India and the Commonwealth
It would be difficult to exaggeratc the importance of the Common- wealth Confsrence which opens next Thursday. Practically, if not quite, the only business is the future relation of India with the Commonwealth. On that there is little to be added to, or subtracted from, the oonsiderations set out in a leading article in the Spectator three weeks ago. Since then Pandit Nehru, in an interview with the Daily Mail, has reaffirmed India's intention to become an independent republic. Is there room for an independent republic within the British Commonwealth ? General Smuts, with his long and unique association with first Imperial and then Commonwealth Conferences, has affirmed emphatically that there is not. In the case of Eire assumption of the status of republic was regarded as involving auto- matically severance from the Commonwealth. None of this is neces- sarily decisive in the case of India, but the fact that Ceylon Is certainly,
and Pakistan probably, remaining in the Commonwealth makes it still more difficult to retain India on any other than the basis which India's two immediate neighbours are ready to accept. But a way may conceivably be found. The Conference will represent a wealth of political experience and political resource, and good will towards India will be universal. But on one principle there should be, and is likely to be, general insistence. There can be no relaxation of such bonds as unite the present members of the Commonwealth in order to retain India's membership. It is common talk that the one bond is the Crown, to which India feels she owes no allegiance. But actually there is much more—a certain quite indefinable mystique whose potency no original member of the Commonwealth doubts, and of which new entrants like Ceylon seem propitiously conscious. Not one single step must be taken to prejudice anything so precious as that. It looks, therefore, as though what must be looked for is some association—by treaty or otherwise—by which India, without being actually a member of the Commonwealth, will be linked with its existing members more closely than with any other State. The political wisdom of Mr. Nehru and the other Commonwealth Prime Ministers ought to be capable of devising that.
