THE CHANGES IN INDIA

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 220, 11 June 1921, Page 9

THE CHANGES IN INDIA

Sir,—l notice that in your issue of June 2 the hon. secretary, New Zealand and India League, gives your readers a further instalment of propaganda literature. It is not at all a bad specimen of the plausibility of the educated Brahmin. But doos it after all carry jyour readers very far towards a sound understanding of the question? I think not. Tn its earliest days it is not impossible that the Indian Congress may have done some useful work on tho fiscal question. But for at least the last ten years it has put that class of work on ono side, and has become more and more ft harmful revolutionary debating society. As a consequence of this development the Moderates have of late years taken but little part in its proceedings, and now they "have ceased to attend at nil. When the new Act. has .been working for a. few years, it will ; probably be found that it is just the introduction into it of the matters covered by the Congress resolutions mentioned by Air. Griffiths that, will make it unworkable in 'practice. Perhaps I am unduly sceptical, but it does not seem to me that the Brahmins have yet shown themselves fitted for selfgovernment, when one of the points that they are most clamorous about is that the white part of the Government shall collect the revenue, and tho native part spend it. As to the resolutions passed by the Council of State, it may be said fbnt they arc mostly of tho debating society type. Tho first and second reaffirm tho century-old principles of British rule in India and elsewhere. Officially, the Government of India was bound to endorse officially the findings of tho Amritsar inquiry. But the terrible facts disclosed in the report of tho Powlatt Commission, so long suppressed by Mr. LloydGeorge and Mr. Montagu, must prevent anything further being done to weaken the hands of justice.

Tho resolutions as to labour conditions are mostly on lines. But they will hardly lie very popular with Hindu manufacturers and merchants, since the ages .of 12 and 15 with natives of India are equivalent to about 16 end 19 with Europeans. I do not. however, gather from Mr. Griffiths’s letter that any of these resolutions have yet. reached the Statute Book. As regards tlx* army, there certainly are some Mohammedans and Rajputs fitted for commissioned rank. But generally speaking natives of India are best as non-commissioned officers, and, save in a few coses, native soldiers would not have anything like the confidence in officers of their own colour that they have in white officers. Perhaps the most unexpected part of Air. Griffiths’s letter is his unexpected desertion of Mr. Ghandi, hitherto tho best asset of the extremists. Evidently they realise that ho is only a talker. It is a number of years ago since I last had a talk with Mr. Ghandi. But from what I havo rend of him recently lie seems to lie practically unchanged. Ho is honest in all respects, a master of eloquence of the limehouse type, find n visionary. But he is, and i think always will be, quite incapable of controlling those whom his unfortunate eloquence rouses to deeds of violence. He is (lie Kerenskv of India. And now will Air. Griffiths tell your readers whether the ultimate object of his correspondents in India is a fully

independent India, or India governed by the prc.-jent agitators. Brahmin priests and lawyers, with British bayonets to protect them against the warlike Mohammedans and the millions of illiterate non-Bra.hmin Hindu peasants who hate them.—l am, etc., TRAVELLER.