INDIA’S HOSTILE PRESS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18554, 29 April 1930, Page 9

INDIA’S HOSTILE PRESS.

More Rigid Restrictions.

OLD ORDINANCE REVIVED. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph —Copyright.) DELHI, April 27. The Viceroy announces an ordinance to revive in a more effective form the Indian Press Act of 1910, which was repealed in 1922. The Government of India, influenced by representations, has at last realised the intense harm that is being done by the violent, seditious and revolutionary language used daily by the greater section of the Indian Press. The communique states that nothing at the present moment is operating so powerfully to promote a revolutionary and lawless spirit as the writing in the Indian Press. At Neela, a salt manufacturing centre near Diamond Harbour, armed police fired on a mob of three thousand villagers, who, encouraged by Congress volunteers, severely stoned the police, most of whom were badly bruised or gashed by knives. Patience proving of no avail, buckshot was ultimately fired. Two rioters and two of the polce were taken to hospital.

[Despite a certain amount of opposition from influential Indians, who were convinced that the country was not sufficiently settled for such a measure, on March 31, 1922, the Indian Legislative Assembly passed a Bill repealing the Press Act and Newspaper Incitement to Offences Act. A feature of the debate was the attack which was made by an Indian member, Razi Ali, on journalists in India, whose writings, he declared, were doing India incalculable harm. Following the repeal of the Act, Lord Reading, who was then Viceroy, prorogued, both Legislatures, and it was rumoured that he had resigned. This however, was denied.]