The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 3, 1925, Page 11

I communicated with an architect in this country, I submit- ted to him the whole plans, and I asked him to draw up a scheme which would not be extravagent. He was an architect belong- ing to your Army, but at the same time he belonged to the labor party. He studied the whole scheme most minutely, and gave us a design where wé could have: one anteroom, one back room and an open verandah (porch). We calculated the cost and printed 5,000 copies, and I sent some out to the Governor of Bombay. I had a very nice and courteous acknowledgement, with the usual statement that the proposal would be borne in mind and would be carried out some. day when possible, fol- jowed by an admission, “At present our hearts are with you, but our money is with us.”’ There was human touch in that letter. These things cannot work. They are bound to bring in the long run a painful fall which will be heavier for Humpty Dumpty in proportion to the long lease of life that he has. The Noble Lord, the Under-Secretary, has. entirely evaded the issue of the Bengal Ordinances, seditious movement, suppression of, the Communists and so forth. . a Ee h 7 Communist Bogey. say this in.your incompetence and incapacity, but why not learn from others? . Our Russian Bolshevist friends have in five years’ time been able to give the political franchise to the agriculturists of Russia, who are as a class parallel with the agriculturist pop- ulation of India. They are also people of diverse religions, in- cluding Mohammedans, Jews, Greek Church people, and others. The Bolsheviks have been able to give them education in five years, yet in the Czar’s days these people were treated with the same callousness and brutal cruelty as that with which you have been treating the Indian peasant for 150 years. In five years after the Communist international revolution in Russia, 65 per cent of the agricultural population have received education and you have today the testimony of half a dozen British men and women that in spite of the bloodcurdling articles in your news- papers, the Russians have done their job well. Why play a dog- in-the-manger part? I appeal to this Committee to allow a com- mission of Indians to. go'to Russia to study and to find what the British have failed to discover—the way of granting to the | ies, institutions, health homes, compensation and allowances for industrial workers. If Russia, a country of agriculturists, could find ‘the way out, how is it that you with your world-pro- claimed cleverness as administrators have failed to find it, why fot be horiest’and"step-aside and let us do the job, and we shall do it on an international: Communist basis? Why are you turned inside out at the very thought of Communist propaganda in India? If as an industrial nation with your Western mind you have failed to discover a humanitarian cure for the ills ‘of an agricultural population in an Hastern country, why play the- dog-in-the-manger? Why not permit the Russian nation, which has actually discovered the way out of the darkness; to come ouse of and help you? 325 and ; as the The Noble Lord delivered himself on a previous occasion im from | of his views on Russian propaganda. Today we have to review es. his actions during the last 12 months with regard to the Cawn- pore trials. Why does he consider himself entitled to suppress Communist propaganda? He says other propaganda or sub- versive propaganda. That is another contradiction. Every propaganda must be subversive. If it is not subversive then there is no need for propaganda. The Hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) is carrying on prohibitionist propaganda. That is propaganda to subvert the drinking system, and ff his rialism propaganda were not subversive it would not be worth any- rialism Every propaganda, if it is effective and*sincere, means something new, and if those who carry it on have the courage of their convictions and want to put what they feel to be right in the plaée of the old system, that propaganda must be sub- versive. You are talking to the 20th century in the terms of 18th century lawyers when you refer to'subversive propaganda, sedition and revolution. They are the birthrights of modern nations, atid they are the birthrights of the Indians just as much as they were your birthrights.. I for one, will not yield to ter-. rorism. I ara going to carry on subversive propaganda; revohi- tionary propaganda, Comniunist propaganda with the assistari¢e f the Russian, and the Chinese and the Germans andthe: tish. I am not alone in’ that. The Government has kept! quiet about the great Indian railway strike. Thé Government says all kinds of doings about the masters being kind, but the Government of India forgets that they ‘themselves are the larg- est employers of labor in the world, taking their postmen, ‘pub- lic men, railwaymen, miners in Government mines, workers’ in’ Government factories, and so on, and I put it quite definitely the that taking a comparison with any other country, you pay the ion, most miserable wage, and give the most miserable conditions, and deprive the population which works for you and for the prosperity of our great Empire of their rights and inflict on "them political indignity and humiliation worse than can be found 10¢ pe in any part of Asia. You could improve things if you meant to pee do so, but you would not be able to stay there after the im- “provements had taken place. You know it and I do. But the international spirit will throw you over the precipice, if you do not retreat gracefully. I am not talking only about my Russian comrades, but about my British comrades. I know the diffi- culties of the Front Bench among my British comrades. We .}must treat them as a section apart. But I think even the Noble Lord knows that the British Government is treating with the most inhuman, callous oppression the railway worker, and imposing on them a negation of their rights to such an extent that the m8 » heen. heldand are being held thruout the United States It may. be that youvare honest incompetents, and that you people of political franchise and education, scientific laborator-: Summary of Saklatvala E GHAPURSI SAKLATV&LA, Communist ’ British house of commons, upon fff ments to enter America as a British deleg parliamentary union congress, at Washin granted a visa. This visa was later revoked by the state department following a conference in Washington of Coolidge, Kel- logg and Burton of Ohio where the protest of two British}. tories and Home Secretary Hicks, who did not dare to bar Saklatvala from leaving England, was discussed. The state department gave as an excuse for its action _ v garbled account.of a speech made by Saklatvala in par- Jiament.for Indian.independence. eet foo United: front mass meetings and demonstrations have to the inter- gton, D..C., was demanding the admittance of Saklatvala, with the Work- A ers (Commuhtist) Party taking the leading role. general council of the trade union movement in this country has telegraphed £100 assistance. — I touch on one more point, and that is the death rate to which the Hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) referred. . He asked the Committee to look at other reports besides the one to which he referred in regard to infantile death rate. You say you went to India because the Rajputs were ‘killing daughters, and you wanted to save human life; bécaus were being burnt, and you wanted to save human life, but I tell you, you are there to destroy human life. It may not be your intention, but that is part of the game, and without it you cannot play the game. I ask Hon. Members to analyze the in- fantile death rate a little more closely. The rate mentioned by my Hon. Friend for the City of Bombay was 411 per thousand. That is the normal rate, though it has been 834 in one year. Even this, however, is a mistaken figure. The City of Bombay, _is a rich city. My own community is one of the richest com- munities there, and they do not present a death rate of 411. Their infantile mortality is very near your own. There is also the European population and the rich Hindu and Mohammedan populations. But if you take the figures of infantile mortality in the municipal records before the final abstract is made, and if you study the rate in those wards where the factory women live, the déath rate there ix not 411 per 1,000, but from 600 to. 700 per 1,000. - You cannot attribute that to the climatesor.to; insanitary conditions, because all over India in the agricultural areas without sanitation or education and with a hot climate the infantile rate is about 190. It is in the factory wards of Bombay, Calcutta, Allahabad, Delhi, and so on, wherever there are modern factories, that the infantile death rate comes to be- tween 600 and 700 infants, and we think that, if nothing else that one inhuman item, that cannibalistic feature of your Imperial- ism, should be quite enough to make you come away. An Eloquent Appeal. You went there, you say, to save the people, but you have acted in a contrary direction, and in the name of the people there, in the name of the people. here, in the name ‘of the masses, I appeal to you to Bolshevize your own minds and hearts, and to determine once and for’ all, that Imperialism, with all its — good talking points has got behind it a trail of inhuman mur- -der, brutality, negation of rights and degradation of human life, and must be dissolved. “British Imperialism ‘must go if humanity is to progress. I do not say that in a spirit of anger again: { say it for your own sakes, that if you want to save yourselves from future misery, from a future heavy fall, from being cut out’ by India in all the raw materials 6n which alone your industries live, if you want to save the people, if you want to take away all) | ee bécause sittees 'F Ome. the armaments and military, wasteful energies of the whole of | Europe, at the bottom of it all is British Imperialism. Do not ‘despise Communist Internationalism, study it from the point of view of the Indians, and yow will find it of greater value. ~ , It being Eleven of the Clock, the Chairman left the Chair to ‘make his\Report.to thé House. On Monday, 13th July, Mr. Sak- datvala spoke as follows; yore O° soy ios Sd Personal. Explanation. os With:your permission, Mr. Speaker, I ask the indulgence of 4 the House while I»make.a. brief personal explanation in regard ‘to a’sentence in my speech last Thursday night. It is due. not only to me and my party, but the House, and for a correct un- derstanding of the functions and purposes of debate in this | House by my Indian friends. When I said in the course of my | speech that I held myself responsible for, and that I am at the bottom of many of the Communist manifestoes and the Com- munist propaganda in India I beg to explain that I unequivocally, | unreservedly and without reservation associate myself with, and endorse such manifestoes, resolutions, and: propagandist liter- ature as are openly and officially propagated by the Communist Party of Great Britain. — ta ts This does not refer to documents of doubtful origin advo- cating crime, of whatever is alleged, which has no proven au- thenticity. I submit that, while: I, on behalf of my party, as well as on behalf of my electors, will always in this House ex- press fearlessly and unequivocally the sentiments and true . feelings of peoples struggling for freedom and liberty’ in this Empire, we would not, Mr. Speaker, endorse here in this House a propaganda which advocates individual crime through relig- ious or racial animosities, or for personal revenge. 1 q RIE =o ey | i »K OL