India in the Commons . The Government's resolution setting up
a Select Committee on the Indian White Paper proposals has been dexterously phrased, for it is made clear that the decision to appoint the committee in no way involves acceptance of the proposals themselves. Even if it did the Govern- ment would be sure enough of its majority, but the minority might have been large enough to create some uncertainty about the future and lend colour at every point to suggestions that the Government was deferring much more to the opinion of malcontents at Westminster than to the reasonable aspirations of India. As it is, no Member of Parliament will have a reasonable excuse for voting against the Government resolution, except indeed the handful who would like to see the whole reform scheme scrapped once for all and an alien rule maintained in India in perpetuity. The real test of strength will conic when the Government has framed its Constitution Bill on' the basis of the Select Committees findings. Those findings may differ so substantially from the White Paper proposals that a division now on the merits of the latter would be beside the point.
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