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Hokitika Guardian, 6 August 1930, Page 4

Onk of the complaints most vehemently urged by the Indian Nationalists against the British Raj concerns the Censorship of the press. The Indian Babu, who is an extremely controversialist, explains a northern writer, denounces the hypocrisy of the Britisher who regards “the freedom of the Press” as a fetish in his own country and imposes the most tyrannical restrictions on the native Press in India, Unfortunately the Nationalists: have induced a number of credulous Europeans to accept their version of the ease, But the fact is, ns was recently pointed out in n letter to the “Times,” the native, newspapers in India “have enjoyed a license in de» nunciation ' and mirepresentntion unthinkable in the West,” Twenty years ago Valentine Chii 01, in his great work “Indian Unrest,” gave many startling illustrations of the monstrous statements that have appeared in these papers, and the deliberate encouragement that they give to violent and sanguinary crime. Some of the native papers are tolerably respectable in their treatment of political questions, but “where the vernacular newspapers are had they are vile almost beyond belief.” Tlie''“Times” quotes'a case, dating back two years, and concerning a railway accident. A leading Indian newspaper accused the whites oi actually planning and causing the accident. which resulted in.the loss of 22 lives, and published a letter purporting to he written Ily an eyewitness which asserted that 200 of the injured were deliberately murdered as they lay helpless by the British railway officials. It is some consolation to know that the editor of this paper was fined severely, but who could calculate the harm done by the circulation of such monstrous charges among an ignorant and emotional people? : If, as the “Times” correspondent says, the vernacular Press in India is characterised by “the deliberate concoction of news, the misrepresentation of every net of the Government, and the abuse of every official, high or low, who tries to do his duty,” it seems that it would be the height of folly, at the present juncture, to leave it wholly unrestrained,