HC Deb 30 July 1907 vol 179 cc757-8
MR. REES

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the newspaper named the Indian Sociologist, edited in London by one Shyamaji Krishnavarma, M.A., Oxon., elsewhere described as president of the Indian Homo Rule Society, in which it is said in an editorial article that if a man is to be dubbed an ardent native rebel simply because he advises his countrymen to shake off an oppressive foreign yoke, we confess we are proud to be called such, and in which it is further said that there is a school of Indian patriots whose ideal is not only to have independence in government in India by ousting the English from that country, but also to recover untold millions of money of which the Indian people have been unjustly deprived, which ideal involves the occupation of England by India till such claims are satisfied; further, whether his attention has been called to the speech made by the said Shyamaji Krishnavarma, in which he says that no concession can ever satisfy him save one, the disappearance of the alien yoke from India; and whether, since the editor claims that he is no British subject, the Government will consider the propriety of moving the Public Prosecutor to proceed against this person in view to his ultimate expulsion as an undesirable alien, who endeavours to debauch the loyal subjects of His Majesty.

MR. MORLEY

I do not think that the language that my hon. friend quotes is worth either the advertisement that he has given it himself, or of that which he wishes me to give it.

MR. REES

Does the right hon. Gentleman know that this person maintains a boarding-house to which young Indians are attracted for the purpose of perversion on their arrival in this country?

MR. MORLEY

I have no official information.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL

is the Question in order, seeing that it contains not only a long extract from a newspaper—and I have been prevented embodying extracts from the Saturday Review in my Questions—but it also embodies certain high rhetoric on the part of the hon. Member putting it?

MR. REES

The Question does not contain a single opinion of my own.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILL

But is the last line in order, in so far as it suggests endeavours to "debauch" loyal subjects?

[No Answer was returned.]