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I don't understand this quote. This is a conversation with an imaginary person who never existed. The Indian Nationalist Movement was founded and pushed forwar

I don't understand this quote. This is a conversation with an imaginary person who never existed. The Indian Nationalist Movement was founded and pushed forward by Western trained and educated elite Indians who wanted self government and Western institutions. They most certainly did not want a return to the caste system or to the system of Islamic slavery that the British abolished. They most certainly preferred "dying in hospital" to dying in pointless battles between warlords.

rramadass 5y ago
That quote and the passage it is from (https://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com/2009/01/gandhi-reference.html https://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com/2009/01/gandh...) was directed at very "concrete" Indian Nationalists who were arguing to basically transplant British Empire values into Indian Independence Movement and by extension into a newly formed Indian State. They had gone so far as to accept Herbert Spencer's "Social Darwinism" (among others) with its inherent justification of Colonialism and "rights" of the Colonizer over the Colonized in all Social/Cultural dimensions and Chesterton was having none of that. Chesterton is arguing for Indians (and by extension all other colonized people) for changing themselves using their own social norms/culture/paradigms and needs. While they maybe influenced by other cultures, it is their decision to make in the context of their history and culture. He is deriding the attempts of the so called "intellectuals" in the then Indian Nationalist movement to transplant wholesale the ideas of the British Culture.