Hindu and Moslem

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24366, 19 September 1944, Page 4

Hindu and Moslem

Mr Gandhi and Mr Jinnah have ended their momentous talks on Indian unity without giving the slightest indication whether their country has moved nearer independence or away from it. If they project another meeting, they have yet to say so. All that is known is that, as a correspondent reported towards the end of last week, the talks ended “earlier than had been “expected”, and the participants had no statement to make. It may therefore be of some consequence that Mr Jinnah’s approach to the meeting did not, on the face of things, promise to ease the breaking of the deadlock. The way had been painstakingly prepared by the Hindu moderate, Mr Rajagopalachari, whose motives are generally conceded to be beyond reproach. To Mr Jinnah’s Moslem League, more than any other party, they should be least open to suspicion. For Mr Rajagopalachari was the only Congress leader to espouse the Moslem cause during the Cripps negotiations; and through insisting that the Congress should regard the Moslem League as an equal and admit as negotiable the Moslem demand for Pakistan, in the result, he lost his place in the Congress councils. Nevertheless, Mr Rajagopalachari continued in the next two years to try to close the Hindu-Mosletn rift. Two months age, when he devised a formula on which Mr Gandhi was prepared to negotiate with Mr Jinnah for a settlement of the communal issue, he won a notable advance. But in accepting Mr Gandhi’s invitation, Mr Jinnah seemed to go out of his way to discourage hopes of further progress. The formula approved by Mr Gandhi requires the Moslem League to endorse the. Indian demand for independence and join the Congress in forming a provisional Government. It also proposes, first, a postI war commission to demarcate dis-

tricts in north-west and east India where the Modems are in an absolute majority, and, second, plebiscites in these areas to determine the Pakistan-Hihdustan issue. Here at least was a starting point, so long lacking,’for amicable discussion and compromise. Mr Jinnah appeared, however, to have little modified his intransigence. Though he accepted Mr Gandhi’s invitation, he rejected the formula as offering “ the shadow and husk of a maimed, “mutilated, and moth-eaten Pakis- “ tan ’’. Mr Gandhi and by implication Mr Rajagopalachari were “trying to pass as having met our “ Pakistan scheme ”. Mr Jinnah’s tone contrasted sharply with Mr Gandhi's. Mr Jinnah read Mr Gandhi’s letter and his own reply when he addressed the council of the Moslem League at the end of July. Mr Gandhi wrote in the mother tongue of the Bombay Province, from which both he and Mr Jihnah come. “Do not,” wrote Mr Gandhi, “regard.me as an enemy “ of Islam or of the Moslems of this “ country. I am the friend and ser“vant of not only yourself, but of “the whole wftrld. Do not disappoint me”. Mr Jinnah replied in English, He would be “ glad to receive” Mr Gandhi, a phrase he read, as a British correspondent put it, “ with undisguised sarcasm ”. The plebiscite proposal Mr Jihnah described as “ridiculous”. Although the Hindu press expressed anger, at Mr Jinnah’s “ insolent and high- “ handed ” references to Mr Gandhi and surprise at his “ unequivocal rejection" of the Rajagopalachari formula, few observers doubted that Mr Gandhi would meet Mr Jinnah. But the* Sydney Morning Herald’s” correspondent in India may be sup-, posed to have' fairly assessed the prospects of progress when he reported that “ardent well-wishers “ of. India are awaiting the result of “ the conference in rather subdued “fashion”. The significance of success or failure in the Gandhi-Jin-nah talks is measured in Lord Wavell’s speech to the Central Legislature last February: We are bound in justice, in honour, in the interests of .progress, to hand over India to Indian rule which can maintain the peace and order and progress which we have endeavoured to establish. . . . But until the two mam parties at least can come to terms, 1 do not see any immediate hope of progress. ' The problem so far is for Indians alone. The solution they evolve will then concern Britain as well. If it concedes Pakistan, India’s polity will become even more tremendously important. For India will then become two and perhaps three States—Hindustan, Pakistan, and the State of the Princes. Lord Wavell has hinted at the dangers of this “ Balkanisation ”, as it has been called. “ You cannot alter geography,” said the Viceroyi “From “the point of view of defence, or “relations with the outside world, “and of many internal and external economic problems, India is a “ natural unit.” But the Cripps proposals, which Britain has recently affirmed in their entirety, accept.the principle of Pakistan. That is why a group of influential Indians, among them members of the Viceroy’s Council, this month issued a statement urging a compromise solution which rejects Pakistan. Above all, they implied, Indian unity is the condition of Indian greatness; for Indian unity, they said, alone can make her voice effective and respected among the nations of the world and keep her free from danger of foreign domination. ,