ADVANCE OF INDIA

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 142, 12 March 1937, Page 11

ADVANCE OF INDIA

Minister on Election Results

CONSTITUTIONAL GOAL

Peaceful Evolution Better Than Revolution

I Britisli Official Wireless.) Rugby, Marcli 10. The Lord Privy Seal, Viscount Halifax, in a speech from the chair at a meeting of tlie East India Association, said that tlie success of the Congress Party in tlie provincial elections just completed in India was an augury for the development of political institutions iu that country.

On April 1, said Lord Halifax, India, marching along Hie parallel roads of democracy and self-government, would make a great advance toward the constitutional goal that lay before her. Less than a generation ago the gradual spread of democracy throughout the civilised world seemed as natural and inevitable as it seemed right. Tlie state of much of the world today appeared to suggest that the tide bad turned, and there wel'e those who asked why India should at such a moment lie made the field of a farreaching experiment in this dubious dogma of democracy, but neither In England nor in India was faith in democracy on tlie wane. Regulating the Advance.

Englishmen aud Indians had long bent themselves to the problem of regulating the coming advance to India’s needs and manifold conditions, and he believed with all his heart that success had been theirs.

Referring to the tempering of the influence of responsibility, he said that in the new provincial legislatures re-' sponsibility would have full scope for its salutary influence. Parties that lacked a practical and constructive programme aud did not act in a spirit of responsibility would speedily be exposed as having failed in their duty toward those who supported them, and would assuredly be so judged. The problems that -would confront Ministers were many and pressing, but fortunately there was an increasing awareness in India of what was needed to be done aud an increasing determination to get it done.

Indispensable Role.

A few weeks ago an electorate of over 30,000,000 went to the poll in huge numbers, and in as orderly a fashion as in countries where political advancement was universally recognised. Some might see in the success of the Congress Party at the polls an ominous fulfilment of their forebodings. He rather saw in this success of the largest organised party in India an augury for the development of political institutions in the country. For in all true democracies the opposition party or liarties in the legislature played an important, indeed, an indispensable, role in the working of the representative system.

Tlie present, changes, Lord Halifax proceeded, were a prelude to a measure of Federal self-government at the centre. The change was probably greater than had ever occurred as a single stage of development in the peaceful evolution of any country. Evolution, not revolution, was the sovereign rule of the British Commonwealth of Nations and the secret of its vitality.