The Delhi Agreement
The temptation to read too much into the agreement which his emerged from the discussions between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan must be resisted The agreement itself is confined to the question of minorities, particularly in East and West Bengal and Assam. On the other economic' and political problems bedeviling relations between the two Dominions no visible progress has been made. though invisible progress may well have been ; in that event the result will ih due time be disclosed. But the tension has been eased ; the atmosphere has been at least partially cleared ; personal contacts have been established ; the two national leaders have 'pub- licly declared their confidence in one another. That amounts in sum to a great deal. So do the actual provisions of the minorities agree- ment. Under it minorities are to be protected, and they are to look for protection to the State in which they live, not the State with which they have ties of race or religion. That is of the first im- portance ; nothing was more disastrous in Europe in the years between the wars than the appeals of minorities to a State outside their borders to protect them against their own Government. Neither are minorities to be expelled or encouraged to migrate ; on the contrary, every endeavour is to be made in both India and Pakistan to assist recent migrants to return and to recover their looted property or, failing that, to get compensation for it. All that is most hopeful. So are the courageous speeches made by Pandit Nehru and Liaquat All Khan in their respective Assemblies— courageous because in each case there is an extremist faction which regards the agreement as a surrender. So is the statement that the two Prime Ministers are to meet again from time to time. So is the acceptance by both countries of Sir Owen Dixon, the Australian judge, as United Nations mediator in Kashmir. For Kashmir is the crucial issue. If thane can be settlement there a new harmony between India and Pakistan is not only possible but likely.
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