Indian Troubles

Because the Secretary of State for India is an arbiter of old port, new cravats and suave cigars, there is a snatch of recitative pretended to have issued from his lips in a fume of dilatory tobacco smoke:

Stands England where she did

Of Orient troubles rid?

Pray don't disturb my ash

With themes so crude and rash!

Actually, of course, the Earl of Birkenhead is sensitive to the slightest "Orient trouble" affecting India. He keeps his counsel, and sometimes he keeps it over a glass and a cigar; but when trouble is scented the quick legal mind that made him Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain (1919-22) kindles, and he speaks as he did last week, before the House of Lords:

"The occurrence of four serious clashes between Hindu and Moslem elements in India during the last six months (TIME, Dec. 13) gives grounds for anxiety and watchfulness on the part of the authorities responsible for the preservation of peace in the Indian Empire. . . . Almost more disquieting than these crude manifestations of mob intolerance are the continuous jealousies and feuds of intrigue between Hindu and Moslem leaders in the field of politics. Indeed Indian politics today is largely a game of personalities. ... In these circumstances the Government must deny that the Indian army is too large. On the contrary should certain contingencies arise [i.e., with Soviet Russia,] the army of India will not suffice. . . . I note, however, a distinct ray of hope in the waning of the Swarajist (NonCooperation) movement...."

While the Earl of Birkenhead was speaking, an Indian riot was actually in progress between Moslems and Hindus at Larkana, Upper India. Some 47 persons were injured in a bellicose dispute arising around an old Hindu woman and her three children alleged to have been mistreated by a Moslem.

During the week Burmese natives killed three British officers attached to an expedition operating through Upper Burma to free all remaining slaves. Over 1,000 slaves were freed by similar expeditions, last year, and the native chiefs appear incensed over this interference with their ancient property rights by agents of the British Raj, the power which seized Burma, by right of armed invasion Jan. 1, 1886.

Significant of conditions in the minor feudal states of Indian princes was a statement, last week, by Director-Professor Heck of the Berlin Zoo: "To explain the enormous number of wild beasts killed by native Indian princes during a single hunt is most simple. On the night before a great hunt the haunts of the beasts of prey, especially lions, are strewn with meats containing morphine. When, next day, the drugged beasts are hunted they prove easy game."

From the League of Nations anti-slavery office it was announced during the week that H. H. Beglar Begi Mir bir Mahmud Khan, Wali of Kalat, cooperating with the Government of India, has abolished slavery in the Kalat district of Baluchistan, remote Indian province. Formerly male and female slaves have been so absolutely the property of their owners in Kalat that two mated slaves were sometimes refused even sustenance by their master, forced to shift for themselves, and then any children which they might manage to bring up were finally seized by the original master as they reached an age suitable for slave work. Reputedly, the grand Khan has seen the error of such ways with so blinding a suddenness that he freed all the Kalat slaves without compensation to their onetime masters, thereby precipitating a revolutionary movement which the Khan is now busy suppressing.