RIGHTS OF INDIANS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 February 1922, Page 5

RIGHTS OF INDIANS.

POSITION AS EMIGRANTS. POLICY WITHIN EMPIRE. THE COLOR BAR. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Feb. 13. The Hon. E. S. Montagu, Secretary for India, informed the Australian Press representative that no' reference was made or implied in his speech to the White Australia policy, because the question of Indians entering the Commonwealth was regarded as settled by the reciprocity agreement of 1918. Mr. Montagu asserts that he was referring exclusively to the treatment of Indians in the Crown colonies, and to any suggestion that they should be excluded from such colonies, especially from Kenya. Full reports of the speech confirm the cable of the 9th instant, in which Mr. Montague was reported as saying: “It is wholly inconsistent with our policy to say that there is any part of the Empire from which the Indian is to be debarred because he is an Indian.” He spoke in general terms. Later he referred to the divergence of his views from those expressed by Mr. Churchill at the Kenya dinner recently, adding that although these were the decisions of the Colonial Office, the subject was still under the consideration of the Government. This was his only allusion to Kenya. Mr. Churchill, at the Kenya dinner a fortnight ago, said that they had the Indian question in Kenya, “bi.. we are pledged to reserve the high lands of •East Africa entirely for Europeans, and we do not intend to depart from this pledge.”