GREAT BRITAIN AND INDIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —A fact of very grave significance at the present crisis in the British rule in India has sorely puzzled my mind. I am impelled to write about it, for I find that its importance. is not understood in England even by those who are in touch
with Indian affairs. •
At Dacca, in Eastern Bengal, there have been communal riots in which men of vicious character have been brought in, so as to increase the mischief, and unspeakable atrocities have occurred. Yet, according to reports which have reached me, the police have either stood idly by, or allowed the evil to go on with indifference and contempt. While the news of a motor accident in Europe causing a few casualties is circulated in all your newspapers, these crying evils continuing from day to day in the capital city of East Bengal (whereby the whole neighbourhood was terrorized and all work paralysed) have hardly found any mention in English journals. The number of deaths, the loss of property, the daily sufferings and terrors caused by these events have been enormous ; and yet they have been ignored with a strange and ominous silence. If a single Englishman were injured, or the comforts of English residents were menaced, such silence would hardly be kept. Is it any wonder, then; that we are led to regard ourselves as of no interest or importance in the eyes of the British people, who have taken upon themselves the gratuitous task of our trusteeship ? Is it strange that we consider such silence as artificially imposed rather than naturally occurring ?
We have not the least doubt that the most expensively and elaborately organized power which the British Government has in India is more than sufficient in checking at once any symptoms of violence in our communal relationship. We have been brought up for a long time past on this belief. What has now occurred at Dacca had happened in a somewhat similar manner a few years ago in Calcutta and had been loudly proclaimed in the English Press. What is remarkable in the present instance is that amid an almost complete silence in the British Press a state of anarchy continued in Dacca for an unconscionably long time. The opinion formed about this arresting silence by our own people is unlikely to be accepted by the people of England.
Here comes the real meaning of our helplessness. For the British people have their comfortable faith in the conduct of their own officials who rule over an alien people. They feel little dirnet responsibility. Therefore, when our evidence is pitted against that of their own official representatives, we have little chance of credence. Let us acknowledge that this is natural ; yet at the same time we should be allowed for 'the same reason to have faith in our own people when under conditions like the present they suffer and complain For we are very unequally matched ; and while your opinion vitally affects us at every point, our opinion may easily remain unnoticed or else be even suppressed by you. But silenced though our people may be and ineffectual in their struggle, we judge ; and in the end it does matter. I know from my own correspondence that this event at Dacca has alienated, more than anything else in Bengal, the sympathies of those who were still clinging to their faith in British justice. Other happenings had shaken public confidence, but this has struck at its very foundation.—I am, Sir, &e.,
RARINDRANATII TAGOIIE. ' P.S.—For those of your readers who wish to study our own version of the story about this Dacca situation reference may be made to the Modern Review of June, 1930.
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