THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, September 18, 1940. INDIA'S REAL PROBLEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24406, 18 September 1940, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, September 18, 1940. INDIA'S REAL PROBLEM

The doubts and difficulties which appear to-day to be besetting the All-India Congress and Mr Gandhi are not of Great Britain's making. While Mr Gandhi is threatening to lead a " strictly non-violent" campaign against the participation of India in the war, he has simultaneously approved a resolution expressing sympathy with the people of Great Britain in their present trial, and declaring, a trifle enigmatically, that " a spirit of insistence on the truth prevents Congress from doing anything to embarrass them." To the simple Occidental mind these two attitudes appear somewhat contradictory. They can only be reconciled by an examination of what is behind them. The first consideration is the attitude of Indians towards the war itself. Many Indians are aggrieved at the manner in which their country was made a party to the conflict, and it is but just to recognise that here, while exercising its rights, the Government perhaps acted tactlessly. But all Indians are bound to appreciate that the war against Nazi aggression is a war in which India is directly interested, and would be interested even if the* land was as free as the wildest dreams of the nationalists would have it. The future of India, and' hence of all the hopes of the present political leaders, is bound up with that of the rest of the Empire. If it were conceivable that Great Britain should fail, and that the Empire should be disintegrated in consequence, then India's shield of British arms and British seapower would be shattered, . India would be in danger of becoming a prey to predatory Powers both, in Asia and in totalitarian Europe. So the All-India Congress, like the Moslem League, must approve of the war, and would hesitate actually to take steps that might sabotage the Indian war effort and perhaps precipitate a crisis in the British Empire's struggle to , defeat the aggressors. But the All-India Congress, while it is understandably reluctant to " embarrass " . Great Britain in her prosecution of a war that is also India's war, is dissatisfied with the British Government's plans for the immediate future as affecting Mr Gandhi's long-drawn struggle for Indian independence. Unfortunately for the Congress, however, it . is not the Government of Great Britain primarily, but the. conflict among the Indian parties themselves, that is preventing India from accepting at the present moment a greater voice in the Administration than is possessed by her and a rapid progress towards a constitutional condition which, if it did not grant independence, would certainly-permit the Indians self-government in a real sense. The proposals put before the Indian leaders a month ago offered representatives of the political parties seatg on the Viceroy's Executive Council, and the formation of a War Advisory Council in which all parts of India, including the Indian States, would be represented. It was promised, further, that after the war the British Government would allow the Indians to work out their own'form of Constitution, subject to certain safeguards concerning defence, foreign policy and relations with the States. Acceptance of "this offer, with the opportunities it provides for immediate co-opexation of all Indian parties with the Government of India, has been delayed by the irreconcilableness of the . parties. It is still to be hoped that from its present confusion the All-India Congress may emerge not as an enemy of the best interests of India, now and in the future, but with a new spirit of willingness to remove the real bar to constitutional progress, that being its dispute with the Moslem League as to the form a Constitution should take.