HOME RULE FOR INDIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 March 1916, Page 8

HOME RULE FOR INDIA.

■A GENEROUS, LOYAL PEOPLE. (Contributed). The Sydney Morning Herald of Jair.iliary 1 contained the following:—"Tin: National Congress (of India) has unanimously demanded self-government for India, it not being a question for agita- ' tion, as India's devotion during the war i has been unsurpassed, the Congress I merely demanding a right the other j parts of the Empire, were enjoying." | To very few of the thousands who glanced at that item had it any special significance. We are deplorably and : dangerously ignorant about Indian af- | fairs. The ignorance is deplorable, bacause it renders us incapable of doing ! justice to our Indian feilo'.v-subjecH, and ; is specially dangerous just now when i tin: currents of Indian life are moving J v.:'..b rapidly increasing force, and the ; 300,000,000 souls of our great Eastern i Empire are being welded into one na- ! tion. with a strong national consciousness. Until the war thrust the subject into the background we were all stirred up by the question of Irish Home Kule; we have still to realise that Home Kule for India is a no less urgent question.' Tor more than thirty years the Indian National Congress has been voicing Indii's need for increased self-government, and ultimately for Home Kule as the remedy for the evils and disabilities from which India suffers. Knowledge, of the important work of the Indian National Congress has not, however, been readily accessible to Western readers until lately, when an able series of articles on the subject lias appeared in the Commonweal, a new but already powerful weekly journal devoted to Indian affairs, edited by Mrs. Annie Besant, tnit ardent champion of India, The articles are rather disconcerting to the aves-a:»o reader, who looks upon India as a semibarbarous country upon which the blessings of British rule have been poured, blessings for which the Indian people should be grateful. When we read of India's unrest we put it down to the ingratitude of a barbarous people and talk ■ contentedly of the "white man's burden," The newspaper comments on Indian loyalty in tJie war show a, tendency to attribute that loyalty exclusively to gratiture for favors received, ignoring that splendid generosity which could put aside questions, which at that time were agitating India from end to end, exactly as Ireland put aside the Home Rule question, in face of the common danger. The reading of the articles referred to in the Commonweal is a wholesome correction for our self-satisfaction. It is quite true that British rule has brought many blessings to India, and it is quit? true that leading Indian patriots appreciate this and understand that the greatness of India and of England are bound up together. Self-government for India within the Empire is their aim; only the failure too long continued on England's part to redeem the promises of Queen Victoria's proclamation of 18ii3, which promised to her Indian subjects equal rights with her other subjects, can drive India to seek self-government outside the Empire. Anyone who has watched Indian affairs of late years must realise that India's demand for equality within tho Empire cannot with safety be longer ignored. The time has already gone by when India asks as a suppliant—Congress voices a demand, a demand based upon legal rights, upon the promise of a Sovereign, upon services rendered, and unfortunately upon England's failure to govern in certain vita! matters, in the interests of the Indian people. Again and again, in the Congress debates, the question of India's increasing poverty has been raised and the severity and frequency of the famines. Famine, oi course, follows after poverty, and the poverty has undoubtedly followed British rule, which from the early days of the East India Company sacrificed Indian industries to the commerce of England. Congress voices, too. the grievance of Indians on being practically excluded from all the well-paid posts in the public service—the burden of the taxes upon the very poor and the failure to grapple with the education problem. Said an Indian patriot some ten years ago: ''lndia should be governed first and foremost in the interests of the Indians themselves. This result will be achieved only in proportion as we obtain more and more voice in the government oi our country." In the years since these words were spoken, India's consciousness of herself as a nation and of her right to be treated as an equal in the Empire has been enormously strengthened. Whether we have grown to the same extent in realisation that England needs India as much as India needs F.ntr- ■ land, and that the future greatness of the British Empire stands or falls by ability to make Tndia a eontented partner in the Empire, is very i doubtful.