The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1930. THE INDIAN PROBLEM.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 January 1930, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1930. THE INDIAN PROBLEM.

hie problem of the ruling of India is coining forward prominently again. In the Monday cables it was stated the report of the Simon Commission would be available, for .tiie Government in February, and a press forecast is that the substance of the report is likely to disappoint those advocating radical oiianges in British rule. The document is further forecasted as being the most important in the history of British rule in India. It is not .surprising to learn that the. members of the Commission have not been unanimous in their findings. The majority favour granting the Dominion status to India only by a slow gradual process. The minority are of opinion that reforms are not appreciated by the Indian politicians, nor is there the capacity among the people to carry them further, and reforms should be dropped. In various ways native leaders are showing considerable opposition to British rule; As in the case, of Gandhi- the most spectacular leader —the opposition is uncompromising. As an exchange puts it —Ghandi at his spinning-wheel talking about complete secession from Great Britain is emblematic of the unpractical idealism which underlies much of the Swaraj movement. One of the main planks in the Swarajists’ platform is to check the rush to the cities by making it possible for the peasantry to earn at home. They believe that it will be possible to boycott the output of factories and replace it by hand-spinning and hand-weaving. Some success has already attended the movement, but it has been comparatively small, and the output does not show

signs of competing with any prospect of profit with the product of the mills. It is akin to the demand lor complete secession. liow could India, under present conditions, govern itself? India numbers its people in hundreds of millions, its languages in hundreds, and ,ts castes and subcastes in thousands. hen we have Hindu and Moslem, Aiahman and Pariah, Such and Parsee, Christian and Buddhist. How are they to be united? Yet the British people stand pledged, by such steps and stages as may bo found feasible, to give India the status of a self-governing State within the Empire. If this pledge is to be redeemed India must be educated in the art of self-government. At present there is a great gap between tiie Legislature and the people. There is also a great disparity between tiie work to be done in qualifying the elector and the means which are so far in sight for doing it. Most of the people live in villages, 1 and the villager is poor, ignorant, inert and superstitious. The first thing to be done is to give him a desire for something better and fuller. Then there must he a mass education. Political institutions themselves will not provide the cure. Thorp must be an intelligent electorate before there can he. sound political life. The building of this electorate is an immense task, and it may well he doubted whether any of our present agencies are equal to it. Gandhi represents the,.demand of many thought--IHi Indians that their countrymen shall lie free to live their own lives and have their own cultural ideals apart from Western interference. They believe that the. Western organisation of economic relationships is radically faulty; that it thrusts the weakest to me wall; that it is heading towards disaster. They admit the excellence of Western organisation and the efficiency of “Western methods, but they believe these things are alien to the genius of their race, and that their ountry must follow its own culture. But they do not face the question whether India can endure as a civilised and orderly country without the British Raj. The set purpose of Gandhi is difficult to counteract, but it is typical of the general problem for Britain in India.