INDIA'S AID TO BRITAIN
SIR,—In your issue of the 13th instant I have given historical retrospect of the events that culminated in the final settlement made on April 16th, 1917. I have shown how that settlement was imple- mented in the case of the Colonies but completely ignored in the case of India. I wish to add that on October 24th, 1933, I had drawn the attention of Mr. Winston Churchill, then a witness before the Joint Committee of Parliament, to these facts. He observed that my statement of the constitutional position of India was " lucid " and promised me his co-operation. (Proceedings, II. C. p. 1828.1 As Sir Austen Chamberlain was a member of that Committee and had pledged his word, as the Secretary of State for India, that the pledge of 1917 would be promptly carried out, I naturally recalled his words and read to the Committee his statement to the House of Commons. As I was reading it he ejaculated: " Deal gently with me," and when I had finished he added that the pledge was genuine and intended to be made good. But I added, as a matter of fact it was never made good, and what is worse, the Act of 1919 was enacted and a preamble added thereto, which directly contra- dicted it.
After that renewal of his pledge, I was surprised to rind that Parliament enacted another Act in 1935, which is as reactionary as its predecessor, and what is worse still, in all the published reports of the discussions of the Committee and debates of the House, not a single word occurs about this settlement or about any questions relating thereto. The reason is not far to seek. The settlement was forced upon the British Government by the exigency of the war. They had profited by it and as soon as the war was over, they gave it the quietus, hoping that nothing more would be said about it. But they overlooked the fact that the First Great War had owed its inception to England's possession of India, which is described as the forest jewel in the British crown. Others besides England were anxious to possess it, and the war that ensued released forces that began to foregather to seize it. We had in the first instance the birth of the Bolshevik movement and the growth of the Third International, which soon became a world-menace and a world- power. by its rousing the working people all over the world to unite and establish for themselves dictatorships of the proletariat. All
oppressed countries were exploited and India was one of these. The Bolshevik movement menaced our very existence and we have been doing the utmost that we can to keep it out of our bounds. But we cannot- keep it out and preserve the autocracy of England. India won't have • it.
In the next place there grew the Nazi, Fascist and the Pan-Asiatic Movement led by Japan, which owes its religion and culture to India. The unification of all Asia to drive Europeans out of it is Japan's declared policy and Japan is a great power in alliance with Germany and Italy. She is exercising pressure upon all Mongolian races to boycott the white man, and regards India as her holy land, the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism, the dominant religion of the whole of Asia east of Iran.
Add to these two forces the miserable poverty of the people of India, whose population, risen from 353 to goo millions within the last decade (1931-41), presents another problem of dire distress, against which there is no escape in the migration of the Indians to the sparsely populated continents of Australia or South Africa which bar their entry, though their nationals are free to exploit India. This one-sided citizenship of the British Commonwealth is strongly resented in India and indeed in this she is warmly supported by Japan.
As every Englishman knows, Indians are proverbially sober, thrifty, intelligent and hardworking, and India is still in the main the mere producer of raw materials which other countries resell to her as finished goods at ten to twenty times the price of her own exports. We have been struggling to industrialise our country, and the Joint Committee on the Bill that became the Act of 1919 strongly recom- mended that India should have fiscal autonomy, but India never had it and when I claimed it on behalf of the elected majority of the House of the Central Assembly, I was told that so long as the Government was a dependency of Whitehall, its policy must continue to be dictated by Whitehall.
I mention these few, very few, facts to illustrate my meaning. I claim dominion-status for India, both because England is pledged to it as also because it is in her interest to give it. If she persists in being the dog in the manger, she cannot avert a succession of wars, one more destructive than the other. Her own self-preservation dictates the course that is both righteous and profitable to her, for strong India, if free, would be a tower of strength to her, and with her man-power and materials, her newly mobilised and organised industries and war-productions, no power on earth can attack England if she is made conscious that India freely stands by her side in the first line of battle.
America asks every Englishman who goes there for help, that if England is fighting for freedom, why does she deny it to India? England is about to establigh a common citizenship with America. Will that great democracy ever join hands with England so long as England continues her domination of India?
And what of Russia and Japan, not to mention Germany and her associate powers? They are galvanising India with their doctrinaire propaganda, which is a necessary prelude to military invasion. The only course open to England is to set India free and the only course that India would then take is to see that England is then truly secure. Modern India is the product of English education and all educated Indians treat England as their spiritual home. Their love for England is as great as that of the white Dominions, and if India is treated alike, India will be as much the bulwark of the British Commonwealth as are her other Dominions.—Yours, &c., 8 Royal Avenue, Chelsea, S.W. 3. HARI SINGH GOUR.
Previous page
