Letters to the Editor
INDIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sra,—This morning the air in Scotland is clear, and the following by the morning Indian mail clears one's mind somewhat on the perplexed situation in India. My corre- spondent has been some years in that country, training Indian teachers in advanced methods. He writes : "Politically India is at last' getting 'her due share of attention at home. It's very hard to see liglit• through it. As the Spectator points out, it's a real tragedy, a conflict of two good principles, both of which seem right. On the one hand Gandhi and his crew (and lots of people think the crew are leading Gandhi instead of the reverse) were, it would seem, not justified in launching a campaign of 'civil disobedience' when the Government had offered a Round Table Con- ference. He might have waited.
Other arguments against Gandhi seem to me to have less force, e.g. (1) the divisions of opinion and race amongst Indians. It cannot, I think, be denied that India is not, as I.C.S. people, &c., used to say, just a mass of different disunited peoples. There is an Indian patriotism, a new sense of nationality which almost all share. On the other hand, it will be as hard a job as statesman ever put hand to to get an agreed policy.
(2) Another argument is that the Congress is only the intellectual minority and does not represent the people. Those who use this argument like to pose as the God-sent rulers of the dumb masses. I think that 75 per cent. of that sort of talk is self-righteous rot. It is true that the Congress represents chiefly the intellectual (so-called) Hindu. And it is true that there are lots of minorities that dread the arrival of any form of government which, is non-British. But I think that we of the West have in the last hundred years done our job so well that the principles of freedom have found a footing, and even the 'dumb masses' are realizing in their hearts that a different regime has to come. To speak very generally, I doubt very much if there is that gap between the ' intellectuals ' and the people. Rather probably the former are just giving expression to the inner instinctive gropings of the latter. But come what may, we are surely in for a bad time—inefficiency in government, unrest, &c., and Christian people and institutions may have rocks in their course ahead. As my friend H. was saying the other day, it's a great privilege to be in India in these days."
It may add weight to my friend's remarks, not written for publication, that he is an expert in Bengali, speaks it daily to his pupils and the people generally, so that he is in immediate touch with the mind of the Indian people.—! am,
Sir, &c., A. CRAWFORD WATT. Rutherford Manse, Grailing, Jedbuigh. June 23rd.
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