PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2812, 5 February 1908, Page 86

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

j THE AWAKENING OF INDIA. I Last week I gave you a general idea of the discontent existing in India — a discontent largely due to the educated Hindu. As a result of a Western education he has been " Westernised ' in ideas, and wishes to introduce Western metnois oi government into India, ioi getting that the British Constitution is an evolution of centuries, and that the Eastern, with his Eastern ideals, manners, customs, modes ot thought, and bo on. is far Irom a fit person to be entrusted wilh the rights a Britisher possesses. On the othei lia.nd, as I said last week, we have given the native of India sufficient education to cause him to chafe under the restraint imposed upon him by the British raj. from about 1885 the educated natives of India have been advocating political leforms which would give them a greater say in the government, of their country — i we might call it a continent, for it contains as many religions and races as Europe, and a much greater population. Only within the last lew years have the resolutions of the Indian National Congress carried much weight. The large area from which delegates were drawn, : the small number they bore to the whole ! population, the absence of rapid comi munication, the many languages spoken, the many religions — some of which v> 01 2 (and are) fiercely antagun.^ic to one another, — the want of educa:ion, the small circulation of the -native press, and other factors, made all efforts to get reiorms futile. But these difficulties are vanishing, excepting, perhaps, the religious animosity the Hindus and Mohammedans show to each other. But while the Hindu and Mohammedan may hate each other as the devil shuns holy water, yet the 1 common hatred to Western domination may cause them to call a truce and to make a common cause against the alien, though they may fall upon each other when the alien is driven out. 1 One of these reformers, the Hon. Mr G. K. Gokhale, who visited England about six months ago, crystallised the principal and immediate reforms advocated by himself and his fellow-progres-sives in the following terms :—: — I 1. Advance in self-government. The enlargement of the Legislative Councils, both Imperial and Provincial; an increase in the proportion of theiv elected members, and a widening of their functions, including some sort of control, however 1 limited, over public expenditure. 2. Admission of qualified Indians to 1 the Secretary of States Council -aid to the Executive Council of the Viceroy, and to the Governors of Madras and Bombay. The nomination of Indian members of the Secretary of States Council to be made by an electoral college composed of the elected members of the various Legislative Councils in India. ! 3. A free and unfettered career in the 1 public services, involving a large substitution of the economical and equally efficient Indian agency for the costly foreign agency in the Higher ranks of all departments, and local competitive exa- ! minations. 4. Cautious but steady improvement ot the position of Indians in the arrmy. 5. Decentralisation of district administration and extension of municipal selt- ' government. 6. Separation of judicial from executive functions and reconstitution ot the judicial service by placing it under the control of the High Courts instead of the Executive Governm.--r.ts, and by substituting legal practitioneis as judges in ploce ot members of tne Civil Service. 7. Reduction of military expenditure ; also of the heavy cost of civil administration, due to the higher branches of the public service being a virtual monopoly of Europeans, so as to set free funds to be revoted to the following objects: — (a) Elementary education, which, should be made free at once throughout India, and gradually made compulsory. (b) Industrial Education. (c) Improved sanitation for the poor. (d) Abolition of the salt tax and of the opium traffic. (c) Measure? for the relief of agricul- | iural indebtedness, and the improve1 ment of the cultivators material con- ] dition generalh". These, demands. &ays H E. A. Cotton, the editor of "India," aie not in any way j incompatible with the continuance of I British rule. Reduced to their simplest and 1 most elemental form they amount to 110 th! ing more than this : Give us a real and practical share, however small, in the government of our country, and put an end to the present system, under which 1 the opinion of a foreign official oveiride, I and completely extinguishes that of the j educated men of the land."' And, adds j Mr Cotton, who is evidently an advocate for larger responsibilities being aiven to Indians, those making the»yp demands j "are men who can and do hold their o"nn ; with Englishmen in the law courts and ' the operating theatre, at the universitiee, I in the -world of commerce, in the Teaims ■ of science, and in the domain of education. They aie n>n who in any other country in the woild would be welcomed 1 as popular representatives" and nrinister-s. j They are men who see aiormd them in I China, in Persia, in Japan, and ev-cn in the Philippines, the triumph of the career lof progress. How much lonFPr is their ' patience to be put to the test?" 1 "If." as Gladstone said, "liberty alone , fits man for liberty," the men we have educated should be siven opportunities to prove themselves. Think over what T have written, then place yourself in the place of an educated Hindoo or Mohammedan in j India, and imagine what would be in your mind as you thought of yourself taxed to j Tjrovide high salaries and pensions for foreigners, and called upon to defend his raj: and at the same time remember how j yon are exclud^-1 irom British possession.'. I and in South Africa treated as a degraded

savage. When -we get out of ourselves and project ourselves into the personalities of others, we often have our mental horizon extended, and fie ccaee to be so pronounced in our opinions'. THE INDIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM.

The Daily Ma;l Y-^ar Book say* that last year a great deal was heard of '"Band? Mat aram," or "Hail, Motherland. 1 ' It was written by Bankim Chandia, in a novel, "'Ananda' Matha," and "he put the song into the mouth of the Sanyasi .beet— a sect which led pure lives, practised austentes. did (,'ood to the poor, and considered the service of the country the object of their ambition." This is a translation of it . — My Mother'a-^d I sine. Her splendid streams, her gloilous trees. The zephj-r from the far-off Vindyan heights, Her fields of waving corn. The raptuious ladiance of her nioonht uights, The trees in floiver that flame afar, The «mihng days that sweetly vocal are, The haupy, b'eased Motherland. Her w.ll b\ seventy million throats extolled. Her pener twice seventy million aims uphold ; Her strength 'et no man scorn. Thou art my he.ad, thou art my heart, ITy Jife. my sou 1 , art thou My song, niy worship, and my art— Beiore thy "feet I bow As Durga, scourg* of all thy foes; As Lakshmi. bowered in the flower, That in the water grows ; As Bam. wisdom, power; The source of all our might. On every temple doth thy form unfo'cl — Unequallefl. tender, happy, pure. Of snleudad streams, of glorious trees, My Motherland I sang, Ihe siaui-esa charms that e'er endure, And verdant banks a.rtl wholesome breeze, That with her praizes ring. Phis ?vas constantly on the lips of the Bengalis, but on the surface of them there is nothing of a treasonable character in them.