THE H.B. TRIBUNE SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1930 INDIA’S PROGRESS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 12, 27 December 1930, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1930 INDIA’S PROGRESS

British public opinion in regard to the whole question of the government of - India has undergone quite a remarkable change during the past twenty years. Just prior to the Great War, it may be said that most people regarded the business of governing India as being in the same category as the business of soldiering. That is to say, it was generally assumed that there were people trained to do these particular kinds of work, and that they should be left to themselves to do their own work in their own way. Politically, there was practically no party difference of opinion in regard to British rule in India. There were some few divergences of view regarding the method of functioning of the Indian Civil Service, but there was no indication of any desire to bring about radical changes even there. Lord Lloyd has recently pointed out that it was from a certain section of opinion in British official circles in India that the first hints of change emanated, and that these hints were favourably received by the Liberal ministers at Home. It was felt that the political education of the country was not proceeding either fast enough or on the right lines. This feeling was really a reaction against the complacent and unassailable faith which an earlier generation had reposed in the universal suitability of an English education and a democratic franchise. It is impossible within these brief limits to enumerate the incidents in the development of the further views which emerged as clearer expressions of this reaction, but something must be said by way of summary. We have heard in recent

days a good deal about the ultimate goal of self-government for India, and one of the underlying and important difficulties of the present conference refers to that goal and particularly to the periou that must elapse before it can be attained. The crux of the matter is, however, that the problem just now is not to formulate a goal, but to frame a policy that will enable India to advance towards it without danger to herself and Britain. Sentimental considerations can have no standing in questions of such grave import, and among the most harmful of all the sentimentalities in regard to India is the prevalent idea that in granting further measures of self-govern-ment and in relaxing British control, we are making a valuable gift to the peoples of India and advancing their political progress. That is precisely one of the assumptions that must be subjected to close and careful scrutiny. Ever since the British East India Company took over an important part of the government of the country, there has been a strong system of centralised government, and it is a matter of history how greatly the country benefited because of the fact that its welfare was in the hands of a nucleus of British officers whose ympathies were not enlisted by birth or upbringing on the side of any one of the conflicting creeds or social customs. Generations of warfare and anarchy had left the masses witn little idea of safeguarding their own interests, and this unsettled condition had combined, with the rigid barriers of the calste system, to set the higher castes out of sympathy with the masses, and to give them a dominant interest in sectional rather than in national welfare. The role of guardian was assumed, and the unifying principle applied by the British government and its officers. That is the system which obtains at present.

Any alteration of that system must take into account tho dominant facts of the internal situation. These are the antagonism, so far irreconcilable —and at the moment more bitter than ever—between the Hindu and Moslem religions ; the racial differences and antipathies which cleave the community in so many directions, and the want of sympathy—in so many districts the hostility—between the priestly class and the lower castes of Hindus. It must never be forgotten that the Indian politician, however sincere, cannot divest himself of his nationality or of his birthright. He is a Hindu or a Moslem, a Brahman or a nonBrahman, a Rajput or Maratha. He is beset constantly by bis instinctive sectional loyalties. India’s difficulties, in short, are her own difficulties, and the agelong feud between Hindu and Moslem has already blocked the progress of the Round Table Conference to a very great extent. It still remains to be seen what definite policy the present British government has to set forth. In an Empire slightly weary of abortive conferences, the hope still lingers that surely out of one of them some concrete results may emerge.