psychological donations? Would the English ideals that provide the background for the courts and justice that they are so generously giving to India necessarily go along with Indian ideals?

As "Pearls and Swine" shows, life experience in India is vastly different from life experience in India. It helps if one has knowledge of another's experiences before they attempt to change the other's way of thinking.

It often seems that if one tries to include non-material gifts (ideas) with material gifts (hospitals), one is asking for a great deal of trouble.