PROBLEM OF INDIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24414, 27 September 1940, Page 7

PROBLEM OF INDIA

FUTURE CONSTITUTION AN IMPORTANT MEETING VICEROY AND MR GANDHI 'British Official Wireless) (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph -Copyright) RUGBY, Sept. 25. (Received Sept. 26. at 7 p.m.) 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 Vicerov of India during the next few days. "One can only hope that the outcome of the discussions may be an agreement consistent both with Mr Gandhi's conscientious objections to war in general and with the Viceroy's no less conscientious conviction and dutv to allow nothing to'stand in the way of India's wholehearted effort to Dlay her part in a struggle which concerns her present welfare and security and all the ideals her Deoples hold dear " Dealing with the constitutional position. Mr Amery said: " The main oermanent 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, and the methods of election and representation, all these matters are open to reexamination. Only, as in the case of every dominion, or for that matter of any federation in the oast, there must be that measure of agreement or consent, and necessarily therefore of compromise, between the main constituent elements that have in the future to live and work together, which is a preliminary condition of free self-government. In this matter Britain has now made clear one of the essential implications of India's future status, while imposing upon the (ndians one of the first responsibilities of that status. It is obvious that a change so far reaching, both in structure and in the very basis of the 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 Amery added that the Nazis' doctrine was a direct attack upon the spiritual basis of all religion. "It 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 mercv. or to Hinduism,.with its deep-rooted 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"