INDIAN QUESTION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 365, 28 October 1932, Page 6

INDIAN QUESTION

DESIRE FOR STATUS OUT OF RANGE OF REASON. BAPTIST MISSIONARY'S VIEWS. The belief that even the extreme Nationalists may co-operate in the working of the new constitution which will shortly be pub into operation in India was expressed in Christchurch by the Rev. B. N. Eade, a Baptist missionary from India. Mr. Eade is a keen admirer of'most of the British officials in India, and of the theory of the British development of the country toward self-go-vernment, but, he says, co-operation which is so essential, does not at present 'exist. "Vvhat the Indians want is sympathy — not in any sloppy sense, but kiore in the sense of understanding — and status; getting those they will stay in the British Commonwealth," he declared.

..u-. Eade's own district is Tipperah, in East Bengal, which he described as one of the "hot spots." But even there there are never more than three Englishmen in administrative positions, and at present there are none. "You see very little of the Englishmen ruling India," he said. "In fact, as an American friend of mine said, 'if the British rule India you can't find them doing it.' "For some years the amount of selfgovernment in India has been considerable — in municipalities, in what corresponds to our county administration, and, under a sysfcem of partial resfionsibility, in the central Government. Beforq that there were other systems leading up to this. As a theory of training in self-government, it could not be bettered," Mr. Eade said. "But it requires co-operation, and that has been lost." The advances in the direction of self-government had been tremendous, not only in provincial- government, but in the Federal Government; but because the responsibilitity of the Indians was not complete they chose to interpret it as non-existent. "The desire for change of status has gone beyond the stage of reason," said Mr. Eade. "It is now purely a matter of the emotions. "P ersonally, I think that when the new system is put into operation it will take the Indian politicians all their time to keep it going, they will have so much to do. "But will the strong Nationalists, most of whom are now in gaol, co-ope-rate, or will they hold that threequarters of a loaf is not enough? No one can say. "The immediate cause of the present trouble was the fact that the Simon Commission, though recognised to be a very able one, was all British. The mistake was recognised, but the appointment of Indian advisory committees to work with the Simon Commission did not placate the Inaians. "The fact that the English in India, as is natural in people a long way from home, keep together in little colonies and have some clubs that do not admit Indians, is another irritant. Most individual Englishmen associate quite freely with the Indians, and many, including officials, sympathise with many of their aspirations. "But one die-hard utterance, such as those of Mr. Winston Churchill, is enough to poison a whole mass of Indians against Great Britain." Mr. Eade himself believed that a definite promise of Dominion status at the end of a definite p'eriod — say, 10 years — would solve the problem. The Indians claimed that they had been vaguely promised so much, and received so little, that they could not trust England. As it was, the new constitution might_ prove the solution, if the extremnists would co-operate.