INDIAN REFORM [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] .
Snt;,--It is difficult in the present slogan-ridden state of Indian diseutsion -for the sober facts of the Indian situation to be appreciated at anything like their true value. • And yet when the :ebullition of contentious critics; -both in India and in England; are dismissed from the mind, the agonizing truth emerges that there are toiling in India today -two hundred million peasants and fifty .thonsand factory- hands and labottrerg whose destiny it is really that is going to be decided within a very short time. Few who have not lived in the trackless villages of India and have not experienced the heart- rending poverty of the working classes can realize their position.
The question which every young man of India is asking
himself, therefore, is : 11'ould the proposed constitution change the position of these poverty-ridden masses in any way and raise them to a status of self-respecting citizenship? For, allow us to say, that it is in this that the cure of the great Indian problem lies. No other moment in the history of democracy is more suited to the furtherance of this fact than now when a Joint Select Committee of both Houses of Parlia- ment is sitting to discuss the Indian problem, and when arrangements are being made for the impending session of the World Economic Conference. Brought about by the urgent necessity of stabilizing the position of the masses threatened by international crisis, as is the latter Conference, we have no doubt it will pay the utmost attention to the case of the peoples of India whose poverty is a more tremendous and a more potent fact than the condition of any other mass. It remains, however, a point to be emphasized with the greatest weight of emphasis lest it be lost in the maze of constitutional
theorizing. . . . .
With due deference to those engaged in the formation of the future constitution of India, the younger generation of India, therefore, strongly appeals that nothing which does not make towards the raising of the status of the Indian masses will achieve the desired end.—We are, Sir, &e., HARDIT SINGH (Hon. President), ,
M. H. RASHID, ''
LAI. CHAMAN (Hon. Sec.).
Chief Punjab Association, 118 Park Road, Chiswick.
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