Fiji-Indians

New Delhi

Interference

In Fiji

Alleged Grievances of Fiji-Indians

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Suva, Apr. 27

rRMERLY one of Whitehall’s diver sions was playing off the India Office against the Colonial Office. But this has come to an end now with the immi nent dissolution of the India Office, and the Colonial Office now shows signs of making occasional decisions that would previously have reduced the India Office to hysteria.

This, of course, will have repercussions in Indian Fiji—unless someone can stop the Colonial Office. Recently, “Fiji Sam archar” (an Indian weekly published in Suva) thundered: “How long this citadel of reaction will be allowed to maintain its present policy will be keenly watched.”

The suggestion that Mr. A. Creech Jones, Secretary of State for the Colonies, had tetter mind his p’s and q’s because “Fiji Samarchar” is on the watch recalls the story of the now-forgotton New Zea land country paper which, in 1913, an nounced editorially that it had its eye on the German Emperor.

The reason for the Indian paper’s agi tation was that it had just recorded the fact that the Colonial Office (presumably with a thought of what has happened in the past) had quashed an amiable pro posal by New Delhi to appoint official Indian agents for Fiji and anywhere else in the Empire “where Indians happen to be in large numbers.”

Unfortunately, the idea does not appear to have oeen quashed finally, not does the parallel idea (from Pandit Nehru himself) of sending delegations of earnest Indians to sort things up in Fiji and the rest of the still-British Empire.

The following statement appeared in the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette, date-lined New Delhi, January 11: “Encouraged by the way in which the Government of India recently fought for the rights of Indian nationals in South Africa, Indian settlers in Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad have sent formal represen tations to the Commonwealth Relations Department of the Government of India urging official intervention with a view to securing better status and better con ditions of living for Indian settlers in these places. Fraternal delegates to the Meerut session of the Indian National Congress from these islands are under stood to have personally discussed this problem with some members of the In terim Government.”

Other references concern “securing re dress of grievences” and “studying the hardships of Indian settlers in Fiji, Maur itius and Trinidad.”

AND so it goes on. In Fiji, the Indians have equal Legislative Council repre sentation with the Fijians (rather loaded perhaps, because all the Fijian members are Government appointees, with the inevitable result); they are on every public body of importance; they have their own Chamber of Commerce in Suva, their own industrial unions in the sugar industry, and heaven knows how many political and other associations—all ex tremely vocal.

It is to be hoped that the investiga tions, if they materialise, will spare a moment for such incidentals as the fabu lous sums made and hoarded (or sent to

India) by Indian traders during the war time American-New Zealand invasions; the Indians who crowd the expensive plane services to New Zealand and Aus tralia on their way to India for long periods; the war record of the Fiji In dians; and the ruthless exploitation of underdog Indians by moneyed Indians at the slightest opportunity. They could also examine, with profit, the “hardships” of any Indians in Fiji and compare them with the filth, starvation, disease and ig norance in the swarming cities and caste ridden countryside of India herself.

Indian humanitarianism, like all other missionary enterprise, should start at home.