The Press MONDAY, MARCH 10, 1947. India

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25129, 10 March 1947, Page 6

The Press MONDAY, MARCH 10, 1947. India

For the first time in nearly seven years a debate in the House of Commons on India went to a division on Friday, when the Opposition dissociated itself from the Government’s policy, as Mr Attlee had defined it on February 20. Till then, of course, agreement on India had been the basis of Britain’s policy. [ If was the foundation of the Cripps mission of 1942 and of the British Cabinet mission of last year. Mr Attlee’s statement, for the first time, promised the Indians full selfgovernment whether the communities reach an agreement or not; and to this extent the Opposition’s refusal to associate itself with the Government was unanswerably sound. But the distinction Mr Churchill drew between present and past policy was clear only so far. He took a dubious stand when, having recalled that the Cripps mission offered India Dominion status, he suggested that Mr Attlee had removed another of the bases on which the coalition Government established its policy. In 1940 the Government promised that India “ should attain Dominion status *as “soon as possible after the war”; and the draft plan carried by Sir Stafford Cripps opened with a declaration of its object—“ the creation ‘‘ of a new Indian union which shall “ constitute a Dominion, associated “with the United Kingdom and the “other- Dominions by a common “ allegiance to the Crown but equal “to them in every respect, in no “ way subordinate in any aspect of ‘ its domestic or external affairs But the right to secede was admitted, not only by Sir Stafford Cripps at the time, but by Mr Amery in June, 1945. Moreover, in March of last year, Mr R. A. Butler, speaking for the Opposition, pointed out that there had never been any question, of limiting Indian independence to self-governing membership within the British Commonwealth. Again, it is difficult to accept Mr Churchill’s conclusion that the Government has abandoned all responsibility for carrying out its pledges to minorities or fulfilling the treaties with the Indian States. Mr Attlee’s statement does not commit the Government to transfer power into Hindu but allows it to determine whether power shall be handed over “as a whole to some “form of central Government for “British India, or in some areas to “ the existing provincial Govern- “ ments, or in such other way as “may seem most reasonable and in “ the best interests of the Indian “people”. But whatever the force of Mr Churchill’s objections to the new policy, it will have been noted that the Opposition could not propound a better one. Three months ago Mr Churchill could see three choices before Britain:

The first is to proceed with ruthless logic to quit India regardless of what may happen there. This we can certainly do. Nothing can prevent us, if it be the will of Parliament, from gathering together our women anti children and unarmed civilians, and marching, under .strong rearguards, to the ■ sea. That -is one choice. The second is to assert the principle, so often proclaimed, that the King needs no unwilling’ subjects and that the British Commonwealth contemplates no compulsory partnership; and that, in default of real agreement, a partition of India between the two different races and religions, widely differing entities, must be faced. ... It follows from this second alternative that anarchy and massacre must be prevented, and that, failing a measure of agreement not now in sight, an impartial administration responsible to Parliament shall be set up to maintain the fundamental guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the hundreds of millions of humble folk who now stand in jeopardy, bewilderment, and fear. Whether that can be achieved or not by any apparatus of British controlled government that we can form from our dissipated resources is again a matter upon which it is now impossible to form a final judgment. It is easier to-day to hazard that final judgment. It is accordingly not surprising that Mr Churchill can propose nothing better than that a solution might oe found in the stress and divisions of the United Nations.