Federal India

LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE A. DREW, President, introduced the speaker.

DR. ELLIOTT: To Canadians and Americans, and to the entire world, India's faith is a thing that ought to be approached seriously. Thank heaven, there are no prohibitory barriers to the exchange of ideas, at least, between our two countries. (Hear, hear). I come to you as a sympathizer with the British Empire in the plight in which the Mother Country of the great group ,of nations is at present involved. I profess to come to you as one who wishes well to the Empire.. but who is trying to analyze this trouble as dispassionately as may be, and look at the long-range possibilities, because it seems to me that is the truest friendship to Britain in dealing with India. To an audience like this, which has made a thorough study of it through distinguished speakers, some of whom I know, it is not necessary to recapitulate the facts, formidable as they are, of that sub-continent with its diversity of religions and peoples, and so on. So we can plunge at once in medias res.

The reforms have definitely reached a point at which the British Raj in India is committed to the effort of uniting India in some such federal form as has been imposed on two or three of the greatest of the British Dominions; and that effort may well prove to be the most crucial test that has ever been made of the power of the Empire to hold an eastern people. For the present momoment the execution of that effort seems to be prejudiced by the events in India in the past two months, beginning before the arrest of Mr. Gandhi and his incarceration in Poona jail, which he knows very well from past experience, to which he retires from time to time, as I suggest, with a real feeling of relief. (Laughter.)

I do not think that the most recent and painful events in India can be treated as having ended the experiment in federalism, though they may delay it. Federation represents constitutionally a climax, because it represents, the effort of Indian opinion to grapple with this most fundamental of its problems-how it can impose any unity ,whatever on so diverse a people. According to the last census there are almost eighty million Moslems, of whom it is fair to say that the vast majority are totally unwilling to be merged into Nationalist India. There are at least sixty million "untouchables"; there are many other communities such as Sikhs, Parsees, Anglo-Indians and finally the Europeans, the latter community small in number but tremendously important, because they represent Britain's stake in India.

Britain is not in a position to resign that stake without at least a billion pounds of capital is controlled by Great Britain, if not directly owned. India is the largest of all her markets, representing normally eleven per cent of her total export trade. The British share has fallen (through the boycott of the last years) from about fifty per cent of India's total imports to a third or less; nevertheless the Indian market is a vital factor in Britain's economic life.

Now, will Britain be able to placate those elements which derive from Nationalist capitalism, from millowners in Bombay and other parts, the Bombay Brokers' Association and Indian Chambers of Commerce, the backbone of the financial support which has supported Mr. Gandhi's movement-the India National Congress Movement-and kept it going at the pace it has? Can England placate those forces, and at the same time keep the reserve powers on which she insists in order to protect her enormous economic stake there?

What are those reserve powers? You in Canada know something of reservations made by Lord Durham, who in his classic report made the assertion that responsible government in the Colonies, as they then were, could be reconciled with reserve powers which left to England the control of finance, external relations, tariffs, the army, foreign affairs, and in his case, Crown lands. He had then in Canada a minority problem, but not similar in complexity to that in India.

The slow evolution of Canada to Dominion Status, with all that phrase implies today, stripped away those reserved powers. But they did not disappear until Canada had shown the capacity to assume these heavy responsibilities. The path of the reforms in India leads slowly in the same direction. But the government in England does not propose to be stamped out of India, at once.

The New Year opened in India, as in many other parts of the world, with omens unfavourable to peace. Where the First Round Table Conference in London, which ended at the beginning of last year, left hopes of a truce that might be prolonged into a settlement along constitutional lines, the Second Conference closed with the practical certainty that the struggle in India would shortly be begun again, and with no hopes of quarter being given or asked by either side. The first days of the year confirmed the worst auguries.

On January fourth, just a month after he left English shores, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested. He was seized, as he expected to be, in the early morning hours of the day which followed the Viceroy's refusal of the interview which Mr. Gandhi had demanded. His recommitment to the old military stronghold of Yerovda. at Poona followed by a few days the arrest of Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru and Abdul Gaffer Khan. These steps inaugurated a series of swift and vigorous measures by the Government of India and the Provincial Governments to crush completely the All-India National Congress Movement by arresting its leaders, attaching its funds, and by attempting to prevent all publication of its documents or contributions to its treasury.

Bengal had already been brought under what was tantamount to a state of siege; and in the Northwest Frontier some casualties and numerous arrests had been inflicted upon the Gaffer Khan's "Red Shirts"--a fanatical sect of Nationalist Moslems.

The Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, the former GovernorGeneral of Canada, backed by a Tory Government that holds Mr. MacDonald and a few Liberals as hostages, thus seems at first sight completely to have reversed the conciliatory policy of the preceding Viceroy, Lord Irwin Though Lord Willingdon professes only to be clearing the way of obstruction in order to allow the work of the constitution-makers to be resumed in India, it is clear that his determination is fixed to sweep away the extremists at all costs. The recent wave of political murders in India and the announcement by the National Congress Party that it intended immediately to resume "non-violent" civil disobedience unless the so-called "repressive" Bengal ordinance were revoked made the Viceroy's attitude almost certain in advance. It was on this ground that he refused an interview with Mr. Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi was himself arrested under a Bombay Ordinance of 1827 which permits the government to place "under personal restraint" without a trial any person whose detention is thought necessary to prevent "internal commotion". Some surprise has been expressed in the press at the use of this antique law, which seems to have doubtful legality and to have been aimed mainly at the subjects of other sovereigns. But the Government of India, though it saw fit to produce a law venerable with over a hundred years' existence, had other measures at its disposal, and an unlimited capacity to invoke the emergency" ordinance-making power of the Viceroy to supplement the legal weapons already at hand.

The arrest of Mr. Gandhi was immediately followed by the promulgation of four severely restrictive ordinances forbidding even peaceful picketing or the staging of "mockfunerals" of individuals whom the Congress Party hopes to intimidate by this prophetic threat of "dummy burial". In addition the powers of the Government were extended by outlawing the "All-India National Congress Party" in every possible way, including a ban on contributions to its funds. Severe penalties might he imposed even on children. By these measures, and by the swift arrest of each successively named President of the Congress after Mr. V. Patel, Dr. Prasad, and Mr. Ansari, the Government hopes to control the boycott movement against British goods, and to deprive the Congress of its leaders and its funds. A clear test of strength of the methods of "Non-cooperation" when faced by a ruthless and determined Government may therefore be expected.

The Nationalists profess to have been prepared for this turn of events, and they point out that a similar campaign was tried by Lord Irwin after Mr. Gandhi's arrest in May, 1930, following his inauguration of a war on payment of salt-taxes and rent by the peasants. But there are several significant differences in technique in this effort to curb non-cooperation. Lord Willingdon has not hesitated to outlaw the whole Congress Party, and to attach its funds. He has made it a penal offence to contribute. This is a circumstance that may aid in giving the millowners and the Indian capitalists a plausible excuse for withdrawing their support from a movement that was proving expensive to subsidize, and which might at any time blow up a wind of anarchy like that under which China has been blasted. The success of the boycott depends upon the retention of nonviolent methods, and this in turn depends upon the liberal use of funds for publicity and propaganda. Offices have been raided and locked, leaders arrested all over India. The Provincial governments have acted with decision, and the Central Government itself devoted its attention especially to Bombay, Calcutta, New Delhi, and Ajmer in the Rajputana, as well as the whole Madras Presidency-the hotbeds of sedition.

The manner of arrest and the treatment of prisoners differs notably from that of the previous round-ups. Where before the Provincial Governments waited for an actual incitation to nonpayment of taxes, or at least permitted the Congress leaders a few days in office, now the arrests are wholesale and obviously very carefully planned. The arrest of the successive Congress Presidents has proceeded with lightning rapidity, after each was named. Mr. Wallabhai J. Patel, who followed Gandhi into prison, was followed immediately by Mr. R. Prasad, who was in turn followed by Dr. Ansari. All three were in prison in twenty-four hours. Mrs. Gandhi and other women leaders have also been arrested.

Furthermore, the Government appears to have done with mere detention of the most persistent and violent of their opponents: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is doing two years' time at hard labor, and Mr. Subhas Bose, former mayor of Calcutta,, seems about to follow his example. The death penalty may be inflicted for violation of the ordinance already announced, and sentence may he passed in the absence of the defendant by recording only the substance of the evidence.

The usual hartals, or strikes, have been declared. The Bombay Brokers' Association has declared a boycott, and the boycott is operating. But there has been comparatively little really serious rioting as yet. Those riots that have occurred have been summarily suppressed by the police, who fired in several cases early enough to indicate that mobs will probably not continue to stone with impunity in the future.

These measures are harsh, and they are intended to be. They indicate that the British Government and the present Viceroy in India both believe that the time has come to try to stamp out Congress' opposition. It was morally certain after Mr. Gandhi left England, even if he did not give out the alleged interview predicting the coming storm to the Giornale d'Italia in Rome, that the extremerly elements in the Congress Party could no longer be held in leash, as he had managed to do at Karachi after his truce with Lord Irwin nearly a year ago. The three Committees of the Conference which are to re-convene in India late this month faced the certainty of boycott and intimidation. Twelve murders of officials and many other attempts during the year indicated a dangerous state of the public mind. Baghat Singh, accused of one of the earlier murders, was made almost a national hero by the Congress Party. The disquieting fact that women and girls, long very effective in the boycott and picketing movements, had begun to try their hands at assassination, could not but make British nerves jumpy.

What fundamental causes have produced this apparent change of attitude on the part of the British Raj in India, from the conciliation of Lord Irwin to the sternest measures of repression that India has seen possibly since the Mutiny, certainly since Lord Curzon's time? The obvious explanation that lies to hand is the presence of an overwhelming Tory majority within the coalition of parties which formed the socalled Government of National Union in Great Britain. Though Lord Lloyd, former Governor of Bombay and later High Commissioner to Egypt, has not been able even in the House of Lords to swing many votes against the government in its declared policy of proceeding toward a greater degree of responsible self-government in a federation of all India, and though Winston Churchill and the militant Generals and admirals in the House of Commons have had little more success, the reason lies partly in the fact that the Government seems to have moved in their direction.

The change of policy is, however, more apparent than real. Had the Labour Government remained in power we should doubtless have seen the same zeal for "law and order" in India that marks the present regime. Actually it was the Liberal Lord Lothian, who is still best known to Americans as Philip Kerr, whose speech to the Lords on November 24th heralded the change, and Lord Lothian is the arch-exemplar of moderation in all things. Lord Lothian minced no words in declaring the intention of His Majesty's Government to put an end to "terrorism" by curbing the press in India, and by the free use of an ordinance issued by the Viceroy at the end of October which permitted the arrest of any person known to be a member of a terrorist organization.

Two things had become apparent to the British Government by November. They were of a nature that would have forced the hand of any British cabinet to support the Viceroy in India in extreme measures of coercion. The first was that the campaign of political murders in India, particularly in Bengal, had grown to alarming intensity. It was paralleled by the growth in intensity and extent of the communal difficulties which culminated in riots like those in Cawnpore, and in dangerous demonstrations like the invasions of the territories of Kashmir by Moslems from British India who were bent on bringing the Maharajah to terms on the treatment of his Moslem subjects. The second factor was that Mr. Gandhi, even with the magic of his loin-cloth and his goat-milk diet, was not capable of bringing the extreme Congress program into any possible reconciliation with the essential British reservations. Lord Sankey's urbane and courteous efforts to find a via media proved fruitless before the stubborn determination of the "humble servant of India's starving millions."

The Mahatma talked of conciliation, even of compromise. He made some real progress with the Moslems and a little with the Sikhs on the problem of communal representation, though he was adamant against allowing the claims of Dr. Ambedkhar for special minority privileges for the fifty or sixty millions of "untouchables" who are at once within and without the Hindoo system. But on the fundamentals of India's right to immediate Dominion status, with complete representative control over all fiscal matters, and substantial control over the army and foreign relations, the holy man exhibited an inflexibility worthy of the most exalted traditions of saintly conviction. It was a tenacity that sorely tried the patience of the British negotiators-who laid no claim to sainthood.

After the general election, that swept the slate clean for the immediate future of the Labor Party as a socialist force in England, the rumor began to leak out that the new Government was going to return to the Simon Commission's scheme for the immediate establishment of responsibility only in the Provinces, with a relegation of federation and all its complex problems to some distant future.

The Congress National Party in India had previously professed to see in federation, as planned in the first London Conference, only a scheme for anchoring the British permanently in India by the establishment of a rigid Constitution in which British interests and minor cries loyal to them were given a vetoing if not an actually controlling power. The Indian Native Rulers' representation of forty or fifty per cent in the Senate, which was to have co-ordinate powers; the provisions for permitting a hare one-third of the joint membership of the two houses to retain a ministry in power against the rest; the proposed Federal Supreme (Court, with its sweeping powers of judicial review; the Central Reserve Bank "removed from political influence"-all these seemed to the Congress Party to he aimed at putting permanent brakes on the development of responsible selfgovernment in India by the Hindoo majority. To umpire a minority system would preserve British Raj in India. These suppositions were not unnatural. They were probably correct.

Now, a word about the permanent features of this matter. Here you have a thing that looks as if it meant delay of Federal India. But when there was talk of returning to the scheme of the Simon (Indian Statutory) Commission's Report, the federal scheme seemed more attractive. It had offered at least a potential rostrum for Indian nationalism, and the strong possibility that the position of the Princes, and even of the more orthodox communalists among the Moslems, might be gradually undermined by nationalist sentiment. Only the most irresponsible of the Congress agitators really hoped to get a government over all India immediately in any form that would permit them to legislate against the wishes of the Princes in the territory of the Indian Native States. Mr. Gandhi therefore became urgent in attempting to save the federal solution, and to have it inaugurated in at least the form of an advisory Federal Council, along the lines suggested by Sir Ahbar Hydari of a joint committee of British India legislators and a delegation from the Chamber of Princes. For this he had the support of practically all the delegates of British India at the Conference, including the Moslems.

When the Conference closed he bore away a promise that federation as an ideal would remain. But the Congress would accept nothing less than federation and responsibility at the centre.

On the return of Gandhi to India the Viceroy was faced with this problem: Shall I continue the policy of conciliation after there is no further hope of conciliation -after we know that the issues have been drawn, after the penalizing and intimidation of the British Colony in India, and that the policy of the Congress is to freeze out the British commercial interest? Shall we try to clear the way for the reforms, or make it clear to India, once and for all, that we intend to stick on this line if it takes every ounce of strength that we have?

With my own traditions and background I think 1 should have waited longer than your ex-Governor General, Lord Willingdon, did. Remember that he had many years in India as governor of Bombay. It may have been his experience with Canadian curling, or something of that sort, as much as his Indian years that taught him the strategy that he used-he was a cricketer before he was a curler-but he judged the moment to be ripe to strike rapidly and continuously. 1 think, quite frankly, that he was premature. I should have waited; but I am not the man on the spot, and neither are you, and we, cannot determine those matters. (Hear. hear). It is quite clear that in this instance he was faced already in Bengal with what amounted to civil disturbance on such a scale as to make civil government almost impossible. Lord Lothian, whom you know as Philip Kerr--a Liberal if ever there was onehad announced in the House of Lords that the government no longer had any option in the matter. Now, when Philip Kerr says that, I think there is something in it.

I do not think that this struggle will solve the constitutional future, by forcing issues. The best that can conic of it is to clear away obstruction. But 1 want to outline, if I can, the opposing forces as I see them. Here you have the Viceroy. with the ordinances at his disposal which permit him to imprison a man, put him to death, or permit the provincial governments similar powers; or to imprison women and children. There has been no such government seen in India since after the Mutiny. These ordinances do not apply to the whole of India; they apply to certain distinct areas in which revolution has been most rife; but they could be extended to all India at a moment's notice, and would he if need arose.

Under those ordinances picketing is forbidden; so are fees or contributions to the Congress Party; the whole Indian National Congress is outlawed, so that every member of it, and the associations connected with it, become outlawed. In addition to that, sweeping penalties are produced by the ordinances themselves. A man may be tried in absentia, as far as I can gather from the reports in most creditable sources, and on the outline of the evidence.

Now, those are harsh measures; those are brutal measures; those are as sweeping as anything that has been done in war-time. But the fact is that war of a sort actually existed in India. They are war measures, because, if my information on the subject is correct, it was just as much open warfare between the Congress and the British Raj, once those lines were drawn and it was seen that no concession at London would be made. Before you could go on, the non-compromise policy had to he cleared away. I may be mistaken about that. A more concilliatory policy might have solved the matter better in the long run. Time will tell. It is certain that if these efforts on the part of the Viceroy fail, and if Indian Nationalism proves to be more powerful, through the use of the boycott and the stagnation of the commercial life of India, it is certain that those measures will not be forgotten. On the other hand, if the three committees of the Round-Table Conference are to convene in India at all, they must have the way clear of intimidation and terrorism; in short, they must he able to operate in an India in which the government supporters know that they are not going to be exposed to what could be called, without exaggeration, a stab in the back. People who back the Raj in India must know that they are going to have the Raj backing them. That, I think, is the analysis of Lord Willingdon's policy as Viceroy, and he is taking these steps to insure it.

I think the Princes, who rule over about 600 native states, of all degrees, have been somewhat disillusioned by the financial aspects of this problem; the relation of the native states to British India in relation to figures. I suggest that the problem is, from their point of view, probably the most pertinent, because the federal structure itself, as laid down in the report, gave them rather adequate protection. But the Indian Princes are not alone in this scepticism about the new regime. One of the three committees will have to deal not only with the financial problems and their relation to the Indian States, but with the franchise and the electorate. How far can you extend the franchise in India? As you all know, a very radical experiment is being made in Ceylon, where it appears to be working well; but the population there is, by and large, entirely different from that of India, and the extension of the suffrage on such a wide scale is a very different experiment.

There is always that varying problem of communal electorates; and although five minority communities are reported to have agreed in London, no agreement was found possible with the Hindoo majority itself. Until that agreement has proved to be possible, the problem defies any solution except one imposed by the government.

Now, so far as the federal problem is concerned, you have not only the Princes and the minorities to consider, but the whole structure of the federation itself, in its solution of the problem. It was not proposed to put through a parliamentary system in India, for the experience of the Dominions from time to time, has proved that where a majority existed the evolution towards Dominion status was inevitably rather rapid. In India the federation, as it was drawn up, put two houses with coordinate power, and gave the Princes from thirty to forty per cent representation in the Upper House. I think the significance of that may appear, because Moslems are to be given a greater representation than their population strength. In short, in the only Upper Chamber, with absolutely coordinate powers in ordinary matters, this was to be done. Then the principle of responsibility itself was to be changed interestingly. The first suggested change was that only on a vote of both Houses should the Ministry resign. Then there was, above everything else, the Supreme Court of India, with powers of judicial review as sweeping as those of the Supreme Court of the United States; with the right to review not only minority powers and federal powers, and the division of powers between the two and more seats of government, but the duty to protect minority rights against the legislature itself-sweeping powers of judicial review.

Now, does it begin to appear to you why I say that federal government in India would be a great anchor for the British Government, because everybody would feel that the British Raj was its guarantor imbedded in the federal structure? It would give India a real experience in attempting to work as complicated a system as India is and must be, into some degree of unity. At the same time it would protect those individuals in India who are not willing to submit themselves to majority Hindoo rule.

Therefore I can only hope that programs for more responsible Indian rule which have culminated in this interesting proposal of federation are not to be completely set aside; that when the atmosphere is clear, and those committees can go on with their work, they may find it possible to work out a sufficient degree of consent to impose what will ultimately be necessary for all of India under a federal solution, with the rights of England safeguarded, and the rights of India taken over under a responsible legislature which can educate them in that which is essential, that is, political experience in running their own affairs, and not being simply critics of other people. (Loud applause).

THE PRESIDENT thanked the speaker for his address.