NOTABLE VISITOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22403, 27 April 1936, Page 15

NOTABLE VISITOR

INDIA ANI) THE WEST REV. tf. F. ANDREWS ARRIVES LECTURES TO STUDENTS INVESTIGATION IN FIJI A unique figure in the religious world/' the Rev. Charles Freer Andrews, well known for his devotional writings and for his almost lifelong endeavours to interpret the mind of India to the West, and to befriend its people, arrived at Auckland on Friday by the Tamaroa frpm London. Mr. Andrews has visited New Zealand twice before, in 1915 and 1917, on his way/ to inquire into the. system of indentured Indian labour in Fiji. On this occasion he is making a lecturing tour of New Zealand and Australia under the auspices of the World Student Christian Federation. At the end of the week he will leave for Fiji in order to investigate certain matters affecting the Indian community there, and on his return in June he will lecture in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington. Speaking of his plans, Mr. Andrews paid that his addresses to New Zealand and Australian students would cover the same ground as a course of lectures which he had just completed at Cambridge University, under the title of "Christ and Prayer." Others would deal with the subject-matter of his recent book, "India and Britain—a Moral Challenge." After leaving Australia he would go to India by way of Ceylon,, and later would return to Cambridge, where he had been appointed university lecturer in pastoral theology for 1937. Fijian Indians' Interests His visit to Fiji was being made at the request of the Imperial Indian Citizenship Association, an organisation which existed to promote the welfare of Indians living in other parts of the British Empire. He had been asked to inquire into difficulties which Indian cultivators encountered in obtaining suitable' leasehold tenures of Fijian native lands, and also into the question of the franchise. According to information he had "received, Mr. Andrews said there was a proposal to abolish elective representation in the Legislative Council of the colony and to make the Council an entirely nominated body. However, the Colonial Office had decided to postpone the proposal for a • year. He would report on both matters to the Citizenship Association and the Indian Government Educational Stepping-stone Mr. Andrews said he hoped also to take up the question of higher education for the very few young people from the Indian community in Fiji who wished to undertake university courses. He had in mind one youth, the son of a former indentured labourer, who had received his secondary education in New Zealand, and was now about to matriculate at Cambridge. This student was the first Indian from Fiji to appear at- that university. "I feel that New Zealand can be very helpful in this," Mr. Andrews remarked. "Perhaps it will be able to assist as a stepping-stone between Fiji and the universities of thd.Old World." He would report upon his lecture tour to the quadrennial sessions of the World Student Christian Federation, to be held in Birmingham in January. He intended also to report to the members of the Student Christian Movement at Cambridge, who were exceedingly interested in Australia and New Zealand. Youth and Religion "No. Religion has not lost its appeal to youth in Britain," said Mr. Andrews in reply to a question. "All through my course of lectures on prayer I had very large attendances, although the lectures were in no way compulsory and were given at a rather awkward hour —half-past five. Not long ago we had what was called a ten days' mission at Cambridge. There are 10,000 students, and to make room for all who came we had to hold gatherings simultaneously in the Guildhall and the university church, Great St. Mary's, holding about 1500 each. Young people may, and do, neglect conventional religious observances nowadays, but they will go to hear anything that is real." Mr. 'Andrews spent the luncheon hour on Friday in giving two addresses at the Auckland Training College. One was to the 40 or 50 relief workers employed in the college grounds, and the other was to the students, who crowded one of the classrooms to hear him. Gandhi's Social Work To the relief workers Mr. Andrews spoke of India, which, he said, contained a quarter of the world's population and was the home of two out of every three British subjects. The mental capacity of Indians was shown by the fact that Rabindranath Tagore had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Indian had been a senior wrangler at Cambridge. "Gandhi is doing a greater social work than any other single individual in the world to-day," remarked Mr. Andrews. "He has devoted the remainder of his life to uplifting 45,000,000 people of bis own country—the depressed classes of 'pariahs.' It is far above politics or anything else, and he is "succeeding because he lives like them, as the poorest of the poor." To the students the visitor described the /educational work at Rabindranath Tagore's institution, Santiniketan, Bengal, of which he is vice-president. The aim there, he said, was to bring education into sympathy with the natural surroundings and the mental and home life of the Indian people, and to break away from the British conventions which had ruled it in India for a century past. "As 1 have gone around the world," Mr. Andrews concluded, "I have often wondered whether, in these great new countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, it is not possible to get education closer to the soil, to the soul and to home life and the life of nature." During his stay in Auckland Mr. Andrews is the guest of an old friend, the Rev. Dr. Alexander Hodge, minister of the Baptist Tabernacle.