INDIA’S FUTURE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 397, 2 April 1937, Page 5

INDIA’S FUTURE

THE NEW CONSTITUTION MANY DEMONSTRATIONS. Day of Mourning at Bombay. Press Association— Copyright Received I 50 pm. Bombay, April 1. Members of the CongrtM Party organised to-day as om of mourning for the inauguration of the Constitution. Business is at a standstill. There are many processions and the shouting of defiant slogans, but few arrests have been made. Congress Party demonstrations throughout India passed resolutions demanding the withdrawal of the Constitution as perpetuating the domination of India and its people. Among IS persons arrested for organising a procession in defiance of the police ban waa Jayaprakash Narain, the secretary of the All-India Congress Socialist Party. The Delhi correspondent of the London Times says: “Ministries are functioning in six Provinces, and Cabinets are being formed in five others where the Congress Party is the strongest party. “Hope is not abandoned that Time and changing circumstances will enable the Congress Party fully to participate.” Mass demonstrations and a general strike are being organised by members *of the Congress Party and will take place to-day as a protest against the introduction ot the new Constitution. The Government has forbidden processions, and the Calcutta Corporation has closed municipal offices and schools as an indication ot disapproval. To-day is the appointed day under the Government ot India Act for the inaugration ot autonomy in the eleven provinces of British India and the separation ot Burma from India, says a British Official Wireless message. On. this occation the King has addressed messages to both India and Burma. Provincial autonomy henceforth obtains over two-thirds ot the total area of India and affects dlrectll a total population of mope than 290,000,000. It Involves the setting up of a Ministry in each ot the eleven provinces, responsible to the elected legislature for a large and clearlydefined spheie of government, in which the central Government will have no say. Each provincial Governor must follow the advice of his Ministers except in a small number ot matters and in circumstances specially defined in the Act.

On the inauguration of the new constitution in Burma the Viceroy ot India, the Marquess of Linlithgow, has presented a silver mace to the Senate In Burma as marking the separation from India. Another effect of the constitutional changes in India is the ending after nearly 300 years of the connection of Aden with the British Indian administration. Aden now becomes part ot the colonial Empire..

Thousands of Arabs, Indians and Somalis watched a brilliant scene when Aden was proclaimed a colony at a public ceremony in front ot the statue of Queen Victoria to-day. Messages were read from the King and from the Viceroy of India.