INDIAN SITUATION

Evening Star, Issue 19794, 18 February 1928, Page 10

INDIAN SITUATION

STATUTORY COMMISSION BOYCOTTED IMPORTANT SPEECH BY LORD BIRKENHEAD (British Official News.) Press Association —By Wireless —Copyright. RUGBY, February 17. (Received February 18, at 11.35 a.m.) Lord Birkenhead, 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. After declaring that the statement issued by Sir John Simon indicating the limits within which the Commission was prepared to admit and welcome the cooperation of the Indian Committee had never been discussed by him before the Commission left England, Lord Birkenhead said those who. imagined 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 the committees of various assemblies would be welcome at every stage, but if that help was not forthcoming the Commission would nevertheless carry its task to a conclusion. He referred to the British Labor Party’s support for the policy of appointing the Commission,' and the declaration of Mr Ramsay MacDonald that if the Labor Party were returned to power to-morrow, India would still find itself confronted with a commission. Lord Birkenhead expressed the opinion that the hoycotters would gradually discover how little they represented the vast and heterogeneous community of which Britain was the trustee. They would discover millions of Moslems, millions of depressed classes, millions in the Anglo-Indian business community who intended to put their case before the Commission, which 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 the extension of the existing constitution by recusing, in the first place, to work it and by declining in the organised boycott to examine its present workings with a view to its reform and possible extension. ’