India

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24898, 11 June 1946, Page 4

India

The constitutional proposals put forward by the British Cabinet mission in India were, as the Viceroy described them, obviously not those which any one of the Indian parties would itself have chosen. As obviously, too, the gap between offer and choice appeared very much wider to the Moslem League than to Congress. Mr Gandhi’s immediate, approving comment did not commit his party; but it was ’ encouraging enough to leave in anxious doubt only the question whether the proposals would be sufficiently acceptable to the Moslem League to enable the interim Government to be established and the constitutionmaking machinery to be set in motion. That suspense has ended. The council of the league has said it is willing to co-operate. But its announcement makes curious reading, the significance of which may be heartening—or disturbing It speaks of “ the basis of Pakistan ” as “ in- “ herent ” in the plan “ by virtue of “ its compulsory grouping of the six “ Moslem provinces ”, and of the hope that “ the establishment of a “ completely sovereign Pakistan will “ultimately result”; and it adds that “ for these reasons ” the league will join the constitution-making body and “ keep in view the oppor- “ tunity for the right of secession “ of provinces or groups of the “union which is provided by im- “ plication in the British mission’s “ plan ”. The assurance plainly offered to the league’s followers is that Pakistan is not lost, and that co-operation is not surrender. In a sense this is true. Pakistan is not lost. But it is more distant now than it has ever been. If the constitution takes the basic form recommended by the Cabinet mission, the Moslem provinces may choose to group themselves. Nevertheless, the group would enjoy no more than the powers its constituents brought with them. That is, it would remain within the federal union, and the union would .continue to deal with foreign affairs, defence, and communications. If a sovereign Moslem nation is ever achieved, ft can come about only when the difficulties of constitutional amendment are surmounted. These are now insuperable, and will remain so for very many years. The White Paper recommends that any question raising in the Union Legislature a major communal issue should require for its decision a majority of the representatives present and voting of each of the two major communities, as well as a majority of all the members present and voting. The intention is to safeguard the Moslems against Hindu domination. But it also makes it certain that, so long as the Hindus want one India, there will be one India. For those tens of millions to whom the league’s council speaks Pakistan can never be anything but a dream. The council cynically encourages them to look on it as something

more real By doing so the council seems to be trying to preserve its standing among them. It may be that the pretence will yield dividends which all Indians will share. This “ big step toward Pakistan ” could be the more profitable step to Indian independence. But it may be, also, that the council will at some convenient time “ discover ” that the promise which it declares to be “ inherent ” and “ implied ” in the British plan is indeed not to be plucked from it—and will then exercise the right, carefully reserved in its resolution, to modify or revise its policy. Such an occasion would of course be contrived, and exploited, to demonstrate that it had not been the league that had “ blocked ” progress, but the league that had been tricked. The possibility has to be pointed out, as one consistent with the intellectual tortuosity that Indian negotiators sometimes exhibit, and indeed relish, in situations which make their clearest demand for straight-line thinking. It is, of course, the possibility that India’s future will again be darkened by a partisanship too obstinately subtle to stop manoeuvring. If Mr Jinnah, however, has decided to embrace reality and its real opportunity for Moslem and Hindu alike, and is contriving merely to look as if he can do so without renouncing Pakistan or deferring it beyond human view, then a happier possibility emerges; and it is not fanciful to see it, on the present evidence, as the more likely one.