India’s Part in War

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 229, 27 September 1940, Page 7

India’s Part in War

SETTLING CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS (British Official Wireless.) Received Thursday, 9.20 p.m. RUGBY, Sept. 25. The Secretary of State for India (Mr. L. C. C. Amery) in a speech at the Overseas League, London, referred to the meeting which Mahatma Gandhi will have with tho Viceroy of India in the next few days. * ‘ One can only hope the outeopie of tho discussions may be an agreement consistent both with Gandhi’s conscientious objections to war in general and with the Viceroy’s no less conscientious conviction and duty to allow nothing to stand in tho way of India’s wholehearted effort to play her part in the struggle which concerns her present welfare and security and all the ideals her peoples hold dear. ’ ’

Dealing with the constitutional position, Mr. Amery said: “The Act of 1935 was still in essentials the word of the British Government and Parliament and was based on the existing structure of the Indian Government and inspired by British ideas. Tho main permanent framework of the future constitution of Lndia as a Dominion is now a matter for Indians to settle for themselves. The whole constitutional field, the relations of the various parts and elements of India to the whole, methods of election and representation, all these matters aro open to re-examination. Only as in the case of every Dominion or, for that matter, of any federation in the past, there must be that measure of agreement of consent, and necessarily therefore of compromise between the main coustitutent elements that have in future to live and work together, which is primarily the condition of free selfgovernment. “In this matter Britain has now made it clear that this is one of the essential implications of India’s future status, while imposing upon Indians one of the first responsibilities of that status, it is obvious that a change so far reaching both in structure and in the very basis of the authority of India’s Government cannot take place at a moment when the whole commonwealth is in the throes of a strugglo for its existence.”

He added: “The Nazi doctrine was a direct attack upon the spiritual basis of all religions. It is as profoundly opposed to Islam with its insistence on the equality of all men before God and on the supreme virtues of justice and mercy, or to Hinduism with its deepseated hatred of violence and cruelty, as it is to Christianity. The Nazi onslaught threatens the soul of India as it threatens ours and there is no Indian who does not realise that menace.”