INDIAN COMMISSION

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 330, 16 April 1928, Page 8

INDIAN COMMISSION

AFTER its “preliminary survey,” the Indian Commission, headed by Sir John Simon, has returned to England. It has been but a few months absent, and so far the chief thing learned by Sir John and his fellow-commissioners of the Indian problem is “its immensity and complexity.” In its task “to interpret India’s feelings and hopes for the information of the British Parliament,” the Commission speedily found itself boycotted by an extensive sphere of educated Indian opinion, the Indian House of Assembly actually carrying a motion of “no confidence” against a body that had been set np with a real desire to do justice to the legitimate aspirations of the people. The motion was carried by 68 votes to 62; it rejected the constitution of the Simon Commission and its scheme of inquiry as “wholly unacceptable to this House, which will have nothing to do with the Commission in any shape or form.” Could anything be more sweeping than this? Yet, if Sir John Simon is not altogether too optimistic, the personnel of the Commission was such as successfully to withstand the words of Indian opposition and actually to make progress. Sir John claims that undoubtedly the boycott has weakened and that the Commission is now assured of the goodwill and co-operation of important sections of the Indian public. If this is so, the Commission’s preliminary survey has indeed been valuable. But what of the revolutionary Indians, who, like Mr. Ranga Iyer, scornfully assert that if Indians all arose they cotild “drive the British out with jaencils, let alone pens and blotting paper”? What of the threats of a fully-extended non-co-operation movement, such as that fathered and fostered by Ghandi, who now sits down to weave and pray? What of the Indian members in the House of Assembly who are ever asserting the readiness of the young men to rise in armed revolt? Has the Commission succeeded in stilling such mischievous voices as these ? All the reasons for Indian discontent cannot now be gone into—indeed the Commission made no attempt to analyse them during its brief visit. It realises the vast magnitude of the task ahead; and in a spirit of confidence asserts that those opposed to it realise the uselessness of the boycott as a political weapon. But the cry which rings louder than the rest in the chorus of complaint is “India for the Indians.” The young Indian, with, his “little knowledge” which, in politics is so dangerous a thing, wants a purely Indian Government, a purely Indian army and everything else fox- India—including the vast wealth built up by British enterprise. The “educated” young Indian has leaxmed a lot that has to be untaught, including the mistaken theory that Indians are fit to govern themselves in this or for many succeeding generations. India has yet a long period to remain in the melting-pot. Her vast area, her innumerable castes, her divergent religions, lier differing local requirements may only be guided by a Power with centuries of administrative experience behind it. Yet there are Indians only just entering the sphere of local politics who imagine they could successfully govern a heterogeneous political mass, the immensity and complexity of which is stressed by great statesmen after a mere preliminary, survey,>