INDIAN LABOUR IN NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 239, 6 October 1916, Page 7

INDIAN LABOUR IN NEW ZEALAND.

(To the Editor.) a Sir,—ln your issue of September '29. there appeared a letter on " Indian Labour in New Zealand" I do not know the writer no do I know what experience he has had of. the East Indian and his ways, but after reading the letter over several times I am forced to believe that the t writer has. very little real knowledge of j the East, or that in his eyes economic j benefits far outweigh social and moral questions. As one who can look back to IT years' sojurn in the East, and a life- ; long study of its peoples and religion. . with a knowledge of two of its lan- ; guages. I wish to say that I am glad the Wellington Labour Council protested ■ against this "Influx of Hindoos." Surely the object-lesson we have in the United States, with its perplexing social problems through the negro question and alien in- : flux, should give us pause before we allow our British idea* of liberty to run away with our commonsense. It seems to be a bent of the English mind to leave for future consideration all but what immediately concerns us; we play with the drink fiend while France and ■ Russia stamp on it; France, Russia, and now our Motherland demands the services of their whole manhood, we tolerate in our midst families of the genus '• shirker," and so with this Hindoo question. "They are Britishers," ergo, they ' must be allowed in as they like, even a I few odd millions thrown off from the teeming hives of India, not missed there, but sufficient to swamp us, body, soul and spirit. The labour side of this question can. I feeL be safely left to the unions of this country; hut I would like to invite the consideration of Mr. Carr and those who think as he does to the pratbable moral and social results of any large influx of Indians. No one wbo knows India well will deny that the moral state of its great mass of 360 millions of people is very low: and that even the minority shine through contrast rather than real virtue. How can it be otherwise in a land where Kail, goddess of lust and murder, Shiva, associated with licentiousness, and a million other gods, are worshipped; where a man becomes an outcast if he leaves the sacred shores of India and crosses the Kalipani—" Blackwater "or ocean —and on his return must make expiation by swaUowing a pill compounded of the five excretions of the cow; where to drink the water a Brahmin has washed his feet in is to gain merit and forgiveness; where a pariah's shadow contaminates a Brahmin; where woman has no. soul hut was made for-man's pleasure; where lying and theft are all hut _viri tues; and the gratification of the passions is good.

Most of these Indians are drawn from the very lowest classes; and, being In : dians, though 99 per cent ol them have left wife and children in India, their religion permits polygamy, and therefore, there presence here in-bound to gradually result in an illegitimate and undesirable class of population. In our generous desire for equality we are in danger of overlooking the" fact that these peoples come not from the cold .countries where chastity is a virtue, but are the children of the tropics, whose passions have been fostered by their very religions, and whose moral and physical stamina has been weakened by ages of child marriage The Indian can no more make an excellent settler in New Zealand than the Xew Zealander could if forced to live under native, law and custom in India.—T am. etc.!" CHARLES M. CAETEB.