MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether it is the fact that the poorest classes of the Native populations, in 1408 many of the up-country districts of India, complain that the reduction of the salt tax has been made an excuse by officials of the Salt Preventive Department to force people to give up the use of "spontaneous" salt, which rises to the surface in various places up-country; and, whether it is the fact that large numbers of Natives, too poor to pay for the taxed salt, are thereby compelled to give up the use of salt altogether, or to render forced labour, in order to procure Government salt manufactured on the coast?
§ MR. J. K. CROSSI have already explained more than once that the use of untaxed salt in India is now, as it has been for many years, illegal. I hardly understand the second clause of the hon. Member's Question. Forced labour, in the sense of the corvée, does not exist in India.