THE SITUATION IN INDIA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXII, Issue 8943, 8 October 1907, Page 4

THE SITUATION IN INDIA.

For tiro moment India is quiet, writes the Simla correspondent of the Daily Mail, under date July 11th. In the Punjab, where sedition two mouths ago was on the point of bursting into mutiny, the agitators have received a serious check. In Bengal, which is their home, they are gaining confidence, learning to evade the clumsy meshes of the law, and extending their agencies and power for mischief upon every side. At a recent public meeting in Calcutta the proposition was acclaimed that patriotism to India is incompatible with loyalty to British rule. At the last District Conference at

Jessoro, the native president described India under the English as ‘‘ a laud once of plenty, ’ ’ but now “a laud of want, sickness, and sorrow,” and bade his hearers, who included a number of native ‘‘volunteers, ’ ’ sworn to make thicr country independent, have ‘‘the courage to die, if it is necessary that we should die,” and ‘‘have no more faith in prayers and petitions unless they can bo so backed up as to be irresistible. Agents are preaching from these dangerous texts in all parts of India. Firearms are being surreptitiously passed from hand to hand in increasing quantities in Calcutta. The few prosecutions which the Anglo-Indian authorities have so far thought it expedient to launch against some of the more violently seditious of the native newspapers have proved the existing law so weak that the tone of the Bengali journalist is becoming more truculently disloyal than over. In a leadhig article published in Calcutta last week, the journal Bande Mataram defines British rule ‘‘as heartless, unscrupulous, iniquitous, deliberate, persistent, and complete subversion of Indian for the sake of English interests, economic and political,” and declares that, when the national awakening which is now in progress is complete, “we shall fling defiance in the face of Government and dare it to do its worst, and we shall laugh it to scorn if it ventures on the suicidal folly of answering our defiance with its useless missiles of oppression. ’ ’ New India (Calcutta) advocates the boycott of everything that is British, and writes: 1 ‘ The success of passive resistance means the ultimate overtlrqpw of British authority ip India. . . . We are anxious to attain our ideal without. . , , an appeal to physical force, . . . but. . . • people are already thinking of it” (physical force), “and if the think-, ing becomes persistent and a whole nation commence to think ardently of brute force, it ■will create and gather that force and try to apply it.” The Yugutar (Calcutta) asks: “How long can foreigners, whoso sole support is oppression, remain in a country whose people do not want them?” and goes on to say. “This is the beginning of the end. The laud will be turned into a vast cremation ground. Wails will rise from every house; dogs aud jackals will leap aud revel; human heads aud skeletons will lie scattered on paths and ways ; the soil of India that is green with harvest will be crimsoned with torrents of blood. The horrid dance of the goddess of war will awaken a vibration in every heart, ’ ’