Should India have Home Rule?

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 34, 3 November 1928, Page 17

Should India have Home Rule?

The Simon Commission has returned to India, not only to take evidence, but to consult with various bodies and councils in order that they may make their report as to the future Government of India. Mr. J. A. Spender, in the “ Daily News,” explains the difficulties of the situation.

(C jr T is, I am sdre, a mistake to dismiss the decision of the Indian All- | Parties’ Conference to unite on a demand for ‘Dominion Status’ I ‘Dominion Home Rule ’as a mere gesture of defiance,” writes Mr. £ J. A. Spender, in the Daily News. | “ So far asi it goes, it represents a sincere attempt to pull back the extremists from the impracticable ground of ‘complete independence’ to an aim and object within the framework of the British Empire. We ourselves in recent-years have encouraged Indians to aspire to a status not unlike that of the other Dominions, and we cannot reasonably take offence if they tell us explicitly that this is their policy. “ And yet, in proportion as Indians study the British Commonwealth and compare India with the other Dominions, they will inevitably be driven to the conclusion that analogies from Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa can only be applied to their country with many and serious qualifications. ■' « Though they vary greatly in the size of their territories, all these Dominions have relatively small and homogeneous populations, whereas India is a continent inhabited by 320 millions of people, scattered through many States and nations, speaking many different languages, professing four or five different religions, and living at many different levels of education and culture. . » “If some all-wise Indian law-giver were given the task of framing a constitution for India, he would, I am sure, not dream of going to Canada or Australia for guidance. He would want Indian institutions to be much more Indian than any that could be borrowed from even the best British models, and he would see that the Indian problem was vastly more difficult and complicated than any that presents itself to the other Dominions. “He would, I think, compare India not with Australia or Canada, but with Europe, and begin by asking how he could avoid the repetition in India of the troubles that have afflicted Europe.. “With all its shortcomings and limitations, the British Government has at least helped the nations of India to become one people, saved them from the internecine wars and struggles which have afflicted Europe, and for a century or more kept the peace over almost the widest area in which it has been kept in that period of history. “ The Indian has come to take all this for granted, but the European who travels through India and remembers his own militarised and Customs-ridden continent can only think it an immeasurable boon. “ This has been achieved, and could only be. achieved, by a strong central Government, and what the Indian has to consider is whether he

could of his own resources provide that' central Government Europeans are unable to do it for. Europe; the Chinese have immense difficulty in doing it for China. ■ - - •

“It is, anyhow, an enormous proposition, and an Indian who looks out on the world, East or West, to-day and is confident that he knows how to do it for the 320 millions of India must have greater assurance than any other sort of man about his own capacity to govern. “ All the wisdom of East and West is against displacing any big Institution that works until there is something ready to take its place. The Indian, if he is like other men, will have all he can do for the present to move forward to full responsible self-government in his provinces, which are bigger than most Western nations; and he will only be able to do that if the framework of the central Government is firm and unchallenged. “At the best the problem of applying Western democratic institutions to Indian conditions must be very difficult. Only a very small proportion of the people are able to read and write; the great majority are divided into castes to whom the idea of democratic equality is utterly remote; sixty millions are regarded by most of their countrymen as outcasts; sixty millions belong to a religion which is in a chronic state of friction with the dominant religion. “ I mention these facts not to suggest that India .is incapable of self-government, or that the Indian is inferior as a human being to the Englishman, but merely to show how difficult it must be to make Western institutions fit the Indian way of life. “ It is largely our own fault if Indian politicians have got into the habit of thinking that they will solve their problems by borrowing from us, and it may seem an oddity that an Englishman should advise them to think more of India in Indian terms. But that is really one of the things most to be desired at the present moment. As applied to India, ‘Dominion status’ may be an intelligible ideal, but it affords little guidance for the organisation Of the government of .India. “The draft scheme which has just been issued is a very interesting and ingenious piece of work, but it assumes that a constitution on a Western democratic model will work for 320,000,000 people scattered over a vast area, the great majority of whom would take no part in it and have no effective knowledge of it. In India such a constitution would mean the rule of a small political class which in present circumstances would have great difficulty in making its writ run. Whatever the future may hold, the beginning must be with the Provincial Councils.”