INDIAN HOME RULE.

Northern Advocate, 24 July 1923, Page 7

INDIAN HOME RULE.

WILL STRENGTHEN THE EMPIRE

A'IEWS OF DR. DATTA,

"There is no ground for fear that India will withdraw from the Empire," said Dr. Surendra K. Datta, upon his arrival in Sydney, when questioned respecting the Montagu-Chelms-ford report.

"Rather," he added, "will it strengthen India's position in the iJmpire when she has complete home rule."

Dr. Datta, who is possessed of a striking personality, is here first as an official of the Young Men's ' Christian Association, of whose council in India he is one of the national secretaries, and because of an anxiety to see thocountry whose soldiers got on best with the Indians in the great war. He is a graduate of Edinburgh in medicine, and was for a time lecturer in biology in the University of the Punjaub. His book, "The Desire of India," has been widely read.

Ho said that the great merit of the Empire was that it contained a great Asiatic population. While a large number of his countrymen felt that India's relations with the Empire were unsatisfactory, they thought that the connection should be continued. They felt, however, that India should have some say m Empire affairs. The present unrest was very significant, but the point was that it was fundamentally economic. "It .can be put down as a formula that where you have landlordism, plus the incidence of famine, you will produce the conditions which lead to non-co-operation," said Dr. Datta.

Defining non-co-dperation, he said that it meant a particular programme of boycott adopted by the Indian National Congress in 1920. GHANDI MOVEMENT DEAD.

"The Ghandi programme is riOAv dead," Dr. Datta continued, "one of the factors of its death being the imprisonment of Ghandi, a man of extraordinary personality, who, strangely enough, received the first great influence in his life from C. H. Spurgeon, under whom he sat in London. The masses of the people have abandoned the Ghandi movement, and have also realised that the methods of Kemal Pasha are impossible.

"A third movement energetically l p d by Mr C. R. Das, an able Calcutta advocate, is making great progress. This party, known as the Swnrajya party, is out to capture all official posts. It has already captured almost all the municipalities of the United Provinces, and at the elections, due in November, an attempt will be made on the Legislatures. When elected the members of the party will probably refuse to accept office until such time as the Executives become wholly responsible to the Legislatures." CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA. It was pointed out to Dr. Datta that tAvo of the three prominent Indians (the Bishop of Dornaknl, Mr Sastri, and himself) who had visited Australia lately were Christians. Dr. Datta said that the total Christian population of India was about o£ millions, and they were drawn almost entirely from the classes socially depressed. The Wesley movement touched the depressed agricultural labourers in England, and it was to the same classes in India that Christianity made its appeal. The growth of Christianity had its effect on the Hindu eomimunity. Ghandi told the Indians that they could not have freedom while there was a single outcast. That was evidence that the reformers appreciated what Christianity was doing to elevate the outcasts. Mr Sastri had recently made a strong statement along those lines. The intellectuals of India had also been tremendously influenced by the teachings, fife, and example of Christ, but they did not become Christians, because they .asked what had Christianity done for Europe. But their reverence for its founder was leading to a demand for the reform of Indian society.

One difficulty lay in the fact that out of India's immense history, its dynasties, and invasions, the one thing that hod emerged was her village system! and the key of that system was caste. That had brought her through still stable, so, while the caste system had its shadows, it certainly had its viitues.