INDIAN PROBLEMS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 196, 20 August 1931, Page 7

INDIAN PROBLEMS

INDIA A LA RUSSIA. A MOSCOW STAGE TRAVESTY. The play, “India,” written by an Indian resident of Moscow, named Es. Habib Waf, and produced in the Realistic Theatre in Moscow, is an extraordin--ary piece -of propagandist melodrama. A representative of the theatre, on the eve of each performance, announces that here is a picture of India r it is, without any unreal accessories in the shape of dancers, snake charmers, etc. In this “realistic” India a native Prince is shown as ordering, for no ap parent reason, the cutting off of the hands of an old weaver, who is one of his subjects, writes a correspondent, of the London Observer. The “Viceroy” of India, an Englishman named Johnson, is shown compassing the murder an Indian Maharajah who is not sufficiently subservient to British policy; British officers beat Indian women with their sticks; and the work of. weavers in a native principality is depicted as being constantly carried on under the lash.

Gandhi comes in for his share of ridicule; he is brought on the stage as a half-nude figure, carried by his followers on some kind of silver tray, and garlanded with flowers; and he exhorts the sullenly rebellious peasants to live in peace -with the landlords and pay their rents and taxes. In such an India the hero of the play, an Indian worker who has been in Moscow’, and drunk at the fountain spring of revolution, has a rather easy task. He duly carries out the programme of the Indian Communist Party, and loses no opportunity to laugh at the priests, to denounce the fallacies of Gandhi, and to expose the “social traitors” who wish to lead the workers along other paths than those of violent rebellion.

SITUATION IN BURMA. OFFICIAL STATEMENT. [British Official Wireless.] RUGBY, Aug. 18. The Indian Office states that there is little change in the situation in Burma. The improvements in most districts have been maintained, though the dacoits are still very numerous in the Thayct/o and Prome districts. Surrenders tinue and number about 2950. . Sixtytwo prisoners were released during the week and the number in custody is 1169. The Irrawaddy River has been ab normally high in Lower Burma, and there is considerable local flooding. The river is now falling and it is hoped that no serious damage has been done to the standing crops.