BOMBAY RIOTS

Hokitika Guardian, 17 April 1929, Page 8

BOMBAY RIOTS

EIGHT DAYS OF HORROR

BOMBAY, Feb. 1(5/

Bombay has just passed through eight days of horror, during which the whole of the city’s important mill industry and the huge Indian bazaar, where a vast business is done by native merchants, wero in a state of complete chaos. The riots started in a not unusual way. Every now and again the bazaars of Indian cities are pertiiroed by reports of the kidnapping of children for sacrificial purposes. A shout is raised that a boy is being kidnapped; an infuriated mob, which listens neither to reason nor to patent proofs of innocence, gathers, and the suspected kidnapper is lucky to escape being beaten to death. On the .Monday following the first outrages a sinister colour was given to the scare. The whole of the- millworkers came out, armed themselves with lathis (long, stout sticks), and began a systematic hounding of Pat linns. The Pallia n population of Bombay has recently become very unpopular with the Hindu millhands because Pathans are generally employed as watchmen, and they refused to join tho strike of other operatives at the oil depot. They are therefore unfairly described as “blacklegs.”

AN EXCUSE

The kidnnnpinsr scare was a convenient excuse, and in two (lavs some fifteen Pathans had been done to death in tho most brutal fashion. A. European police inspector, Mr Priestley, too, was killed, his head being crushed with a big stone as be lay on the ground. The Bombay Government’s attitude has been freely criticised in responsible quarters hero, particularly as a coroner’s jury called for bettor prefaction for the Pathans. Tt is stated that .tho Government should have seen that tho continued attacks on Pathans must lead to communal warfare, since the local Mahommedans must eventually rally to.the support of their co-religionists, tho Pathans. This is what did happen, and 11c appalling and ferocious murders during the remainder of the week were directly attributable to communal feeling.

MISCHIEF DONE,

Bv the time military, pickets were posted in the mill area tho mischief bad been done. Tho Pathans on Wednesday appealed to the Maho-mmedan who responded. The trouble shifted to the bazaars and tho Mahommedans. who are very much in the minority, resorted to .murders, usually by stabbing, of individual Hindus. Tinmilitary could do little. .As martial law had not been declared, they were not allowed to fire except- at crowds, and then only by orders of a special magistrate. This continued for six days. The regular British troops doing picket duty were meantime reinforced, special armed -police were drafted into the town, armoured cars were on duty, and on Sunday—a week after the trouble started—the local auxiliary forces were called out.

These are mostly European and Anglo-Indian. European business men were enrolled as honorary magistrates and a large section of the British civilian population of tho city turned out to keep order. Eventually with a- display of military force and the rounding up of had characters the minders stopped.

BITTER LESSONS

The city has learned some bittoi lessons. Tho pernicious effects of unrestricted peaching of Communist doc. trines to the illiterate mill-hands is undoubtedly responsible, for then growing contempt for Jaw and tin-ii increasing resort to violent .action, in tho murders of Patbans in the early days of tlu* outrages they shouted. “Victory for the Red Flag,” after revolting examples of mob violence.