Nehru Outlines Plan To Solve Problem Of India's Future Relations

Wanganui Chronicle, 2 November 1948, Page 5

Nehru Outlines Plan To Solve Problem Of India's Future Relations

Cripps Confident India Will Remain In Commonwealth LONDON, Nov. 1 (Ree. 7.30 pm).—Mr. Nehru, during many conversations with Prime Ministers at the recent Empire Conference, worked out a compromise plan which may solve the problem of India’s future constitutional relations with the Commonjvealth, says the political correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph.” The plan which Mr. Nehru will place before the Indian Government proposes, firstly, that India should become a republic; secondly, the President should automatically become the King’s representative/in external relations with foreign Powers; thirdly, the King to be head of the Commonwealth as a whole.

British circles regard the plan as the most hopeful of the various idefs so far put forward for India’s consideration.

Modification of the King’s position in relation to the Commonwealth as a whole would be necessary. His Majesty at present is King of each Dominion. His Majesty in the compromise scheme would continue to be King of Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and of those of new Commonwealth nations which prefer to retain the form of ■constitutional monarchy. The President elected by India or any other State which may choose the republican form would become the .King's representative for external relations. His Majesty would have the additional function of King of the Commonwealth at large, though not of the republics associated with it so far as their internal affairs are concerned. The proposal is a matter of fine distinctions but it is regarded in Britain as a better solution than was Eire’s External Relations Act. CRIPPS ON COMMONWEALTH. Sir Stafford Cripps, speaking in Bristol, said there were some who had thought that as a result of the action Britain took in India. Pakistan and Ceylon, she would inevitably los'e her contacts with those countries. “I have always taken precisely the opposite view. I have always insisted that the one certain way of losing contacts with India, Pakistan, and Ceylon was if Britain continued to insist on her domination of those countries; and that the real way of maintaining contracts was to establish a basis of equal friendship.”