INSURRECTION SMOULDERING IN INDIA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 10, 26 June 1885, Page 9

INSURRECTION SMOULDERING IN INDIA.

A despatch from London says:— -"It is now reported that the military activity which has prevailed iv India and especially in the norlhweat provinces the past several week?, was due, not so mnch to the probability of a war with Russia, as was generally supposed. It is now stated that the primary cause of the concentration of 20,000 men at Quetta and other large contingents at various points in the northwest provinces of India is the threatening attitude of the lay population of India, with whom the greater part of the native Indian troops are in full sympathy. The urgent demand of Earl Dufferin, Viceroy of India, that his requisition for 25,000 men from England be honoured immediately was owing more to the alarming state of affairs in India than to the acare|of a war with Russia. Lord Dufferin long since became fully satisfied that the native population of India, and especially of the northwest provinces, was full of sedition, and that a number of well-known chiefs were planning an insurrection, iv comparison with which the troubles of 1857 were child's play. The massing of 25,000 troops at the Rawal Pindi and the grand military display there, got up for the ostensible purpose of doing honour to the Ameer of Afghanistan, were in a great measure a scheme of the Viceroy to overawe the natives. All the native chiefs were invited to the demonstrations and suspicious ones were asked to renew their oath of fealty. They submitted gracefully, but it is well known that they do not consider the oath binding, and will break it at the first opportunity. The greater part of the native Indian army have been concerting with the plotting chiefs, and only await a chance for revolting against the British officers. It is said that the offers of native chiefs to supply military contingents in [ the event of war with Russia, were made for the purpose of egging England on to declare war against Russia so that an opportunity could be offered for a successful rebellion. Old army officers who have just returned from India say that Earl Dufferin, who is known to be very distrustful of native loyalty, is fully justified in taking all possible precautions against an outbreak, as his responsibility is immense. These officers assert that the native troops are dangerously discontented, and go so far as to urge the Government to begin in hot haste to build places of refuge for European women and children resident in India. The large number of applications of natives to be allowed to enter the Volunteer force and the petition of a number of influential natives for the Government to form a native volunteer corps, are, these officers state, only schemes of the plotters to obtain arms. It is this alarming state of affairs in India which more than any other consideration caused the British Cabinet to recede from their several bellicose demands and await Russia's pleasure in coming to a final statement of the ftusso-Afghan boundary question.