Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1924. INDIA AND SELF-GOVERNMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 975, 26 March 1924, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1924. INDIA AND SELF-GOVERNMENT

There is no country in the world where such difficult problems, racial and religious, confront the Government as are to be found in India. When, therefore, certain Labour politicians advocate self-government for that vast territory which we speak of as the Indian Empire, we maybe pardoned for inquiring whether they know what they are talking about, or if they have even an elementary knowledge of the diverse conditions, modes of life, language, and thought, and of the customs, religious and otherwise, of the more than 319,000,000 people who go to make up its population. Apart from European and vernaculars of other Asiatic countries, no less than 33 langu tges are spoken in India, and the non-Christian religions include Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsees, Mohammedans, Jains, Animists, Jews and minor sects, all more or less opposed to one another. The bulk of the population lelongs to the uneducated classes, out of every hundred persons not more than six having ever learned to read or write, or being able to do so. Of the whole population, again, 70 per cent, are engaged in operations directly connected with the soil, and the rural character of the population not only weakens their powers of cooperation or interest in self-govern-ment, but renders them tenacious of local cus ;oms and traditions. The demand foi self-government comes mostly from the towns where the Swarajists find tliei:' chief support. The mass of the population is easily worked upon by the latter, and the agitations they foment ere apt to assume formidable proportioas and to be accompanied by ugly features. A country so constituted is not easily governed and it says a very great deal for British rule in India that it has worked out so well, and that it has been able to protect the low caste Indians from those who, under other circumstances and in the days before the British Government took control of India, were cruelly oppressed, and dragged out a miserable existence owing to the caste prejudices of their fellows. Nowhere m the world does caste count for so much as in India, and British rule has alone ms do life possible under fairly easy conditions for the lower castes—the “unt juchables,” as they are sometimes termed, because association with them is believed by their fellows of the higher castes to be a cause of defilement and they are despised accordingly. J ist what would happen to these unfortunates if they found themselves sue denly deprived of the protection of the British Raj it is difficult to say, tut that they would be again reduced, and that very speedily, to a condition in which oppression and dire poverty would be their lot there can be very ' ittle doubt. And while under British rule Hindus and Mohammedans 1 vo peaceably together, they would be ready to fly at one another’s throats w ere the restraints that rule imposes r pon them removed. There are, unfortunately; too many Indian and Briti sh politicians ready to decry and deprecate the work done by the British in India. Certain of our own politicians-have-,taken up the same attitude, ard the most unfortunate part of the business is that such action on their pari is dictated purely by party considerations, and the desire to make political capital out of the alleged shortcomings of their opponents. But the fact is that British rule has been of a distinctly beneficial character to India and its people, and there is no need to hi ashamed, but rather to be proud of its accomplishments.