The Evening Star SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1937. THE OUTLOOK FOR INDIA.

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 16

The Evening Star SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1937. THE OUTLOOK FOR INDIA.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, President of the Indian Congress Party, has been telling students that India is on the brink of revolution. The hope is presumably father to the thought. The word “ brink ” implies a revolution by violence. If that were not suggested there would, be small point in the statement, because a constitutional revolution in India, under British auspices, is now in progress, plain for all to see. A main value of British rule in India has been to protect it against tho fate of Abyssinia. Pandit Nehru apparently sighs for the fate of Spain —or of Russia, where a revolution is twenty years old and the executions still continue, the development of the last few years being that the revolutionaries are now killing one another. A revolution in India, with its mixed races, castes, and religions, would possess possibilities of frightfulness unmatched by any other country in the world. It is a strange aspiration to cherish, but there is no accounting for the ideas of fanatics. Pandit Nehru, nevertheless, may be wrong when he foresees strife and bloodshed for India. Present signs in that country admit of different readings, and this one is by no means incumbent.

The constitutional crisis which followed the success of the Congress Party in the elections ended in July. Pandit Nehru, who demanded that the Congress leaders should refuse to take office in the six provinces out of eleven where they controlled majorities, was forced to abandon that policy. Mr Gandhi, still powerful in his retirement, advised against it. Aspiring men were not so anxious to reject powers which they saw before them. The Viceroy convinced them that the powers would be real. Tho Congress Ministries were established, and the question then was whether they should use their positions for no other purpose than to wreck the Constitution under which they existed or attempt to get the best out of it for their countrymen. The second course was chosen, the Pandit preferring the first. There has been tranquillity in India since the new Constitution began to work. A, peaceful revolution had been effected by. which, for the first time in their history, a majority of tho provinces of India found them-’ selves under a national democratic Government in the modern sense, and Congress ceased to be His Majesty’s permanent Opposition. Important social policies have been pressed, with the co-operation of Governors. They will have their difficulties, but they are for the benefit of India. The design of smashing the Constitution which makes these things possible remains in the background. It may take first place at any moment, but men who are feeling their usefulness as constructive workers have less inclination to become wreckers. The powers of the central Government are still safeguarded, and it is not so easy to destroy the Constitution by mere provincial action. Opinions differ as to what the future is likely to be. Mr C. F. Andrews, with his strong Radical outlook, thinks that the situation is remarkably hopeful. Mr J. C. French, in the ultraconservative ‘ National Review,’ does not conceal his pessimism. He recalls the subversive history of the Congress Party. Tho pronouncement that “ terrorism is dead ” is not accepted by him. Terrorism in India, he insists, yields only to force. It has worked up till now with the Comintern in Russia, and the Viceroy himself was saying only two years ago, “ the avowed aim of Communism in India is to bring about an armed revolution as quickly as possible.” Revolution is the object of Pandit Nehru. He has his own Congress Socialist Party, whoso doctrines, it has been said, are indistinguishable from Communism, except on the one important point that they are designed for national and not for international ends. But Pandit Nehru is not the Congress. Neither is his Socialist Party. Both may be overruled by the good sense of the majority, encouraged by its experience of responsibility. Congress itself has small control over the peasants and is opposed by the Moslems. The Pandit is working now to overcome those limitations. A writer in the ‘Round Table’ concludes: “All will agree that a united India is a desirable goal, and many will argue that its achievement will mark the beginning of the end of British sovereignty. But underlying most Indian opinion is a strong faith in the value of the British connection, and there is no evidence that India will cut adrift from the British Commonwealth of Nations, even if the fullest measure of national independence is obtained. . . . Indians recognise only too well that British institutions are much more liberal than those of most other nationalities; and their intense hostility to the methods of some totalitarian States suggests that a fruitful partnership between the British Commonwealth and tho Indian people will long endure.”