POLITICS IN INDIA.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19176, 6 December 1927, Page 13

POLITICS IN INDIA.

GANDHI'S INFLUENCE WANING. [THE PRESS Special Serrice.] AUCKLAND, December 5. Tho impression that the political situation in India is over so much easier than when he want to that country in 1920 is held by the Rev. H. S. Cocks, who is returning to Sydney by the Aorangi after being concerned for six years with the educational work of tho Church Missionary Society in Lucknow.

"When I arrived in India,'' Mr Cocks said, "tho influence of Mahatma Gandhi was at its height and people were apprehensive as to how far tho Swaraj .movement might go. To-day, one feels that its influence is very much on the wane, and as for the AJi Brothers, who were associated with Gandhi, they have disappeared off the horizon entirely. Gandhi still has his following, but I think the saner element among the Indians realise that Swaraj must be a gradual movement, and that as over 90 per cent of Indians cannot read or write ideal conditions cannot bo secured by a wave of the hand."

Mr Cocks said that the Chelmsford Administration was recognised as having introduced a successful era, and a further fact of reassurance was that the present Viceroy (Lord Irwin) was extremely popular. The visitor remarked that very few Australians and New Zealanders wero met with in India. In tho service with which he was associated he was the first to he appointed from his country. He wondered whether the time had not come when the Indian Ciivil Service, instead of.recruiting from England almost solely, might make some appointments from these two countries.