INDIANS IN FIJI

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17146, 31 December 1929, Page 7

INDIANS IN FIJI

RACE JEALOUSIES SERIOUS PROBLEM ' | SYDNEY, Dec. 17. According to Pandit Durga Parsad, genera! secretary of the Indian Reform League in Fiji, who arrived in Sydney recently to study Australian customs, politics, and economic conditions, Fiji, is becoming more and more an arena for conflicting racial jealousies. Unless the grievances of the Indian community meet with some sympathy, he says, there may be serious developments. "In Fiji," said the Pandit yesterday, "there are some 85,000 Fijians, 6000 Europeans, and 70,000 Indians. The Indians were indentured to work on the land, and have now become free settlers. They are the chief producers of sugarcane, cotton, copra, and pineapples in the island. control its motor transport, and many of them are storekeepers." • - The demand of the Indian settlers for full and equal franchise, he added,.was the chief subject of contention. - Another grievance concerned education, the Indians claiming that their children were excluded from the Grammar School at Suva and the Public school at Levuka on racial grounds, and that the Government had done nothing for them in the last 50 years. Most of the educational work," he said, had been done by the Methodist missionaries. There was also much dissatisfaction with the system of land tenure.