ORDER IN INDIA

Hokitika Guardian, 20 June 1931, Page 3

ORDER IN INDIA

(Auckland .Star). Twelve years ago an English officer, after a week of rioting, murder and pillage, fired into a crowd at Amritzar and killed a large number of persons. He was broken .for shooting too soon,

or, if ong prefers it, shooting at all. Some maintain that General Dyer saved the Punjaub, and, through the Punjaub, India. Now, at Cawnpore of tragic memory, an English official has been censored for just the opposite offence— for refusing' to shoot. The result of the official inquiry into the 'recent Cawnpore riots is that the district magistrate “failed to recognise the need for firmer measures in suppressing the disorders.” These disorders, it is true, arose not .out of a clash between Europeans and Indians, but out of differences between Moslems and Hindus, but the duty thatrested upon the European authorities was the same as if? the Punjaub in 1910.

It has been said of these Cawnpore disturbances that they were not riots as the term is understood out or India, but a week’s butchery, which has not- been, equalled since the days of the Mutiny. The responsible authority did not asse/rt itself. Quite possibly the British magistrate in charge remembered Amritzar.

The contrast between these two tragedies illustrates in lurid colours the difficulties that beset England in India. To keep order is the "first duty of any Government, but every English official in India knows that whatever lie does, whether he is supine, firm, over-firm or moderate, he will be blamed by friends or enemies. Had the magistrate at Cawnpore used rifles and ma-chine-guns, the. death-roll might have been lighter than it was as a result of the unrestrained attacks by Hindus on Moslems, but he would have been execrated by the Congress party as a murderer.

It was over a murder that the trouble arose, the Moslems refusing to close their shops as a protest against an execution by the British, but in the eyes of the Nationalists murder is not murder when it has a political origin. If anybody wonders why there is so much talk about the difficulty of securing an agreement on communal representation in India, this tragedy should enlighten him. The feeling between Hindu and Moslem casts a black shadow over the whole Indian problem. And if power to repress disorders were given to the Indians themselves, what ’guarantee is there that it would be used impartially? Does anybody suppose that if Hindus attacked Moslems, a Hindu authority could be relied upon to intervene firmly at once for the protection of the minority?