Suppression

Officials of the British raj throughout India indulged last week in considerable delaying, coloring, falsifying and suppressing of vital news.

Delay. Correspondent Negley Farson of Chicago's Daily News, who made a special trip from Bombay to riot torn Sholapur (TIME, May 19). complained that officials who claimed they were not censoring his despatches held them up for as much as 12 hours, then suavely explained that this was due to "clerical delay." He also indicated that he could not send the true story of "Bloody Sholapur."

Falsification. Certainly one of the most vital events of the week was the leading of a non violent march on the Government Salt Works at Dharasana by St. Gandhi's successor as chief of his movement for independence, plump but fiery Mrs. Sarojini Naidu (TIME, May 19).

A despatch was allowed to pass in which she was quoted as saying: "I go to Death or Victory. ... I feel as Joan of Arc must have felt, under divine inspiration! ... I shall cut their barbed wire fence with pliers and seize the salt with my own hands. . . . Neither jail nor Death hold any terrors for me!"

Whether or not Mrs. Naidu ever spoke as quoted, she advanced at the head of 50 placid marchers until faced by a troop of British police. When they would not let her pass, she called for a rocking chair, sat in it for 24 hours.

At the end of this time despatches at first reported that the British police officer asked Mrs. Naidu whether she would like to be sent back to her encampment in a comfortable limousine. India's matronly Joan of Arc was said to have voluntarily accepted, and, leaving her followers to trudge after the limousine, left the field of "Death or Victory" in pusillanimous, soft cushioned ease.

Later British censors were passing what perhaps was a truer story, namely that the police, losing patience at last, suddenly arrested Mrs. Naidu, later releasing her and returning her to her followers at their camp.

The period of falsification had been long enough to give U. S. citizens and Englishmen the impression that Mrs. Sarojini ("Death or Victory") Naidu is a particularly funny female joke. Naturally there is a sense in which scrawny St. Gandhi and his whole topsy turvy nonviolent struggle is history's most colossal and perhaps most dangerous jest.

Suppression. The fact of a riot at Mymensingh, Bengal, was suppressed for 48 hours, after which the Government admitted that 90 persons had been injured, continued to suppress all details.

What the actual situation is in the Northwest Frontier Province has been a state secret since the first riot at Peshawur a month ago (TIME, May 5). Every few days the office of the Viceroy issued reassuring statements; but last week came a remarkable one that "after three weeks" His Majesty's forces had finally "reoccupied Peshawuo," capital of the province, which had not previously been known to be out of British hands. Squadrons of R. A. F. bombing planes were said to have been "highly effective" in quelling the frontier tribesmen.

Most significant was the suppression of news from Sholapur, no remote outpost among wild tribes, but a prosperous cotton milling city of 120,000, only 220 miles from the teeming seaport of Bombay. Not until 1,000 soldiers of the Royal Ulster Rifles had in effect recaptured Sholapur for the Crown, last week, was it made known that for several days the city had flown the flag of Indian Nationalism (white, green and red tricolor), had been under swaraj or "self rule" St. Gandhi's famed ideal.

"Bloody Sholapur." From his cool summer capital at Mahabaleshwar, H. E. Maj.General Sir Frederick Sykes. Governor of Bombay Presidency, directed by telegraph the Royal Ulstermen's occupation of Sholapur, their tearing down of the Indian flag wherever flown, their hoisting of the Union Jack. Stay at home subjects of George V know that, given an occasional whiskey soda and a tough platoon or two, "Sir Freddy" Sykes fears his own Jehovah but no heathen God. man or devil, commands boundless loyalty from the British tommies in that glamorous, sternly romantic force "His Majesty's army in India." The Times of India, an anti Gandhi, pro British paper published at Bombay, sent to Sholapur respected President Hirachand of the Maharasthra Chamber of Commerce. What he reported the Times guiltily tucked away in small type on an inside page: "As regards the situation in the town, I found it extremely quiet under a terrorism inflicted by indiscriminate shooting . . . for nearly five hours by two patrolling motor lorries running at high speed in the whole of the town, where there was any disturbance of any kind." Interjecting at this point the editor of the Times declared: "We have omitted from Mr. Hirachand's statement a paragraph in which he makes wild allegations that individuals not involved in the disturbances were deliberately fired at by police." Since the pro-Gandhi press has been silenced by the Government, the Saint's followers were reduced to circulating a secretly mimeographed leaflet. Excerpt:

"Beside the carnage of Sholapur the British terrorism of the Black and Tans in Ireland pales into a mist. . . . Before they were done at Sholapur the British police committed wholesale murder."

Such references as British correspondents in India made to Sholapur last week, did not omit the humorous side of the city's few days of swaraj. It was fun to cable that lumbering bullocks often balked when directed by Gandhi police to keep to the right. It was gratifying to cable that, as soon as His Majesty's forces gained the upper hand, they restored the right and proper English traffic rule: "Keep to the left."

Courts functioning under martial law at Sholapur jailed wholesale those guilty of promoting swaraj, for terms up to ten years.

In a long communique the Government of Bombay next denied practically all news of any consequence which has reached the world from Sholapur in the past fortnight. "Not a shot was fired" by 'the British forces "except in self-defense." Even the Gandhimen. who seized the Sholapur Municipal Government were absolved of an "atrocity" they committed last week in print all over the world, namely the killing and burning in gasoline of three British police (TIME, May 19). Indeed the Government's blanket denials, right and left, made Sholapur seem like a nightmare city in which things happen only to un-happen, proved that even the most authentic-seeming news from India must be pigeonholed for later confirmation or disproof, perhaps after it has ceased to be news.

Indo-China. Over the border in French Indo-China, last week, rampant revolt broke out, plantation coolies, textile and railroad workers striking in protest against death sentences given 52 textile workers. In Tan Douna village the French Administrator narrowly escaped being murdered by a mob of 1,500 coolies. Said the Conservative newspaper La Liberte: "Unless the Government acts with extreme energy to overcome the agitation fomented by Moscow the violence in our colonies will redouble."

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