Lord Meston, K.C.S.I., LL.D.
This morning Lord Meston is to tell listeners why the upper part of the Ganges plain is called the United Provinces. It is bounded on the north by the independent mountain state of Nepal, home of those famous Indian soldiers, 'the sturdy little Gurkhas', and at its north-west corner climbs up into the Himalayas, providing on the lower hills the well-known 'hill stations' to which Europeans escape from the summer heat.
The province is for the most part a vast alluvial plain, traversed by rivers, all flowing into 'Mother Ganges'. Forty-five million inhabitants, nine out of ten living in villages. Lord Meston will describe life in a typical village. The homes of the cultivators, their bullocks and primitive ploughs. He will take listeners up into the mountains with the wild beasts, and into some of the cities. Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Benares. 'To bathe in the Ganges at Benares, the Hindu believes, will wash his sins away.' Hindu and Mohammedan having to live together, but not eating together - €”sometimes fiercely rioting. 'This is one of the problems of India's future, and it is only the spread of education which will solve it.'