TYPICALLY INDIAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 199, 24 August 1931, Page 8

TYPICALLY INDIAN

WHAT A HARTAL MEANS. The recent attempt by Indian extremists to enforce a mourning strike as a protest against the hanging of B.iagat Singh and his two feLowassassins resulted in savage riots and called attention anew to tnis typically Indian form of demonstration, says the “New York Times.’’

A mourning strike originally served the purpose of commemorating the memory of someone deceased, it was

similar in idea to the period of silence now observed on Armistice Day in memory of the war dead. In India the memory of the departed was perpetuated by a complete cessation of work, the closing of shops, and complete inactivity in trading.

The term mourning strike is sometimes now used synonymously with hartal, although the latter is a broader term covering not omy a complete strike used as a measure of mourning, but also a strike used as a protest in the field of politics. A hartal is symptomatic of public excitement, and is an integral part of native life. Crowds gather in India with amazing rapidity, and a strike is likely to assume unforeseen proportions. In some instances the enforced ho.iday leads to violent clashes between Hindus and Moslems, and then again their mutual zeal for a political cause leads them temporarily to forget their fundamental differences of religion and caste.

The arrival of the Prince of Wales in India was an occasion for hartals. Shops were closed, all trade and traffic ceased. Riots occurred in Bombay, and business was temporarily paralysed in Calcutta. Public enthusiasm, however, suppressed the effects of the hartals as the tour of the Prince progressed. The All-India National Congress passed resolutions urging a nation-wide hartal on the day the Simon Commission landed in India, and local hartals in every place visited by the commission. In Bombay the hartal was practically disregarded, and only students and schoolboys were active. In Madras huge crowds mobbed tramcars and private persons gathered in such great numbers outside High Court that the police opened fire.

Mahatma Gandhi in 1919 noted certain days to be observed throughout India as days of public mourning. In the first of these hartals, called in Delhi on 30th March, five persons were killedas a result of clashes. On 6th April a mourning strike was called for the five victims.

The effectiveness of the hartal as used in the campaign of civil disobedience has been complicated by the riots frequently occurring among the strikers.