HINDU-MOSLEM CLASH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19376, 10 July 1926, Page 10

HINDU-MOSLEM CLASH.

The recurrence of rioting in Bengal, where once again British intervention has been necessary to separate Indians who have flown at one another's throats, proves what a correspondent suggested shortly after the great Calcutta riots of the end of March. He said that not only had the recorded casualties amounted to 40 dead and 500 seriously wounded, but the effects had spread throughout the province. Communal antagonism away from the main centres of population had intensified to a degree previously unknown. Here is evidence that the sinister leaven has been working just as indicated. The situation threatens to be most disastrous to the political progress of India. The people with some political consciousness are working frantically to secure at least an appearance of tranquillity by 1929, when the present reforms will be 10 years old and thus due for reconsideration with a view to extension. Yet, curiously, it is agreed by those who know Indian life that the very prospect of self-government lies at the heart of the trouble always flaming up between Hindu and Moslem. The Mohammedan fears a native Government, swamped and dominated by the Hindu. The Hindu certainly envisages "Swaraj" as taking that form. Yet he fears the Moslem element, numbering about 70,000,000. While only about two-ninths of the enormous Indian population, the Moslems are regarded as a truculent minority, not only believing in force as the only resource against their disparity of numbers, but prepared to call for assistance from their coreligionists across the North-West Frontier. Thus the basis of all the trouble is fear, Moslem fear of Hindu numbers, Hindu fear of Moslem virility. The outbreaks, whatever the immediate provocation, are inspired by this dread of what might happen when self-government comes. The tragedy of it is that in the mind of any impartial observer the day of effective self-government is being continually deferred by these religious vendettas.