The Indians Of Fiji

ADDRESSING an Australian Rotary

Club recently, Sir Raghunath

Paranjpye, High Commissioner for

India in Australia, had the following remarks to make about the Indian residents in Fiji: 1 RECENTLY had occasion to visit Fiji where Indians went as indentured labourers 80 years ago, and are now free men mostly engaged in agriculture.

Their condition is distinctly better than what we read of in other colonies, though even in Fiji one can see some trace of racial prejudice.

The educational system, for instance, is founded upon the complete segrega tion of Europeans. Fijians and Indians.

The poll tax, which has been introduced there, is paid by Indians but specifically exempts the Fijians and practically ex empts most Europeans, as they pay in come-tax.

They have also difficulties about land tenure, but I have great hopes that many of these difficulties will disappear under sympathetic treatment by the local gov ernment and the Colonial Office.

Indians in all of the countries I have mentioned desire to identify themselves with their new homes, and nothing would please them better than to be treated as citizens with full political and other rights. It is only because they are sub ject to disabilities owing to their being Indians that the Government of India has to interest itself on their behalf.

The Commissioner of Police for Fiji, Colonel J. Workman, returned to Suva in July after spending leave in the United Kingdom.