HOME TO INDIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20794, 10 February 1931, Page 10

HOME TO INDIA.

The delegates to the India Round Table Conference, or a considerable section of them, have arrived home. They have issued an appeal for unity and peace, so that the work of the conference may be continued. It was left to India itself to grapple with numberless details that the conference could not attempt to settle. In his farewell speech Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald made it perfectly clear that this work must be done as a preliminary to devising a constitution that would be acceptable to the Indian people and would also be reasonably certain to work smoothly in practice. Such a task, obviously, can only be approached in an atmosphere of peace. But the greatest problem yet to be overcome demands even more imperatively an atmosphere of judicial calm for its dispassionate consideration. It is the devising of some plan, acceptable to all concerned and capable of confident adoption by Great Britain, for meeting the claims, calming the fears and smoothing away the difficulties of communal representation and safeguards for minorities. The Hindus and the Moslems are the two groups most concerned. Numerically they are by far the strongest communities and as a rule it is their differences which lead to most trouble for the authorities. In London it was announced that the Hindus and the Moslems had almost reached an agreement, but had just fallen short of it. The small margin by which success was missed must also have been an important one, since the attempt to bridge the gap was abandoned for the time, the points at issue being left for further discussion in India. It is open to question whether the London atmosphere was not more favourable for agreement than that of India. Distance can sometimes lend detachment which cannot be achieved when the atmosphere of the differences surrounds negotiators. If there is to be success in India where there was failure in London, conditions must favour calm negotiation. That is why the appeal for an atmosphere of peace and goodwill is no mere empty gesture.