INDIAN CONFERENCE

Hokitika Guardian, 30 December 1932, Page 5

INDIAN CONFERENCE

PRESS CRITICISM RESULTS ARE SATISFACTORY. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) CALCUTTA, December 29. The Indian round table conference results are regarded in th© Indian ■ official circles as substantial and satisfactory, and a programme suggested by certain Indian delegates for provincial autonomy in 1934 and federation in 198 g, is regarded as practicable. The Indian Nationalist press, without its former scorn . and bitterness, combines to stress the points on which there is no agreement, and particularly the “wide divergencies on such subjects as the control of the Army and of finance.” The financial stranglehold on India is to remain, declares one paper. Another -paper sums up the. round table conference concessions as follows: “The substance remains in British hands—the shadow is given to India.” The paper “Calcutta Statesman,” without qualification, pronounces the conference a success, and contrasts -the pessimism with which the Indian delegates' began the Conference with their optimism at. its close, It says: “Everybody would be glad to see Gandhi, given his liberty, if there were good reason to suppose that he will not revive the civil disobedience, which is now an unpopular and discredited weapon. Gandhi is showing signs of declining health. He is being merely detained, under regulation and is under ,no sentence. Therefore his release is always a possibility at any moment.”

INDIAN SCHEME REVIEWED

EACH PARTY SAFEGUARDED

1 RUGBY, December 28. The Secretary for India,... Sir S. Hoare, in a broadcast speech, reviewed the scheme proposed for an All India Federation. He said he believed that, as the result of the conferences, a scheme was emerging that would safeguard the rights and interest of each of the three parties, Britain, British India, and the India of the Princes, and that would give the Indians increased scope for managing their own affairs. This scheme, was bound to be complicated, and full of anomalies, and open to criticism, as much, from the extreme “Right,” that desired no change, as from the extreme “Left,” that clamoured for a complete change. The British and Indians alike had realised that there were certain conditions that must be satisfied,

Firstly, India must have a greater measure of ig'elf Government. Secondly, there must be no encroachment on the rights of the Indian Princes other than as regards any rights that they may wish to concede to a F'ederal Government. Thirdly, obligations resultant from the British partnership with India must he effectively safeguarded. These were conditions that they had been trying to satisfy in the long discussions. The next chapter would /he the Parliamentary chapter, when the proposals, would have to face the full blaze of Parliamentary investigation. He did not'shrink from such an examination, for he was confident that the best and most practical proposals had been made.