"THE FUTURE OF INDIA

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 134, 4 December 1930, Page 14

"THE FUTURE OF INDIA

(To the Editor.) Sir, —It' the interest of the Motherland in the Round Table Conference is less than you could wish, the reason is that the majority,- the very great majority of English men and women do not understand the issues. Wherever speakers, Indian and English both/have set these issues clearly and succintly before provincial audiences in Britain, they have been met with sympathy for Indian aspirations. Yon speak. Sir, of these aspirations as impossibe demands, and call the patriots who give utterance to .'them agitators, accusing them to boot of Enrage hatred against British rule1. There is no savage hatred, but there is deep distrust, distrust the student cannot but acknowledge to be only too well founded. It is not easy for us free New Zealandcrs to imagine ourc-clvos members of a subject nation, yet, lacking the Capacity to do so, we are automatically barred out from the Indian point of view. Ninetyseven years aj?o equality as between white and brown (though by no means all ouv Indian fellow-citizens are "coloured") was promulgated as our policy; twenty-five years' later, in Victoria the Good's great proclamation, that entirely just, entirely English policy was specifically restated; but never from that day to this has that equality, whether between individuals or peoples, been- acknowledged. You, Sir, make pretty play with the ultra-modern phrase, "inferiority complex," and would have us think, apparently, that the sense of being members o£ a subject nation is not justified. -As a matter of fact, the Indian is made to feel himself regarded as inferior to his conquerors at every turnthere is evidence enough of that! Macaulay s warning as to our becoming a White Brah-min-caste has proved prophetic, the term "Brahmin" being-used as he intended, to indicate insufferable pride of class, ineffable "contempt for all below. On the railways, in Government offices, in the very conduct of the police in public thoroughfares, the thing is manifest to any seeuig "'"■ You say. Sir, that our British rule has given the country the best government it ever had; tlfat is the view of such as know no more of'lndia's history than is afforded by their schoolbooks, who think that Indian .history, its beginnings really lost m the night of time, but some of it undoubtedly recorded by Megisthenes, began with Olive; it surely is not yours. India had many great and powerful rulers m the elder days—Asoka, Akbar, Chandrsgupta, Snmudragupts, Harslia, to name a few of them; and under them knew peace, prosperity and -wealth, untold while art and .science flourished, and philosophy, and literature in prose, in poetry, in drama. Her conquerors of old time came to stay, identified themselves with India and its people, melted and merged into her life even as Norman William into England s long ago. We have not done so; we have exploited India, and to-day under our rule the nation that was once the wealthiest in the world is the most pitiably poor. Can any sober csimate of things call the administrative system that had that result good government? • You speak, Sir, of the -work England has done for India; I wonder what.you have in mind. The work that we have done in India has been chiefly for our selves; we have thrust on India our English ways; we have taken for granted that what was good for us was necessarily good for Indians; nay,more, we have taken for granted that we knew better than India's* people what was good for them. One has but to study the records and the Resolutions o£ the Congress to see as much beyond all possibility of doubt. The idea of Congress was mooted and discussed in the house, of a well-known reformer in Madras in the end of 1884, the year in which I, then a young man, and as it happened, living in your city, first found touch with some of the great sons and daughters of men, some English and some Indian, who loved and laboured for that distressful land, From 18S5 till now the unofficial parliament of India has met year after year, debated questions of the vitallest importance, crystallised the general view of them into Resolutions, and presented them to those in power, onlyl to have them, with exceptions one may count upon the fingers of one's hands, ignored; you will, I am sure, recall the phrase of a .certain unbeldved Viceroy who spoke of those presented in his time as "solemn nonsense."' The other day, as you have seen, no doubt, the severance of Burma from 'the Indian administration was recommended by the Statutory Commission; a little later, in the Government of India's dispatch, it was suggested .that the views of Indians might be ascertained. Turn up the Congress records, Sir, and you will see that at the very earliest gathering of the nation's seal representatives—for Congress represents all castes, all classes, all-occu-pations, and all faiths, and has' ■ numbered in its membership not only Indians- but English men and women, some bearing well-known names—the annexation of Burma was made a subject of National protest. To one who has turned the pages of the Congress records, read sample speeches, and noted not alone the oratorical capacity of members, but their deep knowledge Of affairs, the cry one

hears from time to time that Indians are incompetent to rule their country becomes fantastic and absurd. There is no Parliament in the world that might not envy the record of the Indian National Congress from.'lßßs till now. And let me add in passing that that other cry that only our control prevents Hindus and Muslims from internecine strife becomes to one who has observed life in the native States, life in the villages of British India, just as fantastic and absurd; becomes even a little shame-fraught, since it is largely -to the system of communal electorates, devised by some who held the bald old adage divide et imperaas the last word of wis dom —to our playing off of one religious body against another—that the occasional clashes in the larger centres, made much of in the cables, but a mere bagatelle among a population of three hundred and twenty millions, are in fact due. The Princes have no neeil to fear Responsible Government in British India, and many of them know it; there was little in the findings of .the-Butler Commission to please them, and not a little which gave profound dissatisfaction, which found vent, as you know, Sir, in the speeches made at the last, meeting of the Chamber of Princes. I may, with your permission, return to this point at another time. 1 would add but two further comments here; first, though you make humorous reference to Mr. Jinnah's westernisation, is it not to be expected that the more completely any Indian is imbued with the ideals of liberty England sets forth, and in her own-domain, at home, endeavours to make actual whatever _ she may dc abroad, the more determinedly and ardently will he strive to actualise, those wonderful ideals in his native land? Secondly, though you speak of the mischief wrought by the Viceroy's statements about Dominion status, there are many close students of the Indian situation who hold that the Viceroy, knowing well the danger of delay, having his linger 'on the Indian national pulse, knowing too the infention of the- Labour Party to implement at last the century old pledges of their land when once in office,.spoke without mental reservation,' meant precisely what he'said and what the Indian leaders thought; and that. but for the foolishness displayed in the debate on India in the House of Commons, his statement would have satisfied Mahatma Gandhi and the Nehrus, and "civil disobedience" would have been let lie until the failure of the Conference, were that the outcome of the great experiment, should justify it in their eyes.—l am, etc., D. W. M. BURN", President New Zealand and India v League. -Dunedin, 23rd November. |