CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19375, 13 July 1937, Page 5

CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS

INDIAN CONGRESS PARTY GAIN FOR DEMOCRACY (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 10. Lord Lothian, a former Undersecretary for India, in a speech at Ashbridge, in discussing the subject of India, said that the decision at Wardha of the Congress Party’s working committee to accept office in the provincial Legislatures was of immense importance not only to the British commonwealth but to the world.

He took it to mean that the Congress Party had decided to achieve its objectives, if possible, by constitutional and democratic methods, and not by means which, consciously or unconsciously, led to revolution and violence. That did not mean that there would not be difficulties ahead. There would be difficulties because the present ideals of the Congress Party were still profoundly different from those embodied in the Indian constitution.

He hoped, and believed, that the responsibility for government would diminish and not widen those differences. But the fact that at this moment, when the democratic and totalitarian systems were competing for the allegiance of mankind, the Congress Party should have decided for the constitutional road to its goal was an immense gain to the democratic world.