INDIAN CHURCH

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 17 December 1927, Page 9

INDIAN CHURCH

LATE EDITION

AUTONOMY GRANTED. BILL BEFORE PARLIAMENT. DISESTABLISHMENT MEASURE. EY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION —COE Y HIGH!. Received 12.55 p.m. to-day. LONDON, Dee. 16. Earl Winter ton moved the second reading of the Indian Church Dill, dissolving the legal union with the Church of England, and giving the Anglican Church in India autonomy similar to the churches in the Dominions, lie said that the Indian Government would continue to utilise the services of chaplains and churches for the British civil service population and for the army, conducted on lines authorised in England. Mr Thurton, moving its rejection, objected to the very name of Indian Church for an alien religion with only half a mi.lion followers 'out of India s three hundred millions. He .was most strongly opposed to assigning £llou,uuu from the Indian revenue for the maintenance of chaplains and churches for the British section of the population. The Rt. Hon. Lord Hugh Cecil said: “'Last night we were told that we ought to have disestablishment. This is a measure of disestablishment. Whatever the Church Assembly does seems wrong; if it tries to adjust its affairs to establishment it is wrong; if it tries to separate the church of India from the State it is wrong. ’ ’ Carl Winterton, replying said that the Indian Government assisted the Mahommedan and Hindu religions as well as Anglican by the exception of mosques and temples from the land tax. The Bill was read a second time without division. —A.P.A. and “Sun.”