INDIA HOME RULE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 73, 27 March 1935, Page 11

INDIA HOME RULE

MB. CHUEOHIIiL'S

ATTACK

"MONUMENT OF SHAMS"

Mr. Winston .Churchill, M.P., in a broadcast speech on the India Bill recently, described it as "a monstrous monument of shams built by the pygmies", states the "Daily Mail." He said:

If our forbears had been cowed by heavy odds the British Empire would have stopped at Brighton beach. This India Home Rule plan strikes at the destiny of the British Empire.

The destiny of the British Empire will not be settled by mere numbers, by counting noses,by clever wirepulling, by adroit manoeuvre. It will be settled by the spirit of the British nation, by the march of world events, and by the faithful discharge of their duty by men and women spread through the land whose constant thought is for the future of our country and whose will power is unconquerable.

If you took a ballot on this Bill among the British electors who have lived in India, and gave them each one vote for every year they have lived there, the verdict would be. 20, 30, 40 to one against the policy which we are now told commands a preponderance of s expert Anglo-Indian opinion.

A hundred thousand Lancashire cotton operative's are .on the dole already; and if we lost India, if we had the same treatment from a Home Rule India as we have had from a Home. Rule Ireland, it wouldn't be ; 100,000, it would be more like 2,000,000 bread-winners in England who would be tramping the streets.

We have in this-island a population of forty-five millions living at a higher level than the people of any other European country. One-third of these would have to go down, out.or under, if we ceased to be a great Empire with world-wide connections and trade. That would be the fate,of the large population of Little England. Britain has done for India surely and firmly what we all hope the League of Nations will some day be able to do for Europe. Freed from war and famine the population .of. India has bounded up by 100,000,000 in the last 50 years.;

Future ages will regard it as incomprehensible that a handfiill of men less than half a dozen, but with their hands on the party, machine, could have twisted the whole mentality of the Conservative Party into its present abject mood.

What is this Home Rule Bill? It is a gigantic quilt of jumbled crochet work. There is no theme; there is no pattern; there is no agreement; there is no conviction; there is no simplicity; there is no courage. India is to be subjected to a double simultaneous convulsion in the Provinces and at the Centre by a crazy attempt to create a federal system, before the units which compose it have even been formed. The wall

before the bricks are made; the faggot before the stakes are cut The faithful, trustworthy Indian police the mainstay of peace and order, are to be disturbed and. harassed by divided allegiances arising from unsure.irrational compromise. The supreme government of India is to be racked by ' dyarchy—rival authorities clutching at the levers of power. In a period of severe economic and financial stress India is to' be launched on another ten years of furious, costly, sterile political struggles fought out in the heart and brain of the Central Government, ■as well as in those of the Provincial Administration.

There are to be eleven Governors armed with-dictatorial powers if they dare to use them; that is to say eleven" potential kings of the seventeenth century type. There are to' be eleven actual parliaments on the twentieth century model.

And these two opposite forces are to begin a wearing struggle with one another which will plunge India into deepening confusion and will impose upon those helpless, millions.and hundredsof millions, living., as they, do already on the very margin of existence; a cruel -new burden, of,,taxation and rnisgovernment*. , ■ • 1 There is one'more question we must ask ourselves. The1 storm'fclouds, are gathering over the European scene. Our defences have < been negelected. Danger is in the air—yes, I-say in the air1. The' mighty discontented nations are reaching out with strong hands to regain what they have lost; nay, to gain a "predominance which they j have never had. I

Is this then the time to plunge our^, vast' dependency of India into the melting pot? Is this the time fatally to dishearten by such a- policy all those strong, clean forces at home up»c on which the strength and future of > Britain depend? I do not take so poor a view of, our ' moral rights. in India as is fashion-,, able nowadays. We are no alien Pow«' er in India, we are the latest of many conquerors, and we are the only con- • querors who have ever made the-, wellbeing of. the Indian masses their; supreme satisfaction. What is the chief shame of this, Indian Home Rule Bill? It is that we i finally withdraw our guardianship from this teeming myriad population of Indian toilers. 'We withdraw;our protection from their daily lives. W« withdraw it not merely as an experiment which can be brought to an end at any moment; but'as a solemn abdication and repudiation of duty. The Indian Liberals, have con* dem'ned this White Paper Home Rule. The Congress Party in India repudiate, it utterly, and will only use H as an invaluable weapon, for the overthrow of British.power. . , .*' ■ The Conservative / Party. \ hifre' at home loathe it, and' fear it-in-^hcir hearts. Well they may, for jt^U by their'votes that it can alons tie* carried and on their heads thaf.thelong reproach will lie. \ '".•{'- By this policy we abandon' ,«our mission in the East, the faithful- diicharge of which has been our greatest glory. By it we blacken the- <tc« ' of Britain with an indelible .'stain: and rend the life of '. India with", 'an. in[curable wound. -, - ~, i,!.,'*,-