I've been thinking a lot about two things: Ahmed Ali's curious position with which he "uses the oppressor's tongue to attack the oppressor" (I'm quoting Ajai) and the shocking ratio of British soldiers to Indian subjects during the time of British rule. It brings to mind (the later not the former) the practice of staking elephants. If you want to keep an elephant calf in place, you've got to tie it to a stake driven deep into the ground, but after a lifetime of staking, grown elephants can be kept in place by a stake tapped gently into the ground. This process of subjugation is entirely psychological. So how do you induce a nation to overthrow its mental fetters?

I think there is this idea that there needs to be an equalizing element to all this, that the British and the Indians alike need to be convinced that they're all brothers, all the same, all capable of the same things. For me, this implies a convergence of thought that doesn't ring wholly true. I don't doubt that there are elements of this at play, but I also want to explore the idea that a break from British rule requires a divergence of thought. The problem is that the Home Rule movement (as was pointed out in class) was born from people with foreign education, which, if Ahmed Ali is taken as an example, can instigate a straddling of sympathies and an assimilation, however mild, of western thoughts and opinions. I'm not sure how to reconcile these diverging and converging elements.