LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
THE AMRITSAR DEBATE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
should be glad if you could afford space for a few remarks from one who has spent thirty years in India on the best terms with Indians. It seems to me unfortunate that the controversy which has raged round the action of General Dyer at Amritsar in the spring of last year, and which culminated in the recent debate in the House of Commons, should have obscured issues of even greater importance. From 1857 to the day when Lord Morley became Secretary for India attacks on English men and women were practically unknown. Since then numbers of English and Indian officials have fallen victims to the pistol or the bomb of the Indian Anarchist, while Viceroys and Lieutenant-Governors have narrowly escaped death. But never till Mr. Montagu took office has there been anything in the nature of a rebellion. The success of the earlier, and the failure of the later, administrations in protecting its servants is surely due to the fact that the former did and the latter did not "truly and indifferently minister justice to the punish- ment of wickedness and vice." Time and again of late years have convicted criminals been released or their sentences reduced, and disaffected persons encouraged for political reasons, with the natural result that the law and the adminis- tration have been brought into contempt. The same mistaken policy has produced similar results in Ireland. It is typical of Mr. Montagu's attitude of mind that while deploring the death of Indians who are assembled in thousands in defiance of warnings to challenge the British Raj, not one spark of sympathy is expressed for the murdered Englishmen, or for the Englishwomen who so narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Indian Anarchists. Small wonder that the sympathies of the English community and of the law-abiding Indians should be estranged from a Secretary of State whose avowed policy—to arouse the millions of Indians from their "pathetic contentment "—has met with such signal success!
General Dyer has been punished for an error of judgment: whether the punishment was just or unjust will for long be a subject for controversy, but if the soldier is punished why should the statesman, who is ultimately responsible for the rebellion which the soldier quelled, escape censure? It seems clear from Mr. Montagu's speech in the House, and from the general trend of his administration, that he is temperamentally unfitted for the supremely difficult task of governing our great dependency—India.—I am, Sir, &c., F. D. Fowtr.a. West Kensington, W. 14.
Previous page
