HOME RULE FOR INDIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Stn,—In presenting an excellently drafted constitution for the future governance of India the representatives of the people of India seem to have given, at last, a fairly complete answer to Lord Birkenhead's oft-repeated challenge. The consti- tution drafted by the Nehru Committee may be capable of
improvement, but all shades of Indian political opinion agree in thinking that it has fully echoed the sentiments of cultured Indians. The document has been prepared with a spirit of toleration and it clearly indicates the goal of Indian aspirations. There has been a lot of loose talk and confused thinking for many years over the future constitution of India. Some politicians thought Swaraj for India nothing more or less than complete severance from the British connexion, while others maintained that India could get Swaraj within the Empire.
This controversy reached its climax at the Madras Congress last year where the "freedom resolution" of Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, son of Pundit Motilal, was passed. Impatient idealists wanted to run at breakneck speed and would not stop till they had seen the British people to a man put of India, but the saner element of the people had no difficulty in realizing that India could, and should, enjoy the blessings of Swaraj as an integral part of the Empire. It is a relief therefore to find the Committee presided over by the father of the sponsor of the "freedom resolution 4' at the Madras Congress, has shown respect for the fundamental condition under which the British people can grant and the Indian people can enjoy Swaraj. Further, by describing India as a " Commonwealth " instead of an Empire and placing the King at the head of the Government, the Nehru Committee has once for all given a clear definition of Swaraj.
In agreeing in this way to keep their motherland as an integral part of the Empire, the leaders of Indian opinion have fulfilled the first conditions under which the British Parliament pledged itself in 1919 to give Swaraj to India.—I .am, Sir, &c.,
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