SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1919. UNREST IN INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 99, 26 April 1919, Page 6

SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1919. UNREST IN INDIA.

For several weeks past cable messages have told of active sedition and violent rioting in widely separated centres of population in India. It would be a mistake to minimise the significance and seriousness of these outbreaks, but at the same time it is easily possible to misinterpret them. In considering the nature of Indian unrest we should bear in mind the warnings that Sir Valentine Chirol, one of the highest authorities on this subject, has prefixed to his study of the Indian Nationalist problem—that movements of this sort are by no means new or strange in India, and that it is a mistake to regard them as simply duo to the effect of western education working too suddenly and violently upon the primitive intelligence of the Hindu. The truth is that to the inhabitants of India, from the Himalaya to Ceylon, and from Calcutta to Peshawar, the white man is to-day still a stranger and an alien, separated from the people of the country by the impassable gulf which divides East from West. The people of India do not appreciate western civilisation because it is so radically different in its essential character from their own; and, generally speaking, they do not feel any sort of gratitude for the material benefits that British occupancy and government have conferred upon them. What the Indian malcontents want is to be left alone to govern their own country and control their own destinies m their own way; and it is this persistent ineradicable dislike for European methods and ideals that has lain at the root of all seditious and rebellious movements fn India ever since the foundations of the British Raj were laid by Clive and Hastings a century and a-half ago.

Qf Wrarge, it _ only natural that with the spread of Western ideas and the extension of the benefits of Western education to India, the Nationalist leaders, with " India for the Indians" as their rallying cry, should have come to adopt some of the familiar catchwords of European political controversy for __ir own purposes. But fundamentally the Nationalist movement is not in the least an attempt to promote constitutional government or to realise democratic ideals for the benefit of the gr?at mass of the Indian peoples. It is simply an organised effort to get rid of the foreign masters of India for good and all, and it is only by comprehending this that we can begin, to understand its nature and the course of its development. Speaking approximately, we may say that the source of all the disturbances that have convulsed India during the past twenty or thirty years is to be found in tho agitation against British rule, engineered in the first place by the Brahmins of the Decean. This extremely powerful caste has its headquarters at Poona, and from this centre the famous agitator Tilak for many) years directed the Nationalist

movement throughout the length and breadth of Hindustan. Tilak was a man of great intellectual and political ability, endowed with all the tenacity and courage of a typical Oriental fanatic, and his teachings, couched in the most inflammatory language, and urging his followers to the most violent extremes in the name of religious duty against British rule, produced a prodigious impression upon the emotional and superstitious masses. Tilak was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in 1008, but by this time, his work had been effectually done. The Brahman agitation extended from the Dcccan into Bengal, there, to join hands with a similar movement in favour of Swaraj (self-government) and 'Swadeshi (the boycott of foreign goods in favour of Indian products), already organised by Banerjee, Chandra Pal, Arabindo Chose and other Hindus trained in European colleges or on Western lines. Then in Bengal was repeated the programme of seditious meetings, riots, and assassinations which had already borne eloquent testimony to Tilak's evil influence in Bombay and the Dcccan. Taken at their worst, however, these conspiracies and seditious agitations did not at first include any very large section of the total population of India, lint one ominous development in recent years has been the spread of the Nationalist movement into the Punjab. The Sikhs are distinct in race and creed from the Bengalees; and they held to the British Raj in the dark days of the Mutiny sixty years ago; and until quite recently their loyalty to Britain has hardly been questioned- Just now, however, the most violent outbreaks of which our cables speak are localised at Amritsar and Lahore; and it certainly seems that

the outcry against tlie Kowlatt Act —a measure authorising the repression of seditious meetings nnd the arrest of dangerous agitators—lias produced a strong impression on public feeling in the Punjab, as well as in Bengal and Bombay. Another very serious feature of the present situation is that the Mohammedan

races, who have always hitherto supported British authority through their dislike of the Hindus, now seem to have joined hands to some extent with their old rivals and enemies. Xo doubt some of tho discontent in Tndia, especially among the Moslem population, is due to German intrigues nnd German gold. Something also may be attributed to the efforts of the Turks to stir up sedition in India by raising'the cry for a "jehad," or holy war against the unbeliever. But whatever may be the cause, the fact remains that in 191G the Moslem League of India for the first time declared in favour of the Swaraj policy of the Hindu National Congress; and if this represents the views of the majority of the Indian .Mohammedans, it can hardly fail to complicate tlie situation seriously. We have every confidence that the British authorities will be able to deal effectually with the present crisis. But prospects for the future are by no means clear or 'encouraging, and the present gloomy outlook certainly suggests that there may bo a great deal of force in the objections raised against the much-dis-cussed Montagu-Chelmsford plan, which, so its critics maintain, would have the effect of establishing in supreme authority throughout India that very Brahmin caste which lias done more than any other force to undermine the British Raj, and which is inspired chiefly by the ambitious desire to rise on the ruins of British ascendancy to absolute despotism over all the races of Hindustan.