BRITAIN’S POLICY IN INDIA

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20722, 8 May 1937, Page 17 (Supplement)

BRITAIN’S POLICY IN INDIA

PLEA FOR FRIENDLY CO-OPERATION DEFINITION OF STATUS OF GOVERNORS United Press Association —By ai-cfric Telegraph—Copyright (Received May 7, 6.30 p.m.) RUGBY, May 6. Before the House of Lords adjourned for the Whitsun recess, Lord Zetland (Secretary of State for India) made another important statement on the working of the Government of India Act. Alluding to the suggestion that a conversation between the Viceroy and Mr Gandhi might dispose of the misunderstanding which appears to have arisen, the Secretary for India said the hope seemed to rest on the assumption that a short and simple formula could be found, as an alternative to Mr Ganhl’s own, to express the manner in which the Governor would exercise his reserved powers, but if such a formula were attainable it would have been embodied in the Act. Lord Zetland said that it appeared to him that in some quarters a great deal more had been read into the part of the Act which imposed certain obligations on governors than it contained. The Congress Party, for example, declared the past record and the present attitude of the British Government showed, without special assurances, that a popular ministry would be exposed to constant and irritating interference. That idea betrayed a very different picture of the working of provincial autonomy from the one he had formed as a member both of the Round Table Conferences and the Joint Select Committee. There was no idea of a Government divided into two parts, in which the Governor and the ministry operated separately with a risk of a clash between them. Reserved powers would not normally be in operation at all and if they ever came into question it would be wrong to assume that the Governor would at once be in open opposition to the ministry. It was certainly not the intention that the governors by narrow and legalistic interpretation of their responsibilities shouM trench upon the wide powers which it was the purpose of Parliament to place in the hands of ministries for use in furtherance of their programmes.