INDIA’S PROBLEM

Evening Star, Issue 23525, 14 March 1940, Page 17

INDIA’S PROBLEM

SURVEY BY SECRETARY OF STATE The Marquess of Zetland, Secretary of State for India prior to the British parliamentary recess, concisely stated the state of affairs in India today. “ The position at the moment is this: In the Punjab, in Bengal, and in Sind, popular Governments responsible to the Legislatures are functioning normally and with success. “In Assam, where the Ministry under a Congress Prime Minister resigned, an alternative Government has been formed under the leadership of Sir Syed Muhammad Saadulla, former Prime Minister of that province. “ But in the remaining seven provinces from which the Congress Ministries have recently resigned, the Administration has been taken over by' the Governors, with the result that, entirely contrary to our desires, the hands of the clock have been set back for more than 30 years to the days before the Minto-Morley Constitution. I should, perhaps, add that the. transition has been effected smoothlythat there has been no reversal of policy in any important respect, and that, broadly speaking, the measures which were promoted By the Ministries and assented to by the Legislatures before they resigned are being given effect to by the Governors. “ What stands in the way? Not the least of the obstacles is a difference of opinion between the Congress on the one hand and the All-India Moslem League on the other hand, as to the relations of Congress and what, for want of a better term, are described compendiously as the : minorities. • “ The nature of this difference of opinion is well illustrated by a sentence in the most recent statement issued by the Working Committee cf the Congress, which runs as follows “ ‘ The committee wish to declare , . . that no communal considerations arise in meeting the demands of the Congress.’ “I am sure that those who made that statement are perfectly sincere in, their belief, but it is. a belief which His Majesty’s Government are unable to share, for in their view no Constitution in India could be expected to function successfully which did not meet with the general assent of the minorities who have to live under it. “1 am.not, of course, in any way intending to minimise the importance of such sections of the Indian people as the Scheduled Castes, or indeed of any other minority, when I say that i

by far the most important of the so* called minority communities, is tha Moslem community. , ■ “We speak of the : Moslems as a minority because on a purely arithmetical basis, they are less in number than the Hindus; yet we have to remember that they are after all a com. munity of some 80,000,000 to 90,000,000, a community, moreover, with race memories of the days, after all not so . very distant in time as the history of nations goes, when a great Moslem dynasty, the Moghul dynasty, reigned for some 200 years, ■ exercising dominion over the greater part of the Indian sub-continent. They are a community, moreover, Which has a great military tradition behind them, a tradition which exists to this day,, and is exemplified by the high proportion of th* Indian army which that community tills. “ I would appeal to the leaders ol the Congress, as the 'largest and most powerful political party in India, to endeavour to understand the difficulties which are responsible' for the attitude of the All-India Moslem League. Hon , great is the need of such understanding is shown by the instruction issued only a few days ago by'the president of the All-India Moslem League, addressed to Moslems throughout India, to observe the twenty-second of this month as ‘ a day of deliverance and thanksgiving that Congress Governments have ceased to function.’ I would equally appeal to the president of the All-India League to consider carefully the effect of such action upon the relations between the two great communities in general and also between the Congress and the All-India Moslem .League. Will they not call a truce that there may be free and friendly discussion between them with a view to reaching that agreement of which Mr Gandhi himself has spoken ? “ What Wo have to aim at is a state of affairs under'which a legislator will think of himself as an Indian first and only as a Moslem or a Hindu or as a member of any of the other minorities afterward. If we are successful in bringing about that state of affairs, then one of .the greatest obstacles in the ways of Indian constitutional progress will have been removed. * ;There are, of course, other matters;- which have to be taken into account. There is the defence of India, there are pur obligations to the Princes, and-there is the position in India which our own people have built up during generations past, to mention only some of them. But the supreme problem of the moment is that of the minorities.”