Towards an Indian Constitution W HAT has been done in the
main at the Round Table Conference can never be undone. It stands as a monument of good will and constructive ability. The progress in regard, to the Federal Constitution has been extraordinarily rapid. The Hindu-Moslem electoral difficulty is by no means settled when we write, but even a longer delay than we expect in settling it cannot spoil the Constitutional conception. The turning point came last week when Lord Reading on behalf of the Liberal Party advanced his former policy by several stages and frankly accepted the principle of responsible Indian Government at the centre.
It is generally expected that the Unionist Party will on the whole also support the idea of an all-India Federal Constitution with responsible government at the centre. At first, of course, owing to the necessity for Imperial safeguards, there will be a dualism of responsibility. But the dualism will gradually disappear in proportion as Indians prove their capacity for complete autonomy. We could wish that the Unionist delegates at the Con- ference last week had been more touched by the psychology of the moment and had spoken in a spirit characteristically :!onstructive rather than critical. We have nothing to say against their description of the various dangers, for these dangers undoubtedly exist. It was the manner rather than the matter which was inopportune.
On the whole, however, the picture of the future India which is taking shape on the canvas is very promising. The composition is already sufficiently plain and is realistic and pleasing. Many details have yet to be added, and it has not even been decided what the nature of these details shall be, but there is no reason whatever to think that the main lines of the ample sketch which is before us will have to be obliterated.
It is only fair to say how extraordinarily helpful was the decision of the Princes to ask for a Federal Constitution immediately and not to regard it as a distant objective as it had been imagined in the Simon Report. It was the Princes who enabled the Liberal Party to pass from its first opinion based on the Simon Report to its second opinion based on an entirely new situation. Our readers may remember that we have insisted from the first on the decisive importance of relating any new Indian Con- stitution to the wishes of the Native States. That has been done More skilfully than seemed possible only a few weeks • ago. • The Indian Liberals who have not spared their labours either at the Conference or outside it must be specially applauded for their courage. When they return to India they will have a difficult and hazardous time before them. They will be cold-shouldered or denounced, but they may be assured that they will have the constant sympathy-and support of all British well-wishers of India. To go through a bad time for a political cause which you- believe to be right is one of the most profitable kinds of suffering. Time brings its just revenges. The reward always comes in the end.
The vast changes of thought which have occurred recently in India are only to be matched—though it is possible that they are outmatched—by the changes of thought in Great Britain. There has seldom been such a great tide of sympathy with the aspirations of another country for autonomy as there is with India now. Arc the Indians going to. let slip such a glorious opportunity ? It is necessary to say plainly that if the opportunity is lost it may not recur. Benevolence, indeed, may never be absent from Great . Britain, but new and intractable circumstances may intervene. The circumstances are now altogether favourable. We who have pleaded whole- heartedly for a generous grant of a new status to India feel it our duty to remind all Indians who accept the proposals of the Round Table Conference that depends upon their own efforts and particularly upon their capacity to agree upon communal rights.
Of course, we cannot hope that the extremists in India will be reconciled at once ; but what we may reasonably expect is that when proposals so obviously sincere, and so inherently capable of expansion, as those of the Round Table are laid before the mass of Indian thinkers, a crumbling process will set in which will detach an increasing number of Indians from the extremist pOsition. •In the end that position will become untenable. The way will be clear for a transformed and contented India.
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