Current Literature
NATIONHOOD FOR INDIA By Lord Meston, K.C.S.I.
Ors a subject on which almost everyone nowadays has something to say, and few have anything worth saying, or know how to say it if they have, Lord Meston has written a book, Nationhood for India (Oxford University Press. London : Humphrey Milford, 5s.), not merely full of wisdom and knowledge, but of the most fascinating interest. His main thesis is the striking one that what is supposed to be Nationalism is lefty orthodox Hinduism in revolt against Western ideas. Not true Nationalism but Hindounine, c'est l'ennemi. If told that there is nothing Hindu about the methods of the Congressman to-day—the contempt of order and, still more' good manners, the subsidized hooliganism, the pursuit of political ends by the bomb and the revolver, the dragging of woman out of her secular seclusion and placing her in the forefront of his vulgar brawl—Lord Meston would reply that the subtle Eastern knows how to make use of the weapons of the Western against himself. It may be so ; yet it must be owned that not many Englishmen who know India would accept this, any more than they would agree that "Mr. Gandhi has been almost consistently used as a eatspaw by cleverer and less scrupulous brains in the orthodox camp." But this is not the whole book. In the latter part the author lays down the three requisites of a constitution for India : it must be one which ultimately makes for national freedom ; it must give free play to a genuine Nationalism ; and it mast be of a type of federalism suited to a territory which includes the Native States as well as the British Pro- vinces. He concludes by showing in a masterly manner how far the proposals of the Simon Commission and the first Round Table Conference go towards the fulfilment of those conditions,
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