Residential Areas

Indians in Suva Residential Areas

Letter to the Editor rE article under the heading; “Indians over-running residential areas in Suva,” contributed by a Suva resi dent, and appearing in your June number, calls for a reply.

At the outset it is obvious that the article in question is the product of a narrow-minded person, who sees nothing good in the Indian, and is bent upon creating feelings of ill-will between the different communities who inhabit Fiji.

Suva Resident is afraid of seeing “goats tethered on the well-cut lawns”! Evidently he is a very ignorant person, for if he were not so ignorant, he should know that under the municipal by-laws it Is illegal for any person to keep, or suffer to be kept, animals of any kind near a resi dence.

Moreover, Suva Resident ought to know that quite a few Indians live in the dif ferent residential areas of Suva, and his conscience ought to tell him that not a single Indian can be found to be keeping goats in or near his home. Not all In dians keep goats even in the country dis tricts.

Neither can a Suva Resident give this writer a single instance where he has seen “ill-clad Indian children with their shrill voices” within the residential areas of Suva.

It is a matter for regret to this writer that he should have thought fit to paint the Indian ironically. He should have paid more regard to truth, but he has general ised instead.

May I hope that a Suva Resident will in future refrain from making disparag ing and untrue statements about the Indian?

I am. etc..

J. A. Kirpal.

Sydney University, Sydney, 2nd July, 1946.