SEDITION IN INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 307, 24 December 1912, Page 4

SEDITION IN INDIA.

The attempt to assassinate the Viceroy of India, though it was happily unsuccessful, is an ominous indication pf the conditions under which British supremacyis now maintained in our Eastern Empire. The elevation of Delhi to the rank of the metropolis of India was intended to conciliate native feeling in the disaffected portions oi the country; and the relations between the British authorities and the subject peoples were supposed to be greatly improved thereby. But on the very day on which the new regime is to be inaugurated the representative of the British Throne is assailed with murderous intent in the main street of the old Mogul capital. Human ingenuity could hardly have devised a more decisive reply than this to the optimistic predictions with which the new policy has been greeted in India, and at Home, it is easy to say tli-at this mad plot was the work ot an Anarchist, and that it is no fair indication of the true state of public feeling in India. But even though the U3e of murderous weapons against British officials is the policy of ouly a small minority of tlie Indian Nationalists, the fact remains that in future the Imperial Government must take this contingency into account precisely as the Czar's Ministers have tn make allowance for it in Russia. It does no good to recount the benefits that the British occupation of India has conferred upon its people. We cannot alTord to forget that Western civilisation is altogether alien from the Oriental view of things; and that iv the minds of the Indian Nationalists railways and irrigation works, famine funds and plague hospitals, the maintenance of order and the impartial administration of justice i are not an adequate recompense for the | loss of the comparative freedom and independence that they enjoyed under the old regime. And though only a small section of extremists arc likely ever to carry their arguments to the final Anarchist extreme, it is futile to J pretend that the peoples of India ire i liappy and contented under the British ■ Raj, or that England could maintain her hold on India for a day. uniess behind i the gorgeous trappings of the Vice-royalty she hold in reserve the power to uphold her authority, if need be, by force.