COMMUNITIES IN INDIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 28, 1 August 1942, Page 6

COMMUNITIES IN INDIA

PLEA FOR EQUITY FOR

ALL

RUGBY, July 31.

Equity to all communities in India, including the Europeans, who are ihv portant to India herself, must be on the basis of self-government, said Lord Craigmyle in the House of Lords today in a debate on India. Apart from the Europeans in the Services, there were 20.000 who were working in India, and they must be considered in the negotiations, he added.

Lord Catto also said that the Britons in India were entitled to the same rights as the Indians, as British subjects, would have in Britain. . Few Indians who understood the economics of India would deny the importance of European capital in India. Lord Hailey said that if India had a complaint it would be that Britain ha 4 delayed too long in granting a system of protection under which her industries could be. developed.

Lord • Hardinge : said that for any Government ..to, admit the claim that was made for. complete independence of India would be.a betrayal of Britain, which had been associated with India for more than 200 years, and also the Indians who relied on and trusted the British. .

Lord Wedgwood said that safeguards for the Europeans in. India would be found in a federal union embracing India, Britain, and the United States

The Duke of Devonshire, replying to the debate, said that both Britain and India would suffer if_ there was a diminution of. the flow of trade, It was impossible to make an. offer of complete self-government an,d to exact guarantees for specific interests. They had passed from the conception of tutelage to one of a free and willing partnership, and; the matters in dispute would have to be settled by discussions as between equal partners. Referring to the co-operation that had existed in the past between: the British and the Indians^ the Duke of Devonshire said there was no reason to suopose that that would cease to exist." He also referred to the way in which Indian-troops had served the Empire, and said he believed the new relationship with India would survive the tests to which it had been subjected. ■'