THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 1910. THE VERNACULAR PRESS OF INDIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9697, 22 January 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 1910. THE VERNACULAR PRESS OF INDIA.

A cablegram from Calcutta the other day stated that Anglo-Indians unanimously demand the .suppression of the verancular press, to which many outrages have been traced. White there is, humanly speaking, no doubt whatever that many of the bomb outrages, assassinations, and attempted assassinations in India are directly traceable to inflammatory articles published in the vernacular newpaper of the country, the unanimous demand of the Anglo-Indian community for the wholesale suppression of the vernacular press can hardly be conceded by the Government without dangerously increasing the existing tension. To deny the right of free speech to any people under the British flag would be an extraordinary anomaly in the present condition of political thought. The Government of India recently clothed itself with fresh powers in, the direction of suppressing vernacular newspapers, whreh printed seditious and inflam-

matory articles, but it has no t yet assumed the power to punish the editor and confiscate the plant of every verancular journal on the ground that it may in future print seditious articles or articles inciting to assassination. A preferable course would be to increase the 3tringency of the supervision ovdr the native press, to punish promptly and rigorously any infraction of the press,laws, and to make it plain to the conductors of the innumerable native journals with which the whole country is thickly sprinkled, that even the most carefully veiled incitements to seditious acts will be visited with condign punishment on the authors. In the greater number of the native newspapers the articles are printed in parallel columns in the Hindu or other native language of the district, and also in English The English version is supposed to be a correct translation of the vernacular, but it is almost invariably watered down and much less cungent than the accompanying version in the language of the country. Although a large percentagt of the lower-class natives are only illiterate, but also almost in conceivably ignorant from the poin' of view of Western civilisation, thsy are reached with turorising comprehensiveness by the native newspapers, which are read aloud ii the bazaars and even in the schools Owing to the low rate of wages ant thi poorness of the production, it is not a large undertaking to finance i native journal, and the consequent is that papers of this class hav< sprung up like mushrooms, the iaen tity of the proprietor being oftei a matter of uncertainty, and th< nominal editor being usually a native graduate of Calcutta University, wh< is merely tha mouthpiece of the hidden controller. A great deal o: interesting light is ihrown upon th< mischief done through the vernaculai press in a recently published nove entitled "The Unlucky Mark." by Mr F. E. Peniy, a well-known writer on Anglo-Indian matters. Mr Penny takes up the same bitterly hostile attitude towards the native press that is described in the cable as being held unanimously by th& AncloIndian community. He shows thai serious outn ;es have repeatedly followed upon ihe publication of inflammatory articles, and lie explain; how natives who are secretly news paper proprietors have been able tc throw dust in the eyes of the Britisl local administrators, and have ostensibly cultivated friendly relations with them, while covertly - causing articles to be published inciting the easily-led native readers to acts of violence against the same authorities, It occasionally happens, apparently, that when the British lozal administrator at last realises the seriousness of the offence of the vernaculai journal and sends the police round t( suppress the paper and seize the printing plant he finds that the plant has been mysteriously spirited awaj in the night, that the editor has disap peared, and that the police are left in possession of an empty room. Mr Penny, who knows India well, holds the opinion that in a greal many cases the newspaper proprietors are themselves under the influence of Brahmin priesthood, and that the Brahmin in their desire to recapture the temporal and spiritual influence which they formerly possessed over the natives of India, and which the British rule has taken from the m, are at the bottom of a great deal of the Sedition which is so dangerously prevalent in India to-day.