EUROPEANS’ STATUS IN INDIA

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 260, 1 August 1942, Page 8

EUROPEANS’ STATUS IN INDIA

Residents And Capital (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 31. Equity to all communities in India, including the Europeans, who are important to India herself, must be on the basis of self-government, said Lord Craigmyle in the House of Lords today in a debate on India. Apart from the Europeans in the Services, there were 20,000 who were working in India, and they must be considered in the negotiations, he added. Lord Catto also said that the Britons in India were entitled to the same "rights as the Indians, as British subjects, would have in Britain. Few Indians who understood the economies of India would deny the importance of European capital in India. Lord Hailey said that if India. had a complaint it would be that Britain had delayed too long in granting a system of protection under which her industries could be developed. Lord Hardinge said that, for any Government to admit the claim that was made for complete independence of India would be a betrayal of Britain, which had been associated with India for more than 200 years, and also the Indians who relied on and trusted the British. Mutual Trade Benefit. Lord Wedgewood said that safeguards for the Europeans in India would be found in a federal union embracing India, Britain and the United States. The Duke of Devonshire, replying to the debate, said that both Britain and India would suffer if there was a diminution of the flow of trade. It was impossible to make an offer of complete self-government and to exact guarantees for specific interests. They had passed from the conception of tutelage to one of a free and willing partnership, and the matters in dispute would have to be .settled by discussions as between equal partners. Referring to the co-operation that had existed in the past between the British and Indians, the Duke of Devonshire said there was no reason to suppose that that would cease to exist. He also referred to the way in which the Indian troops had served the Empire, and he said he believed the new relationship with India would survive the tests to which it had been subjected.