INDIAN SELF-GOVERNMENT

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21414, 5 March 1935, Page 8

INDIAN SELF-GOVERNMENT

TO T7JE EDITOB OP TUB PRESS. Sir,—Allow me to congratulate "Common Sense" on his concise and intelligent letter under the above heading. There will, undoubtedly, be more 1 rouble over the Indian princes and federation. They arc already getling "cold feet" as the implications of federation are emerging more clearly to their startled vision. For British folk jn India the policy presented by the White Taper is a traßcdy. Federation, provincial self-government, the iudianisal.ion of the army, safeguards, and other slogans are a chimera, an hallucination, a farce of meaningless words'

lii a recent letter to "The Press" I mentioned Mr Winston Churchill's suggestion that the sinister link which brought Mr Mac Donald and Mr Baldwin into double harness was their united determination to disintegrate India, to threw that great dependency into the melting pot; but if they do so. they destroy the Empire. The British Government could not have understood the Simon Report. It must be entirely ignorant of Indian conditions, or it would not be humbugged by the wiles of the Indian propagandist. No one could be found better to advise the Home Government on what is the right thing to do for India than Mr Rudyard Kipling. He, together with Sir Michael O'Dwycr. Lord Lloyd, General Sir Henry Page-Croft <men who know the country), is against the White Paper and Home rule. Mr Kipling is a genius of wisdom on Indian affairs, being born there and brpught up there, and having mixed with the peoples of India. And remember—• Mr Kipling is Mr Baldwin's cousin! India is the land of paradox. The ordinary stay-at-home Britons understand very little about the country. It has an area of some 1,800,000 square miles, a coastline of 10,000 miles, and a land frontier of over 6000, with a population of 353,000,000, or one-fifth of the whole world. Of this enormous population, barely 14 per cent, can read or write in any known language. There are seven languages of entirely different linguistic family, sub-divided into 222 groups, besides some 500 dialects. And the British National Government is aiming to give home rule to such an immense conglomerate ccmnnmity with its fanatical religious difficulties! .It seems inconceivable. Nearly 240,000,000 Hindus are hereditary enemies of the 77,000,000 Muslims, who once conquered them. In addition there are Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists. Animists, Christians, Mahrattas, Zoroastrians, and innumerable others. No wonder Mr Ramsay MacDonald was completely at sea when dealing with Mahatma Gandhi at the Round Table Conference!

It is pathetic folly for the Homeland politicians to thrown India into the chaos that will inevitably follow any grant of self-government on the lines at present proposed, and it is high time a direct hand was taken in checking the intrigue which has gone to such dangerous lengths.—Yours, etc., A. A. M. GRUNDY. March 4, .1935.