TERRORISM IN BENGAL.

Evening Star, Issue 21716, 10 May 1934, Page 8

TERRORISM IN BENGAL.

Civil disobedience in India is a spent force. If Congress adopted Mr Gandhi’s lead it would call it oil. Meanwhile the trouble has diminished to such small dimensions that the number of prisoners which a year before was 12,039 had fallen at the end of March to 1,432. Unhappily the campaign of terrorism in Bengal, which lias been the special home of those methods, lias not subsided yet in a like degree. About six weeks ago it was, stated that the presence of two brigades of British and Indian troops in Midnapore and Chittagong had caused an immense improvement. Midnapore is in the Ganges delta, a little west of Calcutta. It has been notorious for the murder of magistrates. For the last crime of this kind three Bengali youths were sentenced to death and four to life transportations. Chittagong, a land of vast jungles, lies directly east of it, on the other side of the Bay of Bengal. la lias had the worst name of all for terrorism in recent times. Since improvement was reported in these cpiartcrs there have been a number of outrages in Bengal. The latest has been the attempt to shoot the Governor, Sir John Anderson, at the Darjeeling races. The Bengali youth, better fed than ho used to he, and, following the example of the haled English, in some measure

an addict of games, is no longer a weedy intellectual. He lias disproved Ids old stigma of cowardice. But apparently lie lias not yet learned to shoot well. Several shots wore fired at close range at Sir John Anderson, and tho only damage done was by one of them which went through a lady’s ankle. There have been other outrages in India—against the Government, caused by labour troubles, and provoked by religious fanaticism —but tho terrorism in Bengal has been recognised as tho most formidable problem with which authorities have to deal. The most drastic laws were passed last March to discourage criminals, prevent the introduction of arms, and prevent recruitment of the underground societies. The Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act punishes the possession of weapons “ with intent to use them for terrorist crime ” by death or transportation for life or less or imprisonment up to fourteen years. Even so, convictions are difficult to obtain. The Indian penal code was designed for normal conditions, and tho Indian law of evidence demands a standard that can seldom bo satisfied, and never in times when witnesses are shot and their families harassed. Without recruitment and arms smuggling (mostly of Belgian and Gorman weapons), it lias been said, the terrorists would soon be powerless. As things are, “ while the few police are worked to death, officials and in some places Europeans generally go about their business under guard and sleep armed and barriered. At Chittagong (tho extreme case) the Hindu inhabitants arc under remarkable restrictions. Houses are watched, streets guarded, something like a passport is imposed for identification, they can be ordered to stay in their houses, to use these roads, these trains, not to use those vehicles, and so on. Europeans there are in danger and have irksome conditions of Jiving and working to put up with. Other stations may become like Chittagong if the fight ends otherwise than in a decisive victory for law and order. Thus the sacrifice of comfort and convenience imposed on the public by these restrictive measures is an inevitable consequence of the situation created by the terrorists.” The best promise of amelioration of these conditions was given souc weeks ago when it was stated that, weary of relentless pressure by the authorities, tho senior Hindu residents of the Chittagong area had at last organised an anti-terrorist organisation to keep vigilance over Bengal youths and report suspicious conduct. This attitude of assistance to the authorities had long been aimed at by the Government, and it was hoped that it would mark the end of the murder cult. It has not done that so far, but another reducing influence should soon be felt in tho decline of civil disobedience. “ Terrorism,” it has been said, “is not civil disobedience, which mildly deprecates crime. Yet it is not entirely different. They shade into each other; when civil disobedience is rife, terrorism responds. In this way Congress has been a stimulator of crime; also, most of the known leaders in terrorism have passed through the Congress camp. Magistrates and policemen, a judge and I.G. of Prisons have been murdered because they have had to deal with civil disobedience and ‘ detenus.’ Civil disobcdicnco may turn its eyes away from murder. But it has spread the view that any way of weakening an alien Government is virtuous.” The conviction has evidently grown among passive resistors that the Government is in earnest in its plans for giving increasing powers of self-government to Indians, and so that movement has subsided. The terrorists may have less incentive when they find no supporting movement to their own. Meanwhile the Administration can only follow the course it has set down for itself, that of pressing on with constitutional change in the direction of self-govern-ment, and of using all necessary powers against those who would subvert all government. If the terrorists became rulers India would be indeed a chaos.