India

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24960, 22 August 1946, Page 4

India

Calcutta is said to be returning to normal after the three days of rioting, by Hindus and Moslems, which began on the day fixed by the Moslem League for what it called “ direct action ” against the British constitutional proposals for India. In New Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, and other Indian cities, “ direct action ” day passed quietly. In Calcutta, however, where Hindu-Moslem tension is never far from breaking-point—the city and its province, both the most populous in India, are only narrowly Moslem, with all that that has meant in rivalry and frustration—the outcome was appalling. The Calcutta “ Statesman ” has estimated the death roll at 2000 to 3000, with many thousands more injured; and the “ Hindustan Stan- “ dard ” has put the material damage at £4,000,000. The decision to institute “ direct action ” was taken, it will be recalled, by the Moslem League’s council three weeks ago, after it had resolved, unanimously, to withdraw its acceptance of the short-term and long-term proposals submitted by the British Cabinet mission, and after Mr Jinnah had begun to talk again of his “ determination ” to “ insist ” on the setting up of a separate Moslem State. It then seemed that the old, familiar paralysis was again about to spread over the Indian scene. But they have not been weeks of political stagnation. On the long-term proposals, which set out a basis on which the Indian parties might construct a constitution, the league and Congress had been agreed. Congress, however, had found the scheme for an interim Government unacceptable. In the weeks since the league decided to go its own way, to “direct action”, the Viceroy has not relaxed his efforts to bring league and Congress into an interim Government. Though he has not succeeded, it would be too much to say, baldly and finally, that he has failed. For in a situation that calls urgently for almost any kind of a popular government, it is not failure to have persuaded Pandit Nehru to accept responsibility for forming an administration. Again, Pandit Nehru, though he does not seem to have been required to secure the league’s cooperation, has sought to win it; and that fact is even less consistent with failure. It is not long since Congress claimed to be the allrepresentative Indian party, and, as Mr Rajagopalachari can testify, not long since it was heresy to suggest

that the league, could not be excluded from India’s governance. Though Congress has since been moved to parley with the league, it has never admitted that its old claim was excessive. It must have I been sorely tempted by Mr Jinnah’s strictures—his recent words, for instance, about “ caste Hindu domina- j “ tion ” and the “ contemptuous ” treatment of the league by Congress—to advance alone to power, and, when Pandit Nehru had invited the league to co-operate in forming an interim Government, it would not have been surprising if Congress, in reaction to Mr Jinnah’s immediate call for the day of “ direct action ”, had declared its resolve to go. on in rigid independence. It is something, too, that Mr Jinnah was willing at least to discuss terms for co-operation. These are small factors, perhaps, to set against the swift collapse of the Nehru-Jinnah talks. Nevertheless, they seem to indicate that common sense and goodwill did not disappear entirely from the Indian scene with the departure of the British mission. They are essential qualities. Pandit Nehru is expected at any time to complete an interim Government without league representatives. Whatever its omissions it cannot fail to be a better Government than the present caretaker Administration, which commands neither Moslem nor Hindu loyalty. But unless wisdom and compromise mould it into a fully representative instrument, there will inevitably be bloodier days, not only in Calcutta, than the three just ended.