THE FUTURE OF INDIA
SIR,—The British Government has again led the Congress horse to the water, but it still refuses to drink. All India, Congress, Moslems
and Princes alike, views with detestation the policies for which Ge:.
many and Italy stand. Yet the Congress, by far the most powerful party in the country, is not prepared to throw its weight behind the Empire's effort, because it is not satisfied with the promised status of an equal partnership with the other members of the British Com- monwealth of Nations. It is in vain that we try to persuade she Congress leaders that we are offering India a more valuable and dignified status than that cif an independent nation. Is it not importam that we should try to understand why they remain unmoved?
As a partner in the British Empire, India would sit at the tabk with South Africa, whose treatment of Indians as well as of her owt native and coloured people, has long been condemned by all parties it India; and with Australia, whose policy it is to exclude Asiatics from her territory. But quite apart from these particular difficulties, she would inevitably fwd that, as the only Oriental member of the British Commonwealth, she was continually placed in the position of either having to protest against, or to endure, policies and actions which are based, however unconsciously, upon the tacit assumption of the superiority of the European races. As an independent nation, she would be able to make whatever representations she wished. Even if she was not strong enough to sustain them, she could at lea feel that, like China, she was the captain of her national soul. Indeed might it not help us in dealing with India to ask whether we can
conceive of China, although she is fighting for her life, accepting the status which we are offering to India as the ultimate goal of her aspirations? I cannot think that we are showing sufficient imagination in out Asiatic policy. Here are two vast populations, boo or boo millions of people, both instinctively opposed to Germany and Italy in the West, and to Japan in the East. Yet we are alienating one of them by withholding (unwillingly I grant) the supplies which she needs to resist aggression, and the other by insisting upon keeping her against her will within the political system of the British Commonwealth it Nations. Are we so sure that in the end we may not throw boy these nations into the arms of a Japan which will be only too glad o stand as the champion of the East against the West? I do no forget the immense difficulties and complications of India's internal problems, nor the special relations with Britain which would nuke necessary the negotiations of an elaborate treaty between the n%
countries. But I cannot believe that these difficulties would prove to be insuperable if India were once assured that we were wilhl to give her the status which she covets, the status of a sovereign nation among the other sovereign nations of the world. If, when ona assured of this, she should elect of her own accord to remain partner in the British Commonwealth of Nations, her position wo be far more dignified, her contribution to the Commonwealth more valuable, than if she is held there against her will:
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