India in Transition
The speed at which a dependent India is being transformed into two independent Dominions is breath-taking. The first clause of the Indian Independence Bill (historically significant title) intro- duced last Friday, and given a second reading this Thursday, reads: "As from the t5th day of August, 1947, two independent Dominions shall be set up in India, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan," and August 15th, 1947, is now exactly five weeks distant. The Bill contains no surprises, for the regrettable, though perhaps inevitable, declaration that as from the appointed day all obligations of His Majesty's Government towards Indian States and their rulers lapse completely was, unfortunately, in accordance with expec:ation. The Bill has been generally received with enthusiasm in India as decisive proof of British good faith, and preparations for the actual transfer of authority five weeks hence are well advanced. The plebiscite now in progress in the North-West Province will determine the affiliation of that territory—almost certainly in favour of Pakistan —and Sir Cyril Radcliffe is to go out as chairman of a boundary commission which will determine the precise frontiers of the parti- tioned Bengal and Punjab. The King ceases to be Emperor of India and the India and Burma Offices disappear, what remains of their functions being transferred to the newly (and wisely) named Minister of Commonwealth Relations. So the fateful step is taken. It was impossible that it should not be taken, but it is idle to pretend that India's prospects are either clear or reassuring. The relations between the two Dominions—if either or bosh of them remain Dominions— the relations of each of them to the Indian States and the future of those States, the effect on administration of the removal of the able British civil servants who have promoted India's interests so well and so long—all this raises grave questions in the mind of everyone who realises the vast import of so radical a change in the machinery of government of 410,000,000. It is for India to prove that she can wield the instrument she has so insistently, and intelligibly, demanded.
