THE RIOTS IN BOMBAY.
WE do not understand the inattention of the British public to the fate of Bombay. Englisbm3n are supposed to be very proud of their Empire, and certainly talk and write sufficiently about it, yet here is the second city in that Empire in population and the fourth in wealth perishing slowly of disease and misfortune, and the com- munity at home is scarcely interested. The telegrams from Australia about cricket are three times as long and ten times as much read as the telegrams about the ravages of Plague in Bombay. The arrest of the murderous activity of the pest which was supposed to have occurred proves to have been only a momentary lull, and though one-third of the population has fled from the stricken city, the weekly average of recorded deaths greatly exceeds a. thousand, and as the people conceal the attacks, the true number probably rises to flfteen hundred. That is equal, supposing the population of Bombay to have been reduced to seven hundred thousand, to nine thousand deaths a week in London from one disease alone, a number which, we need not say, would alarm and excite the great city, and even the national Parliament, beyond all measure.
Yet we receive no news of the progress of the pest except a curt telegram once a week, nor has any full account of its ravages and their consequences yet appeared in any newspaper. There has been no discussion of the matter in Parliament, and even the experts in disease, usually so willing to instruct the community, have told us much less than they would tell us about a visitation of typhoid in a tenth-rate English country town. To aggravate the misfortune, the Plague has pro- duced, or rather has developed, one of those collisions between European and Asiatic ideas of civilisation which every now and then warn us of the depth of the gulf which still divides the West from the East, a gulf in which, if we cannot learn wisdom in time, we shall one day be swallowed up. Hindoos and Mussulmans alike think that their rulers should concern themselves with the Plague, and are prepared to submit to orders which in Europe would be considered unbearably despotic. They would probably move their city if a new site could be found on the coast, and if that were the decision of the Sircar, without making too much fuss over their loss of property. Such movements repeatedly occurred under the Moguls ; and one such transfer on the other side of the Peninsula lies recorded for ever in the mighty ruins of Gour, the ancient capital of Bengal. An order to camp oat on the mainland for six weeks, that the city might be thoroughly cleansed, would be obeyed whatever the loss of life or money ; and we are by no means certain that if a moderate compensation were promised and paid, the one final remedy, the burning of all infected quarters to the ground, would create an insurrection. Unfortunately, the English doctors put their trust in much less drastic measures, and insist that the Plague can be stayed by the segregation of all who are attacked. Very likely they are right, and at all events theirs is the best opinion obtainable ; but, unhappily, segrega Ion involves examination, removal to public hospitals, and interference in the disposal of the dead, and against all these things Indian feeling instinctively revolts. They had rather their women died than that they were seen and touched and questioned by strange men, whose diplomas to them mean nothing ; they consider removal to hospital a, senseless outrage, involving usually a sentence of death under strange eyes ; and they r-gard cremation or sepulture as as much beyond interference from the Magistrate as rites in the temple or preaching in the Mosque. Even their own Kings would not dare to inter- fere in such matters ; and shall these outcast foreigners, encamped in India for a day in punishment for our sins, be allowed to commit such outrages in peace ? Even Bengalees would rise under such circumstances ; and the population of Bombay is in the main Mussulman or Mahratta, descendants of men who have shown for centuries that they knew how to die. There was no plot, for the Government telegraphed to London that there was "no unrest;" but an accident the forcible removal of one woman to hospital, fired the smouldering embers, and in a moment Bombay, usually the quietest of commercial .capitals, was boiling over in an insurrection which, if the people had had rifles and cartridges, and there had been no warships in harbour, would have ended in the extinction of the white community. As usual, the permanent differences between Hindoo and Mussulman were suspended, and all Asiatics, except Parsees and Chinamen, were united against all Europeans. By pure ill-luck the first Magis- trate who ordered the armed police to act was a Parsee— which was as if a Jew Prefect had given the same order in Paris—and within twelve hours it was necessary to send up troops from Poona, to call out the Volunteers, who are Europeans with rifles, and to plant artillery in the most dangerous streets. Bombay is, in fact, a city in a state of siege, a small garrison and a few ships holding down a vast and furious but half-armed population solely by force of their discipline, their weapons, and their readiness to inflict death.
What ought to be done ? As usual, there are three courses open to us, either of which would be effectual, though to each there are serious objections. One, which ought not to be rejected summarily, is to suspend all sanitary measures, and allow the Plague to rage until it has killed out all who are liable to its ravages. That course would be certainly popular, and we do not know that we are bound merely as Christians to save a population which does not wish to be saved, from dying a little earlier than usual of a disease which we did not introduce. It is, however, certain that we are bound, as civilising and vivifying rulers, to make the attempt, and that to give it up because of opposition is to give up the one solid excuse for our sovereignty in India, and to reduce our presence there to something unpleasantly like a highly successful dacoity. We must save the people if we can, to prove to ourselves that we are wiser than they, and in saving them we must rely on our own ideas and our own science. The second course is to hold down Bombay by sheer force, to make the doctors absolute, to shoot down those who resist, and to wait steadily through months of disorder, suffering, and humiliation until the disease shall take itself away. That is the plan approved here; it probably will be the plan adopted ; and it has this merit, that we shall do at any hazard what we believe to be our duty. If we were sure of success, it would be the only plan ; but as success is doubtful, statesmen may well consider that it involves a frightful deepening of the cleavage between the rulers and the ruled ; that it may have to be pursued permanently, the Plague reappearing from year to year ; and that if the visitation marched through India the plan would overtax our strength. We simply have not the force to carry out such regulations in cities full of Sikhs and distant from the cruisers, two of which would at any moment hold down Bombay if it were seething with insurrection. The third course, which, if practicable, is free of all these evils, is to consult the best moollahs and pundits as to the rules which really affect religious faith or the Indian ideas of honour, to withdraw these, and to devote all strength and attention to the thorough cleansing of the city, remaking all drains, opening all quarters impervious to the wind from the sea, burning the floor of the streets, exter- minating all rats, closing all chawls—the vast tenement- houses with five hundred inhabitants, which are packed like sardine-boxes — and burning down remorselessly every house in which an inmate has died of the Plague. Those measures, unaccompanied by segregation, have been successful in Europe, and as science is not local they ought to be successful in mbay. It should be intimated to the people at the same time that the demands of their religions having been satisfied, any further attempt at license would be put down summarily by soldiers as well as the police. Order must be maintained in a city like Bombay, whatever the expenditure of lives, but to a reasonable man there is something very depressing in being compelled to kill her Majesty's subjects with bullets in order to persuade them not to suffer themselves to be killed by buboes.
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