THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1932. A WISE WAY WITH INDIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21221, 29 June 1932, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1932. A WISE WAY WITH INDIA.

Hope of a solution of India's political troubles is quickened by the announcement Sir Samuel Hoare has made on behalf of the British Government. It has declared a definite policy. By the enactment of a single measure it will provide both for provincial self-government and for an all-India federation—inclusive of the Indian States as well as the British Provinces. That is to say, the British Parliament will take at once into its own hands the settlement of the constitutional question that has been so long exercising thought, and will do this in a way providing for a final achievement, while encouraging political development toward that end. Thus it keeps Mr. Mac-Donald's word that, if India could not come to agreement, the British Government would decide what was to be done. There is complete justification for this course. It follows the lines laid down in the Simon Commission's report; it does not cross any decision reached in the two Bound Table Conferences; it is assured of the approval of the Indian Princes. The conferences did not reach finality. There is reason to doubt whether any prolonging of such discussion would have produced a detailed conclusion on all points. To refer the contested issues back to India was a step taken without any real hope of settlement there. The National Congress, using its advantage as the only Indian organisation possessing powers of agitation and utterance, resumed at once its aggressive opposition to any workable scheme, knowing that by obstruction it might delay a settlement and so serve its own ends. It is well that the British Government has refused to have tho question made a means of increasing Indian discontent by such continued propaganda, prone to adopt seditious methods.

For years there has been talk of responsible government in India. Ever since the reforms initiated in 1919 on the plain promise of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, the goal has been set. To reach it has been the difficulty—a difficulty not yet overcome —and so long as little apparent progress was made the agitators had a chance to say, and they said it with pernicious emphasis, that the promise meant nothing. An end to all that is made possible by the measure now announced. It is usefully positive, and rightly cuts away from the indefiniteness that has hitherto blocked advance. Only interminable wrangle could otherwise have resulted from all that has been tried—dyarchy a failure and the Round Table Conferences inconclusive. To come back to the Simon Report and proceed upon it offers something of real value. Its main proposal was what is now announced —a federation of autonomous administrations, these to have opportunity to develop a representative system, in keeping with indigenous customs, before the federation is achieved. The provincial process will take time, probably a period of years., but a start can be made. It is of less moment to create the central Federal Government; that can wait. To try to do the two things together would have been asking for more trouble. On this the Simon Report was convincingly clear. "The nature of the constituents themselves, " one memorable passage ran, "has a great influence on the form that federation takes. It is a difficult task to combine the process qf devolution with that of integration upon a new basis. Experience shows that federation has generally come about some time after the federating units have been politically self-conscious." For India's good, there has been one form of control for more than a century, that of a just and beneficent British rule, administered from "Westminster. That is to pass, in accordance with the British pledge. To displace it by the full independence of the Swaraj demanded by the Congress would be calamitous, in view of a native illiteracy of 85 per cent, and a seething strife among rival creeds. The middle way of fostering autonomy, hedged about with safeguards and developed in localities, before the federation is achieved, promises all that can be reasonably enjoyed.

Care is to be taken that the measure will embody adequate detail and that in its framing an opportunity will be given for Indian cooperation and wide consultation among the political parties in Britain. No progress can be made without precise provision for (he provincial institutions—taking account of the group-organisations that characterise the social life of India, vastly different from that which makes representative government easily possible in most Western countries —and these particulars are essential. Ample data are at hand for their framing. Some specific problems, Sir Samuel Hoare suggests, will remain for reference to those thoroughly conversant with conditions in India. Doubtless the various committees that have been visiting India to investigate such matters as finance and franchise will submit findings on the questions left unanswered at the Round Table Conferences. But there are to be no more "formal sessions of large bodies," serving rather to delay than to expedite a settlement. The Bound Table Conferences were not wholly profitless. They assisted in ventilating some aspects of the problem, and they gave some assurance to India, in spite of what the Congress has since said, that Britain was sincerely anxious to implement every undertaking to promote a degree of autonomy, within the Empire, that would satisfy every reasonable wish. Yet they demonstrated the futility of mere talk, whether in Britain or in India, The time is ripe, if not over ripe, for action ; and in what :is announced there is practical wisdom.,