INDIAN REFORM

Taranaki Daily News, 20 November 1934, Page 7

INDIAN REFORM

THIS WEEK’S REPORT JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE ALL OTHERS SUPERSEDED WEIGHT AND AUTHORITY KEEN INTEREST SHOWN British Wireless. Rugby, Nov. 17. Undoubtedly the main political event next week will be the publication of the report of the Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform. The Joint Select Committee consists of members of both Houses of Parliament. All parties are represented, and the members include three ex-Viceroys, three former Under-Secretaries of State for India, two ex-Governors of Indian provinces, four members who visited India with the Simon Commission, six members of the visiting committee reappointed by the Round Table Conference and other Parliamentarians who have given long public service to India. The committee carries exceptional weight and authority, and it is doubtful if ever such a concentration of expert knowledge has been brought to bear upon any great Imperial question. The committee contains a proportion of men of such status as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Derby and Sir Austen Chamberlain, who have not hitherto been directly associated with Indian affairs and whose opinion must have in the main been shaped in the course of the committee proceedings. The report will supersede all previous documents on which it will be founded. It undoubtedly will be closely scrutinised and cannot hope to avoid criticism, at least from those whose opinions already have been formulated in Britain. A large section of the Conservative. Party expressed grave anxiety that the measure of constitutional reform will proceed too far and too fast. The Congress party in India already is criticising the White Paper even before its rigorously guarded contents are published. Nevertheless the all-important document will be issued at a time when the atmosphere in India shows immense improvement bn that of two or three years ago when the Congress agitation was at its height. Now the Congress Party has returned to constitutional ways and is concentrating on obtaining votes to return its members to the next Legislature, which Mahatma Ghandi, for so long a protagonist of non-co-operation, is using his influence with the electorate to bring them to the polls. Between these extremes of formulated opinion there is an immense body of moderate if less audible opinion which will regard the report objectively with the sole intention of judging its effects upon the best interests of India and her continued association with the Empire.