ISSUES IN INDIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1938, Page 5

ISSUES IN INDIA

DIFFICULTIES OF ORDERLY DEVELOPMENT OBSERVATIONS ON POLITICAL IMPASSE. OPPOSITION OF CONGRESS. Hopes of resolving the difficulties now preventing the orderly development of the British Government’s much heralded constitutional reforms for India, have been raised by the comings and goings of several of those intimately concerned with this highly controversial question, writes Everard C. Cotes in the “Christian Science Monitor.”

The latest of these to arrive here from India is Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, last year’s President of the Indian National Congress, the chief political organisation in India. Another influential Indian who has recently left after a short visit is Mr Bullabhai Desai, leader of the Indian Congress Party in the Legislative Assembly at Delhi. A third is the Marquess Linlithgow, British Governor-General in India. Mr Jawaharlal Nehru and Mr Bullabhai Desai have both denied any special authority from the Congress Party to negotiate for a settlement. Nevertheless talks the ‘Monitor’ correspondent has had with them have emphasised the critical nature of the situation that has been reached. At present the first half of the reforms scheme, namely that completed in April, 1937, has since been working far more successfully than most of those who criticised it when in the stage of incubation thought possible. This part of the plan established demoerat'C governments in the eleven major Indian Provinces The second half, which was to brigade those provinces with the princely states so as to constitute a central federal government is held up for lack of agreement among the elements concerned. One difficulty has been to persuade the Indian princes to come in. These potentates, of whom there are some 600 in all, though only two or three score of them are important, each governs a particular area subject only io the suzerainty of the British Crown as represented by the Foreign Office at Delhi. Their objection is owing to the fear that they wilt lose their personal powers and dignity. Another and much more serious obstacle—since in the last resort the princes must accept advice tendered to them on the Crown’s behalf —is to be found in the newly constituted provincial Governments, seven of which are nominees of the Indian National Congress.

This Congress—as all its leaders, including Mr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who is the most influential of them all, have most emphatically de-clared-will have nothing to do with Federation in the shape hitherto proposed for it. Qn the other hand, the British Government as now advised, is convinced that without federation of some kind, the provinces must sooner or later drift apart, in which case the entire plan for making India . into a selfwhofelwouldv neeggsarily break down.

The opposition of the Congress—unlike rhat of the princes—cannot be officially overruled.

The problem therefore has become one of how to meet such of its objections as' are reasonable. These objections are in two categories. One category concerns the adequacy of the powers to be delegated to the proposed Federal Government. The other is based upon fears lest influence of the autocratically ruled states should swamp that of the democratic element as represented by the provinces.

Theoretically speaking neither of these objections is insuperable. The first, it is thought by many egreful observers, might be met by rendering the system tentative at first. It could then be seen in practice—without permanently committing either side —in what respect if at all modification of the scheme as it now stands was desirable. The second, it is thought, might be amenable to moves within the power of the rulers of the princely states. Such moves would have to be directed toward the gradual democratisation of these units in the Federation so as to render the contrast they now present to the democratically ruled provinces less glaring than at present.

Already in theory, if not always in practice, some of the more enlightened of these princely states have introduced at least the semblance of representative institutions. They have done this by creating elected councils which at present however only have advisory powers. The present deadlock is thus far from complete. The situation, however, is highly delicate, and anvthing of the nature of a settlement still far to seek.