The Indian Conversations
Since the Indian negotiations are at a critical point as these lines are being written, and are of course being conducted in secret, it is difficult to say anything of service regarding them beyond expressing satisfaction that Pandit Nehru and Sardar Baldev Singh (the Sikh representative) should have changed their minds and come to London after all. Everything that Mr. Attlee and Lord Pethick-Lawrence can do to persuade the Congress and Muslim leaders to co-operate is no doubt being done, but it cannot be pretended that much ground for optimism exists. The gulf is as wide, and the prospects of bridging it as remote, as ever. That at any rate is the conclusion to which appearances, which may conceivably be deceptive, point. The Muslims are convinced that Congress is resolved to use its numerical majority to achieve complete supremacy in India, and that no paper protection for minorities, whether the Muslims themselves or the Depressed Classes, will be effective. They are smarting, moreover, under what they consider British bad faith in the creation by Lord Wavell of a purely Congress Ministry when Congress had accepted only the long-term Cabinet Mission proposals, whereas the Muslims liad::aceepted both ionz-term and interim, and the Viceroy had pre- viously expressed his intention, if a Coalition Government proved impossible, of forming one as representative as possible from those sectins which..hatl accepted the whole of the Cabinet scheme. In sudi"ciilcuinstances the Muslims see salvation for themselves only in their Xakistan Is4eme, but they do not see the Pakistan of their 'desires einergitig from the provincial groupings proposed by the Cabinet plan. The London conversations may at least break the existing deadlock. Mr. Jinnah may go back to persuade his followers to take part in the Constituent Assembly after all. In that case the next bridge can be left to be crossed when it is reached. What- ever the issue of the talks, British statesmen can at least be satisfied, and will have satisfied the world, that they have left nothing undone that could save Indian unity and make for Indian prosperity.
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