Progress in India

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22415, 31 May 1938, Page 8

Progress in India

Lord Zetland’s review of the working of the India Act of 1935 is evidence that a difficult and dangerous political experiment, launched at a most unpropitious moment in history, had had a greater initial success than seemed possible a year ago. In April, 1937, it will be recalled, the sections of the act providing for autonomous parliamentary government in the provinces of British India became effective. In the elections to the provincial legislatures, held at the end of March, the Indian National Congress, which had pledged itself to work for the abrogation of the India Act and had been in some doubt ag to whether it should put forward candidates, won impressive victories in a> majority of the provinces. It then became a question, on which Congress was fairly evenly divided, whether Congress Ministries should be formed in those provinces where Congress had a clear majority in the legislatures. The Congress leaders believed, pr professed to believe, that the freedom of the provincial minis-

tries was not adequately guaranteed and attempted to induce the provincial governors to pledge themselves not to use the reserve powers conferred upon them by the act. It was, of course, impossible for the governors to pled:: - ; themselves to act otherwise than in conformity with the act; but the deadlock was finally resolved by a statement by the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, in which he placed the narrowest possible interpretation on the clauses defining the powers of governors. The sincerity of Lord Linlithgo-v’s assurances seems to have been demonstrated by events; in Bombay at any rate an active and at times aggressive Congress Ministry has been left completely free to shape its own policy in internal administration. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to regard provincial autonomy as demonstrably workable. The task of the British Government is now to bring into operation the sections of the act providing for an All-India federation, or, in the words of Lord Zetland, “to bring beneath the dome of a single poli- “ tical edifice the new democracies of British “ India and the ancient autocracies of the In- “ dian states.” The metaphor emphasises what is the most novel and hazardous feature of the experiment. Never before has it been attempted to bring within a federal system two widely dissimilar classes of political units. The Indian National Congress, for its part, has made no secret of its belief that the inclusion of the states means the subservience of the democratic idea to autocracy and conservatism. And in the last year or so opposition to the federal scheme in British India has grown rather than diminished. Lord Zetland’s speech shows that he is fully conscious of the difficulties; and, greatly daring, he has given a plain hint to the Princes that the solution must lie in the development of representative government in the states. Progress in this direction is at least a possibility, since some of the Princes, adroitly encouraged by the India Office, are already dabbling in liberal ideas. Lord Zetland’s proposal that the Princes should voluntarily adopt the elective principle in choosing their representatives on the central legislature suggests a compromise which may well be the means of bridging the gap between! Congress and the states. In the meantime, it is a matter for satisfaction, and even wonderment, that democratic government, so generally in eclipse, is making steady headway in a country to which it is apparently so ill-adapted.