MANY NATIONAL PROBLEMS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21819, 23 November 1940, Page 8

MANY NATIONAL PROBLEMS

India Not Ready For Independence Secretary Reviews Deadlock British Official Wireless (Received November 22, 8.24 p.m.) RUGBY. November 21. Speaking in London to-day, the Secretary for India <Mr L. C. S. Amery) dealt exhaustively with the genesis of problems standing in the way of Indian unity. He traced the structure of Imperial India which, under an admittedly bureaucratic system of Government imposed the British conception of reign and law on a great continent with 350,000,000 humans of many races and creeds. Athough it w r as then impossible to give India British political institutions, Mr Amery • contended that the eventful introduction of them had made inevitable the universal teaching of the English language which Macaulay initiated. English education in India he foresaw would lead some day to the demand Tor English institutions. Mr Amery traced the history of these demands, and recalled that the British policy in relation to them was evidenced by the Minto-Morley talks and the Montagu-Chelmsford declaration. He also traced the origin of the Congress Party, and pointed out that the claim to represent all India was becoming less and less acceptable to the bulk of Moslem opinion. The All-Indian Moslem League was founded in 1906, and he reminded his audience that there were two Indias—British India and the Indian States. The Simon Commission had come to a definite conclusion that the creation of a self-governing Dominion of British India w r as impossible, and the Commission therefore expressed the opinion that an All-India Federation was the only solution. At the same time it reported that the provinces were ripe for full and responsible self-government. The Commission’s findings were dealt with at a round table conference and a joint select Parliament, from the deliberations of which the India Act, 1915, eventuated. Responsible Parliamentary Government was given the provinces of British India respecting all subjects who have a defence and foreign policy, which has remained under the Viceroy’s direct control. Congress denounced the Act, but accepted the responsibility for the taking of office by seven out of 11 provinces. Discussing the Federal Provisions Act. Mr Amery said that experience had shown the necessity for considerable modification even of the fundamental reconstruction of them. Congress, however, rejected the Federal provisions because reserved subjects demanded that a new constitution should be framed as the India Constituent Assembly based on universal suffrage all over India, including the Indian States. Moslem Objection To Act Mr Amery pointed out that the Moslem objection to the Act was that power was always put into the hands of the Hindu majority which is infinitely stronger against any kind of constitution emerging from a Congress controlled constituent assembly. The Moslems answer to Congress’S demand was that they would sooner go outside India and set up independent states composed of the north-westerly and north-eastern provinces in which they had a majority of Princes who were also profoundly affected by Congress attitude in the last few years and refused to join any India constituted on Congress lines. The constitutional deadlock to-day was not between the consentient Indian national movement asking for freedom and the British Government, which was reluctant to .surrender authority, but between the main elements of India’s own national life. Mr Amery said that the problem was not how to hasten on the devolution of that authority to willing Indian hands but how to find a constitutional solution which will preserve in some practical degree at least the unity of India and avert the process of internal disintegration to which it might be impossible to set a limit, and which would certainly put an end to all hopes of real democracy and real social progress. “The answer to the problem is in the first instance at any rate for Indians themselves to provide,” Mr Amery explained that neither were reservations of defence and foreign policy imposed by British reluctance to surrender control but by India’s own external interest both for internal peace and external security. We had built up in India a powerful military system based mainly upon the Indian army hitherto mainly officered and directed by British officers, together with a considerable force of British troops. Even these could not hope to defend India against aggression from Russia or Japan without reinforcements from the rest of the Empire. If India were declared independent to-morrow she could only gradually over a period of years dispense with outside support uj the defensive structure. Only by the growth of India’s policy to provide for her own defence can she form some measure of interlocking between the British and Indian foreign and military policy. British Press Comment The main comment in the London press on Indian affairs as dealt with by both the Viceroy’s statement in the Legislature and later in the House of Commons debate underlines one common important feature. Both Lord Linlithgow and Mr Amery, w’hile regretting the postponement of the Viceroy’s plans for the expansion of the Executive Council and the setting up of a War Advisory Council owing to the apparent inability of Congress at present to co-operate politically with the Home Government, gave first place in the speeches to magnificent practical contribution of India as a whole to the Imperial military effort. Since the outbreak of war it is agreed, as the “Daily Telegraph” points out, that the real India is working with her brain in the war. “Even to Congress Hitlerism is the unspeakable thing. A great opportunity for counsels of conciliation and sanity has been given and remains open, but in the meantime India is arming and will arm for her own salvation and honour.” “The Times,” while stipulating Mr

Gandhi as “having found a formula which enables his party to combine philosophical hatred of Nazism with the sabotage of the British Indian war effort,” stresses a continuation and intensification of this effort. It is clearly what matters at the moment. The significance of the present Delhi conferences are also stressed by both newspapers and the “Daily Mall,” which states: “There has been no finer Imperial conception than the calling of the Eastern Group conference designed to link in one unit the vast resources of the Empire countries east and south of Suez.”