INDIA AND DOMINION STATUS

Evening Post, Issue 26, 31 January 1935, Page 8

INDIA AND DOMINION STATUS

(To the Editor.) - ' , Sir,—Much has been written about India,, but' little appears in British papers about the1 Indian point of view. Mr. EamßayvMacDonald has been confronted with almost insurmountable difficulties in Ma endeavour to <bring Home Bulo for India into practical politics. How is it possible t.o satisfy the interests of tho British commercial class, the middle classes, who look to the Indian Civil Service for lucrative positions for their sons and give Indians the control of their own affairs? So some measure of self-government haß'been devised (for which India, fought along with the Allies) hedged round with hundreds of restrictions, - euphoniously called safeguards, they are almost solely safeguards of British interests. Yet neither in tho White Paper nor in the report of the Joint Select Committee is any mention made of Dominion status for India. In the "Manchester Guardian" Major D. Graham Polo points but how previously Winston Churchill when Secretary of State in 1921 had spoken of Dominion Status for India. Others who have done so are Mr. Baldwin, Lord Irwin, and Lord Wjllingdon. Then in tho instrument of instructions from H.M. tho King Emperor to tho Governor-General of India, dated 15/3/21 aro these words: —•

"For above all things it is our will and pleasure that tho plans laid by our-Parliament . . . may come to fruition-to-tho cml that British India may attain its due place among the 'Dominions." JVIr. Churchill may have;'been defeated at the Conservative. Conference; but does it not look like an^ultimate. victory? What is.the value of ' all the, promises made to ludiaf The late Lord Lytton as long ago' as > May 3, 1878, wrote to the Secretary of State: "I do not hesitate to say that both the Governments of England and of India appear to me, up to the present moment; linable to answer satisfactorily the charge of having taken. _ every means in, their power of. breaking to the 'heart the words jof promise they had uttered to the ear." The good intentions of Britain few it us question, yet there is a danger of making a more serious problem of India than that of Ireland.—l am, etc., JOHN GRIFFITHS, lion. Sec, N.Z. and India League.