A Fateful Day

Northern Advocate, 2 June 1947, Page 4

A Fateful Day

India has stood at the crossroads for many months, but the time has arrived when she must make a choice of the road she is to take.

Her choice is naturally a matter of supreme importance to herself, but it cannot be too strongly urged that the British Commonwealth and, incidentally, the world as a whole is a vitally interested party.

Britain, hopeful that when the day of decision dawned, Indians, turning from a past in which they had proved unable to compose religious and other causes of dissension and hatred between one class and another, would turn their eyes to a future in which an independent India would become a glittering gem

in the crown of a British Commonwealth of Nations. The decision of the British Government to leave India to the control of Indians was a move the wisdom or folly of which time alone can reveal.

Today the Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, who has returned to New Delhi after consulting the British Government at No. 10 Downing Street, is to submit the Government’s plan for the transference of governmental power to the Indians. So far there has been little to suggest the acceptance of the plan in its entirety. Moslems and Hindus having widened the gulf that has separated them in the past. Truly today is a fateful day.