PROBLEMS OF INDIA

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6442, 24 January 1924, Page 2

PROBLEMS OF INDIA

Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, in an article in the Asiatic Review, says:— “It will be recognised that the politician. or call, him the ‘agitator’ if you like, is abroad, and one of the main problems of Indian administraton during the last few years has been how to deal with this new situation. Those who imagine that our village population lives in perfectly secure Gardens of Eden have yet to realise the reality of the situation. You may condemn the educated classes for their political activities; you may hold that their loyalty is questionable, and that, they are the sources from which emanate all trouble and unrest. I do not quarrel with this sort of criticism,, but I do maintain that those who hold that the educated classes have no influence with the masses live in a fool’s paradise. The outstanding feature of the Indian situation is the enormous influence, for good or evil, which the educated classes have acquired with the masses during the last few years, and you have to reckon with that fact. They cannot be treated any longer on the footing of a microscopic minority. It is impossible that a microscopic minority would have given all the trouble that the Government of India has had to face during the last few years unless it had the backing of what are called the uneducated masses.”