BOLSHEVIK INTRIGUES IN INDIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 April 1926, Page 4

BOLSHEVIK INTRIGUES IN INDIA.

SCHEMING- FROM ACROSS THE FRONTIER. (By Sir Rercival Phillips.) DELHI, Jan. 11. Russian Bolshevik propaganda has made very little headway in India, thanks to the constant viglance of the authorities. Agents of the Moscow Government have found it extremely difficult to get into the country, and those who are able to elude the coastal cordon invariably fall, sooner or !hter, into the police net. Nevertheless the Soviet is far from being discouraged in its determination to undermine authority in India as part of its campaign for the destruction of the British IyuqVire. Its Red organisation for India is still based o.u Berlin, with the notorious Indian Communist Roy as the head. This burcmi i.> in close touch with the “Commiutern,” which supplies funds and ideas for reaching the Hindu revolutionaries in this country. The .Bolsheviks cannot maintain headquarters with any safety inside the borders of British India, or in the native States, where there name is unthema. The Flench settlements ol Pondicherry in the south .and Cham',nagorc (near Calcutta) are bases from which they arc trying to instill the poison of Communism, into the masses. Pondicherry has been definitely linked up with Roy s bureau in Berlin, and until the French authorities stirred themselves the agitators sheltered there gave >. oiisiderahle trouble.

A Madras/si named Fliarmi was in charge of the Pondicherry operations against British India. His activities

, nine to mu end with his internment l,v the French. He has simo 'eon !el eased, but is still under surveillance and is unable to carry out the instructions of bis employers in Moscow. The. Red agents sent to India direct from Russia have included at least one Englishman '‘.mil several Indians trained in the Moscow propaganda college. All of them were discovered soon after their arrival ami cither deported or imprisoned. 'lhe last agent, a Hindu, nomed Gupta, made the difficult overland journey from Moscow to India, oldv to had a senteneo of penal servitude as his reward. "He travelled laboriously through Central Asia to Bushire. where there is a Soviet bureau for “missionary ' work in India, ificro shipped ns fireman in a British ..hip to Karachi, and visited Madras and Central India.

Gupta was arrested tor complicity in Hie Caw ii pore conspiracy case (which w.is of purely Bolshevik" origin) and sent to prison for five years. Since his retirement no turthor attempt has been made hv Hie Moscow Government to plant direct representatives in India. Tts policy has been to concentrate on Bolshevik literature, smuggled in devious ways through the ports.

But here again the results have been wholly inadequate in proportion to the time and money expended. So thorough is the surveillance hv the port authorities that very little, if any of this literature is ever distributed. Seizures are taking place weekly under the Sea Customs Act. All <d Roy'-, publications are proscribed and he has great difficulty in delivering rh.uu to his Indian .sympathiser.-,. where the real danger lies. The real Bolshevik danger is not in India Imt nil her mirihera frontiers. Moscow is working quietly and t.teadily for the consolidation ami extension of le-r chain ol Soviet States in t'-'t pari of .\mm. Her policy in Afghanistan is causing considerable disquiet. tor there can. be no doubt that it is inspired by the determination to retv'h India, eventual'' through that country. She is trying to bring the whole of Afghanistiin within the Soviet orbit and has marked success in iutliieir.'ing the Ameer and his people.

M. Stark, the Soviet Minister, enjoys great prestige in Kabul, lie snti'ered a temporary reverse recently through the ill-advised action of Russian frontier troops in occupying an i Find in the Oxits which Afghanistan claimed as her own. The Ameer delivered a fiery speech of protest from the pulpit of iiie principal mosque at Kabul in which lie declared that llie Russians had always been unpleasant end untrustworthy people and that their character would never change. This attack was hacked up- hy an expeditionary force which Kabul with flags living and drums heating for the purpose of evicting the Bolsheviks from the disputed territory. M. Stark became feverishly active, and after a three-hours interview with the angry Ameer succeeded in convincing him that the frontier incident was merely a. stupid mistake. The Afghan troops wore recalled and Kabul became, ea'iii

There is still mi atmosphere of suspicion which the Russians are Irving hard to dispel, and they appear to he having some success. Al. Stark, who was formerly Soviet Minister in Esthonia. where he directed the Bolshevik intrigues against the Government of that Republic, is one of the ablest members of the Red Diplomatic Corps. Ho has increased his staff during the tun years he has been in Kabul, and to-ilav there are at least 100 European Hu.s.sian> outraged in .airtivi* propaganda. AFGHANISTAN’S RUSSIAN AIR FORCE.

Afghanistan litis an air force which is wholly Russian. This is one of the most important results of Al. t-Sark’s mission, It consist of about 20 machine of the latest type with a personnel of nearly 50 experienced airmen -and niechiimics. When the Ameer visited Kandahar recently the air force maintained a small mail service with the capital for a month without delay or accident of any kind, a feat which igreatly impressed the Ameer. This fir force, which possesses five landing grounds, could liemh India far south as .Lahore from its nearest base at Jellalabad.

Other Bolshevik activities adjacent to India’s northern frontiers have especial significance. Soviet survey parties finished surveying a railway from Kabul to the present railhead at Terniz only three weeks after the completion of the Indian railway through the Khyher Pass to Landi Khaiia. Tiie Russians have completed the telegraph line to Herat and are continuing it to Khandabar. They are also opening up the route from A'irini (which is one of their army corps lieadqu carters) to Lanchou in the Chinese province of Kansu. This province has already been marked down as a new Soviet- State, one of the chain which Aloseov." intends shall extend eventually from Afghanistan across China.

Until a few months ago Chinese Turkestan was comparatively free from Bolshevik influence. The Russians have now established Conidates-Gen-ei d, with large staff's, at Kashgar and Urums.hi. There i> no consular work to ho done there, and the obvious inference is that these missions are intended to turn Sinkiang into a Soviet State like Mongolia. There is a heavy eor.eenration of Bolshevik troops on the frontier ready to move into the province. ,

Moscow is disguising its real intentions by professing to Hive the na-

tionalist aspirations of the various peoples at heart. The new Soviet States of Uzbekistanii Taiikstan. Khirgizstan, Urghuristan, and Turkmenistan are being grouped ethnologically rather than geographically, and it is believed that they will be enlarged by embodying portions of 'Afghanistan down to the line of the Hindu Kusli. •If a Soviet Government is set up in Turkestan the menace to India will become even more serious, for the chain of buffer States against the Russians will thus be destroyed and there wilt bo some SCO miles of contiguous Bolshevik frontier pressing her on the north-rough and inaccessible to troops, it is true, but good enough to permit, the unobstructed passage of Red agents into India.