INDIAN REFORMS

Evening Star, Issue 21960, 21 February 1935, Page 9

INDIAN REFORMS

BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S BILL ANOTHER AMENDMENT DEFEATED (British Official Wireless.) Pre»* Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. RUGBY, February 20. (Received February 21, at noon.) An amendment to establish an advisory council, to be styled the Council of Greater India, in substitution for the Federal proposals in the India Bill was rejected by 308 votes to 50 during the committee stage of the debate in the House of Commons. Sir Samuel Hoare said that supporters of the amendment based their views on the very tentative and temporary recommendations of the Statutory Commission. The whole essence of the recommendation in the report to the joint select committee was that over as wide a 'field as was safe more responsibility should be given in the provinces and in the centre. His own view since the time the princes made their offer to come into the federation was that it would be the greatest possible mistake to return to the earlier proposal, which was made by the statutory commission only on the assumption that the princes were unlikely to enter the federation for a considerable time. He felt confident that the princes would on no account co-operate with a body of this kind. When they made their offer four years ago they said quite definitely that they were prepared to participate in a central Government only if it was the responsible Government. _ He was convinced that one of the main reasons prompting the princes was the need they felt for a voice in effective control in policy, particularly questions of customs. A great many people had at first taken the view that the safer course was to make an advance in the provinces without making a simultaneous advance at the centre. On further consideration many of them had been driven inevitably to the view that that was really the more foolish and dangerous course, because to ignore the feeling in the States and in British India that without action at the centre the Indian States would still remain inferior in the eyes of the world, would be to run the risk of making a provincial experiment in the worst possible atmosphere. The first reason that had driven the Government along the road for including in the Bill a chapter dealing with federation _ was the almost unanimous feeling in political India; secondly, thev had been gravely impressed with the danger of starting those great autonomous provinces in the absence of a federal link, and with the body of popular feeling behind it without" responsibility at the centre_ there would'be a danger of India breaking up into frgaments; thirdly, the princes would be put in an extremely dangerous position if the great provincial autonomous Governments were to grow up with popular support and the centre remained in its present unreformed position. _