INDIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1921, Page 7

INDIA.

ARMY REDUCTION.

BAD FINANCIAL OUTLOOK. By Telegraph.—-Press Assn.—Copyright. Delhi, Jan. 15. There is uneasiness in the Indian Army over a Government decision to demobilise about a dozen cavalry regiments. This means that about 30,000 men and 2400 British officers will be discharged from the service at the end of March. It is also believed probable that the British force in India will be reduced by sending" home British cavalry and four British infantry regiments. These measures are being adopted partly owing to the withdrawal of troops from Mesopotamia and partly as a result of the bad financial jutlook and consequent growing Indian outcry against heavy army expenditure. The Government is considering ways and means of meeting the heavy Budget deficit, which is inevitable owing to the fall in exchange and the severe slump in trade.—Reuter. BOYCOTTING DUKE OF CONNAUGHT Delhi, Jan. 16. The extremists decided that, on the occasion of the Duke of Connaught opening the Council of State and the 7 Legislative Council on February 9, Delhi shall be declared in a state of deep mourning. All shops will be closed and the crowds are asked to boycott the visit. Strikes are also being organised in Calcutta, in anticipation of the Duke’s visit next week.—Aus. -N.Z. Cable Assn. UNREST NOT OMINOUS. MISSIONARY’S HOPEFUL VIEW. “We may have disturbances like the Amritsar riot, but the bulk of the population are solidly in favor of the British. They know the benefits of British rule.” ’This statement ■was made by Miss Alice Henderson, who has spent twenty-five years In missionary work both in the south and the north of India, and has mastered the Tamil and Urdu languages, and some of the local dialects. She also replied in the negative to the question whether a rising against British rule in India might be feared. Miss Henderson took a very hopeful view of the future of India, and she gave some extremely interesting facts regarding the latest trend of missionary effort, and its effect oh Indian national aspirations.

INDIANS CANNOT HOLD TOGETHER.

“No one who thinks sanely imagines that India is in a position to govern herself,” Miss Henderson added. “The Indians are not a nation, and cannot hang together for anything. A municipal council cannot hang together long enough to make a road. They have not that in them which makes them able to pull together. There is not in India any such thing as the common good. It is the Hindu for the Hindu, the Brahmin for the Brahmin, the non-Brahmin for ths non-Brahmin, and so on. They eee it themselves, for they are trying to bring about some sort of brotherhood between themselves and the Mohammedans. While the place is like that, how can one think it would be possible to . select a body of men who would run the country for the people’s good? Any reform movement that has been a success has b?en carried out by Indians (noii-Christians, of course) who have been educated by missionaries. You do not find a Hindu or a Mohammedan coming out of a Hindu or Mohammedan college who has any of the ideas of a Hindu or Mohammedan that comes out of a Christian college. He never breaks away. The Hindu is essentially a self-seeker—his own rights and his own family rights count. He has no idea for the welfare of the people of his village except that he has enough humanity to distribute food in times of famine. If that is so, where will they get.those aims and ideals that will govern the country. These men who are agitating have all been to England, Germany, or America, and have come back filled with Western ideas.”

FIRM VICEROY NEEDED. Troubles and riots might occur occasionally, Miss Henderson said, but if Britain was going to do her duty by India she must grant a much larger share of government. The Government had conceded a sort of homo rule by installing new councils for five years, an/ ,if the leaders were wise the councils would be continued. The first Indian Governor —Lord Sinali—had been appointed Governor of the General Provinces, showing that when a suitable man was available he would be appointed. But a strong Viceroy was required, and a vacillating man would cut at the roots of British rule. Of Lord Reading’s qualifications for the position she could not speak; but the bulk of the British people of India would have been greatly disappointed if Lord Montagu had been made Viceroy, for it might justly be said that as Secretary for India lie had encouraged trouble. The Amritsar riot, however, was only the work of the mob. A great deal that happened was never planned at all, but the floating population found an opportunity for loot, and sallied out while the others were quarrelling. These looters were the “badmashes,” or roughs. The Punjab was full of people who were originally dacoite. The Government had put down daceity, but there were thousands of people with no means of livelihood except to rob and plunder. It was they who looted the banks. . It was no part of the plans of Gandhi or his followers.

GANDHI AND THE KHALIFAT. Gandhi, Miss Henderson said, was posing as a Tighter of wrongs, but however sincere he have been at the beginning, he was now seeking more notoriety. The Rowlatt Act was merely the excuse for the trouble at Delhi, Amritsar and Lahore. The Amritsar affair had had no special effect, except to inflame the Congress people, and lead on to the new Khalifat movement, which had to do with the peace of Turkey. Gandhi knew that the Sultan was not the real religious head of the Mohammedans, and was only the head of a section. The two main sects of Mohammedans were the Shiahs and the Sunnis. One of these believed that Ali was the first duly appointed Khalif, and the others did not. The Sultan of Turkey was only the head of the Sunnis, while the Aga Khan of India was bead of the Shiahs, and in addition, the Sultan of Egypt was head of another large section; so that to make the Khalifat question a test question was an entirely senseless thing, and so far Gandhi had not met with much aucsejli among Mohammedans.

LOYALTY OF NATIVE PRINCES. The Khalifat movement might present a very big problem to the British Government, for it might be that the German emissaries had prepared the ground well for these extremists. They had done their .work well, although they had really taught the people of India that they were better under Britain. Nothing, indeed, was more surprising than the way in which the native princes had come in during the war. To her, this was the strongest answer to all the stuff that was printed in some papers about unrest in India. If there was really such a very serious problem before India, those Rajahs and native princes would never have done what they did. A very remarkable thing ha 4 happened after the Amritsar riot. Emissaries were at work in the Hyderabad district, which was the most powerful native State, with a Mohammedan ruler —the Nizam—who was the most influential of all the native princes. When the Khalifat movement began the Nizam quietly set himself to observe what was going on. He had all the emissaries arrested, and then issued a proclamation that it was his wish that tire whole of his people should keep thejpeelves aloof from the movement, and that he would punish any attempt to stir up strife over question. The Begum of Bopal had made a similar proclamation, and the Gaekwar of Baroda had done the same thing.

EDUCATION AND CHRISTIANITY. The new mass movement of tiie missionaries, as described by Miss Henderson, gave some idea of the means by which India might some day become fit for home rule. Miss Henderson said that this movement was gaining impetus among the laboring classes, who made up the great bulk of the population, and was almost beginning to run itself, since it opened the way to the education by which the laborers could free themselves from virtual slavery. The missionaries did not now go out promiscuously to teach and preach. They went chiefly to the villages where the lower clashes had appealed to them to be taught. If a village decided to ask for Christian teaching, it came over as a village or went back as a village, for individual concerts were subject to too great persecution by the Zemindars, or land-owners, some of whom had enslaved the laboring classes for generations. Practically the whole of the north of India had come under the mass movement, and the lower classes were eager to become Christians as a means of lifting themselves out of their eries. The movement, therefore, was spreading almost without the help of the missionaries. Many of the natives thought that they CQiild put their applications in one day and be baptised the next, and they did not like to be put on probation, but the missionaries tried to bring them to the place where they would knock down their idol shrines before baptism. There was not much hope that the old people, steeped in superstition, would become pukka Christians, and the greatest hope lay with the children. The great question was how to educate the masses of people to become self-supporting, self-respecting Christians, not dependent on the Zemindars. This fact accounted for some of the unrest in India, for the masses in the north could see that those who had risen had done so only with the aid of Christian missions, and some of them became a prey for the “Congress wallah,” or stump orator of the Gandhi class; but whereas the desire to lift themselves was a healthy unrest which should be encouraged, the other thing was a most unhealthy unrest, aimed at the throwing of bombs and so on, but not many had been persuaded to join it. Some of these educated lower classes had received grants of land in the new canal colonies, and for their work during the war they had been given the rank of Christian Zemindars, a rank that, the caste Hindu clamed, and this showed what could be done with men Who were looked on by Hindus ami Mohammedans as the obscuring of the earth. Even those who were striving for home rule were recognising these laboring classes as a power, and the highest Hindus realised that they must lift these people up if they were to get India for the Indians.