The Press FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1942. Gripps to India

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23586, 13 March 1942, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1942. Gripps to India

Mr Churchill’s statement on India is probably one of the most difficult he has had to make since he became Prime Minister. Seven years ago he came close to expulsion from the Conservative Party for opposing the Government’s India Bill with all his considerable resources of eloquence and determination. Now, by a curious irony, he heads a Government which has already promised India a far greater measure of political independence than was contemplated in the India Act and is prepared to go even beyond those promises. Wisely, Mr Churchill has decided against making public immediately the terms of the War Cabinet’s scheme. Secrecy will avert ,a precipitate declaration by the Congress or the Moslem League which might condemn the scheme to failure; it will also leave Sir Stafford Cripps a very necessary freedom in his discussions with Indian political leaders. It must be hoped, and can perhaps be assumed, that the scheme is not a hard-and-fast set of proposals which India will be invited to accept or reject. But although Mr Churchill has given no inkling of the nature of the scheme, he has defined with care and precision the limits within which it will operate; and unfortunately it is too much to hope that Indian political organisations will accept those limits. The scheme does not, it would seem, supplant the declaration made by Mr Amery and the Viceroy in August, 1940, the core of which was an undertaking that after the war, “ with the least possible delay,” a representative body of Indians should be allowed to,frame a constitution under which India would enjoy full Dominion status. The War Cabinet is now seeking “to “ clothe these general declarations “ with precision ” and to convince all classes, races, and creeds in India of the British Government’s good faith. Like the declaration of 1940, the new proposals are “ subject to “ the fulfilment of our obligations “for the protection of the xninori“ties,' including the depressed “ classes, and all our treaty obliga- “ tions to the Indian States and the “ settlement of certain , matters “ arising out of our long association “ with the fortunes of the Indian “sub-continent.” The first reservation is unexceptionable in view of Mr Churchill’s assurance that minorities will be allowed to “ im- “ pose an indefinite veto on the “ wishes of the majority.” The second reservation raises a difficult problem. But for their treaty status, the States and their Princes would long ago have disappeared—lamented by few. Must these little islands of reaction be maintained indefinitely because in the remote past their rulers made advantageous bargains with Britain? The third reservation may mean much or little; if it refers only to Britain’s defence obligations in India it is not likely to cause trouble at this time. But the passage in Mr Churchill’s speech which will do more than any other to prejudice the scheme in the eyes of the Indian National Congress is that in which he refers to the goal of Indian constitutional progress as “Dominion status.” Pandit Nehru, who is now in effect the leader of the Congress and India’s most important political figure, summarised his objection to the 1940 declaration in the statement that Dominion status is “ as dead as “a door nail.” Apologists for the 1940 declaration have pointed out that the term has no precise meaning and may not be incompatible with full political independence. If that is so, it is one more reason for keeping the term out of discussions on India’s political future. It seems tragic to reach a deadlock over a concept which is in any case ambiguous.