SEDITION IN INDIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10026, 23 April 1910, Page 3

SEDITION IN INDIA.

AN ATMOSPHERE OF UNREST. As a dignified looking coolie shouldered my two portmanteaux at the Calcuttawharf I looked with curiosity at him, He didn't in the least look like a bomb-thrower, and I wondered if the stoties heard from the returning military and Civil Service men on the ship were true. But on entering the Calcutta streets, one fmm the very first experiences a strange feeling of unrest. The air seems to be charged with something quite out of the ordinary. The resident Britisher looks graver than usual, and more careworn, a& if weighed down by the knowledge of a coming crisis. I, lika the average Englishman, before r«aching Calcutta thought the situation exagge.ated, but when the Babu hotel manager, after showiug me my room, suggested that I should purchase a revolver, I thought seriously of taking the next steamer home. I did not take his advice, but half regretted it a few days after when travelling into the cdol Himalayas, when my travelling companions, Civil Service men, produced a sixshooter each from their handbags. One of them told me his son a few weeks previously had been seriously injured by a native, and was only rescued just in time by the conductor of the train in which he travelled. This attempted assassination took pake at night. I was in the train several nights in Bengal and must confess I felt far from comfortable. At every station stopped at the natives swhrm about the platform, gazing into carriages, and making apparently very uncpmplimentary remarks about the European occupants, and when one discovers that the footboards and handrails have been removed from carriages, and an electric alarum under one's pillow connects | with the door, sleep is apt to be very broken. Many attempts are made by natives to board trains moying out of [ stations in the darkness. It was easy for an assassin to slip out of the jungle and get on a train before it gained great speed, hence the precaui tion of removing footboards and handrails.

In Calcutta conversation in the hotels invariably turns on the seditionary movement. The public engagements of the Viceroy, Lord Minto, are no longer published; as far as Calcutta is concerned he is under strict police surveillance, and I noted the elaborate precautions taken when he went out to play polo on the Maidan. Police cleared the street leading from Government House and patrolled the route to the Maidan. The same thing occurred on his return, i noted al?o how carefully the Residency was guarded. A native loafing about, gazing through the iron fence surrounding it, would suddenly be confronted by a dusky faced policeman from behind a shrub in the grounds,carefully taken stock of and moved on. It is evident from the number of native police and military in the grounds that every care is exercised.

The partition of Bengal is the excuse given for the situation by the educated BengH, "but the AngloIndian knows better. Japan's success with Russia, the partial education of the native, and our action after the Boer war are the main causes."

I recollect a erey-haired old Sikh at Jeypore saying contemptuously in reply to my query, as to cause of unrest, "You Eoglish spend two hundred millions in beating the Boers, and then give them back their country. Gave ua ours back. Your occupacy of it is phacy."

As I said before, one feels the unrest in Calcutta, and thg Bengali shows bis scorn and contempt whether one does business with him in a bank, or meets him striding along in the street wich his shoulders thrown back, giving one a look enough to slay, if looks could kill. In Calcutta twenty years ago the Babu would give way to the Britisher in the streets, but it is not so in these days of smouldering resentment. Between England and Bombay I met a prominent Anglo Indian official going home on leave, broken down in health from his strenuous work, attended with grave danger. He tol i me something of what the Bengal authorities were undergoing—how be and his native pojice lay for two nights on the roof of a house in Calcutta occupied by conspirators, listening to the plana and plots being hatched inaida. The result of this dangerous exploit was tho arrest of several prominent natives, and the discovery of the fact that about 10,000 Bengalis were impregnated with sedition, and that at night in thejungle round Calcutta revolver-shoot

ing and the use of the dogger were regularly practiced. British officials have an anxious time, and my friend told me, whe/i going off by train to Bombay, en route Home, he thought it safer to travel three days sooner than the data the newspapers published of his intended departure. He had in his possesison two or three letters warning him to expect death by the assassin's hand. The frontier men, such as Ghurkas and Pathans, have a great contempt for the non-fighting men of Bengal, and plead with iheir British officers to be allowed to go down to the plains and settle the traitors tiiere. Caste is ttie safety valve of the situation in this wonderful country. Mahommedan and Hindoo can never unite, and it is well for us they cannot. Native regiments have one half company Hindoo, the other Mahommedan, and most stringent precautions are t&ken to see that caste rules are observed The native who goes to England to finish his education receives a certain amount of attention there. On his return to India, he losas caste to a certain extent, and is disliked by his own people and the AngloIndian. He paticularly rtswnts the ; latter's attitude, and becomes as a ; rule prominent in the ami-British movement. It is said that some of the native Princes are in sympathy with the redition propaganda. I heard that one of the most loyal gave large sums to the movement, and that the authorities were watching him. One can hardly believe this though, as the tfajahs would be the first to suffer if we were driven out of India. In these gloomy days in India it cheers one to hear still a tribute to the Englishman —how the poor agriculturist who quarrels with a neighbour, ignoring his village headman, will travel miles to find a British Sahib, submit his grievance, und abide loyally by the verdict.