SETTLEMENT IN INDIA

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23541, 20 January 1942, Page 6

SETTLEMENT IN INDIA

♦ CONGRESS LEADERS CRITICISED SIR VICTOR SASSOON’S PROPOSAL (Received January 19, 7 p.m.) BOMBAY, January 18. Sir Victor Sassoon has made a new suggestion for a temporary settlement in India. He said that the Secretary of State for India should, for the duration of the war, hand over all powers to the Viceroy, who should declare a state of national emergency, cut away all red tape, and rule India as a temporary dictator. “In spite of their professions of devotion for India, some of the leaders of the Congress Party appear to hate England so much that they are prepared quite light-heartedly to abandon their fellow countrymen to the tender mercies of the Japanese in the name of non-violence,’' he said. “To hand over the government of India to them could only lead to a repetition of what has occurred in Thailand. “I have no objection even to an allIndia Cabinet, provided it was understood that its members would be ruthlessly scrapped if they failed in their allotted task.” [Sir Victor Sassoon is chairman of E. D. Sassoon Banking Company, Ltd. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College. Cambridge, he has twice been a member of the Indian Legislative Assembly. from 1922 to 1923, and 1926 to 1929. In 1929 he was a member of the Royal Commission which investigated labour conditions in India.] Mr Gandhi’s English weekly newspaper, “Harijan,” has reappeared after many months’ voluntary suspension. Mr Gandhi says it will deal with problems facing the people daily, “I am not an enemy of Britain,” he writes. “My resistance to the war docs not carry me to the point of thwarting those who participate in it. I put before them the better way, and leave them to make their choice.” SUCCESSOR TO MR AMERY SIR STAFFORD CRIPPS SUGGESTED LONDON. January 18. Political circles in New Delhi forecast a change at the India Office. Sir Stafford Cripps, the former Ambassador to Russia, is mentioned as a successor to Mr L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for India.