POLICY IN INDIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1942, Page 3

POLICY IN INDIA

STATEMENT BY BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DENIAL OF CONGRESS PRETENSIONS FIRM ACTION AGAINST DISORDER. NO OCCASION FOR UNDUE DESPONDENCY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.53 a.m.) RUGBY, September 10. The Primo Minister (Mr Churchill) macle a statement in. the House of Commons on the present situation in India, where, he said, the course of events had been, improvingand was on the whole reassuring. The broad principle of the declaration made by the British Government, which formed the basis of the Cripps mission to India, must be taken as presenting the settled policy of the British Crown and Parliament.

These principles, Mr Churchill continued, stood in their full scope and integrity. No one could add anything to them and no one could take anything away. The fact that the Congress Party had rejected Sir Stafford Cripps’s good offices did not end the matter. The Indian Congress Party did not represent all India, nor even a majority of the people of India—not even the Hindu masses. It was a political organisation built around a party machine and sustained by certain manufacturers. Opposed to the Congress Party were ninety million Moslems, British India, fifty million members of the depressed classes and 95 million subjects of the Indian princes, to whom we were bound by treaty. In all there were 235 millions in these three large groups alone, out of the allIndian population of 390 millions. The Congress Party had come out into the open as a revolutionary movement, out to paralyse communications and generally to promote disorder, the looting of shops and sporadic attacks on the Indian police, accompanied from time to time by revolting atrocities," the whole having the intention, or at any rate the effect, of hampering the defence of India against the Japanese. It might well be that this activity by the Congress Party had been aided by Japanese Fifth Column work on a widely extended scale, with a special direction to strategic points. It was noteworthy that the defences of the Indian forces defending Bengal had been specially attacked. In these circumstances the Viceroy and Government of India, with the unanimous support of the Viceroy’s Council, had felt it necessary to suppress this association, which had become committed to hostile and criminal actions. Mr Gandhi and other principal leaders had been interned, under conditions of the highest comfort and consideration, but would be kept out of harm's way until the trouble subsided.

Upwards of a million Indians had volunteered to serve the cause of the United Nations in this world struggle and had served with distinction m many theatres, Mr Churchill continued. In the last two months, when the Congress Party had been measuring its strength against the Government of India, there had been 140,000 new volunteers. Events to the present had revealed the impotence of the Congress Party either to seduce of even to swav the Indian Army, to draw from their duty the enormous body of Indian officials, or still less to stir the vast Indian masses. The Congress conspiracy against communications, Mr Churchill said, was breaking down. Acts of pillage and arson had been suppressed with incredibly little loss of life. Fewer than 500 persons had been killed. The British Government intended to give all necessary support to the Viceroy in the firm but temperate measures taken. Mr Churchill said large, reinforcements of British troops had now reached India. The number of white soldiers now there was larger than at any time in the British connection. Therefore it could be said that the situation in India at this moment gave no occasion for undue despondency or alarm.