NEWS OF THE WEEK
MUCH is happening in India in many fields. The Supreme Court's verdict that the rule under which Mr. Gandhi and some thousands of Congress supporters are being detained was ultra tares provides notable evidence of a British Chief Justice's resolve to interpret law objectively even against the Government of India, but it has resulted only in a revision of the rule, not in the release of the prisoners. The request of Mr. William Phillips, the American Envoy in India, to visit Mr. Gandhi had to be made, in order that Mr. Phillips might not be reproached at home with not making it, but he appears to have been neither surprised nor disturbed that it was unsuccessful. Speculation is rife as to the appointments to the four vacant places on the Viceroy's Council, and the Government of India has, in one instance at any rate, by its emphatic protest against the South African Act laying restrictions on Indians in Natal and the Transvaal, faithfully expressed the feelings of Indians of all parties and faiths. But in many ways the most important event of the week was the Delhi meeting of the Moslem League, which by the vigour of its uncompromising demand for acceptance of its full Pakistan policy complicates the already complicated Indian situation further. Leaguers have now got to the point where, pro- fessedly at least, they refuse to look at any form of federation, since it would leave them in a minority at the centre. On the other hand the little-known Momins, who claim to consist of 4,500,000 " depressed class " Moslems, have simultaneously been declaring as unequivocally for federation. It is right for the British Govern- ment to say that Indians must settle their own differences, but if those differences, instead of that, get more acute the Government car. obviously not go on sitting idle.
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