The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1910 SEDITION IN INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 33, 8 February 1910, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1910 SEDITION IN INDIA.

for the canst that lack* assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in ttus diatanoc. And the goo* that vie can dm.

After long and 1 not unnatural hesitation, the Indian Government has apparently decided to employ stringently repressive methods in dealing with the seditious propaganda of the native Press. The state of things depicted by Sir H. Risley, when submitting the new Press Bill to the Viceroy's Council, seems to have startled and horrified not only British but Indian observers; but there is only too much reason to believe that the Indian Home Secretary in no gense exaggerated the danger of the situation when he warned the Viceroy and his Council that they are "confronted by a murderous conspiracy." There is ample evidence to prove not only that a large number of the native newspapers make a practice of slandering and attacking the British Government, but that they are habitually inciting the natives in more or less carefully-guarded terms to violent crime and to rebellion. Every effort is made by these preachers of sedition to impress upon the young men, and more especially upon the halfeducated native officials, the duty of embarrassing and obstructing the foreign inilers of the country, even by perpetrating deliberate murder; and the terrible crimes that have stained the public records of India within the last three years show how successfully these unscrupulous methods have been employed. It may be true that the deplorable state of things described by Sir H. Risley is in itself a strong indictment against the Government, but though the Indian and the Imperial authorities may have temporised unduly in the past, the state of the country to-day certainly seems to demand more drastic remedies than have yet been applied to the disease from which our Indian Empire is suffering. The chief difficulty in enforcing laws against sedition is of course to prove that the alleged offences come within the precise scope of the statute; and there is no doubt that an immense amount of harm can be done and is done in India 'by publications that are seditious in purpose and effect, and yet display great ingenuity in keeping inside the letter of the law. The object of the new Act is to cover cases where direct incitement to conspiracy, rebellion, or murder cannot bo specifically proved, but where a reasonable construction of the language used brings the case within the limits of the criminal law. Local governments are to be empowered to suppress without legal prosecution, all newspapers which are "mischievous though not technically seditious," and the Customs officials and postal authorities are entitled to search for "suspected matter" of the character described. It must be admitted at once that such a statute infringes some of the beet established traditions of British legal procedure; and there is no doubt that it will throw additional power into the hands of officials who are not always judicially minded or impartial. But when the "Daily News" says that no Indian editor will be able to print a single adverse comment upon the Government's policy or official actions without running serious risks, it obviously overstates the defects of the proposed legislation. The excuse for such a law as Sir H. Risley has proposed, is of course that in an exceptional emergency, a grave public danger may demand the use of means that ordinary circumstances would not justify; and the state of India at the present moment, in our opinion, is such that the authorities have no alternative but to resort to unusual methods specially adapted to the present crisis.

®Tt is, of course, easy to find a plausible pretext for condemning such a measure as the new Indian Press Bill, on the ground that it infringes some sacred abstract principle such as the Liberty of the Subject or Freedom of Speech. No doubt a large section of the Indian Nationalist party will endorse the protest of the "Hindi," which asserts that the new Press Act will be "a grose infringement of the right's of the people"; and, unfortunately,' there are only too many politicians and public men at Homo who are always prepared to take up a cry of this sort on the least possible excuse. To Liberals, who are inclined to estimate fhe value of legislation by applying

to it purely theoretical standards, we commend the common sense view of the "Daily Chronicle," to the effect that "when incendiary articles are part and parcel of murderous acts, it i 3 merely moonshine to talk heroics about the freedora i of the Press." It is certainly mos'. unfortunate that the state of the country has necessitated such a step as the Viceroy and his advisers now contemplate. But desperate maladies demand desperate remedies; and unless England is to stand idly by and see her hundred yeare of toil in India undone, and this great country relapse once more into th? chaos of anarchy from which she has raised it. stern and vigorous methods of repression must be employed to oope wit-'ii the growing pestilence of siitlition. The necessity for conciliating Indian National-

ist feeling, and for satisfying the reasonable aspirations of the Indian people, doee not admit of argument; but our present' point is that unless active steps are taken to keep in check the volcanic forces of anarchy and crime, the few thousand white men in the peninsula who now hold hundreds of millions in subjection, will lose their control of the situation, and the British Empire in India will speedily be a thing of the past.