DOMINION STATUS

Evening Post, Issue 36, 12 February 1935, Page 9

DOMINION STATUS

WITHIff THE EMPIEE ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S VIEW [ (British Official Wireless.) 1 (Received February 12, 1 p.m.) RUGBY, February 11. The Attorney-General. (Sir Thomas Inskip) during the fourth day's House of Commons debate on the second reading of the Government of India Bill, dealt in particular with the prob- i lem of the depressed classes, the inclusion of law and order- within the sphere of action of Ministers, and the question of Dominion Status. The depressed classes and masses of India, he said, had everything to gain I by the Bill and- nothing was more1 likely to quicken the pace of internal reforms, for which Britain's great ad-i ministrators and engineers had paved the way, than the fact of bearing great responsibility.. Those who said they would agree to Provincial auto-1 nomy, if law and order were not transferred, were clutching at a straw ' Divorce between political power on the I one hand and authority in the sphere of public order on the other hand would be certain to end in the col-1 lapse of one or the other.. ! CONSIDERED JUDGMENT. [ Referring to Dominion Status, Sir Thomas said that the Secretary for India's declaration last Wednesday had not merely the assent of the Government, but expressed their considered judgment. To put that declaration in the Bill, however, would be interpreting an interpretation—more likely to darken counsel than to elucidate words already used. Sir. Samuel Hoare's statement was intended to have precisely the same importance and to be treated with the same respect as if the Government had been able to put it into the preamble. It would be extremely difficult to frame suitable language for a formal statement of preamble. The Statute of Westminster did not mention, still less define, Dominion Status and did not alter it at all. That India should at some time have the same rights as the Dominions he most certainly affirmed, but it was obvious that India from her size, condition, and strategic position would have more difficult problems presented to her than were ever presented to the Governments of other Dominions. PURELY ACADEMIC. He regretted that the purely academic question of the right to secede from the Empire had been raised. All pledges to India were pledges relating to its future development in the words of the 1919 preamble "As an integral part of the Empire." It was so stated in the Irwin Declaration. It would apply to the Irwin Declaration, even if it were not stated, because that declaration was solely put forward as an interpretation of the preamble. Quite .obviously none of the pledges included the promise of status outside the British Empire, ncr was the Constitution intended to be used to take India out of the Empire. TAKING RISKS. They were told they were taking great risks in this Bill; but was there ever a time when the British nation was not taking risks. The whole Empire was one, long history of risks wisely taken. The Government felt that this question had been so long pondered, so widely discussed by men of good will and of experience, that they might go forward in the hope that their intentions would be accepted for what they' were worth, and that India might after this great debate realise that the people of Britain were prepared now to lend all their efforts to;enable the peoples of India to attain what he had taught them to desirefull stature of manhood within the British Commonwealth. MR. CHURCHILL'S FEARS. Later speakers included Mr. Winston Churchill, who prefaced his criticism of the Bill, by referring to the Dominion Status Declaration as a grave new fact. He-admitted that he himself had loosely-and unwisely used the phrase immediately after the war, but later it was felt in many quarters in politics that such a vague and indefinite phrase ought not to play its part in a revision of the Indian constitution. He claimed that they were entitled to a clarification of Sir Thomas Inskip's statement. The debate is proceeding. , {