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Hokitika Guardian, 23 September 1931, Page 4

Tiik central figure at the India Round Table Conference is the Indian leader •(landhi, who icpresents the National Congress, and that Congress stands f r independence. This year’s meeting at Karachi was a triumph for Gandhi, for ho carried against opposition the pact lie had made with the Viceroy, but the meeting re-asserted independence as its goal, and it is this policy that Gandhi has gone to England to advocate. He has re stated it in his address to the Federal Structural Committee of the Round Table Conference. By independence, he says, the Congress means a partnership by consent, an “honourable and equal partnership” that may be dissolved by either side at will. What Gandhi now expre-ses in conciliatory terms has been stated more bluntly by others of his parry. Another Congress leader said the other day that Britain still thought of Luria in terms of “stages, safeguards, guarantees, assurances, and so on.” whereas India thought “in terms of complete freedom without anv reservation. The practical question however, is how this goal of the Congress ran be reached with the least injury to Inrun. If the Congress demand means that India must at once be handed over to the Congress, Britain cannot possibly agree to it. Tho. Congress is an unofficial body, and the strength of the .force behind it is conjectural.. When this leader speaks of India as thinking so, and so, he refers really to only part of it. India is not, and never wn.s. a nation, and government of India by the Congress party would mean government bv Hindus in the interests of Hindus. No one knows this so well a.s the Mohammedans, licence the demand for political representation disproportionate to their numbers. The Mohammedan representative on' the Federal •Structure C-remittee has welcomed Gandhi cordially and expressed the hope that his presence will lead to a settlement of this difference, font it is .a fact that, generally speaking, relations between Hindus and Moslems have not improved since the first Conference met. Despite the criticism of the Hindu leader quoted above. Britain is bound, with regard to her own a,-id India’s interests, and indeed in honour, to. insist upon safeguards and sTua.rantees. She cannot sanction a Constitution that would place Moslems and “untouchables” at the merev of the Hindu hierarchy. She cnn>r><'t in a day hand the. whoK of Mie largest and most difficult trustee-shin of the kind in the world over to the beneficiaries unconditionally.