India Ready for Home Rule?

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6540, 23 February 1928, Page 6

India Ready for Home Rule?

The future government of India is bound to become an important political issue within the next two years. Eight out of the ten years of experimental dyarchy laid.down by the Act of 1919—the Montagu-Chelmsford system—have now passed. In the last months of last year the Statutory Commission under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon was appointed, upon whose report some British Government will have to act at the latest in 1929. Unfortunately these last eight years have been so full of storm and stress at Home and in Europe that most people, even of progressive outlook, have been thankful that the Indian constitutional question was temporarily shelved, and have felt that they could dismiss a whole series of complex problems by vaguely approving the principle of “Home Rule for India.”

The problems however remain. There is n 6 historical parallel to the granting of self-government to India. 'The cases of Italy, Ireland, and of the older Dominions are often cited by Indian politicians but do not form a useful comparison. Some of the special difficulties are obvious the immense area, equal to the whole of Europe less Russia, the vast population, mostly illiterate and inarticulate, the two hundred different languages, the many conflicting religions, and above all the fact that India in historical times has never been united except under foreign domination. The Simon Commission arrived in India three weeks ago to undertake its big task of inquiring into the working of the dyarchy under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, and as a result to bring down a report to Parliament before 1929 with suggestions how far the principle of responsible government may be extended to the heterogeneous miscellany that forms the Indian Empire.

The Act of 1919, while it delegated to Indian Ministers in each Province a considerable number of important administrative duties, such as agriculture, public health, education, and public works, left the central Government of India supreme. The two Houses which comprise the All-India Legislature have each a large Indian majority, but the Government of India is not responsible to them. The power of the Legislature in regard to matters concerning the army, foreign affairs, and the Native States, are strictly limited. The principle of dyarchy has not been introduced into the Executive Council, and the ultimate authority of the Viceroy is fully safeguarded. The enforcement of law and order, the protection of the frontiers, and the general direction of Indian policy are still under British control. The most important problems in connection with self-government will arise when this ultimate control is passed into Indian hands.

There are of course many intermediate stages between dyarchy and Dominion status, and one which may be suggested as a compromise by the Simon Commission when it reports would be to confer large power’s upon Provincial Governments; but no modification of the present system would have the bracing and Sobering effect, of responsible government, nor satisfy the demands of Nationalist India. Nor has the Commission been accepted with the wholehearted support of the Indian Legislative Assembly. A cable early this week stated that the Assembly had decided by 68 votes to 62 to boycott the Commission. The reason given by the Nationalist leader, Lala Lajpat Tai, in moving the boycott motion was that the Indians did not believe that those who had appointed the Commission were actuated by motives of justice and fairplay, nor did they believe they acted in the interests of India, this boycott campaign is no sudden storm that has arisen in a night It has been brewing since August last, and perhaps before, under the aegis of Mahomed AH, who, it is rumoured, has recently been in close touch with Ghandi.

The grant of Dominion status would be a bold experiment, fraught with incalculable risk. We would have to watch developments —as in Ireland and South Africa but on a highly magnified scale—-which are utterly distasteful to our ideas of democracy and progress. Yet the face of the cloud is ominously patent: India will never bf “ educated up to Home Rule ” by a long series of grudging concessions—it must be one thing or the other .now, for the Nationalist movement is showing itself ever and ever more unwilling to accept compromise.