Max Mueller's Cambridge Lectures (late 19th cent.)

Dug from Project Gutenburg, a collection of lectures delivered by Friedrich Max Mueller,the eminent 19th century philologist and indologist, to a class of young Cambridge students who had just passed their Indian Civil Services examinations, What I read was an eye-opener. And strangely, the books and accounts I have read of other "indophiles" and Raj writers often smack of racial prejudices that it seemed that this document was a modern work and not something written /delivered 120-130 odd years back. To quote a passage from his second lecture on the stereotypes westerners carried of Indians:
"I believe there is nothing more disheartening to any high-minded youngman than the idea that he will have to spend his life among humanbeings whom he can never respect or love--natives, as they are called,not to use even more offensive names--men whom he is taught toconsider as not amenable to the recognized principles of self-respect,uprightness, and veracity, and with whom therefore any community ofinterests and action, much more any real friendship, is supposed to beout of the question.
So often has that charge of untruthfulness been repeated, and sogenerally is it now accepted, that it seems almost Quixotic to try tofight against it.
Nor should I venture to fight this almost hopeless battle, if I werenot convinced that such a charge, like all charges brought against awhole nation, rests on the most flimsy induction, and that it hasdone, is doing, and will continue to do more mischief than anythingthat even the bitterest enemy of English dominion in India could haveinvented. If a young man who goes to India as a civil servant or as amilitary officer, goes there fully convinced that the people whom heis to meet with are all liars, liars by nature or by nationalinstinct, never restrained in their dealings by any regard for truth,never to be trusted on their word, need we wonder at the feelings ofdisgust with which he thinks of the Hindus, even before he has seenthem; the feelings of distrust with which he approaches them, and thecontemptuous way in which he treats them when brought into contactwith them for the transaction of public or private business? When suchtares have once been sown by the enemy, it will be difficult to gatherthem up. It has become almost an article of faith with every Indiancivil servant that all Indians are liars; nay, I know I shall never beforgiven for my heresy in venturing to doubt it."
The best passage of this lecture is this:
"Now, quite apart from India, I feel most strongly that every one ofthese international condemnations is to be deprecated, not only forthe sake of the self-conceited and uncharitable state of mind fromwhich they spring, and which they serve to strengthen and confirm, butfor purely logical reasons also, namely for the reckless and slovenlycharacter of the induction on which such conclusions rest. Because aman has travelled in Greece and has been cheated by his dragoman, orbeen carried off by brigands, does it follow that all Greeks, ancientas well as modern, are cheats and robbers, or that they approve ofcheating and robbery? And because in Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras,Indians who are brought before judges, or who hang about thelaw-courts and the bazaars, are not distinguished by an unreasoningand uncompromising love of truth, is it not a very vicious inductionto say, in these days of careful reasoning, that all Hindus areliars--particularly if you bear in mind that, according to the latestcensus, the number of inhabitants of that vast country amounts to twohundred and fifty-three millions. Are all these two hundred andfifty-three millions of human beings to be set down as liars, becausesome hundreds, say even some thousands of Indians, when they arebrought to an English court of law, on suspicion of having committed atheft or a murder, do not speak the truth, the whole truth, andnothing but the truth? Would an English sailor, if brought before adark-skinned judge, who spoke English with a strange accent, bow downbefore him and confess at once any misdeed that he may have committed;and would all his mates rush forward and eagerly bear witness againsthim, when he had got himself into trouble?"
The last sentence, said almost 130 years back - how many times do we see this even today? How many times do we hear about a western nation insisting on extraditing a westerner commiting crime in a third-world country of dark-skinned people (and judges) to ensure a "fair" trial? (well, the pun obviously intended)...hmmm...guess somethings can never change. But I thank God that the world has its fair share of Max Muellers..