REACTIONS IN INDIA T HE discussion of the Indian situation by
the House of Commons at the end of last week did little, and by the nature of things could do little, to change the present position. It none the less had its value. It enabled the Prime Minister to re-define the attitude of the British Government, and it gave both him and the Secretary of State the opportunity of reminding the House and the country of something that is inadequately realised here and still less adequately realised in the United States, the extent to which India is being governed and administered by Indians today. "The whole administration," said Mr. Churchill, "of the government of the 390,000,000 people who live in India is carried on by Indians, there being under 600 British members of the Indian Civil Service. In five provinces, including two of the greatest and comprising i ro,000,000 people, provincial Ministers responsible to their Legislatures stand at their posts." That as regards the general situation. As regards the steps -taken to fore- stall the civil disobedience campaign of the Indian Congress Party and to check the disorders which unhappily broke out, Mr. Amery made the striking statement that "the Government of India, on its own initiative, and without reference to this country, by unanimous decision of a body [the Viceroy's Executive Council] which at the moment consisted of eleven Indian members and one European member, took the only action which a self-respect- ing Government could take in these circumstances." It is against essential facts like these that windy talk in India and in some quarters in the United States and even in Britain about British domination and British oppression and British exploitation in India should be weighed.
But the fact that India is being so largely governed by Indians does not leave the position satisfactory. In the five provinces to which the Prime Minister referred the Indian Ministries are responsible in duly elected legislatures. In the other six provinces the situation was the same till the resignation of the Ministries was forced by the Congress Party as a political move. But at the centre the Ministers are not in that sense representative. They are nominated by the Viceroy and responsible to no elected body. They have shown themselves public-spirited and independent, and the Viceroy has done nothing to check their independence ; Sir Firoz Khan Noon, the Defence member of the Council, has testified that in the eleven months in which he has sat on that body, in no single case has the Viceroy over-ridden the views of the majority. Only the fact that the portfolios of Finance and Home Affairs are held by official Europeans, and that of Trans- port by an unofficial European, precludes the assertion that India is being governed completely by Indians under the presidency of the Viceroy. Pending the fundamental constitutional changes which it is all but impossible to carry through in war-time, the present arrangement is wise and works well. But that does not by an iota weaken the case for the fundamental, constitutional change the moment it becomes practicable, and the Prime Minister did well to declare unequivocally _last week that the Government stands as firmly as ever it did by the promise of complete inde- pendence conveyed to the Indian people by Sir Stafford Cripps on behalf of the War Cabinet last April.
As has just been said, it is all but impossible to carry through such a change now. It is not utterly impossible, and the Govern- ment has gone too far in insisting that it is. Given goodwill and universal co-operation in India, the risk might be taken and the change made even at this grave moment when preparations to meet imminent invasion are being made throughout the length of India's eastern seaboard. A united and resolute India, co- operating unreservedly with the British and American forces now engaged in India's defence, and with the rest of the United Nations in any way possible, would form a far stronger barrier against Japanese attack than an India which has only just been saved from the disaster of civil war by the swift, courageous and effective action of a predominantly Indian executive. It is true that a complete constitution for India could not be framed in two months or in four. To bring full representative institutions into being would take longer than that. But if the great Indian parties and communities, Congress and the Moslems and the Depressed Classes in particular, could agree on the creation of an executive on which they would all be represented in rough pro- portion to their numerical strength, then the case for transference. to such a body of complete power, except in the purely military sphere—and this even the Congress Party does not claim—would be almost unanswerable. It is precisely this unity which the British Government's critics call on the Government, with pathetic futility, to achieve. Someone, it is urged, presumably the Viceroy, should "get the Indian parties together." The hard fact, and it is the very root and core of all the trouble, is that the Indian parties will not come together. Sir Stafford Cripps talked to all their spokesmen, and looked for a time like achieving the hitherto unachieved. But he failed. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru has tried to get them together. Mr. Rajagopalachari has tried. In the last week Dr. Mookerjee, ChAirman of the Working Committee of the Hindu Mahasabha, has tried. None of them has succeeded, or even looked like succeeding. From that hard and dominating fact there is no escape.
Even more than that must be said. The Congress Party is admittedly the strongest political party in British India, but it does not constitute a majority even in British India, much less in India as a whole. And the differences between Congress and the other great parties are to all appearance irreconcilable. The 90,000,000 Moslems, according to the President of the Moslem League, Mr. Jinnah, would take part in no provisional national government whose creation would militate against the Moslem demand for a separate Moslem State of Pakistan ; the Congress Party is pledged in all circumstances to oppose the Pakistan project to the death. Mr. Jinnah accuses the British Government of taking no Indian political party except the Congress Party seriously ; the Congress Party accuses the British Government of paying wholly unjustified deference to Mr. Jinnah and the Moslems, described as the sole obstacles to unity. They are by no means the sole obstacles to unity. In an interview with the Daily Herald earlier this month Dr. Ambedkar, leader of the Depressed Classes, whom he numbers at 6o,000,000, and who certainly number over so,000,000, declared that there are two things the Depressed Classes will never stand. One is to be placed under the political domination of the Hindus, i.e., the Congress Party ; the other is to have to depend for their emancipation from the stringent caste restrictions on Hindus. In the face of such declarations as these, which are repeated constantly, while there is no sign anywhere of any kind of rapprochement, it is not merely foolish but pro- foundly mischievous to attack the British Government for- failure to achieve Indian unity. Only Indians can achieve that, and they will not. Indeed, such working unity as does exist—and fortunately there is enough of it for practical purposes—is due to the determination of the British elements in the administration to treat Indians as Indians without discrimination of party.
In some ways• the Indian situation may be less unsatisfactory than it appears, in other ways more. More, because we have to recognise that there is at present no indication that India will be more united after the war than it is today. The British Government has said clearly that if Indians will get together and frame their own constitution it will be accepted as it stands, subject only to certain reservations in the interest not of Great Britain but of various sections or minorities in India. It is earnestly to be hoped that that programme can be carried out. But if Indians fail to agree on a constitution it cannot be. This, however, is a problem of the future and factors may arise that will make for a solution. Meanwhile there is no need for undue pessimism. The disorders in India have been serious enough, as the speech by the Home Member, Sir Reginald Maxwell, in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday showed, and there is no question that they were deliberately engineered. But the firm action taken by the Government of India, and in particular the relegation of the Congress leaders to temporary • seclusion, has had its effect, and the situation is well in hand. There are signs indeed that ordinary citizens are reacting against the disorders and the authors of them and that Mr. Churchill's firm language regarding the Congress Party is by no means generally resented. In such circumstances there is still an opportunity for moderates like Mr. Rajagopalachari, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and Sir Sikander Hyat Khan to organise reasonable centre opinion effectively. That is, and always was, the only hope.
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