SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
!Notice in this column does not necessarily prided. tubsnusfat miss./
A weighty and searching criticism of Mr. Montagu's India Act appears in the Church Quarterly Review for January. The writer, who has lived for sixteen years in India, shows why the lower castes and the out-castes, including the native Christians, who form the vast majority of the population, fear the un- controlled domination of the Brahmin minority. Thus, the " untouchables " are not allowed to use the public wells pro- vided by public money, even in Bombay. The out-castes In Madras, numbering ten millions out of forty millions, may not use the public roads or walk in a street in the Brahmin quarter. Ninety per cent. of the public schools in Madras are closed to non- caste children, either because they may not uso the roads leading to the schools, or because the schools are near temples, or because the Brahmin landowner insists, before selling a site for a school, that non-castes shall be excluded. The Moslem minority insists on equal rights ; the out-castes get no sympathy from Mr. Montagu and have to bear their hard lot. It is strange that an Act enthroning the small Brahmin minority in India should be hailed by Liberals in the name of Democracy and by the Labour Party in the name of "the proletariat."
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