KALEIDOSCOPIC INDIA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 17, 28 August 1946, Page 6

KALEIDOSCOPIC INDIA

DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS OVER 150 YEARS OF BRITISH RULE “One is apt to speak of India as if it were a uniformed country inhabited by one people,” said Sir Patrick Duff, K.C.8., K.C.V.0., in an address to the Patriotic Societies in Christchurch recently. “Actually, it has 24 different languages and is as varied in peoples, traditions and religions as is Europe, with all its deep diversities, and the size of it is like the British Isles, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium and Holland all rolled into one. It has about 388 million people. Its composition is of incredible complexity. There are 562 Indian States covering one-third of the Indian Peninsula ruled by Princes in Treaty relations with Britain. The largest of these States is as big as France.

“The native rulers, who are not part of what is called British India, rule without democratically elected legislatures. They would hold that their peoples are not sufficiently advanced to handle safely democratic institutions. On the other hand, advanced political leaders in India think that you cannot have existing side by side complete governance by the people in the rest of India. The problem of Federation in such circumstances, and of getting a unified government for a united India, is complicated. And, over all other divergencies, tower two major divisions: the Hindus (25 million) and the Moslems (95 million).

Democratic Provinces

At the present time, there are 11 Provinces in the part of India called British India. These are ruled by Governoi's acting on the advice of Indian Ministers. Each Province has a legislature exactly like legislatures in New Zealand: they are in charge of the whole admiinstrative machinery. In every Province an Indian Premier and Indian Cabinet responsible to a fully elected Indian Legislature are empowered to deal with the full range of every-day government, including law and order, finance, public health, local .government, education, agriculture, land and taxation. Women have the franchise in all British India. Out of one and a half million Government servants in all Services, only about 3000 are British.

“The Central Government of India deals with defence, foreign affairs, the regulations of railways, and other matters of common conceim to all the Provinces of India. Its position in relation to the 11 Provinces- corresponds roughly to what one sees in the Federal Parliaments of Australia or Canada.

In the Melting Pot

“Things at the moment are in the melting pot; but, previously, the Viceroy’s Executive Council has been composed of 11 Indian and four British members, and the Viceroy has been bound by the advice of the majority of his Executive Council in all executive decisions. . “I make mention of these few significant facts because people are apt to forget that our present efforts to launch India on complete self-government are only the culmination of a process which has been going on for many years and that, for decades past, India has in fact enjoyed a very large measure of self-goyernment. “It is not for nothing that the great French political historian, de Tocqueville, who died as long ago as 1859, could write ‘for every man who believes in the legitimate progress of the human race, what a consoling and marvellous spectacle is that of the English Dominion in India.’ Our efforts to create a political self-consciousness in India date back for the last hundred years. With our encouragement, the .Indian National Congress assembled for the first time in 1885. The most prominent Indian Moslem of the day, Sir Saiyid Ahmed, said in 1906 ‘of such benevolence as the English Government shows to foreign nations under her, there is no example in the history of the world.’

“A hundred years is very little in the chequered histories of the immemorial East. All nationalist movements feed on memories, but the greatest memories of India are not national. While Hindu patriots recall the golden age of Hindustan, Moslem pride remembers a more recent conquest and dominion. Thus, the complexities of this vast and kaleidoscopic continent, the bitter racial animosities, the inability to keep religion and politics apart, have to say the least, not made easier the task of the British who have sought so long, so patiently, so thanklessly, to create and encourage an Indian nationhood.

Assumption of Responsibility

“Over the last 30 or 40 years the pace has quickened: and at last the responsibilities and difficulties of self-government have, in • their entirety and without any reservations whatsoever, recently been offered to Indians. The response, up to the moment, has not been altogether impressive. Mr Fraser observed in the House of Representatives two or three weeks ago that it appeared to him that perhaps so downright an offer had embarrassed some of the parties in India because, as he said, ‘it was one thing to join in a campaign for independence and selfgovernment and self-determination, but it was another to assume responsibility.’ We are doing our utmost by all possible means to promote agreement among Indians as to the form of Government under which they will take their place in the fellowship of free nations. One can sympathise with the impatience of Indians for the day when this js brought about. But it rests with India to do it.

“One can even sympathise a little with those who suggest that Britain should walk out and let India’s passionate and divided millions fight it out by themselves. But we have a deep responsibility engaged to these millions of people whom we have administered now for over 150 years, whom, mind you, we rescued from internecine war and wholesale domestic convulsions and to whom we have given a regime of peace lasting longer than India has ever known in all her history.”