INSCRUTABLE INDIA

Taranaki Daily News, 8 January 1932, Page 9

INSCRUTABLE INDIA

WILL THERE BE BLOODSHED? PREPARED FOR THE WORST. The cablegrams from India make very disquieting reading, and people familiar with, the history of the Indian Mutiny cannot help wondering if the stage is not set for a repetition of the harrowing incidents of that tragedy. Western people would imagine Calcutta and Bombay seething with unrest, white-robed natives gliding mysteriously and suspiciously from one quarter do another, perhaps arms or home-made bombs hidden in the ample folds of their cotton clothes, and they would also imagine the erstwhile obsequious Hindu scowling when he meets a hated white, and perhaps sitting contemptuously on the pavement—a universal method of expressing disdain and .contempt. But it is quite otherwise. One can stroll through the Crawford Market in Bombay, with its fascinating medley of stalls, on which are piled the colourful fruits, vegetables and foodstuffs of the native people; one can wander down the native quarters of teeming Calcutta, and the meek-eyed natives seem as oblivious of Gandhi, Patel and Swaraj as they are of the winner of tho last Auckland Cup. At least, this, says the Star, is the experience of an officer in the mercantile marine who is at present in Auckland, just having come from Calcutta. A few weeks ago, when the officer’s ship was lying in the Hooghly, he used to meet all sorts of people, white and brown, and he came away with the impression that ' nobody had the remotest idea what was going to happen as the result of Gandhi’s return and the tightening up of police supervision. Even among the best-informed whites there was the widest divergence of opinions. Some of them regarded the future as hopeless, dreading the next few months, while others even laughed, said it would all blow over, and took refuge in the proverbial British saying, “We’ll worry -through all right!” Here and there the officer came across an incident that betrayed the lurking danger that comes from secret Societies and the accumulation of forbidden arms. A police van drives up to an innocentlooking building; armed guards make a double line from the doorway to the van door; natives have to make a detour and pass on the roadway; whites are allowed to keep the pavement and pass between the guards. Men ’ enter the building, and presently come out with rifles and other arms, which are put into the van and taken to a place where they will jbe safe from the hands of fiery students and other Gandhi supporters. In spite of the Mahatma’s exhortation that no blood must be spilt, the authorities /do not believe in leaving lethal weapons in the hands of his fanatical followerfl.

Another significant feature was the weeding out of certain native troops from the city, and the increase in the number of white and half-caste troops. The half-castes live in a sort of no-man’s land, possibly despised -by both races, but in a struggle, if it comes to a struggle, they will side with the whites. Still another significant feature of feeling in troubled India is the scarcely veiled hostility between the Hindus and the Moslems. When the Hindus were celebrating some religious festival the Moslems took pleasure in throwing gibes at the worshippers; insults would be offered to the cow, sacred in the eyes.of the Hindu; a band would bray noisily before a crowd of praying Hindus. This antipathy between the two hordes, fellow-countrymen, but as far apart as the poles from a religious point of view, is one of the reasons why the whites say there will never be a general rising. .The Hindu numbers five to every one Moslem, but the latter is the better fighter, and the inequality of numbers would bother him but little. “One can stroll down through the dense native quarters,” said the officer, “and ; as far as a stranger can tell anything in the nature of a revolution is as far off as it is in London town. The natives do not make the slightest gesture of hatred towards the whites; they are im/perturbable as bronze statues. Bloodshed.is the -last thing one would visualise. Still, some of the whites say it is certain. If and when it comes, it will come suddenly; that is certain. All arrangements havo been made for the concentration of the white population. The difficulty will be, of course, in gathering in the white women, for the whites are fairly scattered round about Calcutta. In the event of trouble appearing, all the whites would be concentrated in Fort William, .an impregnable fortress, facing the river and the Maidan;, its guns could command all the vulnerable parts of the immense citv. Whether it will come to that no one can tell, not even Calcutta itself.”