INDIAN HOME RULE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 29, 3 August 1923, Page 10

INDIAN HOME RULE

WILL STRENGTHEN THE EMPIRE

VIEWS OP DR. DATTA.

Dr. S. K. Datta, who is coming to Wellington at the end of the month in connection with the V.M.C.A. student Christian movement, is the author of that well-known book, "The Desire of India,." and his knowledge of Kastern and Western. civilisation qualifies him to speak with authority on the new India which is being born.

"There is no ground for fear that Indii will withdraw from the Empire," said Dr..Datta in an interview in Sydney, when questioned respecting the Montagu-Chelmsford report. "Rather," he added, "will it strengthen India's position in the Empire when she has complete home rule."

Dr. Datta, who is possessed of a striking personality, is a graduate of Edinburgh in medicine, and was for a time lecturer in biology in the University of the Punjaub. He said that the great rcerit o! the Empire was that it contained a great Asiatic population. While a large number of his countrymen felt that India/s relations with the Empire were unsatisfactory, they thought that'the connection should be continued. They felt, however, that India should havejsome say In Empire affairs. The present unrest was very significant, but the point was that it was fundamentally economic "It can be put down as a formula that where you have landlordism, plus the incidence of famine, you will produce the conditions whiuii lead to non-co-operation," said Dr. Datta.

Defining non-co-operation, he said that it meant a particular progifcmme of boycott adoptecf by the Indian National Congress in 1920. GHANDI MOVEMENT DEAD.

"The Ghandi movement is now dead," Dr. Datta continued, "one of the factors of its death being the imprisonment of Ghandi, a man of extraordinary personality, who, strangely enough, received the first great influence in his life from C. H. Spurgeon, under whom he sat in London. The masses of the people have abandoned the Ghandi movement, and have also realised that the methods of Kemal Pasha are impossible. r

A third movement, energetically led by Mr 0. R Das, an able Calcutta advocate, is making great progress. This party, known as the Swarajya Party, is out to capture all official posts. It has already captured almosfc all the municipalities of the United Provinces, and at the elections, due in November an attempt will be made on the Legis- & U WM? n elected the members of the party will probably refuse to accept office until such time as the Executives become responsible to the LegisicitUTCS.

. CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA *™ TV\ poi£ted oufc t0 Dr- Datta'that two of the three prominent Indians (the Bishop of Dornakal, M. Sastri, and himself) who had visited Australia lately -were Christians. Dr. Datta said that the total Christian population of India was about 5i millions, and they were drawn almost entirely from th? .classes socially depressed. The Weslw movement touched the depressed agricultural labourers in. England, and it yjas TOjtne same classes in India that Chdstwmty made its appeal. ' The growth of Christianity had its effect on the Hindu community. Ghandi told the Indiani that they could not have freedom while there was a; single outcast. That was cvi- ? nce r., afc th? ref«"mers appreciated what Christianity was doing to, elevate the outcasts. M. Sastri had'recently made a strong' statement along those lines The intellectuals of . India had also been tremendously influenced by the teachings life, and example, of Christ, but they did not become Christians, be^ because they ask*; what 'had Christianity done for Europe. But their reverence for its founder was, leading to' a Jm t u 6 eform of>4kn society. One difficulty lay m the fact that out of India s immense history,, its dynasties, and invasions, the ono thing that ha.3 theTv oHf t her t ViUaS° B*stem> »' the key of that system was caste. That wVI t l USht her ***<*>& still stable, so yhile^the caste system had its shadows it certainly had its virtues '