A FORECAST ON INDIA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 73, 25 February 1932, Page 6

A FORECAST ON INDIA.

So engrossed have we become in our domestic economic affairs and the trend of events in the Far East that the stir created throughout the Empire a few months back over the crisis in India and Mr Gandhi’s visit to Britain has been relegated to the background, and apart from spasmodic outbursts of anti-British spleen, fomented no doubt by agents of a Power whose objective is the overthrow of constitutional measures, little attention is paid to Indian affairs to-day. But the last has not been heard of the tremendous effort now being made to alter the system of government in that country, and we may expect soon to have an insight into the workings of the special committees set up to pursue the work of the Round Table Conference which met in London. Until then, however, Indian affairs must rest. In reviewing the agitation which has arisen in that country with . its teeming population and organised hatred of the nation which, has done so much to develop the potentialities of India, it is interesting to recall that a great deal of the agitation experienced in the past few years was forecast as far back as fifty years ago by that eminent statesman, Lord Salisbury, when he gave a memorandum to his Cabinet on the Indian Reforaj. Bill of 1888, providing for elected Councils _ in India. In many signal directions events have indicated his sagacity and foresight—his capacity for “studying tendencies in their extreme catastrophe.” One example may be cited _ as having special relevance to the affairs as they exist to-day: “The men who will be brought to the front by this plan (the setting up of Councils) will be lawyers and agents; not the men of business (who have no time for this work), nor the simpler and more numerous members of the community who would not have the requisite qualification. ... In India they are the class among whom disaffection is strongest; and they are the most competent to use the weapon which a Legislative Council would place in their hands to embarrass and damage the Government. On the other hand, they are not to be feared unless we put power into their hands. . . • We shall in no way please the class on whose goodwill the submission of India depends; we shall not reconcile our only enemies; but we shall give them arms against ourselves.” In its application to recent events and its definition of the trouble-makers in India the Gandhis— Lord Salisbury s prediction is truly remarkable.