ADVANCED VIEWS IN INDIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22393, 14 April 1936, Page 8

ADVANCED VIEWS IN INDIA

The president of the All India National Congress has appeared as an exponent of out-and-out Communism. He combines this creed with a violent attack on the new Constitution. In the one he has advanced only 'a little from views previously expressed, in the other he is reiterating what he has said before. Not long ago Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru was in London. Then he described himself as an international Socialist. He denounced the Constitution on the ground that it "petrified every single vested interest in India from that of the British Government, the City of London, the Indian Princes, the Indian landlords and everything else, ending up with the Scottish Presbytorian Church." Under the new order, he proceeded, it would be almost impossible to make a vital change, because of the consolidation of these vested interests. Such a declaration was naturally quoted as an answer to those opponents of the new Constitution who declared it was a surrender to and a victory for the extremists of the National Congress. As one commentator said, this was scarcely the language of victory. Mr. Nehru, however, gives only one view, not the universal view of India on the latest reforms. The Indian Liberal Party, for instance, recently decided to work under the new Constitution "to extract from it whatever good it can yield." The chief spokesman of this body is Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, whom New Zealand met in the flesh some 14 years ago. The Moslem United Party also has agreed that its main object must now be "to bring together the Moslems for obtaining the greatest good from the new Constitution." It is evident, therefore, that while the reforms may not be wholly satisfactory to Indian opinion, Mr. Nehru expresses the extreme, and not the universal, attitude toward them.