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Foreign News: Call Me Mister

2 minute read
TIME

Kipling’s Rustum Beg of Kolazai “lusted for a C.S.I.” (Companion of the Star of India) so avidly that he “built a Gaol and Hospital—nearby built a City drain—till his faithful subjects all thought their ruler was insane.” When Rustum Beg was awarded only a lowly C.I.E. (Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire), he got so mad “he disendowed the Gaol—stopped at once the City drain,” installed his harem in the hospital.

India’s Moslems last week were as angry as Rustum Beg—so angry that they were renouncing the coveted British titles that many of them had served long and fawningly to earn. Sir Mohamed Saadulla, ex-Premier of Assam Province, one of about 435 Indians and Burmans who now hold knighthoods, was angriest. He could ‘hardly talk.

At a Moslem League meeting in Bombay’s Quaisar Bagh Hall, he gripped the microphone, sputtered: “I surrender—” in a voice that sounded like anything but surrender. Sir Mohamed then put fingers of both hands in his mouth, removed his lower teeth. That was better. He shouted again: “I surrender my knighthood.” Delegates cheered and embraced.

Sir Firozkhan Noon, chief collector of British honors among the Moslems (K.C.S.L, K.C.I.E., Hon. LL.D., Toronto, Honorary Fellow, Wadham College, Oxford), mounted the platform. “From now on,” he proclaimed, “I am Mister Noon.” (Cracked one Hindu columnist: “Twilight would have been a better word than noon.”)

By week’s end, 61 titled Moslems—seven knights, 28 Khan Bahadurs, 26 Khan Sahibs—had solemnly renounced their British honors in protest against wholehearted British cooperation with the Congress Party, which represents India’s overwhelming, untitled majority.

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