INDIA: INDEPENDENCE v. DOMINION STATUS [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR,—You published extracts from a speech in London by Mr. V. J. Patel (Ex-President of the Assembly) in the Special°, of July 11th. It is clear that my friend is completely out of touch with recent events in India. He imagines that Congress is the only important body in India to-day. Like others, he claims that Mr. Gandhi and his campaign of last year forced the Government to sign a " truce " and that the Congress has only to keep its weapons bright to renew the "war," and during the " armistice " to intensify the boycott till the end of the next London Conference, when Congress will then be in a position to "dictate terms" to its "vanquished foe" and so forth. This is Congress talk. Under cover of the honourable and excellent settlement reached by Mr. Gandhi and Lord Irwin, they seek to paralyse the administration, and claim immunity for whatever they do. While murderous hooliganism is rapidly increasing on all sides, any attempt to check it is met with shrieks that the police are "harassing young men," and thereby " breaking the Delhi Agreement." Congress now has too much blood on its hands, and all those outside Congress (and these are in the vast majority) are in no mood to have anything to do with it. It is the intention of Congress to wreck the London Conference. It will be seen that it is sheer folly to mix non-co-operators with co-operators. Mr. Gandhi personally is quite another matter. He is a reasonable man, a man of peace. But the Congress as a body has lost its opportunity. It is not capable of a change of heart, and cannot understand a friendly advance. The real India to whom the British people should give their hearts is not the Congress India, but the sane, moderate, liberal elements of the nation—Hindu and Moslem.
The systematic glorification of murderers since June, 1924 (at the Sarajganj Conference), has gone far enough, and the Mahatma in his Young India is now seriously alarmed, and is protesting against it every week.
The Government of India and Mr. MacDonald's Cabinet should realize that unless their freedom of action is resumed forthwith (as provided for in Article 21 of the settlement) "they will be rightly held responsible as participes criminis in further bloodshed," as the Statesman has well put it.
There can be no question now of successful Congress participation in the Round Table Conference. For years the Congress has been professing "non-violence," and in doing so it has produced rivers of blood. To-day it is a rapidly dwindling minority in India. For seven years it has
proceeded from extravagance to extravagance. Its last
great campaign achieved nothing good at all. Like Mr. Gandhi's " campaign " of ten years ago, it has been an obvious, ghastly failure, and Mr. Patel knows it.—I am, Sir, Poona. J. D. J.
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