SEDITION IN INDIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 2998, 22 September 1908, Page 5

SEDITION IN INDIA.

CONVICTION OF TILAK. Received September 21, 10.13 p.m. CALCUTTA. September 21. The newspaper "Pioneer of Allahabad," understands that Tilak has been committed to prison, being interned outside the Presidency.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Indian Nationalist leader, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for publishing a seditious article. ' The article upon which the prosecution of Tilak was founded was evidently written with extreme care, and its seditious meaning is rather implied than directly expressed. It deals generally with the subject of British rule in India, and attempts to compare the revolt to the disturbance in Russia. • T,he writer does not claim that the murders which have been committed will put an end to British administration. "There is no possibility," he says, "of the -structure of British rule giving way in consequence of the murder of high white officers. If one passes away a second will come in his pla'-e; if the second passes away a third will succeed. There is no one whatever so foolish as not to understand this; but Government hhould take this lesson from the Muzzufferpore affair, that, the minds of some persons out of the young generation have begun to turn towards violence on finding that all peaceful agitation for obtaining political rights has failed, just as a deer attacks a hunter, totally regardless of its own life, after all means of protection have been exhausted. No reasonable man will approve of this excess or", sinful deed, but it is impossible, not only tor the subjects, but even for the King, to escape or to totally stop this 'traga' of desperation, and 'traga/ really speaking, must at all times be the result of a climax of exasperation and depair. Speaking of true statesmanship, it consists in not allowing these things to reach such an extreme or critical stage; and this is the very policy we are at*present suggesting to Government on tnis occasiui., witn a candid mind in a plain manner. . . The time has through our misfortune arrived when the party of Nihilists, like that which has arisen in Russia, Germany. France and other countries, will now rise here. To avoid this coitiueency, to prevent the growth of this poisonous tree, is altogether m the hands of Government. These abscesses affecting the country will never be permanently got rid of by oppression or by force Re form of the administration is the only medicine co be administered internally for' this • disease, and if the bureaucracy does noc make use of that medicine at this time, then it must be considered a great misfortune for all of us." ' I