TROUBLES IN INDIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3765, 14 May 1907, Page 3

TROUBLES IN INDIA.

Position at Lahore. Another Agitator Arrested. Calcutta, May 11. Late reports from Lahore state that the natives are overawed by the military, though the position is still serious. Laj Patria has been deported to the Andaman Islands. Sir D. C. J. Ibbetson, Governor of the Punjaub, has postponed his departure, and has closely inspected the defences. Laj Patria is a pleader in the Punjaub Chief Court. He was organiser, financier, and inspirer of seditious violence. The Government’s bold step in deporting him has. startled the Hindoos, who counted upon the Government’s inaction. Ajit Sings, another prominent agitator, has been arrested in the Punjaub. London, May 11 The Times says the disturbances in India are largely due to|Mr Naoroji's utterances in December. The Times adds that the movement for an Indian National Congress is incompatible with the fundamental principle of British rule as emphasised in Mr Morley’s speech delivered in the autumn

Is there political unrest of discontent in India (asks “ Native Thinker” in the Bombay Gazette”)? The Maharaja of Darbhanga says that there is, and his testimony cannot be lightly dismissed. He pleaded for a wide scope for the aspirations which have been created by more than a centuy of the beneficent British rule. He asserted th at the present discontent was an expression of the conviction that the opportunies open to the people are not proportinate to their present capabilities. The Nawab of Daca, used to the whirl and stir, the strife and agitation of Eastern Bengal, says that there is no real trouble or unrest in India The ' cry of unrest he ridiculed as a pure fiction, and he appealed to the .Viceroy not . to be led by ‘‘the ’spurious agitation of a bastard public opinion to put the axe to the root of a tree which had rendered shelter and protection to countless numbers of illiterate people.' * The Nawab appears to be drawn towards the ignorant and Illiterate. As opposed to them the educated class is but a straw in the balance. Their aspirations are, in his opinion, harmful to the country and .they must be put back and suppressed., , The Nawab after this

fulmination must have felt very uncomfortable, when the Viceroy himself admitted the existence of unrest and recognised the justice of reasonable concessions to the people.