INDIAN COMMISSION

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 121, 20 February 1928, Page 9

INDIAN COMMISSION

NATIVE CO-OPERATION DESIRED BOYCOTTERS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF COMMUNITY SPEECH BY LORD BIRKENHEAD Lord Birkenhead, speaking on the situation in India, said the boycotters of the Commission would discover how little they represented the community and that millions would put their case before the Commission. Rugby, February 17. Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, at Doncaster yesterday delivered an important speech on the situation in India, where the Indian Legislative Assembly is now debating at Delhi the question .of boycotting the Indian Statutory Commission, of which Sir John Simon is chairman. After declaring that the statement issued by Sir John Simon, indicating the limits within which the Commission was prepared to admit and welcome the co-operation of an Indian committee, had never been discussed by him before the Commission left England, Lord Birkenhead said that those who imagined that they- could defeat the purpose of the Commission by boycotting it had no contact with reality. The assistance of Indian opinion officially represented and organised in committees of the various Assemblies would be welcomed at every stage, but if that help was not forthcoming the Commission would nevertheless carry its task to a conclusion. Lord Birkenhead referred to the British Labour Party’s support for the policy of appointing a Commission, and the declaration of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald that if the Labour Party were returned to power to-morrow India would still find itself confronted with the Commission.

Lord Birkenhead expressed the opinion that the boycotters would gradually discover how little they represented the vast and heterogeneous community of which Britain was the trustee. They would discover millions of Moslem’s, millions of depressed classes, millions of business people in the Anglo-Indian community who intended to put their case before the Commission, and that Commission would ultimately report to Parliament. They should consider whether the attitude recommended by the more extreme elements in India was likely to convince anyone that they were fit for a great extension of the present constitution. They might easily by co-operation so prove it, but he misread the situation if they succeeded in proving that India was already ripe for an extension of the existing Constitution by refusing in the first place to work it and by declining in an organised boycott to examine its present workings with a view to its. reform and possible extension.—British Official Wireless.