SEDITION IN INDIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2762, 20 February 1907, Page 25

SEDITION IN INDIA.

.STATEMENTS IN A NATIVE NEWSPAPER. PROPRIETOR AND EDITOR PUNISHED.

CALCUiTA, February 16

The proprietor of a native newspapei lias been sentenced at Lahore to two yedi&' ; imprisonment and fined a thousand lunves for having published an unverified rumour The defendant pleaded that the pubh. ation was in good faith. The editor of the paper, who was indicted for sedition in publishing fictitious and wicked statements, received a sentence ol six months and was ordered to pay a fine of 200 rupees. After the tiial a crowd of Hindus paraded the streets gesticulating and hooting Europeans. There has recently beon an unmistakable increase in seditious utterances in India, and a certain class of native newspapers have been taking every advantage of the leniency of the Government. The Sandbyra (Calcutta) recently stated.— "We shall now have to say constantly that we are grear. the feringhees are low. We are eons of men — we have practised hand to hand fighting-. It is by the power of their gune that they have captured our arts and industries. Let them give us five years' time. We

shall prepare guns and show them our fitne^s. We know we shall not grt time — we do not <vant it. But wait, God will be pleased with you. Your greatness and their lowness will soon bo displayed." At ' the recent Indian National Congress there I were frequent cries of " Bande, Mataram !" (Hail, Motherland!) during the sitting. This is a political war-cry, which has been forbidden by the Indian Government on account of its seditious signification. Sir Bampf\lde Fuller, the LieutenantGovernor of Eastern Bengal, recently decided that the masters and students of two schools at Sirajganj had been guilty of seditious and lawless action in the prosecution of the organised political agitation, directed from Calcutta against the division of the old province of Bengal, and that, in the interests of good government and public order within the newly-created eastern pro\inee, their conduct should be punished by the "disaffiliation " of tho=e institutions from tho Uni\ersity of Calcutta. He officially reque.-<od the registrar of the university to submit a proposal for disaffiliating them to the syndicate of that body. As tho Go%ernment questioned the expediency of this step, and asked Sir Bampfylde to withdraw his icqucat to the registrar, he resigned.