CONFLICT IN INDIA

Evening Star, Issue 20556, 7 August 1930, Page 1

CONFLICT IN INDIA

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS LECTURE BY DR A. I, DRIVER A comprehensive survey of the situation in India was made by Dr A. H. Driver, who is revisiting .Dunedin from South India, at a meeting last night in the Aloray Place Congregational Church, under the auspices of tae London Missionary Society. . Dr Driver, after, remarking on the fascination of the Indian scene to-day, urged the vital importance of watching India, which was in rapid evolution. History was being made- rapidly m India, but through a very dark and menacing background of conflict. Ihero was much in the situation that was puzzling. In New Zealand comment on India was frequently • made from two sections. On the one hand the’© were tho Theosophists, who, under cover of the “ New Zealand India League,” were engaged in apologising for everything Indian—a body .which loved to suggest that Hinduism was/a pure and a beautiful thing, and whoso members every now and than held up to a wondering world some ready-made Messiah. This body usually ignored the'central problem of India, that of Hindu-Aloslem relationships. On the other hand, there were those who drew all their knowledge of India from Air Alayo. Tho evils of India were exclusively emphasised, and India’s sore dissensions were rather smugly taken as an excuse for beating the Imperial drum. Both views were false—false because one-sided and incomplete. . As much disservice was done to India by those who shut their eyes to the brighter side of Indian , life as by those who could not speak of anything Indian except in terms of empty and superficial adulation. , , ■ , The speaker then touched on , the political atmosphere,. which, he said, was coloured by religious and idealistic conceptions foreign to our habit of thought. Indian leaders were, followed up to the point of adoration not in proportion to their skill in framing policies, but in proportion . to. the depth of their devotion to an ideal, no matter how visionary that ideal mffilit be or with what inconsistencies, or. indeed, with what dire results it might be associated. It was only when this capacity for blind adherence to an ideal was realised that we could understand tho amazing .influence of Gandhi in India. It was impossible to reconcile the ideals of Gandhi with the campaign of misrepresentation and. abuse carried on by his closest associations in the Congress,, a campaign which necessarily resulted in sternly repressive Press ordinances, or with the hard facts of the riots throughput many centres. We ware faced in India ynth that very dangerous .combination, ti movement which tended increasingly to express itself in ways, subversive and anarchical, but yet which drew for its inspiration on a motive - which, taken by itself, contained much that . was high and worthy. Gandhi and his associates, in destroying the atmosphere of hope and goodwill that followed universally in India the Viceroy’s statement of November last, m letting loose forces of disorder he was unable, to control rendered ■ to India a tragicdisservice. Tho speaker then dealt with the philosophy underlying expressions of the national movement. The Hindu regarded the organisation or the Western state, especially in its industrial side, as destructive to every . Lamm ideal. In his view the Western system stood for greed, for selfishness, for. the subordination of the spirit of man to tho spirit of commercial or, of racial necessity. Western industrialism, as exemplified, for example, in Bombay, showed itself as tho operation of a coldly materialistic, impersonal machine. Ho regarded it as destructive to human personality. This reassertion of the value of certain ethical ideas in Hinduism was accompanied, bv increased’ sensitiveness to the, reality or tho problem of the poverty . and. illiteracy of tho Indian village. Behind it all was a vague, and hazy philosophy of social idealism, unattached to practical endeavour, and in itself msutncient to cope with the great problems facing India to-day. , The lecturer then dealt with. a conflict between an awakening social conscience and an orthodox Brahnnnisni. Granted that the new Child Marriage Restraint Act would be administered by a strong and efficient Government—a big proviso—there had come .into force a law in extent more far-reaching

and in effect* more profoundly disturb-* ing to the customs of a conservative people than any other piece of social legislation attempted by a_ny_ nation.It was one sign of the stirrings of a social conscience within Hindustan, though not inspired by it. In Madras there was a strong movement towards the abolition of the practice of dedicate ing girls to temples. The recent inu'-f tiplication of child welfare societies, a' continuation of the pioneer work cf. Christian missions, had helped to produce a new attitude to motherhood and to childhood.

There was a similar conflict going on inflation to uutouchability. A great awakening among the depressed classes was accompanied by a slowly-changing ; attitude in the world of caste. The cleavage between caste and outcaste was, however, a great reality. Very, little, indeed, had been done for the depressed classes by caste India. Tho lecturer quoted from tho Simon Report Christian _ missions, which' were for generations _ the chief agents of education, still continue to do educational work of inestimable value. In the Presidency of Madras alone Christian missions ‘ have 8,000 schools and twenty colleges. Part of! the conflict in regard to untouchability centred round entry to temples froni which these classes, were excluded.” The lecturer then dealt with aspects of the Hindu-Moslem conflict. All were familiar with the more obvious manifestations of Hindu-Moslem discord—how that hardly a day passed without some bitter riot because a Hindu procession with music passed a mosque at the time of prayer, or because Moslem fanatics violated the Hindu veneration for the cow by leading a sacrificial cowthrough Hindu streets. But this matter of cows and music was symptomatic} of one of the deepest cleavages in Indian society. The loyalties of Moslems were first to Islam and only second to India, and Islam’s first insistence was that she be dominant. Mohammedan India dreaded nothing so much as the prospect of a Hindu Raj. Exactly in proportion as political evolution in' India moved toward dominion status and towards increase of power to the Brahmin and the Hindu, Moslem apprehensions and suspicions were increasing. A few issues stood out clearly in regard to our own relations with India. . The whole issue should be lifted above considerations of political and comment cial, expediency and the whole energies of Government devoted to its declared aim., the sympathetic guidance of India into freedom, but a freedom that would be a true national freedom and not the domination of one class—a _ freedom, too, in which would not be imperilled the' best achievement of Britain m India, freedom from the never-far-dis-tant spectre of war and famine. Both spectres would certainly become very real' were there to be any breakdown of the complex and far-reaching system of administration that Britain had built up in India. * , Further, -tho speaker continued, in the coming new- order of things it'was essential that a. thorough-going application of the principles of Christianity b& made to every aspect of the British connection, to every act of administration, to every method in commerce, to the relations of India overseas with the Brjtiish domipions. The only' way out of'ai menacing situation was the way, not -of armaments or alliances or of government by force, but the way of friendship and of co-opera-tion. - The only forces that would make any •ultimate ’impression on an awakened East, the only forces that would provide an adequate basis for the meeting of East and. West, the! only forces on which could be laid the foundations of world peace wero the forces of the .spirit, those forces of which Christian missions tried_ to be a practical and living expression.