TRAVEL CLUB

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27040, 15 May 1953, Page 2

TRAVEL CLUB

ADDRESS ON INDIA

Major H. T. Calcutt, who served for 10 yean with the British. .Amy to India, part of the time under Sir William Slim, now Governor-General of Australia, was the speaker at a meeting of the Travel Chiba V-the DI.C. yesterday. Major arid Mrs Calcutt will make-their-home to New Zealand, but have notiyet decided if they will Settle in Christchurch. Major Calcutt aaid that the British people, being of hybrid origin, had the ability to colonise and had done much good fa the world, but they did not mow their own trumpets sufficiently “~ a fault that he thought Sir Winston Churchill now recognised. In' India, a country now only very slenderly attached to the British Commonwealth. the British, far from exploiting the people, had dona much ™r h ?. r own advantage and for that of India, Major Calcutt said. While doubting the wisdom of trying to inculcate Christian religion too zealously in the people of. India, Major praised the work done by the Christian missionaries, especially by the medical missionaries. Chiefly through their work, the expectation of life in India was now three times as great as it had been 30 years ago. but this, in turn, created a problem - a greater population—--430,000,000—1e5s food was available and hunger or partial hunger was the common lot of the people. This position had always obtained, more or less, but under British administration efforts were made to remedy it. Major Calcutt spoke warmly of the village people of India, those on the hinterland, whom ,he knew best. Although they were on the borderline of starvation and lived in most primitive conditions, they were delightful people and .reasonably happy, he said. A head man, generally a man of education to some extent, ruled the life of the village to the district in which he had been stationed. The village was self-contained, growing millet, pulse and maize, which were cultivated by the women, while the men caught fish or hunted deer. As many as 12 persons—even as many as 25 lived to one house 12 feet square. They slept out of doors and kept their little homes with their puddled clay floors quite clean. They ground their grain and drove their oxen as their ancestors had done two or three thousand years earlier, and they did not hanker for modern amenities. One aspect of life that the British had improved, Major Calcutt said, was that of peasants in States ruled by Maharajahs. Formerly the peasants were practically in the position of serfs, giving a proportion of their grain to the Maharajah, who also took all that the peasants produced qver and about their tithe. By British intervention the ndasants were now allowed to sell all that they produced above their tithe.

’ But Udo not wish you to think that all Indians are agriculturists.” said Major Calcutt. “Many of them are skilled artisans. They make beautiful brassware, weave lovely silks, do petit point work and make scarves and carpets. They are a very clever, people, very likeable, and very welcoming to visitors.” Before the address Miss Blanche Atkinson played piano accomoaniments for songs sung by Mr Cedric Read, who was enthusiastically encored. Mr J. Wyn Irwin presided at the meeting, and Mesdames M. H. Godby and R. T. Tosswill were hostesses.