INDIA’S RIGHTS

Hokitika Guardian, 7 November 1929, Page 6

INDIA’S RIGHTS

* CONSERVATIVE OPINION.

[United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.]

LONDON, Nov. 6,

Lord Birkenhead, speaking in the House of Lords, in reply to Lord Parmoor, brushed aside contemptuously the idea that it was not intended to suggest any change to, the people of India. It was plain what was intended. It was intended to appease them, because a grave threat had been made that was subservient of the civil government in India. It was because we were menaced at the end of the year with a campaign of civil disobedience that it was thought that some announcement of this kind, which was misleading in its scope, would pvevt the threat to law and order. He had drawn one deep lessor from his study of Indian history during the past sixty years. It was that the way to discharge our fiduciary obligations to India was never to yield to threats..

Lord Birkenhead, proceeding, asked: What did Dominion Status mean? It did not mean what it meant five years ago, and no one knew what it might mean five yeai# hence. l r ct here, with crude ignorance, the Government flung into the disputations in India an indication that officially had never been made before, namely, that Dominion Status was the goal. No sane man could assay any approximate date when it was possible to conceive India attaining Dominion Status. What man could see the time, even in a hundred years, when the people of India would be capable of taking such control of the army, navy, and civil service as was assumed by self-governing Dominions. The result of this pronouncement would be that the people of India would sav that they had been cheated. The Government had mishandled the situation in every conceivable stage.

AGAINST DOMINION STATUS

LONDON, Nov. 6

The opinion is expressed in Conservative circles that the debate on India in the House of Lords has cleared the air bv eliciting from Lord Parmoor a statement that the Indian Viceroy’s recent pronouncement did not mean any change in polk-y as regards India on the part of the British Government.

The “Daily Telegraph” accepts this assurance, but it says: “The effect in India of this belated frankness has now been seen.”

The ‘'‘Morning Post” says: “As Lord Birkenhead jointed out, Dominion Status has not been defined, and may mean., one thing one year and another thing the next year. It is used by the Irish Free State as a euphemism for independence. Such a definition, if applied to India, would mean the destruction of that Empire.”

The “Daily Chronicle” says: The Government say that they merely have reaffirmed the old promises, but that is not what India understood by Lord Irwin’s statement.