FUTURE OF INDIA

Evening Star, Issue 23692, 27 September 1940, Page 8

FUTURE OF INDIA

QUESTION OF DOMINION STATUS BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S POLICY (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 25. The Secretary for India. Mr L,. S. Amery, in a speech to the Overseas League in London, referred to the meeting which' Mr Gandhi will have with the Viceroy of India during the next few days. “ One can only hope that the outcome of the discussions may be an agreement consistent both with Mr Gandhi’s conscientious objections to war in general and with the Viceroy’s no less conscientious conviction and duty to allow nothing to stand in the way of India’s wholehearted effort to play her part iq a struggle which concerns her present welfare and security and all the ideals her peoples hold dear.” Dealing with the constitutional position, Mr Amery said: “The main permanent framework of the future constitution of India as a dominion is now a matter for the Indians to settle for themselves. The whole constitutional field, the relations of the various parts and Clements of India to the whole, andl the methods of election and representation, all these matters are open to re-examination. Only, as in the case of every dominion, or for that matter of any federation in the past, there must be that measure of agreement or consent, and necessarily therefore of compromise, between the main constituent elements that have in the future to live and work together, which is a preliminary condition of free self-govern-ment. In this matter Britain has now made clear one of the essential implications of India’s future status, while imposing upon the Indians one of the first responsibilities of that status. It is obvious that a change so far reaching, both in structure and in the very basis of the authority of India’s government, cannot take place at a moment when the whole Commonwealth is in the throes of a struggle for its existence.”

Mr Amery added that the .Nazis’ doctrine was a direct attack upon the spirtiual basis of all religion. “It is as profoundly opposed to Islam,’ with its insistence on the equality of all nien before Godl and on the supreme virtues of justice and mercy, or to Hinduism, with its deep-rooted hatred of violence and cruelty, as it is to Christianity. The Nazis’ onslaught threatens the soul of India as it threatens ours, and there is no Indian who does no troalise that menace.” AFRICAN COCOA (British Official Wireless,) RUGBY, September 25. The Colonial Office announces the purchase bv Britain of the whole of the forthcoming cocoa crops of the Gold Coast, Nigeria, and West Africa. A cocoa control board is being set up to administer the scheme. Equal treatment will be extended to producers in French colonies which have adhered to the Free French movement, and while plans are being settled the British Government, to provide immediate resumption of trade in the French Cameroons, is buying 12,000 tons of cocoa as far as possible from stocks of the past crop, •1.500 tons being shipped to Britain immediately.