The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1910-02-13
INDIA s UNREST

England's fear of jealousy of Ger
many is not circumstance to what
she may be called upon to face in In
dia if conditions do not improve. 70!
the people of India are fast being
welded into compact mass, out OF
which IS rising spirit of Indian ma
tionality and of Indian unity, consti-
tuting problem difficult of solution.
Paul kennaday, in discussing the sit
uation in the Forum for February,
says that the Englishman is Englands
greatest enemy in India" and that By
his selfishness and h, lack of sympa
thy and understanding he has spread
wide through 3pO.OOo,OOO Indian sub
jects of the British crown discomfort,
disloyalty and hatred. Mr.. kennaday
quotes approvingly from a declaration
by the marquis of Salisbury, when sec
rotary of state for India thirty five
years ago. thus:
No system Of government can be
permanently safe when there is feel
ing Of inferiority or modification at
fecting the relation between the gov
erning and the governed. Those who
leave this country to govern India, II
they choose to be so. are the only en-
emies England has to fear.
Mr.. Kennaday says that this warn
ing has gone UNDECIDED" and the En-
glish civil servant, taken from his
school or his college, perhaps from a
humble station in life, and released
from the control which his own people
held in manners and mind. under
tropical sun loses his veneer of cul-
ture, fOrgets his manners, learns to de-
spise the poor, crlnging native who
fears him, and he sometimes becomes
that abhorred thing, that absolute ne
cation of a gentleman. the English
call 'bounder'.'
Mr.. kenLaday tells Of meeting cul
tured Parsee. who. talking of the gov
eminent and the British rulers of his
country, exclaimed with flashing eye:
Shall the dirtiest, lowest white man,
or mongrel of an Eurasian, ii he has
only a little white blood in him, be
preferred to me, and this is my own
country?
And then he related, with face full
of mingled anger and dispair. how
that very day two Englishmen, with a
curse and jeer, had slammed in his
face the door of a first-class railway
carriage which he had attempted to ell
ter, and recited the irdignities and af-
fronts TO which he and his family
were daily subjected There are 9th
err causes Of complaint, not embraced
in the arrogance and insulting demean-
or of the British in control, and prin-
cipal one lies in the desperate straits
to which the agriculturist has been re-
duced. He is wretchedly poor and is
constantly confronted by fear of fam
inc. 1t is estimated that hundred
millions of people subsist in perennial
hunger, usually one meal a day. Plague
has carried them off by the millions,
and famine has taken its millions
more. While the English have sup
piled irrigation for probably six mil
| lion acres. there are millions of acres
| with no relief from the long burning
| dry season AS the Indian extracts
| his scanty crops he is taxed to the lin
| it of endurance: from 80 to 60 per cent
| of his net income being extracted for
ldlu TAX vi Icll, DcSiuCo NultL IL IL
possibly can be extorted, he is COM
PEELED to pay extras for schools and
! roads, police. irrigation works, etc.
| The poor famished Indian believes that
the taxes have much to do with famine
conditions, and that the railways
which the British have constructed al
so do harm to his country. One thing
he knows beyond all contradiction: He
starves. And this leads Mr.. Kenna.
day to say:
The times are mirous-with the sell
fishness. the blindness and the folly
Of this handful of conquerors: with the
deep just cause for resentment and an
ger on the part of these multitudes OF
conquered: with the inability and ap
parent unwillingness of the English tC
appreciate the growing demand for po-
litical power, the yearning for liberty
and justice which the very history OF
the English people themselves has
awakened in the people of India.