THE FUTURE OF INDIA SIR, —It is true that the Congress
Party does not comprise the whole of India or even of British India, but it is very much more than "a section of Hindus who have had an English education," as one of your correspondents declares. In the elections which followed the 1935 Act it won sweeping majorities in eight of the eleven Provinces. The Congress Ministers in all these Provinces have now resigned as a protest against the refusal of the British Government to make what they would accept as a satisfactory pronouncement on the future status of India. Yet no one imagines that any other party would have the remotest chance of success at the polls. I am convinced that we make the most profound mistake if we underestimate the influence of the Congress in India today.
We in England find it very difficult to believe that any consider- able and responsible section of the people of India can regard the status of a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire as derogatory to India's self-respect. But Congress India does so regard it. And since this is so, „would it not be wise to take full account of the fact, and to try to understand the sentiment which lies behind it?
I do not forget the sharp differences which divide the Moslem League from the Congress and both from the Indian States. What I maintain is that no solution can be permanently satisfactory which ignores the hardening conviction of the most influential element in the population of British India.—Yours faithfully.
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