GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 22 February 1935, Page 8

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA

Defeat of Amendment to Establish Advisory Council

“WOULD BE MISTAKE” DEBATE IN COMMONS (Bt Itish Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Feb. 20. An amendment to establish an advisory council, to be styled the Council of Greater India, in substitution for the federal proposals of the Government of India Bill, was rejected by 308 votes to 50 during the committee stage of the debate in the House of Commons to-night. The Secretary for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, said that supporters of the amendment based themselves on the very tentative and temporary recommendations of the Statutory Commission. The whole essence of the recommendation in the report of the Joint Select Committee was that, over as wide a field 1 as was safe, more responsibility should be given in the provinces and at the centre. His own view, since the time the Princes made their offer to come into the Federation, was than it would bo 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 the Central Government only if it was responsible Government. He was convinced that one of the main reasons prompting the Princes was the need they felt for a voice in the effective control of policy, particularly questions of customs. “DANGEROUS COURSE.” 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 ip the eyes of the I world, would be to run the risk of making the provincial experiment in the worst possible atmosphere. The first reason that had driven the Government along the road of including in the Bill the chapter dealing with Federation was the almost unanimous feeling of political India. Seci ondly, it had been gravely impressed with the danger of starting those great autonomous provinces in the absence of a Federal link with a body of popular feeling behind it. Without responsibility at the centre, there would be danger of India breaking up into fragments. Thirdly, the Princes would be put in an extremely dangerous position if great provincial autonomous Governments were to grow up with popular support, and the centre remained in its present unrefermed position. . . An amendment moved by Sir H. Page-Crofts (Con., Bournemouth), a London cable states, providing that the proclamation of an Indian Federation be contingent on a request by the majority of elected, members of the Indian legislature was defeated by 230 votes to 77. Sir Samuel Hoare, opposing the amendment, said it virtually asked an Indian politicians’ assembly, which was bound to be biased, to constitute itself into a constituent assembly. It would mean surrender by the Imperial Parliament of vital responsibility. Several Labourites approved the principle of the amendment, but expressed the opinion that its sponsors were speaking only to wreck the Bill.