CORRESPONDENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19049, 30 June 1924, Page 10

CORRESPONDENCE

t • t BRITISH RULE IN INDIA. ' J (To the Editor.) j Sir,—Let me say at once, please, r that I have drawn no sword, though c every thoughtful person who knows ‘ India must see one flaming in the dis- t tance if the so-called leaders of* the * people persist in their present policy, 1 nor am I to be drawn into an acriinon- ’ ions controversy. We will take it for granted that when the disinterested £ and unselfish patriots have displaced 2 the foreigners, {he village punchayats ( will be, revived, and that Dheds anl I Mahads will sit on the tribunal. Noth- ? ing that the secretary of the New Zea 1 land and India League or I can say or ‘ write will have the remotest effect on ! the destiny of India’s multiplicity of | ] races and the still more numerous castes | ’ that divide these races into hostile ramps. 1 merely took up the subject ’; to show those of your readers who arc ' unacquainted with India’s problems 1 that unr friend, the secretary, has allowed his zeal to outstrip his discretion. 1 1 asked a simple question, just what did he mean by he concluding sentence 1 in his letter—“the new constitution and Dominion status for India.” .He answers my question by quoting some 1 well-known names who are said to crave 1 for—for what? With regard to the ' Aga Khan, I doubt if his views would 1 be quite in accord with those of Mr. Sastri. Some of these gentlemen are, ; it appears, now in consultation with Mr. MacDonald in London on the subject of “Domiion Status for Awakened India!” Let me quote what the present Prime Minister wrote some years ago (about 1910) after a visit to India, and Mr. MacDonald has been anything but a friendly critic of our administration while he has been notoriously favourable to India’s aspirants to political power: further one ' wanders on this road of inquiry the greater appear the difficulties ahead. History adds to the confusion. The people have no history in common in which they take pride. The population are like layer on land. Then there is the important political fact that 693 native states exist over an area of 679,393 square miles against a British area of 1,987,000 square miles, with a population of 62,500,000. Cau

these be united in one nation? When the Mahiutta Brahmin and the Bengali Babu cry together for a nationalist movement, does each only seek for the dominance of his own kind? Has he deluded himself so that ‘ndia’ in his mouth means himself and his own caste? Has he honestly faced what the morrow of India’s independence is to bring? At first sight, and on tne surface, India appears to be a land where people live side by side but do not form a national community. The hope of a united India, an India con scious of a national unity of purpose and destiny, seems to be the vainest of dreams.” Thus wrote of India the present Prime Minister of England when he travelled m India ana came in contact with the would-be rulers of that land. Now that he is in a position to deal with the matter officially it will be intresting to watch developmens. So much for India as a nation. It is, moreover, not correct to say that Jerusalem “has the same import to Islam as to Christendom.” By Mahomedans Palestine is looked upon as sacred, Bait el Makadas. I think this is phonetically the rendering of the Arabic for Holy Land, but all who have studied the subject at all know that to win over the Jews to his standard Mahomeu proposed g make Jerusalem the place of pilgrimage and the point to which all true believers should turn in prayer, but the Jews were obdurate and he substituted Mecca. In any case Jerusalem, which to Christians is the cradle of Christianity, is not the Moslem in the same category with Mecca, the birthplace of the prophet, or Medina to which he fled in his hour of trial. The stupendous folly of India with its defunct Khalifate Commission, in which Hindus joined merely to embarass the Government, seeking to enter European politics, is emphasised by the tragedy, despite India’s heroics, that has overtaken the commander of the faithful at the hands of his hereditary protectors. Your correspondent brings up the Jullianwalla Bagh incident (Amritsar), but he omits the dastardly outrages that pre-

ceed it. Among many we may select an English nurse on her way from the house of a native patient in Amritsar, knocked off her bicycle and left for dead on the road, the bank burnt, and the European manager and his assistant thrown into the flames, two British soldiers out for a quiet walk beaten to death and so on. Moreover, the meeting was convened at a time when the seeds of excitement and disorder had been sown broadcast and held in defiance of orders by men who were notoriously out to disturb the peace. Let Mr. MacDonald, now Prime Minister of England, tell us the devil ish means used by unscrupulous men to spread discord, to give it a very mild r>me. Speaking the the Hindu devotee who according to the injunctions of the laws of Manu'lays down all wordly cares and leaving the merits of his good deeds to those who love him and his evil deeds to those who hate him, goes through meditation

and the eternal Brahma. “This ' spirit, blurred by blackguardism, dulled , by indifference, coarsened by deceit, is nevertheless in its purity the spirit which we have to understand. I was talking one day with one of those f educated Hindus, and I was advancing arguments to convince him of the weakness of his position in India. An I Agnostic, a town dweller, an Englishman in dress veneer, an insignificant minority—what was he but that? In reply he said: minority! But you do not know uie mind of India. i You innoculate us. We can pass the word round that your serum is poison. You then innoculate yourselves as a i proof of your good faith. We reply I through a million gossips that the English innoculate themselves with rose water. We can announce a miracle; I we can proclaim a revelation from the gods, we can spread tales of desecrated shrines and temples, of cow killing. L Ah! You do not know the Indian mind. A minority! Minorities and majorities arc things of the West, not of India.” These men, the pampered product of British rule are willing in their spite I to briqg disaster on their own country. It s easy therefore to understand how disorder spreads like wildfire among credulous inflamable people. With regard to the particular case of amrissar, we now have the dispassionate pronouncement of an English judge in England that General Dwyer’s prompt action saved a conflagration, and be it remembered that in a conflagration of the kind the Europeans would not be the greatest Sufferers. In the Moplah outbreak the Hindus were the only serious sufferers, many having been “forcibly converted” to Islam—a painful process foj the victim. In the Gandhi riots in Bombay, if I remember rightly, the Parsees were singled out for attack. Poor old Gandhi, an honest but foolish vissionary. By re ligion a Jain, his creed is the sanctity of life from the human to the insect. In South Africa he was the stormy petrel of the Indian community and thought he would best serve their interests by defying thp Government with the result that he got into prison. After this little episode he transferred the sphere of his activities to his native land, where he thought he could teach the people to flout the Government and that they would all be good boys and keep peace; but the mobs got out of hand and like the peaceful pickets in England they became very militant. Too late, this shocked the soul of the gentle Jain, but his tactics in India led to the same result for him as in South Africa. Our secretary tells us that W. T. Stead’s dream has been brought down to the arena of practical application. I wish I could thing so, but facts are stubborn things, and at the present time the map of Europe shows me many more nationalities than when Stead dreamt his noble dream. The League of Nations is still like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but God grant it may prosper. No my friend, the time has I not yet como when the German junker ! will fraternise with the Frenchman or : the Punjabi lion (Singh) lie down with the Bengali or Madrassi lamb. Were I a Hindu looking on the ghastly cataclysm that has shaken European civilisation to its very foundations, I would do pooja from early morn to dewy eve and thank my goas for the great boon they have granted us in uniting all castes, creeds and races of our mother land under one beneficial rule. Our India did not suffer in the world upheaval except for the loss of those brave soldier sous who shared with their British comrades the honour of giving their lives in the great cause. Were I an Indian Mahomedan I would thank Allah from the first watch of morning to he last watch at night for the same inestimable boon. - This boon is well described by an outsider, a distinguished German who visited India several times between, I think, about 1893 and 1910. He spent a considerable time in the country on each occasion and studied conditions from the Himalayas to Comorin. He was filled with wonderment at the miracle wrought by the British in a few generations. “Peopled since the beginning of historical tradition by nations of alien race, divided by language and religion alike, split up into innumerable states and principalities, hither India was smelted together into a single compact world-empire. With the union of these diverse countries under the Union Jack began the liberation of the common people, enslaved by priestcraft and suppressed by force.” Writing of Bombay he says: “Willy-nilly, the white man today has to be put up with an Indian Croesus looking down upon him from his pride of place. This is the universal plaint of the Europeans in Bombay, as it is all over India in general. The native tends to become more i and more emancipated. From a position of independence to one of pre- ' sumption is only a step.” This will give your readers some of the “insults and oppressions” to which the poor native of India is subjected at Home. . The book bristles with interest, but we , will dismiss our German observer with ! just one further extract. “True, the prestige of the Government rests in 1 British hands, as does the supremo 1 authority, but with the dignities they ’ have to bear the burdens of their posi- ! tion as well. The heavy responsibility of law and order, the toilsome supervision of sanitary and police measures, fall on their shoulders alone, while 1 young India in full security enjoys the ■ protection and profits of English rule. ' Hindus Mahomedans and Parsecs ire 5 free to, attend their personal concerns ' at leisure, and to augment their hoards ‘ while the Englishman, toiling and slav--1 ing for the sake of general common good, sacrifices the best years of his I life.” Of course, changes must come in the Government of the country and if India were a nation she would have slipped her leading strings long ere now, but to turn these congeries of nations loose upon each other at the present time in response to the clamour of an interested and incompetent few, would be madness. In the words of one L of India’s most enlightened princes: L “one revolution after another would lay waste the land that is already so ; rich to-day.—l am, etc., ALIF BEY.