VAIN ATTEMPT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 March 1943, Page 4

VAIN ATTEMPT

MADE BY CONGRESS PARTY IN INDIA T.j TRADE ON HR TISH DIFFICULTIES MR. AMERY’S SURVEY OF EVENTS AND POLICY. GANDHI'S DICTATORSHIP. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.20 a.m.) RUGBY, March 30. In opening a debate on the Indian situation, the Secretary of State for India and Burma, Mr. L. S. Amery, said the origin of the situation and the reasons for its present continuance could only be understood in light of the nature and policy of the Congress Party. Originally democratic in organisation and constitutional in methods .the Congress Party had progressively become a dictatorship, aiming at the expulsion, by revolutionary through professedly non-violent methods, of the' existing British Raj, and its supersession by a Congress Raj. “The particular character and methods of the Congress Party have largely been shaped by a single man. Mr. Gandhi,” said Mr. Amery. “I shdll not attempt here to assess the mentality of that remarkable and enigmatic personality. Mr. Gandhi’s peculiar appeal to the Hindu veneration for the ascetic has helped to make him an unquestioned dictator and super-president of by far the largest, the best financed, and the most rigidly drilled party organisation in India.” Speaking of Sir Stafford Cripps s mission, Mr. Amery said a. strong reason for -the rejection of the Government’s generous and explicit offer wa£ to be found in the fact that while negotiations Were in progress we were suffering our worst defeats in the East. In phandi’s eyes the mission was hoistings distress signal and our offer was nothing more than a post-dated cheque on "a failing bank. During the weeks that followed the rejection of the proposals, which coincided with a period of severe reverses in the military field, when the Germans were, fifty miles from Alexandria, Gandhi concentrated all his efforts on a campaign to force the British to quit India. Happily there was better and sterner stuff in India than the Congress leaders reckoned with. We owed a deep debt to the Indian members of the Viceroy’s Council for the swift and resolute decision to arrest the organisers of mischief. The rebellion went off at half-cock and a vast majority of the Indian people stood aloof, or. even gave active support to the authorities. “Broadly speaking,” said Mr. Amery, “it can be said- that the Congress Party’s rebellion has been successfully dealt with by the Government of India, by the Provincial Governments concerned and by India at large. Gandhi's action last year must convince the House how difficult and indeed dangerous it would be to consider any concession of that nature in the absence of most explicit assurances and effective guarantees of a complete change of attitude and conduct on the pari of those who have already brought so .much unhappiness upon India and who may well be capable of so much danger.”