CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS UNDER ATTACK IN TRAVANCORE

From Our Own Correspondent Overshadowing all other anxieties in India, even the elections, ions, from a Catholic point of view, are the Travancore educational measures, and the repercussions to them throughout India.
The Government is authoritarian, and the two assemblies purely advisory. The Royal House is Hindu and until the present Dewan (Prime Minister) took office, was tolerant. When the militant Hindu Sir C. P. Ramaswami Ayer became Dewan increasing difficulties and embarrassments were placed on the Catholics of Travancore with regard to their schools, churches, and other institutions which led to protests from all over India earlier this year, arid to the banning of the leading Calcutta Catholic paper within Travancore itself HEAVIEST BLOW
The heaviest blow fell a few weeks ago when the Travancore Government announced that it proposed, on the recommendation of the Hindu-dominated Assemblies to take over the entire primary education of the State, withdraw the subsidies from aided schools, and ensure their disappearance within a few years.
In this highly literate State there are 2.800 elementary schools, 2,000 of which are aided. and the vast majority of these are Catholic.
The decision came. therefore, as a shock to Travancore Catholics, who have been ignorant of the Government's trends owing to the muzzling of the Catholic press, particularly Deepika, the Catholic daily. under rules designed to protect the country against external foes.
Within a week Catholic opinion all over India was horrified by the announcement that the Travancore Government had ordered the Bishop of Changanacherry, who had just issued a pastoral condemning the measures, to withdraw it or take the consequences.. Issue was joined by the Archbishop of Madras on this point, and subsequently Hindu opinion in India was mobilised on the side of the Dewan of Travancore by a skilful press vilification of Catholicism.
On the Hindu side such names as the Hon, V. S Sastrl were involori'd, and Pandit Javrarlal Nehru, whose views are usually balanced, counselled the Catholics to trust to the better nature of their fellow-countrymen. The position steadily worsened throughout October until the entire Hierarchy of India drew up a statement setting forth the minimum Catholic demands with
regard to education. Even this has been dismissed by the majority press as " narrow and medieval."
The significance of the controversy which is still not settled lies in the fact that the issues have been deliberately obscured by Hindu protagonists who are anxious to conceal the truth— namely. that the Travancore Dewan's policy is part of his self-confessed " reconversion " scheme.
HINDU STATE Thus it has been alleged that the Catholics want a predominantly Hindu State to subsidise proselytising. Catholic missionary schools. The Catholic schools of Travancore are neither proselytising nor missionary. They are primarily the schools of an indigenous population as well established in Travancore as Mohammedanism in Bengal, and, it is their high standards which recommend them to non-Christian parents.
The issue is still in the balance, and it is now obvious that the Dcwan is not a little frightened by the strength of the opposition. Their loyalty to the Royal House which so often protected them in the past has been unsurpassed, bat matters hem cow become grave,