REPORT ON INDIA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 306, 23 November 1934, Page 8

REPORT ON INDIA

RECEPTION IN THE PRESS. DIVERSITY OF OPINION. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. ) (British Official Wireless.) Received November 23, 12.25 p.m. RUGBY, Nov. 22. A controversy over the Joint Select Committee’s report on Indian constitution reform has already begun in the Press, but in the more responsible quarters it is generally recognised that the report must inevitably rank as one of the great State papers of our political history. The Times says.: The amendments to the White Paper, while neither few nor negligible, do not affect the main principles of the new constitutional scheme or the freedom of Indians to develop as the years go on. These amendments, affecting in particular the police and pensions, free trading and the powers of Governors, many of which will remain a dead letter if all goes well with India, are bound to have a decisive effect on the reception of the report in England. The Manchester Guardian pays a tribute to the breadth and dignity with which the authors of the report have handled, their task, and it also emphasises that after a year and ahalf of the most searching examination by some of the wisest and most experienced statesmen the proposals for a Federation of all India and for wide experience of responsible government among her peoples are left unshaken.

Turning to the details, the Guardian regards the stiffening of the _ safeguards as mostly a strengthening of form rather than the constitutional substance, while a few, though still too few, useful concessions have been made to Indian opinion. The Morning Post expresses strong opposition to the report’s general confirmation of the White Paper proposals which, it says, have aroused grave fears in India and England. It notes as an ominous feature of the proceedings of the committee the fundamental differences between the majority and the minority, and lays emphasis on the view expressed by the Conservative minority which endorses the Simon Commission and would maintain a strong Government at the centre responsible to Westminster. The Daily Telegraph examines these committee differences and remarks that on most matters a remarkable degree of unity is shown. The differences of opinion, it says, will continue to find expression, but the Select Committee has ensured that opinion shall be informed.

The Daily Mail expresses profound disappointment with the report and regards the additional safeguards as worthless. It declares that the general effect is that India is to be handed over to the control of Congress. The News-Chronicle says’ the report represents a great landmark of British history. The new reservations are not, on the whole, of very great importance. It would have liked to have seen India’s aspirations met with greater sympathy and less suspicion, but it thinks that opinion in the end, however critical, would be well advised. not to magnify them out of their true perspective. CHAIRMAN’S COMMENT.

The first reactions to the report are generally in accordance with expectations. The Indian Press comments are in the main highly critical and disposed to magnify the safeguards and “special responsibilities” placed in the hands of the Governor-General and provincial Governors. At the other extreme, a section of Conservative opinion in Britain maintains wth equal vigor that the reforms go too far and too fast. In between there is jambed a body of moderate ■opinion, both in India and Britain, which recognises the momentous nature of the proposals, but is unafraid. The chairman of the Joint Select Committee (Lord Linlithgow) referred to the subject of safeguards in a broadcast. Responsible government, lie pointed out, is not an automatic device which can be manufactured to specification anywhere. It depends for its successful working on the existence of certain conditions which are as essential as they are difficult to define. The committee feel no doubt that if free play were given to powerful forces, be they communal, racial, or religious, which would be set free by an unqualified system of Parliamentary Government in India, the consequences would be disastrous to India, perhaps irreparable. They are satisfied to grant responsible Government. If the grant is to be in reality it demands the presence of certain statutory safeguards. These in some form or other find a place in most constitutions, no less in the constitution of Britain, though their existence is often forgotten because, with Britain’s long Parliamentary tradition, the need for emphasising them has largely disappeared and because they, for the most part, are based on custom and convention and not on any statutory enactment. Safeguards of this kind, the speaker said, are not only not inconsistent with some form of responsible Government, but, in the present circumstances in India, they are in truth a necessary complement to any form, and without them it could have little hope of success. It is in the exact proportion as their Indian fellow subjects show themselves to be capable of taking and exercising responsibility, and able to supply those elements in their political life, which only experience can give, that safeguards and their use will, as in Great Britain, disappear.