Welfare Worker Speaks On Troubled India

Chronicle (Levin), 21 July 1948, Page 4

Welfare Worker Speaks On Troubled India

The opinioii*. thdt.. the trouble bdtWeeri Mosleni and Hindu in India, was created and forwarded by the . riative ptiriees, the richest rrieri "in the world j was expressed by Miss N. M. Black, generstl secretary of the Y.W.O-JW Wheri - speaking to the LeVih Junior Chamber of -Commerce on • Monday night. She was recently fh charge of the welfare. work of the Y.W.C.A. iri :Sout-h- •' East Asia, Which. includes _ India, Purnia and MUIaya.-' . Miss Black poirited ojit 'that the [riative pririces did riot WSnt to see j England leave India, as they would lose niuch of their. po'wer. .They thought that * while there was • trouble iri Iridia, Eriglarid Would never leave. Wheri World Wsir II , broke out, the princes had been" the i. first' to offer money to Britain and i "coriSequeritly she ' Was iridebted to • therii.. - [ Before the first world war, Miss. > Black was a school teacher. After ; the war" she travelled extensively r and attended meetings of. the t League cf Nations and other interr national bodie,s. It bfought her a

realisation Of the woria-s neea oi education if there "was going ,to be peaee. she had her owri school in Dunedin aird later took over the Welfare work in Asia. Although she had taught geography at school On arrival in India, she found that everything was difterent. Of necessity, she had flown whenever she had to trav'el and it wds in crossing and re-crossing India that she realised that it was a country of thousands of "Iittle villages." The big towns did not seem to belong to India; they seemed imposed on it and some were little Americas and Great Britains. Landing a f ew miles outside Calcutta in- the plane which took her to India from Perth, Miss Black was driven by military truck to the city. It was then she realised that Calcutta was the dirtiest place on earth. Unfortunately, she arrived in the middle of a famine and people wer'e dying* itt the streets. Her work necessitated leaving in the early h'ours of the morning to catch a plahe and every time she stepped dver a sleepins: native in the streets, she-krtew that there was every possibility that he, or she, would be dead by morning. Every day orie could read on the front page of the newspapers: "City^officials report that so many destitute were found dead in Calcutta last night," The numbers ran into hundreds, said Miss Black. The people killed .in the recent strife were many less than those who died ; each day- from starVation iri Cal- ' cutta alone * ; ' • r , . • ,. •Why had all theSe people died? - Becausefthe people lacked educa- , tion. They-lived in .little, villages - which were sfcill as primitive as they ' were a' thousand years ago, con- ' tinued Miss Black. - Sanifary ^ arrangements were non-existenfc ■ and there was no method- of storing [water. If the monsoon failed or > was late, the people from one vil- ! lage would just walk out arid go to ?,the -riextvorie: -And so -it wuld,go c on. Hundreds. and hundreds drif t- • /ing to the cities wHere there was I water, -Because there was no shditUer; and no means of producing ■ [ food, thousaridS died. b' Miss Black told of the men Who had tried to educate India, among -jthem and most prominent, " Mahatma- Gandhi. He believed ^ that the machiriO age had cottle too J soon td India. His theme was mass ' education of the people and a ' reverse of the industrial revolution. " She told of how at one time Gandhi • had almost emhraeed the Christian : faith, but failed to do so because he 3 felt that he had never met one who " lived as a Christian iri accordance With the teachings Of the Bible. " Miss Black added that orie of the ^ Christian doctrines which had 3 impressed Gandhi was: "Go, sell all cjyou.hath and give th the.poor/'.He •fhad believed in ihe ^Christian ethics Mof love for all thin'gS, "r -