THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Thursday, June 5, 1947. PARTITION IN INDIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26479, 5 June 1947, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Thursday, June 5, 1947. PARTITION IN INDIA

The announcement of the British plan for India has made clear the fact that all hope of a united India has been given up, and the power of self-government will be accepted by the partitioned States of Pakistan and Hindustan. The general regret that will be felt at the inability of Moslems and Hindus to reconcile their differences even at the last and critical hour will be tempered with the satisfaction that some plan acceptable to both parties has finally been evolved. Both the new States will be given full dominion status, and in those provinces having mixed communities the respective parties will be given the opportunity of voting on the partition issue. The agreement is, at the best, a compromise which has been accepted by the various leaders because they realised that no amount of bargaining would gain for them any further concessions. There now remains the task of putting the plan into operation; of delineating the borders of the new State of Pakistan, and of persuading the extremists on both sides to accept them. Further outbursts of communal rioting and bloodshed will certainly occur before the quarrelsome elements are eventually divided by the new frontiers. The original scheme for Pakistan, as defined by the Moslem League in 1940, embraced about one-third of the total area of India and would include Sind, Baluchistan, the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, some districts in the United Provinces, most of Bengal, Assam, Hyderabad, Deccan, Kashmir, and a few districts in Madras. The name was coined from the letters P for Punjab, A for the Afghans of the North-West Frontier, K for Kashmir, S for Sind, and TAN for Baluchistan. Throughout the prolonged negotiations Mr Jinnah and the Moslem League have steadfastly refused to co-operate except on the basis of recognition of Pakistan as a separate Moslem State, but the final shape of Pakistan is likely to be considerably dif-ferent-from the original conception of the Moslem League, and recent despatches suggest that the League has already resigned itself to a modified' form of its earlier plan. The North-West Frontier Province, for instance,' is controlled by a Congress Ministry and the Premier, Dr Khan Sahib, hds stated that the province would not join Pakistan. The partition plan, moreover, is likely to divide several provinces, including Punjab and Bengal, into Moslem and Hindu areas. In whatever manner the partition is planned, the Moslem community must be left in a State divided by thousands of r miles between its northern and eastern parts, and one which is lacking in the resources which would enable it to compete industrially with Hindustan. Yet it is the will of the respective sections of the community that such a division should *be made, and the British Government, in its determination that there should be no further delay in the transference of responsibility, has accepted partition as the basis of its plan. Thus there will be in India two jealous and rival States, both weakened by the inability of their peoples to work together for their common advancement, and their rivalry will present some difficult problems in future Empire relations.

EFFICIENT FARMERS

The direct appeal for an increased efficiency in primary industry, which was made by Mr Stuart Sim in his presidential address to the annual conference of Federated Farmers of Otago, is one that no farmer in Otago—or New Zealand—can dare ignore. As Mr Sim stated, only an elastic and highly efficient industry will be able to meet successfully the challenge that can be expected from those countries which will become our competitors in the days when world production overtakes world demand and the profitable disposal of surpluses will become a major problem. At a time like the present, when every exporting country is rejoicing in the rewards of a sellers’ market, such warnings of difficult days to come are often dismissed as unwarranted pessimism, but there can be no evasion of the fact that the sellers’ market, as it exists for New Zealand to-day, is dependent wholly on Great Britain’s ability to win through the tremendous economic battle which she has undertaken. If Great Britain fails, she will no ; longer be able to afford the high prices she has promised for our produce, and farmers must acknowledge the fact that in no other market in the world can they hope to obtain rewards on the same generous scale that Great Britain offers. The tendency—which has been so manifest in all branches of industry in recent years—to disregard soaring costs so long as a profitable return is assured, has had a particularly marked effect on the farming industry in the Dominion. In spite of the most determined efforts of farmers’ organisations to retard the inflationary trend, the economy of the country has been so geared that farm prices have moved inexorably upwards with the ever-increasing spiral of costs and rewards. It is, nevertheless, a dangerous and alarming trend, and one fraught with disaster for New Zealand as an exporting country dependent on one market. Thanks to Great Britain’s generosity in meeting the successive demands of the New Zealand Government’s negotiators, substantial reserves have been built up in the meat and dairy accounts, but these will rapidly disappear if the Homeland becomes economically exhausted or if Imperial preference has to be modified to the extent that the Dominion is forced to seek markets in lands in which the standards of living do not permit of high prices being paid for imported produce. Either of these possibilities would necessarily entail a sudden and drastic recession in produce prices, .and either would mean disaster to an industry based on an inflated and extravagant cost structure. Only by creating in the industry that efficiency and elasticity that will enable it to cope with falling prices or the difficulties of developing new markets will possible hardship for the whole community be avoided.

THE BURNS MEMORIAL

The members of the Dunedin Presbytery are to be commended for consenting without demur to the City Council’s proposal to pull down' the Thomas Burns column from the Octagon and no less for their willingness to cede to the city space in the grounds of First Church for a more fitting memorial. It is not pleasant to have to agree to the demolition of old landmarks, and it must have been far from easy for the Presbytery to agree to the removal of the only civic—or more correctly, semi-civic—monument to the Rev. Dr Burns. There must, however, be a question whether the plan now proposed for the erection of a substitute memorial at the corner of the Church grounds, is the best that could be found. The aphorism that nothing should reveal beauty but itself, applies pertinently to the First Church. Tire appearance of this magnificently - proportioned building cannot be enhanced by the erection of a memorial structure at the Burlington street coi'ner. Other plans might well be considered by both the City Council and the Synod. It would, for example, be possible to have designed a new. gateway to the First Church, wrought in iron and with appropriate stone decorations. And there is, alternatively, no particular reason why, in place of the present Bums memorial, a less exaggerated and more beautiful monument should not be placed in the Octagon. The size and form of the present memorial provide the reason why it appears to clutter up the clear space in the Octagon and destroys the vista from lower Stuart street.