INDIA’S STATUS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 257, 27 September 1940, Page 7

INDIA’S STATUS.

COMING DISCUSSIONS. BRITISH VIEWPOINT.. (British Official Wireless.) ' RUGBY, (Sept. 20. 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 (Lord Linlithgow) in the next few days. “One can only hope,” he said, “that the outcome of the discussions may be an agreement consistent both with Mr Gancini’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 a part in the 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 Act of 1935 was still, m essentials, the work of the British Government and Parliament and based on the existing structure of the Indian Government and inspired by British ideas. 3he 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 elements of India to the whole, the methods of election and the representation of 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 he that measure of agreement and of consent and necessarily therefore of compromise among t'he main constituent elements that have in future to live and work together which is a preliminary condition to free selfgovernment. MENACE OF NAZISM.

“In this matter Britain has now made, clear one of the essential implications in India’s future status while imposing upon the Indians one of the first responsiihlities of that status. It is obvious that a change so farreaching both in structure and m the very lnTsis of tlie 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 Amerv added that the Nazi doctrine was a direct attack upon the spiritual basis of all religion: ‘lt is as profoundly opposed to Islam, with its insistence on the equality of all men before God and on the supreme virtues of justice and mercy, or to Hinduism, with its deep-seated 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 not realise that menace.”