TO BOYCOTT THE DUKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 25, 29 January 1921, Page 7

TO BOYCOTT THE DUKE.

CAIX3UTTA IN A- FERMENT. 6HANDI STIRS UP TROUBLE. (Received 10.30 a.m.) DELHI, January 2S. The Nationalist extremists in Calcutta are making frantic efforts to boycott the j Duke of Connaught, who is visiting India for the purpose of inaugurating the new National Councils. The shops, bazaars, hotels, and restaurants have been closed > by order of the extremists. The Indians I i have been ordered to refuse to run the I steamers on the river or permit traffic in \ the main streets. There will be no ' illuminations, and the tramway men ' have declared a gerfcral strike." Tlie student population is manifesting an aggressive attitude. Ghandi, the Nationalist leader, is making wild speeches declaring that the present regime is the "Kingdom of sin."—(A. and N.Z. Cable.) A host of officials in the Ind'a Oflice in Whitehall, a swarm of Government servants in India, a thousand and one traders in London, Bombay, and Calcutta kno-w "Mr. Gandhi" and fear him. To them he appears a greater menace to the. British Empire than all the revohit'onists, Bolshevik asitators.l Indian fanatics, and other trouble maikers of the last fifty years. i But who is "Mr. Gandhi"? In the "Asiatic Jtevie-w" X. M. Samartil, a! distinguished lawyer and prominent | . leader of the Mod-crate movement in India, writes: \ "Mr. Gandhi is mrt an extremist in i the sense in which that term is generally applied and understood in Ind'an politics. Indian extremists, rightly viewed, are Indian patriots in an mood. That mood necessar ly postulates absence and cool-headednese. "Mr. Gandhi is nothing if not coolheaded. He is an idealist, pure and simple—an idealist with an unshakable fa : th in adamantine 'soul force' as the| only force opposed to physical fore- , ' i which can compel the most powerful i Government, "nowever stern and un- ■ bendinjr, to yield to the dictates of justice as he conceives it. , "His strength lie? in h's transparent sincerity ami honesty of purpose and! his pnflinching determination to practise: what "he preaches at alt r'aks and all; i hazards." Mr. Gandhi I? incorruptible.! IHe cannot be bought. I This remarkable Indian, with the wis- , dom of a statesman, the cleverness of a , politician, the simplicity of a pensant, is (fearless, idolised irr a large part of his , countrymen, feared by many but hated ' by none His "non-co-operation"' programme, adopted "by a ■ma-jority of the delegates of the Indian National Con-' j press at Calcutta, provide for one of J the greatest boycotts in the history' of ! the world j '. He asked for the boycott of the 1 , Courts by Indian lawyers and of foreign jroods by the public eenerallv Mr. • Gandhi would withdra-w toys and jrirls J from schools and colleges and boycott! i the legislative councils which have just been Teformed in an effort to meet the discontent in India. This is the grave danger which Enffland fears. Mr. Gandh : is at pains to warn hia followers against the use of force. He them merely to sit 1 and that r>olicv is- infinitely harder to 'beat than a force of revolutionists. "He is a rev'-valist. His appeal -is to the past. 'What do the traditions,! philosophy and culture of India lack.' says he. 'that we should wholesale im-Dort Western ideas, and thus <>tk)an ger ' our immemorial social fabric, whicTi his j provided so many saints and heroes ?! It is because India ha-s turned away Tier ffaze from the Vedas and the ancient ' nhilosophy that she has fallen upon evil da vs.

" 1-ct her retvTn to the past and all w'll be well.' 'Here lies the irresistible appeal of Mr. Oandhi to the popuTace. For in matters of religion and social reform the average Indian is -what the average European was in the Middle Ages.

"Religion is- yet everything to him; he has not yet learned what tlie European has learned through "bitter experience —to divorce politics from religion. "Here, too, lies the distrust that most of the younger penerat'on feel against Mr. Gandhi's -proposals. For eood or for evil. India has been committed to a system of government whioh, rightly or wrongly has 'been called Western; we have, too, .plunged into the deepest recesses of industrialism. Mr. Gandhi would have us del'frsratWy set the hande o>f the clock backward. Away with lawyers, doctors, rairwavs, machinery; tHey are an abomination before the sight of the Lord."