AGITATED INDIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 142, 15 December 1908, Page 2

AGITATED INDIA.

— — » OBJECTION TO REFORM. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXTREMISTS AND MODERATES. AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW. (Bt Temxjhaph. — Special to The Post.] CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. In the course of an interview with a Lyttelton Times representative, Major A. W. Andrew, of the 116 th Mahrattas, gave some interesting views in regard to the condition of India. "It is most difficult for the Indian Government to know what the people under its control really want," he said. "The extremists, as represented by the man who was sentenced to six years' transportation the other day, want to turn the British out of India altogether, but they are very few 111 number. The mass of the educated natives, sometimes called the moderates, are by no means similarly certain what they do want. They are very distinctly dissatisfied, but ■ they have no definite programme. The congress of which so much has been heard does not represent Indian opinion. It claims to voice the views of 300,000,000 people, but as a matter of fact probably 290,000,000 of those people have never heard of its existence, are quite content, and will remain so as long as the agitators c(in be kept away from them. The demaads of the moderates, as far as one can gather, do not involve any big cpnstitutional changes at all. They want "<rider powers in the matter (If local government, a larger share in the Civil appointments of the State, and the placing of the province of Bengal once more under one administration. These are questions of machinery rather than of principle. The partition of Bengal wag not as sore a point as the agitators tried to make out ; the grievance was magnified for the purpose of producing discontent just as was the trouble over the cartridges in 1857. "There can be no doubt that a good deal of the trouble has been due to the fact that the Civil administration of India has been instituting reforms that are ahead of the opinion of the mass of the Indian people. Take, for example, the measures connected with the suppression of the plague. The regulations regarding the destruction of rats were opposed to one of the primary doctrines of the people's religion, which does not allow of .the destruction of life. The measures taken for improving the sanitary condition of villages and towns often necessitated the removal of women and children from houses and localities and gave cause to a good deal of illfeeling amongst millions of people who would rather die according to usage and custom than be saved by measures opposed to their religious doctrines and sentiments. The abolition of Suttee — the burning of the wife with her dead husband — caused a tremendous lot of dissatisfaction. The present endeavour of the Indian Government to raise the age at which children, may be married, so as to prevent the evils that have existed in the past, has produced a vast amount of ill-feeling. Then the attitude taken un in the colonies in regard to our Indian subjects has provided the agitators and sedition mongers with material for attacks on the British rule, which claims to be based on justice, equality, and freedom. The native speakers in the Bombay presidency have been urging their audiences to pass resolutions and take action in the direction of reprisal against these colonies which are showing such decided hostility towards the natives of India. They suggest that petitions should be sent to the Home Government urging it to take measures to prevent the introduction of any more Australians — Canadians or New Zealanders — into the Indian military or Civil service. The ultimate result of the agitation, I think, will be to secure for the natives a greater share in the government of their own country, and the effort of the , British ' authorities should be to prepare the natives for a gradual change in this direction. If there were more natives in the higher ranks of the Civil service, the British officials would not have to bear the 'whole brunt of the hostility that is aroused by any change or reform owing to the intensely nonprogressive nature of the people. I think that even the agitators see that they must depend on Great Britain' to a very large extent. India would revert to a state of chaos and anarchy if the natives were left to manage their own affairs unaided, because the old racial and religious differences are as bitter as ,they ever were.