THE REAL BAR TO INDIAN SELF- GOVERNMENT.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Although I have not been so . fortunate enough as to meet or even see, from a distance, Lord Winterton, I have always greatly admired the way he has tackled and faced some of the Indian problems. When, however, he talks in the way he does in your issue of July 12th, I am only amused at the piffle he puts forward as the real bar to Indian self-government.. To him it is the status of the fifty million poor and depressed classes which bars the way to peace and Swaraj. Really ? I am in a way glad, as he has gone after something apparently tangible and substantial to prove his dissertation why India should not be given Swaraj, while most others, like the leader writer of the Daily Mail, only depend on such general, vague and often foolish italicized sentences as " No sane man believes that India is ripe for democratic self-government " to maintain the pet theory of unfitness—unfit to look after one's own home ? Can anything be more ridiculous and asinine than this ?
Lord Winterton has the courage of his conviction to admit that the British have failed in India, and this makes easy an otherwise difficult task of making an Englishman actually realize what useless lumber he is so far as India is concerned so long as his only ambition is to exploit and squeeze as much " tin " as possible from the country. How- ever, to come to the status of the oppressed masses which seems to weigh so heavily on the noble lord's otherwise Swaraj mind—I wonder what he means to do by staying in a country where he is not wanted, when he himself admits his inability to improve matters Does he • want these masses to be able to exercise the vote before India shall be given home rule—a dream dear to the heart of every Indian, but a dream which can never be realized so long as India
is denied Swaraj ? Let me here discuss this question a little I are even though they profess Communism. Rather is it a
more fully. faith in self-development—the faith of those who having
What is this oppression due to ? Religion many answer —an answer only half true, for this is not the real reason. It is more a question of money than religion. It is poverty which is keeping the masses down, a poverty which to be realized must only be seen. It is a poverty, not of spiritual goods, but of worldly fare. These masses that Lord Winterton speaks of have no place to go to, no land to be owned and cultivated, and so no opportunity of becoming free men. It is the power more than anything else which oppresses them.
If money can be earned there will be no oppression, but no such money can be earned. India is too small a place for her huge population. The only way for the oppressed masses to become free men is to go elsewhere and earn money by peaceful cultivation, but this opportunity is denied them. They have no place to go to. There is tropical Australia, admirably suited and situated, but an immoral and selfish dog-in-the-manger policy that only pale-faced people should breathe the wind of that part of the earth prevents thin. India, at present, helpless, powerless, protests in vain, but give her self-government, Swaraj (this naturally will make her powerful), and a soul of her own and then the dream will be realized and there will be peace. The real bar to Indian self-government, to be plain, is not any of the things the Earl talks of in his article, but British selfishness and greediness to possess, to exploit and to lord it over.—I am,
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