INDIAN SITUATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 9184, Issue 9184, 7 April 1910, Page 2

INDIAN SITUATION.

"NO REAL TJKKEST."

ANGLO-INDIAN AUTHORITY

SPEAKS

A very remarkable denial of tlie rumours that trouble is pending in India was given to the Sydney Morning Herald by an authority peculiarly qualified to speak on the subject. This is Colonel Pollen, lately of the Indian Civil Service, who, by reason of his present position as secretary of the East India Association, has been brought probably as intimately into touch with the clique from which the agitators are drawn as any Englishman can be. He has also a particularly intimate knowledge of some of the men who have- been the victims of these outrages. "Poor Jackson who was assassinated the other day was at one time my assistant," he said. "He was a fine man—a fine upright, considerate, humane man, a thorough gentleman and a good friend to the natives. He was one of those men who went amongst them and studied them more than most. You could tell the sort of man he was by the place where he happened to be when he was killed. It is only a man that studies the natives who goes to the native theatres. It is strange how the men who commit these crimes always seem to pick on the men who are their best friends— just as in Russia they blew up the very Tsar who liberated the serfs. "Curzon Wyllie, who was shot by a young Indian at the Imperial Institute, was another good friend to the natives. I was there at the time. In fact, it is a wonder he did not shoot me, because I was engaged in very much the same sort of work as secretary of the East India Association — charged with the furtherance of all objects connected with the people of India." AN ACCEPTED RISK. Colonel Pollen went on to give a most interesting and evenly expressed explanation of the feeling of the natives of India towards the British in India at the present moment. "They do not like us," he said. "We know that; we have known that all along. And we carry our lives in our hands in India—we know that. We have always carried our lives in our hands there, and we have always been aware of it. But we accept that, we do not mind it—it is not going tc make us swerve a hair's breadth. I have looked up the papers of 30 and 40 years ago, when Norman and Mayo about the same time were assassinated ; and exactly the same things were said then as arc being said now. We know individually that we take the risk, and it has never made the leasi difference. "But that is not the point. The point is that the deep-seated genera' popular unrest which people out here suspect to exist in India does not exist. The movement is very much or. the surface. It is solely the result _oi the work of agitators who have stirred a few unfortunate young men educated in Europe to commit in a feverheat- crimes of intrigue and assassination on the common European anarchistic lines which are utterly foreign and detestable to the native population. • 'The movement is confined to agitators. These agitators are men with s grievance. The facts arc not all widely known. But I will give you two cases:—

HOW KRISHNAVARMA BECAME AGITATOR. "You have heard of Krishnavarma— the agitator now living in Paris. This is Krishnavarma's story. He was a son of a weaver of Cutch. He was sent as a hoy to the high schools of Bombay. He would be under native masters at school there, and would be taught classics and mathematics — would get a good education. I tjiink he went to Bombay University next. There he would have come under some English professors and some native ones. "From there he went to Balliol College, Oxford. He used to do some coaching there in his leisure hours— coachino- men who were going into the India Civil Service in the Indian languages. He was so good a scholar of Sanscrit that Professor Menier Williams wanted him to succeed himself when he retired from the Chair of Sanscrit at Oxford. He was generally known as the 'Pundit' there, and was always up to then looked upon as a loval man. . . ""Well, the Oxford authorities gave the appointment to an Englishman. That was Krishnavarma's first grievance. It was a private, grievance. He went back to India and becanie Prime Minister of certain native states. He was rather suddenly expelled from there, and came back to London with money saved. In London he started as an agitator, xlc found that the role of agitator paid well. The money comes to these agitators from India—from rieli discontented natives with some grievance against the Government. Then lie set up India House at High gate in London. He represented to the young Indian students in London and Oxford and elsewhere that we British were draining India to death, draining it of its lifeblood for our own gain. He told the boys that it was an abominable thing to have the English rule over India. "YOU CAN'T BLAME THE BOYS." "Well, Krislmavarma, when the English Government began to take steps to enquire into his proceedings, fled to Paris, where he still is, and issued from there his paper, "The Indian Sociologist," which was taken in by the students in England, _ and which preached the same doctrines. The majority of these students are fine young fellows, and true, loyal lads—l know them well. But they are suffering from what they look upon as a social grievance—that the English profess to receive them on terms of equality, and really do not do so. There is a real difficulty in this, a difficulty for which it looks sometimes almost hopeless to find a solution.

"Added to this, a number of the boys come over with insufficient means to get on with. They get hopelessly stranded. I have come upon them again and again, and have given them what help I could. Some of these stranded lads fall deeper and deeper; and it is out of these that there arises that class of brooding boys which is worked upon to become agitators. They are not really to blame—they are really maniacs. They arc infected with a type of common anarchistic intrigue of the European sort— a delicate plotting and scheming of assassinations which is utterly opposed to the native ethics, and abominalole alike the them and to us. THE GRIEVANCE OF GHOSE.

"The case of Arabinda Ghose, another agitator you have heard of, is precisely similar. ITe went to the university in England, and some years ago passed the examination for the Indian Civil Service, and was one of the selected candidates. After the written examination, it is necessary to pass a test in riding; and it has boon.commonly reported that the ex-

aminers had reasons for not wishing to let Arabinda Ghose through, and chose the riding test as a convenient cliancc of plucking him. I happen to know what the real facts were. Arabinda Ghose, for some reason, objected to the necessity of the riding test. He had some peculiar opinions, and he maintained that it ought not to bo necessary for a man to pass an examination in He refused to go up for it. The examiner explained to him that it would not be necessary to ride skilfully—he need only stick on for a turn or so—but he entirely refused. He thought the rule should bo modified in his favour.

"He failed, for that reason, to get into the India Civil Service; and from that time he, too, had a grievance. He served the Gaikwar in Baroda for a time, and thence camo to Calcutta, where he got into trouble, but was acquitted. "These people are the agitators. They are all men with an English education. Their methods are anarchistic a'nd opposed to Indian ideas. But they have the loudest voices and lungs, and they have command of the native press. Most natives do not read these newspapers. But what does happen is that a copy goes to the village, and will be read out to the bystanders by a man sitting m some corner. In that way they getto a great number of people." "Another means they have of stirring up disaffection, which the Government has taken no steps to control, is the native drama. They often use it in that way. "But in spite of this the agitation and disaffection do not go deep. It is most difficult to know whether we do right to give them a European education. But I myself believe itis on the right course to throw all examinations open to them. I often say that the Brahmins of Bombay and the Babus of Bengal are our most loyal people there, because tliey know very well what would happen if by any chance we withdrew even for a time. The rest of the people 1 don't know that they appreciate the fact that we have turned deserts into wardens, and so on. They do not like us—they do not like any rulers. But they certainly harbour no deep feelings or concerted designs against us for the grievances the agitators speak of." . _ TT

A HIGH FAITH. Colonel Pollen, after touching on the difficulty of the solution of the social question, finished by stating Ins grounds of simple faith that trouble was not coming in India in very remarkable terms. He simplifies out the whole tangled situation under one clear rule—that so long as the place is fairly and honestly ruled things cannot "go'far wrong. _ "I believe this agitation will tiic down and disappear," he said. 1 believe it on the simple ground that there is no real grievance behind it. There is no drain upon India, there is no blood-letting of India. For the last SO years the Government has been conducted only for the good_ of t-lie people of India. My motto m dealing with the natives would be always 'Be just and fear nought,' and be as conciliatory as you possibly can. The native resents condescension as much as haughty exclusiveness. I have always treated the native of India as a gentleman, and he is a gentleman. And if you do that you arc not very far wrong."