INDIAN REALITIES
By GODFREY NICHOLSON, M.P.
THERE are times when it is right and wise to ignore difficulties, just as there are those when it is criminal not to face them in
all their crudeness. And it is one of the most awkward and em- barrassing moments in politics when one has to switch over from the one method of approach to the other. For many years the need to convince Indian, and indeed world, opinion of the sincerity of our intentions has been the mainspring of our Indian policy, both in deeds and in words. So we have had to indulge in a long course of what might be called sincere insincerity, knowing well that even the barest allusions to the fundamental difficulties inherent in the Indian political problem would be interpreted on all sides as proof that we did not mean what we said. Indeed we have gone even further than that, for with the same motives we have fassively allowed a progressive deterioration in the whole fabric of the administration, until today it is on the verge of breakdown. But now, by insisting upon Indian Debates in Parliament last month, the Opposition have forced us all on to the other tack, and we are faced with the dis- agreeable, though salutary, -business of trying to see the picture as it really is. Let us proceed, then, upon the assumption that the worst will happen, and see where we stand.
In plain English, we have got to make our minds what we shall do if the Constituent Assembly produces no result at all, or pro- duces a constitution which our obligations to minorities will force us to reject. And let us bring ourselves to admit that one of these two things is practically bound to happen. Where do we go from there ? To find any answer that makes sense we must get down to the bare bones of the position, and decide upon what are our inescapable responsibilities, and how far we are able and determined to carry them out. The concoction of imaginary constitutions is- no longer enough, and that and similar pastimes must be jettisoned for the time being, while we get down to the elements. The most, fundamental element of all is that the British Government is respon- sible for the actual lives of the inhabitants of India. There can be no argument at all about the strictly legal position, for under the Act of 5935 the subject called "Law and Order" is in the last resort the responsibility of each ProVincial Governor, and finally of the Viceroy. This responsibility is a personal -one, in that it attaches to them-as individual Governors and as Viceroy respeotively, and not as "Governor in Council" or "Viceroy in Council," so that from them it passes directly to Parliament. About the moral justifi- cation for our feeling of responsibility a great deal has been said and written. Indian politicians from Gandhi downwards will argue with you for hours about it. Their thesis is that if India wants to work out her own salvation—and the admission of that right is implicit in every statement of British policy—then what business is it of ours if it involves any amount of misery, or even millions of deaths by violence? For us the answer is simple, for we view the whole -thing practically and not theoretically. Our answer is that questions of moral or legal justification can be left to be debated at leisure, but no words can alter the plain fact that Britain, and only Britain, is today in a position to prevent or to minimise imminent disaster.
If the worst comes to the worst, are we as a nation prepared to acknowledge that it is our inescapable duty to do our utmost to prevent bloodshed and all that must accompany it? This is the
• cardinal question ; upon our answer hangs the fate of India, and possibly much more besides. If the answer is a direct negative, cr the equivalent plea that we cannot or will not carry out our obligation, then our course is clear. We must evacuate India at once, and leave its unfortunate inhabitants to stew in their own juice, and, incidentally, abandon any -claim to think of ourselves as a humane or as a great people. If the answer is that -we do in fact recognise it to be our duty to try‘ to prevent a catastrophe when we have the power to do so, we shall have embarked upon a course of action the end and the consequences of which it is impossible to predict. But in either case we should like time to give the alarmingly weighty matters at stake proper consideration, and to prepare public opinion. But. time is just what we shall not be given. For the fateful question will have to be answered one way or the other when- ever large-scale disorders next break out.
Here we must give some consideration to the curious constitutional status of the present interim Indian Government which is headed by Mr. Nehru. This Government could only be induced to take office at all by the Viceroy's undertaking at all times to accept the advice of his Executive Council, in other words, not to exercise most °If the duties and responsibilities that are laid upon him by statute, that is by the Act of 1935. Under the Act the Viceroy is a sort of Prime Minister, with the right and duty of keeping in constant and active touch through his Ministers, with the running of the administrative machine, and with the power of over-ruling hostile votes in the Legis- lature. He and the Provincial Governors also have special respon- sibilities such as that for law and order, to which I have already referred. As things stand today it would be difficult to say what is the legal position of the Viceroy ; he certainly is not playing the part laid down for him as the head of the Government, as he has renounced his rights in this respect. Parliament was never consulted before he was placed in this position, so its legality must remain open to question. And it would be even more difficult to define the status of the interim Government, which seems to be answerable to nobody, unless it is to the party caucuses. The problems that arise from this anomalous state of affairs are far from being of purely academic interest, the proof of which is to be seen in the recent tragic happenings in Bihar. There, only a few weeks ago, many thousands of our fellow subjects were niassacred in circumstances of great horror. Neither the Provincial Government, nor the Provincial Governor, nor the Viceroy, provided any effective intervention, and though Mr. Nehru acted with considerable courage, for which full credit must be given him, he was not able to prevent the massacre, and he gave no reliable indication that he would be able to prevent similar tragedies elsewhere. So it looks very much as if further episodes of the same sort will take place unless the Governors or the Viceroy, as the case may be, exercise the special personal re- sponsibilities placed on them by Parliament. Which is only another way of saying that indirectly it will be His Majesty's Government that will have to intervene. There is another contingency that may force the issue. If circumstances occur in which British troops have to be used, is it conceivable that they could be employed at the behest of the Interim Government, whose legal status is more than doubtful, and whioltr-usight only represent one party? Here again the authority that would have to be exerted would have to be one that ultimately derives from Parliament.
We are thus brought sharply up against the fact that the British Government may at any moment be forced to take decisions that will commit us, and commit us for a long time to come, to an extent that no one can foresee. The choice will lie between the recognition of our continued and continuing responsibility for the maintenance of the public peace, and evacuation. And the die will be cast, overnight as it were, without more than a fraction of the electorate being aware of what is happening. This is the most dis- quieting feature of all. It is impossible to believe that British public opinion would stand for a policy of evacuation once it became aware of what it would mean in terms of death and human misery. But it is not aware of them, any more than it is aware of the commitments involved in a policy of continued responsibility. The heaviness of the military commitment will depend very largely upon the extent to which India as a whole is convinced s of the genuineness of our intention to retain power only until a fresh and broadly acceptable constitutional New Deal is reached. It is outside the scope of this article to speculate as to what the latter would be, but one's thoughts naturally turn to some form of Partition. The most serious commitment will be the administrative one. For with- out the necessary instrument of administration we should be ham- strung, and the present machine is falling to pieces. It is a serious charge against His Majesty's Government that they are fully aware of this, but that they canncn or will not do anything about it. Both these admissions were extracted from them during the recent debates. Whatever view one may hold of future events in India, this problem -must be tackled at once.
Confused and cloudy though the future may appear to be, there is no need to lose our heads, or to lose heart either. We have priceless assets, in the courage and sense of our own people, and in the immense reservoir of goodwill towards us, and of trust in our good faith, that remains in India. But neither the one nor the other will avail unless the true facts are brought into the open, and honestly faced, and unless we make clear to all the world that, having made up our minds where our duty lies, we mean to do it.
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