ASIA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 9, 26 August 1908, Page 7

ASIA.

Sedition in India. Surendranath Arya was on August 18th sentenced to five years” transportation for seditious speeches at Madras. Tho severity of tho recent sentences for sedition is undoubtedly called for. The “Pioneer" says that short sentences for sedition do not servo tho purpose in India. Tho truth is that the agitator who is sentenced to a year or eighteen months’ or two years’ imprisonment, shortened as these terms may be by good conduct in gaol, is in no way deterred from his courses. Before Gio prisongates have well closed upon him ho ii probably planning to take up his work again where he left off, and before many

months are over his friends will be otmcerting triumphal demonstrations to celebrate his release. A sentence of seven or ten years’ lends itself *o a different class of reflections. The agitator is conscious that he will be a changed man before he returns to freedom, that his admirers will have half forgotten him and will have dispersed, and that there may no longer bo any agitation in existence to find him occupation.