Reforms for India

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 213, 28 November 1927, Page 14

Reforms for India

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT’S TASK Commission's Functions Defined THE remodelling of the Indian Constitution, in accordance with the undertaking given at the time by the Montagu- < helmsford reforms, must be the function of the Imperial Parliament. Therefore the Commission, which is to investigate the question and submit an independent report to Parliament, cannot include Indians. In stating this view the Secretary and Under-Secretary of State for India make it clear that members of the Indian Legislature will meet the Commission on terms of equality, and later a joint committee of Indians and British parliamentarians will go fully into the report and attach recommendations to it before it is submitted to Parliament.

By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright,

LONDON, Friday. Tn the House of Lords, the Secrei try of State for India, the Earl of liirkenhead, moved the resolution to appoint the Commission on India. He said the two Labour members of the House of Commons, Messrs. S. Walsh and C. Attlee, were appointed to the commission after discussion with the leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. Lord Birkenhead said the purpose of the commission was to submit an independent report to Parliament, so t hat it was not desirable to associate Indians with the commission, but to rely on men without pre-commitments of any kind. It would have been necessary to appoint at least 20 commissioners in order to represent all sections of Indian opinion. The Earl of Reading, a former Governor-General of India, strongly supported the commission, and warned India of the danger of persisting in boycotting it. Viscount Chelmg.’ord spoke similarly, and said there was no intention of shutting out the natives of India from fully expressing their views. The x?solution was carried without a division. In the House of Commons, the Vnder-Secretary for India, Earl Winter'.on, in moving the appointment of the commission, said India would bear the cost, but Britain -would contribute £20,000.

In reply to the suggestion that the commission should have included representative natives of India, he offered the opinion that it would be fantastic to imagine that any two natives could possibly represent the various political, religious, and racial factors of India.

Accredited representatives of the Indian Legislatures would be given every opportunity of emphasising their case before the commission. No part of the Empire, before it received partial or complete self-government, had ever had such an opportunity of directly influencing Parliament. Free Exchange of Views Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in supporting the motion on behalf of the Labour Party, said he regretted the lack of consultation with representatives of Tndia before the announcement of the personnel of the commission. It ought to be made clear that the commissipn would meet the committees of the Indian Legislatures on the basis of the free exchcange of their views. The Prime Minister, Mr Baldwin, said the Government had deliberately left the commission a free hand to shape its own procedure in India. The Government associated itself with Mr. MacDonald's suggestion for the freest consultation with the sister Parliament.

A British official wireless message gives further particulars of Earl Winterton's speech. He said there were two points to consider. The first point was that upon Parliament lay the responsibility and ultimate decision upon the issues to be raised by the inquiry, a responsibility which it would neither share with nor hand over to any other country. The second point was that the composition of the committee, and every detail of the method contemplated for its inquiry formed one Integral whole, which would stand or fall together. He recalled the circumstances under which the Montagu-Chelmsford Act w-as passed in 1919 with the assent of all parties in the House. Parliament could not divest itself of its responsibility by repudiating its duty under the Act. Much False History There was, he thought, much falsified history regarding the situation which the British found when they first went to India, and when they first assumed the responsibility for any part of that country. The British saved India at that time from a welter of anarchy. When they assumed their responsibility they assumed it as trustees, for the present and for the future of the Indian people, especially as trustees for the various minorities in that country.

By the declaration of 1917 and by the Act of 1919, which implemented that declaration, the Government of the day, on behalf of the people of Britain, and with the support of all the parties in the House, stated that they were prepared gradually to hand over their trusteeship to the people of India themselves when they were in a position to exercise it with a due regard to the interests of all concerned.

Attempts had been made to draw a comparison between the conditions prevailing in India and the conditions prevailing in Southern Ireland or Egypt Anyone who had any knowledge of these countries w-ould know that such a comparison was profoundly fallacious. Both Egypt and Southern Ireland were far more homogenous than the great sub-continent of India had ever been. Referring to the proposal made that one or two representative Indians should be appointed to the commission, Earl Winterton said that if his contention were accepted, that the responsibility if Parliament was supreme, was it really contended that Parliament could not carry out its obligations under the declaration of 1917 and under the Act of 1919 of surveying and reviewing the Indian situation through the agency of the commission and taking the necessary action? It was absurd to say that a commission which contained representatives carefully chosen from both Houses of Parliament, with a chairman who was in the very centre of the front rank, both in Parliament and in the legal profession, was not an instrument whereby Parliament was able to discharge its responsibility. It was perfectly possible to be a realist in this matter of high policy,

without abating one iota or one tittle of conscience, for or in sympathy with the ideals of Indians in public life. Were the members of the House who were going to be the members of the commission likely to be less sympathetic to the Moslem minority, or to the millions of “untouchables,” than to the Brahmin or Hindu majority? Clearly also the committee of the central Indian Legislature and the committees of the Provincial Councils would be more than mere witnesses; they would be able to prepare a case for further self-government, as it appealed to them, and present it to the commission. He refused to believe that the people of India would not assist Parliament in its formidable task of revising and reinforcing the constitution of an Empire within the Empire, which India was. No Inferiority Mr. Baldwin said: “It may be as well that I should say this; Let the people of India dismiss from their minds any thought of inferiority. They will be approached as friends and equals. But the responsibility of Parliament remains, and no procedure which suggests that that responsibility can be formally shared with the representatives of another Parliament would really advance the cause which the Indians have at heart.” Mr. Baldwin further said he wanted to lay stress on part of the scheme. When the commission had reported, but before Parliament was committed in any way to its recommendations, or the Government had acted upon them, the Government proposed that the question should be referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament and the Indian Legislature should have the opportunity, by means of a delegation, of examining the proposals and discussquestion should be referred to a Joint Committee. The Indian people would in this way be given an opportunity of taking part in the framing of their own constitution, which had never been given before In the whole history of any people in a similar position. Mr. Baldwin concluded: “It is an unprecedented step we are taking, but we are relying on the instinctive sense of justice that lies deep in every British heart. The poet Milton wrote ‘When God wants a hard thing done, He tells it to His Englishmen.’ No harder thing has ever been told to Englishmen than this matter. We shall do it with courage, faith, strength and hope.” The resolution was carried without a division. —A. and N.Z.