WHY CRIPPS FAILED IN INDIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 162, 31 July 1942, Page 6

WHY CRIPPS FAILED IN INDIA

(From a BBC talk last week by Professor Reginald Coupland, in the series "Calling New Zealand" )

been part of my job to study the development of self-government in India. I went out there last autumn e I travelled through most of the pro‘vinces and had long talks with most of the leading politicians of all parties, Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Jinnah, Mr. Nehru, and so on, and I was just on the point of coming home this spring when Sir Stafford Cripps arrived and asked me to stay on and join his staff. So I saw what happened at close quarters. What did happen? First and foremost Cripps made, op behalf of the British Government, a declaration of Indien independence. "India," he said, "was to be wholly independent, as free as any country in the world, as free as we are in Britain, after the war, as soon as ever the Indian leaders could frame a system of government to take over full power from us. But perhaps I ought to remind you further that the elevén provinces of British India already have a system of parliamentary self-government. In four of the provinces it has been working ever since 1937 and is working now. It could be working in the other seven if their Congress governments hadn’t resigned because of the war, and anyone who goes to India can see as I did that it’s real self-government. One of the Congress ex-Ministers told me that his province had been as self-governing as a province of the Canadian federation. So it looks as if this provincial system would suit the Indians, and the only question now is that of a central government. | more than 20 years now it has Why India Can’t Agree Now it isn’t easy for the* Indians to agree about this central government for two main reasons. First, most of the Indian Moslems (who altogether number about ninety millions) refuse to accept a central government run on the democratic principle of majority rule. It means, they say, their subjection for ever and ever to a Hindu majority. Under Mr. Jinnah’s leadership they have now carried the objection to extremes. They demand that the areas where Moslems are in the majority should form a separate independent state under the name of Pakistan. The second difficulty is the Princes, the rulers of those Indian states which cover about two-fifths of the territory of India. These Princes hesitate ‘to join a central government which will be based on democratic principles, and in which Congress, whose leaders are always attacking them, would be the dominant party. Mr. Gandhi and his associates have long been saying that the British Government’s promises were insincere and that they did not mean India to be free; and that they were making. the most of the Moslems and the Princes and using them as an excuse for keeping control of the central government indefinitely. That takes me straight back to Cripps. He showed that the Government’s

declaration completely exploded that theory of insincerity. The affections of the Moslems or the Princes were not to be rallied to the process of national emancipation. If they refused to come in they could stay out. But that wouldn’t prevent the attainment of full freedom for all the rest of India. Congress cried out at that of course. You are vivisecting mother India, it said. But as Cripps pointed out, you can’t force those great communities to come in, and the best way to persuade them to come in is to tell them they can stay out if they like. The Most Remarkable Aspect And there was a third Congress charge. Somewhere or other, they said, British interests in India prevent India becoming free for fear that they should suffer. Well, that charge was also blown up by Cripps. He was directly questioned about it in public. He at once replied that the British Government would not ask for special provisions or safeguards for British business as a condition of India’s freedom. So that was that.

I said that Cripps was questioned in public, and that brings me to what I think was the most remarkable aspect of the whole affair. It was a great public discussion of high policy. Cripps’s talks with the Indian party leaders ‘were private of course, but side by side with them he held press conferences every other day. They were attended by some 200 Indian journalists, a great majority of whom were publishers making reports for public use, and Cripps ruled no questions out. Those journalists knew their job. They pressed him hard. But I am used to being heckled, said Cripps. I don’t mind being heckled. Well, that was rather startling in India. Here was a leading member of the British War Cabinet inviting Indian pressmen to heckle him in public on any point they liked, and they made the most of it. Would the promised independence of India be real independence? Would India be free to secede from the British (Continued on next page)

THE PROBLEM OF INDIA (Continued from previous page)

Commonwealth? Yes, said Cripps. Could she make treaties with other countries? Yes. Would there be obstacles now to applying the Atlantic charter to India? None at all, said Cripps, and so on and so on. Cripps answered every question without the slightest hesitation and in the plainest style. Why Did He Fail? Yet, as you know, Cripps failed to obtain a settlement. Why? Because the Congress leaders were not content to accept office in the Central Government under the Viceroy but insisted on complete and immediate independence; and Mr. Gandhi, as you know, has recently repeated this demand. He is willing, it seems, that the British and American forces in India should stay there to defend his country against the Japanese, but the British Government must go at once or Congress will make use of all its non-violent strength. That is to say, it will launch among the Indian races a campaign of disobedience to the law. What that means is grimly apparent. Mr. Gandhi is reported to have described it as open rebellion, Nevertheless he doesn’t want, he says, to do anything to embarrass the United Nations. As soon as the present Government has withdrawn a provisional Indian Government will be formed which will organise the drafting of the new constitution. "Obviously Impracticable" What is one to say to that? It is obviously impracticable. It means, in the first place, that the safety of the British and American forces in India and the security of the whole country as a base for helping China and for counter attack on Japan are to be committed to an independent Indian Government at this moment in the middle of the fighting when the Japs are on the frontier. Transport and communications, the supply of munitions and of food, everything an army needs will be in purely Indian control, and the néw Government

will be entitled as a wholly independent Government to deal in its own right with the Government of Japan. It is not a question of trust. The British Government has asked the Congress leaders to take a full and real share in the Government, The Cart Before the Horse There are several other reasons why this sudden mid-war abdication is impracticable, but I will mention only one. Mr. Gandhi proposes to form an Indian Government after the present Government his withdrawn, but that puts the cart before the horse. The present Government must have somebody to transfer its power to. Heads of departments can’t just leave their files on their office tables and walk out. The whole machinery of Government would be paralysed with disastrous results not only on the war effort but on the daily life of all the people of India. Mr. Gandhi seems to assume that the new Government would be ready to function without a moment’s delay, but that, of course, is to jump clean over the whole Indian problem. What about the Moslems? Mr. Jinnah, who certainly commands the allegiance of many million Moslems, has promptly poured scorn on Mr. Gandhi’s plan. What about the Princes? Whatever we may think of their methods of government they cannot be just dropped out of the picture. No, I can’t understand how Mr. Gandhi can suppose it to be possible for us to yield to his demand. I go further. I can’t really understand why he insists on forcing this quarrel on us now. We promised India complete independence immediately after the war, provided only that the Indians would agree on a form of self-government, and we have ourselves suggested ways by which the obstacles to that agreement could be overcome. That is 100 per cent. We can do no more, and we cannot go back on it-even if we wanted to. We are pledged in the face of the world. Surely then something unreal is keeping up the conflict with Britain, at any rate since the Cripps Mission, and especially at this perilous period of the war. OOS > oe