GANDHI'S FAST

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 36, 12 February 1943, Page 3

GANDHI'S FAST

APPEALS FOR RELEASE

To Enable Beginning For Removal Of Deadlock

Rec. 10 a.m. NEW DELHI, Feb. 11

The committee of the Indian Merchants' Chamber in Bombay has appealed to the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow,' to release Gandhi unconditionally so that a beginning may be made for the removal of the existing deadlock. The fast is the sequel to correspondence with the Viceroy in which Gandhi repudiated the suggestion that the Congress party was responsible for recent murders and sabotage, which he blamed on the Government. The president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry is also sending a memorandum to Lord Linlithgow requesting the release of Gandhi. Textile Mills Close All textile mills at Ahmedabad closed yesterday and to-day. Students left their schools and colleges at Karachi and Lahore to demonstrate, but otherwise no incidents have thus far been reported. In the Lahore district a magistrate prohibited for a week meetings and processions in furtherance of Congress party propaganda.

A message from Bombay states that Gandhi's son left the editorial column blank in the Hindustan Times as a protest against the detention of his father and the censorship of the paper. Expressing unqualified disapproval of Gandhi's fast, the Statesman, in an editorial, said: "By normal criteria the present drama seems to be but a mean device to recapture the limelight by a politician who is conscious of miscalculation and gathering obscurity." ' Campaign of Terrorism Since last August, says the New Delhi correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, 270 schools have been attacked and 53 Government employees, chiefly police and railway officials, killed and 186 injured, according to information given by high Government officials, emphasising the extent of the outrages by followers of Congress (states a message from London). Thirty-one men and four children have been killed in bomb outrages and 232 persons injured. The correspondent says the Congress mass disobedience movement is dead, but it has been succeeded by a terrorist campaign against Government and public officials. "Congress has established its influence by terror," adds the correspondent. "It has shown all the characteristics of Black Shirt Fascist organisations in its rule of fear." The correspondent says that a document he received, described as an All-India Congress News Letter, claimed that during November 19 derailments occurred and 42 railway stations were burned down.