A SOLUTION FOR INDIA ?
Sm,—Mr. Griffin forgets that in 1935 we gave India provincial autonomy. In 1937, Congress obtained majorities in seven provinces out of the eleven, but they were bare majorities. In the Bombay elections, the number of votes cast for Congress was 1,483,189 out of a total of 2,536,698. All over India, Congress only won 715 seats out of 1,585. Any chance of practising democratic government in these provinces was squashed by the ukase of the Congress High Command two years later, which robbed zoo million voters of their rights. Thereupon Dr. Satyapal, President of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee, resigned. He told the Press, " Mr. Gan-dhi's dictatorial edicts give me no alternative. . . . Congress has converted itself into a rigid dictatorship." The Liberal leaders in their mani- festo stated that " Congress believes in annihilating all parties and making Congress the only party in the land, as is the case in the Fascist and Nazi regimes—a result which would be a death-blow to democracy. If Congress really believed in democracy, it would not slight other parties or insist upon their dissolution."
As long ago as 1919, no less an authority than Mr. Srinivasa Sastri strongly opposed setting up parliaments on the English model, as un- suited to India, and begged Lord Chelmsford to drop the idea. Our best prospect of finding a solution is to get together a small com- mittee of representative men of the various great religious and national groups, and let them hammer out a workable scheme which will satisfy moderate people of all classes. Nearly everyone is tired of the rival pretensions of the Congress and the Moslem League, and would welcome any reasonable suggestions put forward.—Yours, &c., H. G. RAWLINSON.
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