India

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24868, 7 May 1946, Page 4

India

At Simla, there has begun the conference which will determine whether the British Cabinet mission will succeed in a task which its leader, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, has defined as that of reconciling the irreconcilable and solving the insoluble. It is not a task which confronts British statesmanship in India only. It has still tc be discharged in Palestine; and, unfortunately, the failure to reconcile Jew and Arab in Palestine makes it more difficult to bring together Hindu and Moslem in India. In that failure Mr Jinnah sees a stay for his cause. The recommendations of the Anglo-American committee of inquiry are, he has said, “ monstrous The Moslems of India will not take lying down “ this very gross betrayal ” of Britain’s promises to the Arabs; and, as a later message reported, the Moslem League has called on its followers to make Friday, “ Palestine Day ”, an occasion for protest meetings throughout India. The Arab League, which tenuously unites some 30,000,000 souls, all but a little over 1.000,000 of them tyloslems, is assured of at least moral support from India’s Moslems. Mr Jinnah may hope to save something by identifying, in a common religion, his cause with that of the Arab League. If Britain insists that a minority shall not be allowed to block India’s political advancement, Pakistan is lost. But if Mr Jinnah can encourage the Arab League to press its demands for Palestine, it might be that Britain, faced with the prospect of strife throughout the Middle East, or, even, involved in it, would baulk at imposing a settlement in India. More certainly, Mr Jinnah has failed to appreciate the strength of Britain’s resolve; and in underestimating it he confirms Congress

in its determination not to concede Pakistan, An independent, fully sovereign Moslem State covering the Punjab, Sind,*North-west Frontier, Kashmir, and'" Baluchistan would include the bulk of the fighting races of India. It would, also, control a frontier beyond which lies a continuous belt of Moslem countries reaching to the Mediterranean. The Pan-Arab movement of to-day differs from its precursor, Pan-Islamism; but every time Mr Jinnah associates his cause with Pan-Arabism he brings before Hindu eyes a picture of the mighty Arab empire that, for several centuries before the rise of the Ottoman Empire, stretched from the Iberian peninsula to the banks of the Indus and eastwards.