THE INDIAN CONFERENCE.

Evening Star, Issue 20671, 19 December 1930, Page 8

THE INDIAN CONFERENCE.

Alr, conferences on an international scale have thoir periods when oven the smallest progress seems hopeless. Generally tho bad moment passes; something is snatched from despair to give at least an appearance of success to discussions which would have been better never commenced if nothing except failure was to result from them. The Indian Conference deals with problems more iminensc, more complicated, involving a greater total of human beings with more and deeper differences among themselves, than any convention of its kind, possibly, that has been held before. It was not very hopeful from the start, and now its bad hour is upon it. A Hindu delegate points out that, despite nearly a. month’s discussions, not one single decision of importance affecting British India lias been arrived at. Pessimism, lie admits, has-settled down on the conference, owing to the impossibility, as it seems, of settling HiuduMoslem communal differences, Mr

Ramsay MacDonald lias been holding private confabulations with the leaders of each of these parties in turn, reasoning, persuading, mg, bringing all his arts of conciliation to bear so that some sort of agreement may bo achieved. His task might bo easier if ho had only them to deal with, but the delegates arc on the end of a. string. As soon as they would make concessions to one another's positions they arc brought to order by summary commands from intransigent bodies in India, whom ho is unable to influence, demanding impossibilities. The fear has grown lest the ’ separation of Burma may prove the only constructive work of the conference.

That would be failure absolute. The separation of Burma never has been more than a side issue of this problem. No conference was required to effect it, because no opposition to it has been revealed in India or Burma or Britain. A week or less may make a different outlook for tho general deliberations, but it was inevitable that Hindu-Mos-lem differences would make one of tho greatest difficulties. “ Dispersed among tho 216 millions of Hindus of India,” tho Simon Report pointed out, “ are nearly 70 million representatives of a widely different typo of culture, not originally or exclusively Indian, but spread throughout India as a consequence of a series of invasions from tho north and west which have taken place within historical times. Tho splendid monuments of Mogul architecture stand as a perpetual reminder of the vanished domination of Mohammedan rule. Yet during the centuries, when tho material power of Islam was at its highest in India, it was quito unable to crush the enduring influences of Hinduism. When British authority began to extend over the Indian continent it could, as a neutral, set up and endeavour to apply a canon of tolerance, but it could not alter tho essential facts of Hindu-Moslem differences.” Tho antagonism between the two communities is not limited to religion, though it is constantly intensified by religion. Differences of race, a different system of Jaw, and the absence of intermarriage have all to he contended with. It is a basic opposition manifesting itself at every turn in social custom and economic competition, as well as in mutual religious antipathy. If the Mohammedans were confined to special districts tho problem would be less acute, but they are not. In Bengal and the Punjab they form a majority of the population; in all tho other provinces they are a minority. One of tho difficulties in adjusting representation in the provincial legislatures is to devise a scheme which takes duo account of Mohammedan predominance where that occurs, and at tho same time provides adequate representation whore Moslems are in a minority.

It is with less than complete success that tho British Raj has been able to keep the peace between these traditional enemies. In the iive years 1923 to 1927 approximately 450 lives were lost and 5,000 persons were injured in communal riots. In ten months, ending: in Juno, 1928, there were nineteen serious Hindu-Moham-medan riots, affecting every province except Madras. With the British Ha] withdrawn, it is easy to imagine what tho result would be. No departure seems to bo practicable from tho system of communal representation, under which Moslems form a separate electoral roll and choose their own members, while non-Mohammedan electors are grouped in distinct communities and elect their own representatives. The coming of tho reforms, it is observed in the Simon Report, and tbo anticipation of what may follow them, have given new point to HitiduMoslem competition. A great part of tho evidence given before us was on communal lines, and tbo same cleavago appears in, tbo reports of tho Indian committees that sab with us. Tbo one community naturally lays claim to the rights of a majority, and relies upon its qualifications of better education and greater wealth; the other is all the more determined on those accounts to secure effective protection for its members, 'and does not forget that it represents tho previous conquerors of tho country. It wishes to be assured of adequate representation and of a full share of official posts.” It seems impossible that tho contending peoples and sects of India should ever agree among themselves upon tho lines of a constitution upon which solf-rulo should bo established. It is only half a conference at which that request has been made to them, since the party which goes furthest in extremism, and which is not to-day the least powerful force in India, has preferred to boycott it. lb has been urged that the British Government would have done better if it bad given tbo conference a lead with some plan of its own, but what plan, after tbo scorn which was heaped on tbo Simon Commission’s Report, could it bo expected to follow? No one will envy Mr' MacDonald his wrestlings with this conference.