AGITATORS BUSY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 201, 26 August 1930, Page 7

AGITATORS BUSY.

TROUBLES IN INDIA

Frontier Tribesmen Incited By

Extremists.

STILL MUCH UNREST.

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received 1.30 p.m.)

RUGBY, August 25.

In the "weekly appreciation by the Government of India of the situation in India, it is stated that by August 19 the Afridi lashkar had been dispersed, although a few small parties still remained in the district. Congress emissaries from British territory are, however, reported to have passed up the Bara Yalley to urge the Afridis to renew hostilities.

About 3000 Afridis were present at the usual Friday jirga at Bagh on August 22, and aeroplanes doing reconnaissance there were fired upon. On the northern border of th? Peshawar district the Haji of Turangai and his emissaries have remained active among the upper Mohmands and the Utman Khel jirga of two sections.

The latter tribe was interviewed by the Deputy-Commissioner on August ltiThey undertook to commit no more offences against the Government, to refrain from joining any hostile lashkar and to refuse passage to any hostile lashkar of other tribes. In view of this undertaking their eleven prisoners captured at Pallai were released.

It is clear, however, that the Haji has met with a good deal of success among the upper Mohmands and possibly some part of the Utman Khel tribe, and still has great hopes of raising a lashkar to attack the Peshawar district by way of Gandao, on the Kurram border. Intensive bombing of other tribes had very good effect.

The Massolai jirga and the jirga of one section of the Para Chainkannis have come into Parachinar to make overtures for settlement. Tho agitation, .however, has spread to other tribes.

On August 19 Ahmadzai Ghilzai col. lected a lashkar on Peiwar Kotal. in the neighbourhood of Utsar and Bargawisar. Reconnaissance aeroplanes were heavily fired upon from these two points and the militia pickets in Upper Kurram were fired on from Utsar. Thanks to the excellent defensive measures adopted by the Kurram militia and the village levies, together with successful measures adopted by the local Afghan authorities to restrain the tribes on their side of the border, the hostile tribesmen were dispersed after a few daysProvinces Improve. Provincial reports for the first fortnight of August continue to show marked improvement in most provinces. In Madras the number of breaches of the law and consequent prosecutions continues to fall. In Bengal the improvement has been so marked that it is possible to discern a tendency to return to normal conditions. There lias been less picketing, particularly in Calcutta, and the movement generally has much weakened. A good sign in several districts is the increased attendance at sehool. The boycott of educational institutions seems to be falling.

In the United Provinces the chief feature of the fortnight was the attack on the educational institutions, from which the Mohammedans, however, kept aloof. There has been a very serious interference with studies at all Allahabad, Benares and Lucknow universities, but a recent report in the Press states that the students have revolted in the first-men-tioned university" against this interference with their future careers.

The Punjab records a definite and pratieally universal decline in Congress activities, and the movement is moribund. The situation in Bombay City is more stable s'o far as law and order are concerned, but the economic conditions tend to deteriQrate, and more mills have been closed down.

The above record of improvement must be qualified in certain respects. The boycott of foreign goods is still effective in many towns, and picketing, although on tbe decline, is still practised to a considerable extent. Although the situation in most of the provinces i 3 distinctly easier, there is-no province in which the conditions are normal or in which it can be safely said that some of the activities of the civil disobedience movement may not assume fresh vigour.

There has fortunately been a marked improvement in the Sind, where the Communal situation was reported last week to be serious. The position is now under control.