HC Deb 20 March 1935 vol 299 cc1287-343

7.45 p.m.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I beg to move, in page 35, line 39, to leave out "proposed," and to insert "directed by the Governor-General. "

I understand, Captain Bourne, that under this Amendment you will allow the Committee to discuss broadly the question of the transfer of law and order to a Minister responsible not to the Governor but to a wholly elected Provincial Legislature. I wish first to remind hon. Members that the term "law and order" not only applies to the police, but includes also the powers of a district magistrate in regard to the police, who act in an emergency under his orders. It also includes the charge of prisons and kindred institutions and the powers of a Provincial Government in relation to the appointment, posting, and promotion of magistrates and of judges below those of the High Court.

Mr. OSWALD LEWIS

On a point of Order. Which Amendments are included in this general discussion?

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

The Amendment which the Noble Lady is moving will cover the other two Amendments to this Clause standing in the name of the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill)—in page 36, line 2, after "military," to insert: the Governor shall carry out such direction and in doing so, and, in line 3, to leave out from "respect" to the end of the Clause, and to add, "thereto so far as such direction permits." It will depend on the width of the discussion whether other Amendments on the Paper may or may not be covered.

Mr. ATTLEE

Can the Noble Lady give us the substance of the Amendment she is now moving?

Duchess of ATHOLL

The substance of the Amendment is that the Governor of a Province in relation to the power given him under Clause 56 to give or withhold his approval to the amendment of rules or regulations relating to the police should be acting at the instance of the Governor-General, but I understand, Captain Bourne, that you are ready to allow the general question of the transfer of law and order to be discussed on this Amendment, and I would, therefore, return to the point that this question includes the powers of provincial governments to make appointments of magistrates and of judges below those of the High Court. The High Court may make recommendations regarding appointments but they may be fettered by rules made by the Provincial Government, and in the majority of cases I understand that the power of appointment rests with that Government. It may be said that the question of law and order includes all the duties of the Home Secretary in this country and more, because the Minister in charge of law and order would have the whole of the police of a Province under his orders and not merely a section of the police, as in this country. Then we remember that this proposal to transfer law and order originated with the Statutory Commission and that they gave two reasons. The first was that they wished dyarchy to come to an end, and the second was that they considered that to reserve the police would concentrate hostility on them.

The first argument, that dyarchy must go, has now been put out of court since it has been proposed that dyarchy should be introduced into the central government. There remains, therefore, only the argument that hostility would be concentrated on the police, but it seems to me that that argument has also been destroyed by the Prime Minister's communal award. In every Province in India, with one exception, that award will give one community or the other unfettered rule, and place it in an absolute majority in the Provincial Legislature. The police must therefore be the instrument of the majority community, and seeing what the feeling is to-day (between Hindu and Moslem, does it not stand to reason that there is likely to be far greater hostility felt towards the police, say, by a Hindu minority when the police is the instrument of a Moslem Government, and, vice versa, infinitely greater hostility than is felt to-day when the police are the instruments of a Government which, even though it may be blamed, is recognised as a Government that is neither Moslem nor Hindu, but impartial? That con- sideration has been far too long lost sight of, and absolutely answers the second reason given by the Statutory Commission for proposing this change. The Committee may further remember that the police witnesses before the Joint Select Committee bore witness to the popularity of the police with the masses of the people, as shown by the fact that when it was proposed to close a police station, there was an outcry. We have therefore to recognise at the outset of the discussion of this question that the only two reasons given by the Statutory Commission for recommending this tremendous step have fallen to the ground.

It should also be remembered that the Commission were very candid in setting forth the reasons against the change. They stressed the fears expressed by the police and the general public of loss of impartiality once the man in charge of the police—the Minister, that is to say—would be a Hindu or a Moslem responsible to a Legislature in which Hindu or Moslems must predominate. It was recognised that there was bound to be pressure on the Minister from members of his community to make appointments and promotions in the police and that it might be very difficult on account of communal feeling for him to stand up against that pressure. This was said to the Statutory Commission by seven Inspectors-General of police whom they heard, and I understand that the same fears were expressed in memorials signed by British and Indian police officers which were sent to the Statutory Commission. A police witness before the Joint Select Committee indeed said that he had found Indian police officers even more opposed to the transfer than British officers, and the Statutory Commission with a candour for which I wish to give them my humble meed of praise, said they had found members of rival communities which had said they would rather have a European or Indian Christian in charge of law and order than one of the communities in question. When we remember that the Commission themselves recorded how the work of local authorities and of education had deteriorated mainly because of this communal pressure on a Minister of education or members of local authorities, to make appointments on grounds of community, caste, or family, it seems to me that they might well have recognised that it would be infinitely more serious to the community that appointments should be made for those reasons in the police force than in the education service or by the local authorities.

Now when the Commission recommended this change they could say that the police were entirely free from this communal bias and pressure, and they recorded their appreciation of the fact, but those who have read the evidence of the police witnesses before the Joint Select Committee will have found that events have moved on since the Statutory Commission reported. An ex-inspector general of police, Sir Charles Stead, frankly told the Committee that the one reason why he had been glad to leave India at the end of his service was because of the daily relentless persecution to which he was subjected by members of the Provincial Legislature who came to him and urged him to make appointments in the police for communal or other reasons. He said that it was the "mere talk of transfer" which had brought this about, and he went on to say that such pressure would be infinitely more severe on the Minister and that it would be much more difficult for him to stand up against it. That has been confirmed to me by another ex-inspector general of police, who has said that a Minister would have to be a superman to be able to stand up against such pressure.

Then the Commission themselves recognised the difficulty the Governor would have in knowing whether this communal feeling had begun to creep into the force. They spoke of the impossibility of checking from headquarters the injustices which communal bias inside the police force might inflict on the countryside and how impossible it was to minimise the importance of that matter. That again was just the fear expressed by police witnesses to the Joint Select Committee. They said that they did not so much fear a sudden crash of the police as the gradual, insidious sapping of their morale and discipline by this influence creeping in unseen through communal appointments. They feared that the individual policeman who to-day does his duty impartially against Moslem or Hindu or Sikh would gradually become community conscious, and might hesitate to act against his own community or against the majority community in case the Minister under pressure might let him down.

Another reason given by the Statutory Commission for this recommendation was the need for quick and prompt co-operation between the police and the Ministry in case of trouble—the absolute necessity in a country where feelings are easily aroused and are so inflammable of nipping in the bud any sign of trouble. That was confirmed by an ex-inspector general of police and others to the Joint Committee. They were told how to-day there is this close co-operation between district magistrates and the military authorities, and that very often in an emergency troops are asked for by the district magistrate without reference to the headquarters of a Province. The witnesses, however, expressed doubt, which I feel sure many Members of this Committee will echo, whether you can expect such close co-operation in future, when the district magistrate will be responsible, not to the Governor, but to a Minister, and the military forces will be under the control of the Governor-General. When we remember how very quickly serious trouble may flame up, it seems to me that this lack of co-operation may mean the loss of scores of lives. Take the case of the Cawnpore riot of 1931. In two or three hours, without any warning at all, a riot flared up which lasted for about 12 days, in the course of which considerable military forces had to pour into the city day after day, as well as hundreds of extra police. It meant the burning of a large part of the native city of Cawnpore and the loss of hundreds of lives.

It seems to me therefore that the only two arguments used by the Statutory Commission in favour of their recommendations have been completely answered, and that experience, on the other hand, has confirmed the correctness of the reasons given against the change. Let us also remember that the Commission only recommended this change subject to the Governor having the power to' nominate one or more Ministers to be responsible to himself alone, and that was a way out of the difficulty recommended by four of the Provincial Governors; so that we have to-day a proposal which is not that of the Statutory Commission, but one which lacks the one considerable safeguard which they proposed. I think the Committee should also know that so strong were the fears among the police officers in India after the Commission reported in favour of the transfer, that the Bengal Police Association and the Indian Police Association both sent very strongly worded memorials to the Secretary of State against the recommendation of the Commission. I imagine that it was probably an unprecedented course for a loyal body such as the police to take, when their views had not been accepted, actually to memorialise the Secretary of State after the Commission had reported. It shows how very strongly they felt on the matter.

I now come to another point. Some of the Committee may have observed that the Statutory Commission in talking of the transfer of law and order only refer to the police. They say nothing whatever about the transfer of the district magistrate in his relation to the police, though in Volume I of their report they showed full appreciation of the importance of his position. Stranger still, there is no mention whatever that the transfer of law and order would mean the transfer of the powers of a provincial government in relation to the appointment of magistrates and the subordinate judiciary. I find the explanation of this strange omission in a fact which seems stranger still to me, namely, that the Commission only heard one judicial witness and that no member of the Commission put to that judicial witness the question: What would you think of a transfer of law and order?

It was a discovery that staggered me when I made it about 18 months ago, and I thought it a matter of such importance that I endeavoured to make it public in a letter to an important newspaper, but the letter was not published. It is just one of many instances in which those of us who have been trying to bring out the facts with regard to India have found it extraordinarily difficult to do so. The omission from the Statutory Commission's Report is all the stranger, because they must have realised what a land of litigation India is and how it plays a far larger part in the life of the community generally there than it does in this country.

Surely, also, it must be evident that if you have reason to fear communal or caste influence in regard to appointments or promotions, dangerous as they must be in regard to the police, may they not be even more dangerous in appointments to the judiciary, because it may be easier to see the result of any insidious influences that have acted in regard to the police and to take some steps to counteract them? At least the mischief may be more visible in the case of the police than it is likely to be in the case of the law courts. Imagine how insidious these influences may be that are likely to press on a judge—how insidious the influence on his decisions, due to the fact that he owes his appointment to a particular community or caste. To-day there are rules fettering the discretion of the judges of the High Court in the Punjab with regard to the appointment of subordinate judges, which illustrate how communal feeling has already crept into the appointments there. These rules lay down that out of every eleven candidates who pass an examination conducted by the High Court four have to be Moslems, four Hindus, two Sikhs, and one Christian. I have been informed by ex-judges of that High Court that in consequence they have very often to go far down the list to find a candidate who is of the right community. That shows that communal influence is already at work in judicial appointments in that Province, and surely when you have a Minister in charge who is likely to be a Hindu, Moslem or Sikh, this communal influence will be much more strongly exercised on him.

An ex-district judge, giving evidence before the Joint Select Committee, spoke of another kind of pressure, of pressure that might be exercised on the minister by friends of litigants, endeavouring to secure favourable verdicts for their friends. He said that the minister might also be pestered by relations of any one who was under trial for any criminal offence, and he went on to tell the committee of experiences he had himself had of intrigue that had been set on foot to get the minister to reverse a judgment he had given, or to issue some order amending a judgment he had given He went on to say that the penalty the judge might have to meet for not falling in with the minister's wishes in a matter of this kind might be removal to an unhealthy station, to which he could not take his wife and family. Stations in India must vary infinitely more in regard to climate and amenities generally than stations in this country to which judges or other high officials may be posted, and that fact of the variety of unhealthiness of climate and amenities obviously puts a tremendous power in the hands of a minister who may be annoyed with a judge because of some decision he has given. Imagine how the independence of a judge must be sapped by any feeling that pressure can be brought to bear on a minister to upset or influence his judgment. And of course the police are-helpless unless they are backed up by the magistracy and the courts generally. They must all work together. If any of them become demoralised or weakened or biassed in any way, the whole structure of law and order must threaten to crash. So do not let us forget that in regard to this great question of law and order the Statutory Commission only discussed the question of the transfer of the police.

I would now go on to remind the Committee how much more dangerous this transfer would be than it might appear in 1930 when the Commission reported. At that time civil disobedience was in its infancy. Terrorism had only just revived in Bengal. Since then we have had in Bengal what Sir Charles Tegart, the ex-Commissioner of Police in Calcutta, has described as the most serious of all the terrorist campaigns. We have the Memorandum of the Secretary of State to the Joint Select Committee, which says that since 1930 there have been terrorist outrages in every Province in India. Also in these years since the Comimission reported, we have had the admitted growth of Communism in India; and, finally, in the Memorandum I have referred to, the Secretary of State tells us of the recrudescence of the Ghadr movement among the Sikhs, which attempted to upset the loyalty of our Sikh regiments in the War and caused a great deal of trouble in the Punjab. The Secretary of State said a movement was actually on foot to link up Terrorism, Communism and the Ghadr movement, and he spoke of it as extremely dangerous.

Again, we know from the recent elections in India that Congress is the strongest political party there. It may shortly be in power in five or six Provinces when the nominated element is withdrawn from the Provincial Legislature. We know, also, from the Secretary of State's Memorandum that there is a close connection between Terrorism and Congress, anyhow in Bengal. Imagine the danger to life and safety if you have a Congress minister in charge of law and order who may have affiliations with the Terrorist party. Imagine the danger of the victimisation of those loyal police officers and men who, in the discharge of their duty, have had to arrest members of the Terrorist movement. We have, of course, to recognise that Clause 57 is an admission, and a welcome admission, of how serious the Terrorist movement can be, because we know it gives power to the Governor, in the event of there being a revolutionary movement in his Province to upset his Government by violent crime, to take control of whatever department of Government he may consider necessary to combat these crimes. The Joint Select Committee recommended that unless the position had very greatly improved at the time the new Constitution was inaugurated, these powers should not be transferred in Bengal, or at least that the Governor should retain whatever power he considered necessary; but the Secretary of State's Memorandum shows that you may have a very serious situation in every Province in which terrorism has shown its head, and therefore we who oppose the transfer of law and order cannot rest content with the mere suggestion that this course be limited to Bengal.

I also regret extremely that the powers given to the Governor in Clause 57 are only to refer to cases in which a Government is threatened to be overthrown by crime. There is much loss of life, much disorder—one might almost say anarchy—at different times and places in India which cannot be described as coming under that Clause. There was an agrarian uprising in 1921—

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

I notice the Noble Lady has an Amendment on these lines down on Clause 57. If she discusses it now, it must be on the clear understanding that that Amendment is only moved formally.

Viscount WOLMER

Is there not a general understanding that the whole question of law and order is to be discussed on this particular Amendment, and we are not to have further discussions on later Amendments?

The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN

I was trying to make the position of the Chair perfectly clear on that point.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I understood that was so, that if I discussed that Amendment now I could merely move it formally later on. I should just like to indicate the reasons for this later Amendment, because it serves to show how many different forms of crime you may have in India which may cause very serious loss of life and possessions without the situation arising which is dealt with under Clause 57. In 1921 there was an outbreak of agrarian trouble in the United Provinces, because of the attempts of some landlords to extort heavy fines on the renewal of leases, which the law at that time only enabled to be quite short. The trouble was so serious that troops were called out, and the Act had to be hurriedly amended. That is the sort of situation you cannot imagine arising in this country. There is in India a completely different state of things which has to be judged on an entirely different standard. Again, a judicial witness before the Joint Select Committee expressed the fear that if taxation became oppressive, as it very well might because of all the additional expenditure this new Constitution will place on India, you might have a great deal of agrarian uprising. This witness reminded the Committee how the people rose in Alwar and Kashmir because they thought taxation exorbitant and unjust, though he said that often in Indian States the people are apt to be more patient and tolerant than they are sometimes in British India. He stressed most strongly the fear of much agrarian discontent from further taxation.

But however much you may have troubles of that kind in a Province the Governor cannot resume control. He may give orders over his minister's head. He may dismiss the Minister—dismiss them all, if he feels strong enough—but all he can do is to keep on appointing new ministers one after another. He cannot resume control himself. Again, his hands are tied if there is communal trouble, and this has caused much greater loss of life than even these terrorist outrages. Terrorist outrages are specifically aimed at Government officials. Valuable men, British and Indian, have lost their lives in consequence, but Terrorism is not the same menace to the public in general in India that communal riots are. Take, for instance, the case of the Moplah rising in 1921. That went on for months, and meant the slaughter of thousands of Hindus. I have heard of a collector's area in which all the wells were filled up with the bodies of Hindus. That is a situation in which, if it arises, the Governor cannot resume control. All he can do is to get a change of Minister, however difficult it may be to find the right man. The same applies to the incident reported in to-day's newspapers in which we read with very great regret of the Army firing on a Moslem crowd. Imagine how difficult it might be for a Hindu or even for a Moslem minister to deal with a situation of that kind. Yet that is a situation in which the Governor could only act through his ministers.

Take, again, a serious outbreak of organised crime. There are whole tribes whose hereditary occupation is crime, and is it realised how much crime there is in the North-West Frontier Province, which are to have law and order transferred just as much as any of the older provinces? The conditions on the North-West Frontier were described by a retired officer of long experience to the Joint Select Committee. He described the Frontier as a country of immense thieving propensities and dacoities"— A dacoity is robbery by an armed band— robbery under arms and the robbery of the trader and the carrying off of his wives, these are the ordinary rules of the Frontier. Again, if you have a condition of that kind on the Frontier, or if you have it worse than usual, the Governor is powerless to take over control. It will give an example of how serious crime can be in that part of India, if I tell the Committee that in 1932, whereas there were three murders for every million of the population in England and Wales, in the North-West Frontier that year there were 138 per million. That will give an idea of the very serious amount of crime there is to be dealt with. Another witness from Bihar and Orissa told the Joint Select Committee of districts in which he had had complaints of 300 dacoities before a charge could be lodged at all, and that he had only learned of this immense number of dacoities because he happened to be on tour. If he had stayed at his headquarters he would not have heard of them. And a distressing fact is that in Bengal there has been a great increase of dacoities since before the War. According to an answer given by the Secretary of State a few months ago, dacoities inceased from some 250 in 1913, to 1,900 in 1931 and 1,800 in 1932. I have actually heard of a village not far from Calcutta in which sometimes villagers have had to stay up at night in turn to give warning against attacks by dacoities because they could not get protection. You have then this very serious form of organised crime, evidence that it may increase and that there may be a great deal of it of which a good district commissioner does not know, and yet, however bad it may be, the Governor may not resume control of law and order.

Again, you may have serious disturbance arising out of interference with or obstruction of rights of sale and purchase. An instance of that was the Congress boycott of British cloth in 1930–31. We know what paralysis that caused in the streets of Bombay, that men and women threw themselves down before the trams. It was a very serious situation indeed. A dealer was murdered at Benares for stocking British cloth and a communal riot ensued in which 70 people were killed. Then there was the riot at Cawnpore, originating actually from the "hartal ", imposed on the Moslems by the Hindus, to which the Moslems refused to submit. They were ordered to close their shops because of the execution of Bhagat Singh and they refused, with the result that there was the trouble to which I have already referred. But again, in situations such as these the Governor could not resume control. I have therefore put down an Amendment covering these cases because I feel that Clause 57 is quite inadequate to deal with the variety of serious situations which may arise in India and which may mean more loss of life and property to the ordinary rank and file than the terrorist crimes mentioned in the Clause.

I should like finally to remind the Committee of the very grave fears expressed by police witnesses to the Joint Select Committee not merely on account of the communal question, but on many other grounds, and of the many safeguards for which they asked. In particular they asked that their powers should not be interfered with, and that is why I have put down an Amendment to this effect. It was not enough, they said, to leave them with the rules they had at present as regards organisation and discipline, as proposed in Clause 56. The thing they stressed was that their powers should not be frittered away as they feared they would be in certain circumstances. They also asked for Federal supervision and for a Federal inspector of police in order to keep the police force in each Province up to a uniform minimum standard. But that too, has been ignored by the Government. Very few of the safeguards for which the police asked have in fact been embodied in the Bill. Yet they made a very grave statement to the Committee to the effect that unless the Government are prepared to carry them out "— the safeguards for which they asked— we doubt whether it will he worth their while to retain an Imperial Police service in India, and it might be the best course to wind up the Indian Police, as a service immediately—a course already favoured, in any case, by a considerable minority among ourselves. I do not think that you could have a graver statement from loyal, experienced and responsible men. We feel that it is a tremendous responsibility to hand over law and order under the conditions prevailing in India to-day, because it means, not endangering our own lives or the lives of those near and dear to us or our own property, but the lives and property of millions of other and much more helpless people. We feel that it is a responsibility we are not prepared to shoulder, and therefore I beg to move the Amendment on the Paper.

8.24 p.m.

Sir CHARLES OMAN

I must confess that I was rather surprised by the wording of this Clause. It begins: Where it is proposed that the Governor of a Province should. Proposed by whom? Proposed by himself? Proposed by one of his Ministers? Proposed by any body of Ministers? Proposed by the vote of the Provincial Assembly, or how? Surely, there never was a more ridiculous piece of absolutely bad drafting than the phrase which begins "Where it is proposed." I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman in charge of the legal side of this Bill what is the actual meaning of "Where it is proposed "? It really sounds like something anonymous—merely a suggestion. The Clause itself is absurdly drafted. I am now coming to the contents of the Clause. This proposes that the Governor should have a very large control of making or amending rules and regulations, relating to civil or military and police forces under him. There are Governors and Governors. There is the Governor, conceived no doubt by the framers of the Bill, who is a sort of superman. He is "beautiful, bounteous and bold," and fears no man. There are also the real governors, of whom I have known several, who sometimes are very ordinary human beings, not unsusceptible to influences of physical fatigue or to considerations of health or to local troubles in the Assembly district. We have to look at an ordinary governor on whom pressure is brought, I suppose by some Minister or by some body of Ministers. If weak or ailing he may be bullied into making shifts and changes with his police force.

It seems to me that this is a most dangerous chance. You may have a governor of perfect rectitude, yet attempts may be made to induce him to tamper in an unhappy way with the police force. Let us remember that we are not dealing with a super-governor but with an ordinary governor. He may be English and rather weak or out of sorts. On the other hand he may be, under the new system, an Indian, no doubt a very estimable person, since he has reached that position, but still he may be not altogether unliable to be influenced by pressure being continually brought to bear upon him by his co-religionists. I can imagine a governor, either a weak English governor or an intensely pliable Indian governor, doing certain things in order to please those who are continually pestering him. Probably the pressure of Ministers will lead him into making lavish and not very wise changes in the police administration of the district. It may be that he will be influenced to cut down the number of armed police in a certain district, or to leave them with inferior arms, or to shift the properly armed force from one district to another. Those sort of things come under his administra- tion and they are left to be settled by his individual judgment. I am very glad that I do not always have to rely upon my own individual judgment in all circumstances or to rely solely on official advisers, but that I am allowed to take counsel. In this case it seems to me that there is very considerable danger of a weakening of control in one part or other of a district by a governor who is under sinister influences.

I do not think that I shall be wandering from the subject if I pay a high tribute of respect and gratitude to the Indian police. Perhaps more than anybody else in the House I am entitled to pay this tribute, because I probably should not have been in existence had it not been for the Indian police. At the time of the mutiny, when the 12th Irregular Cavalry mutinied, massacred their officers and overspread their country, the police in the district where I was born stood firm. There was temptation for them to become disloyal, because there was a small provincial treasury in their charge and the deputy-commissioner had fled, leaving the whole white population of the district at the mercy of the police. Fortunately, the police, under their English officers, stood firm and actually fired on the Irregular Cavalry, who went off and joined the Lucknow rebels. A considerable number of Europeans were saved by the loyalty of this body of police, and I am proud to pay my testimonial to them. My father and probably a hundred more would have been massacred had it not been for the splendid loyalty of the Indian police in the province of Bihar. I might mention that my own first cousin was in charge of 8,000 Indian -police for 10 or 12 years, and I have that in my memory too; in many trying circumstances his police carried out their duties with extraordinary courage and justice and in face of many dangers, riots and dacoities which were very prevalent in the district.

I must confess that I look with dismay and horror at the proposal that the Indian police, no longer under their English officers but under the control of the provincial ministers, is to be handed over to the management of the politicians of a Provincial Parliament. One cannot but be impressed with the seriousness and the importance of the declaration which has been signed by an enormous body of police officers, who look forward with dismay to their being left entirely at the mercy of ever-changing Ministers with possibly a very weak Governor, whether he be English or Indian. It seems to me to be absurd and it makes my blood boil with rage to think that this vital service of the police, on which depends the lives not only of our relatives in India but the whole of the population in those parts where there is a communal minority who are at the mercy of a communal majority, is to be handed over to the charge of politicians. For all these years the lives of the Indian people have been safe under the European administration of the police, and now they are to be handed over to the Indian politicians.

In the old days before the police force was properly organised, in the earlier part of the East India Company's time, there was, no doubt, any amount of maladministration, but fortunately that came to an end. Speaking as one who remembers three generations in India, I recollect that in the 1820's my grandfather had to raise the local lattials and to come out himself to deal with the dacoits, because the police under their Indian durogahs were then perfectly ineffective. That sort of thing is long past. Since European administration of the police has come in that sort of thing has long ceased to be remembered and there has been safety, but I do not see how that safety is to be ensured in future, if the control of the police is to be handed over to a Governor who is under constant pressure from political Ministers.

8.33 p.m.

Mr. BUTLER

The Committee will realise that this is a matter of very great importance, and I think they will agree that the Noble Lady who introduced the discussion, in a long and very important speech, is actuated by sincere conviction. No one has taken more trouble to study the evidence given before the Joint Select Committee or to acquaint herself with many of the serious matters involved in this decision. It is always a pleasure when one is able to follow the Noble Lady into every single point in the many researches that she has made, because one then feels that one's own researches are worth while if one can keep pace with her. The decision to transfer law and order was come to after very serious consideration by the Joint Select Com- mittee and the decision has been incorporated in the Bill. The Committee felt and the Government most warmly agree that in this matter the responsibility of the Ministers in the Provinces of India must be a reality. Basing themselves on that conviction there are no proposals in the Bill to reserve the department known as law and order from the general field of responsibilities of Ministers.

I will confine my reply to answering the points raised by the noble Lady and the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman). The decision not to reserve law and order from the field of responsibilities follows the advice of the Joint Select Committee and that of the Statutory Commission. The Noble Lady picked out two arguments upon which the Statutory Commission based their decision that responsibility in this matter should be real. She referred to the decision of the Statutory Commission that there should be no dyarchy in the provincial field, and the decision with reference to the appointment of certain official members in provincial ministries. The Joint Select Committee considered the question of dyarchy extremely carefully. The problem of dyarchy might occur at various different points. It can occur, for instance, within the relationship of the centre to the province, and no greater friction could occur than the friction which would occur between the sort of centre which the Noble Lady suggests, that is a static centre, and an autonomous province. That is one form of dyarchy.

The Noble Lady also proposed another form of dyarchy, that is the preservation of the department of law and order within the Province itself. She is therefore proposing in her general plan two forms of friction resulting from the operation of dyarchy. Those who have studied the report of the Joint Select Committee will realise that the operation of dyarchy in these two directions would be disastrous to the successful operation and working of the new Constitution. The Noble Lady then proceeded to develop the views of the Statutory Commission on the subject of official members. She said that the Statutory Commission recommended that the Governor might nominate one or two Ministers to be responsible to him alone, and she implied that it was very probable that one of these official ministers might take over the department of law and order. I do not think that this is actually and literally what was suggested by the Statutory Commission. It would be much fairer to summarise it in this way, that the Statutory Commission suggested that the Governor might find it desirable to include in his Ministry one or more persons who are not elected members of the Legislature. Ordinarily such persons would be experienced officials. They contemplated that at any rate in some Provinces this special minister might be placed in charge of law and order, though they did not say that this in fact must be so. The only member of the Statutory Commission who took exception to that view was the late Lord Burnham, who considered that in every Province one or two places in the Cabinet should be reserved for official members. The actual finding of the Statutory Commission differs materially from the suggestion made by the Noble Lady that they suggested that one or two ministers should be responsible to the Governor alone.

The Noble Lady fell into another error when she said that the ministers should be responsible to the Governor alone. Those who have studied the report of the Statutory Commission will realise that when they gave this discretionary power to the Governor they did not suggest that there should be any breach in the general responsibilities of the provincial Ministry as a whole, and they indicated that if there was an official minister of this sort he need not necessarily be attached to the department of law and order. From the reading I have made of the Commission's report they intended this device to give administrative advice to the minister, and did not intend such minister to be necessarily attached to the department of law and order. I do not consider that this decision of the Statutory Commission alters very much their general conclusion or their general argument that law and order should be transferred. They use arguments which to me seem quite unanswerable, and which were reiterated by the Joint Select Committee. In their second volume, on page 47, the Statutory Commission say: If essential Votes for the police force cannot be got through, the Governor's power of restoration has to be employed, and all the time the unhealthy atmosphere remains in which elected representatives of the Province, and even Ministers who are responsible to them, treat police administration and expenditure as a subject in which it is for others than themselves to bear unpopularity. And they continue: In such a situation the right course seems to us to be to try to change the atmosphere by fixing responsibility upon the shoulders of the critics. That shows the common sense nature of the decision of the Statutory Commission not to reserve from the sphere of responsibilities the general administration of the department of law and order. I have done my best to deal with some of the arguments advanced by the Noble Lady, and I now want to put forward some general reasons why I consider it will be extremely unwise not to make the responsibility of Ministers in the Provinces real. We genuinely believe in provincial autonomy. Hon. Members who disagree with us desire to mitigate in this vital matter the, real authority and responsibilities of Provincial Governments. We believe that if you reserve law and order it is not real autonomy. Indeed, provincial autonomy would be completely destroyed. If provincial administration was started in an atmosphere of suspicion and regret, if the proposals of our opponents were accepted, administration within a Province would be almost impossible.

I want to develop the extent to which the administration of law and order is bound up with all departments within provincial government. Take, first, the department of local self-government. Within the department of local self-government it will fall to the lot of the responsible minister to issue by-laws with regard, for instance, to questions relating to religion. It will be within the province of the minister to make regulations and rules affecting such questions, vital to Indians, as religious endowments. Take the department of education. It is within the power of the minister for education to influence the whole attitude of teachers towards the schools, and we know from the report on the Cawnpore riots of 1931 how a certain amount of trouble was traced to an unhealthy atmosphere and unhealthy administration of the department of education. Those are departments in which there is always a chance for the forces of law and order to be needed at any minute.

The result of reserving law and order would be to place on the Governor the burden of dealing with disorder, the cause of which he was quite unable to control. If I pursue that argument a little further and take two other important departments, for example, the Department of Land Revenue, or the Irrigation Department, and if I refer to the possibility that the Noble Lady mentioned, of difficulties over rent or over water rates, for example, the Noble Lady will see the truth of what I have said, that the reserving of law and order would place upon the Governor the burden of dealing with disorder the cause of which he cannot control, and I consider that the friction which would result from the operation of the proposal would land the province in very serious difficulties indeed.

When we come to the person of the district magistrate himself, we find that he in an Indian Province is the agency through which much of the operation of the necessary orders in the department of law and order occurs. He is the agent who puts the orders into force. If the department of law and order is transferred, the district magistrate would be, in one part of his work, responsible to the Governor, and in the other part of his work, concerned with the general administration of the district, he would be responsible to the minister. So the friction would not only take place in the general framework of the administration of the province, destroying the confidence of both sides, but would take place in the person of the district magistrate himself, than whom there is no more important officer in the whole organisation of our Indian Empire. For these reasons I think the proposal to reserve law and order breaks down, not only because of the lack of confidence and the destruction of genuine provincial autonomy, but also because of the friction it would create and the impossibility almost of running the administration of a particular province.

Let me now touch upon some of the points raised by the Noble Lady with regard to her own Amendment. The Noble Lady desired that the Government should enlarge the scope of Clause 57, which gives the Governor special powers to take over the departments of gov- ernment necessary to him to combat in particular the menace of terrorism. The Noble Lady referred to the problem of agrarian discontent. We maintain that we have in the Bill powers, in the special responsibility of the Governor, to deal with an emergency of that sort. In explaining our proposals for the operation of the special responsibility of the provincial Governor we have always said that we believe the most valuable moment at which the operation of this special responsibility will occur is in the personal relations between the Governor and his ministers and in the daily operations of the business between the Governor and his responsible ministers.

Duchess of ATHOLL

Would the Under-Secretary explain whether the special responsibility of the Governor in regard to the prevention of any grave menace to peace and tranquillity would enable him to use the powers of Clause 57 with regard to agrarian discontent and communal riots?

Mr. BUTLER

The operation of Clause 57 is intended to deal with crimes of violence intended to overthrow the Government, and if the Noble Lady will refer to the relevant paragraph in the Joint Select Committee's report she will see that it is primarily intended to deal with persons preparing to commit crimes. If the Noble Lady will turn to Clause 52, paragraph (a) of Sub-section (1), she will see that it refers to the special responsibility of the Governor for the prevention of any grave menace to the peace or tranquillity of the province, or any part thereof, and that the Governor will have powers, if he considers that there is a, no-rent campaign on foot, to take action sufficiently early by issuing executive orders, if possible with the approval of his minister, and, if that is not possible, without his approval, so that these executive orders are acted upon in time to avert such a calamity as might have occurred in the United Provinces.

Duchess of ATHOLL

But he will not have power to assume control himself in the case of revolutionary crime.

Mr. BUTLER

I have attempted to differentiate between the two sorts of emergency. We consider that the responsibility of the Ministers must be genuine and real. We believe that the operation of the special responsibility will give the Governor sufficient powers to intervene sufficiently early and to take sufficient action to meet an emergency to which the Noble Lady referred when she spoke of agrarian discontent. The difference between some of us and some right hon. and hon. Members who oppose us is that we believe that responsibility in the provinces must be genuine and real, and that they wish to hedge about this responsibility and take more and more powers for the executive. It is a genuine difference of opinion. I am certain that responsible government in the provinces cannot develop except in an atmosphere of confidence.

In conclusion, I wish to say a few words in support of what the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) said about the excellence of the Indian police. The Indian police require no words of mine to thank them for the arduous work they have done, and the work which I am certain they will continue to do in the new circumstances. I am certain also that if we reserve law and order and continue the sort of attacks which must be made on the police and on the department of law and order if it be reserved to what is regarded as an alien bureaucracy, the position of the Governor in relation to his Ministers will be undermined, and the position of his officers, high or low, in the Province, will be very much disturbed, and confidence will be shaken owing to continued attacks on the executive and on the police. It is because we wish to preserve the moral and efficiency of the police that we have felt it is impossible to reserve the department of law and order from the general operation of the responsibility of Indian Ministers.

8.54 p.m.

Mr. MOLSON

I understand we are having a general discussion, and I would like, therefore, to refer to an Amendment which appears on the Paper in my name—in page 36, line 10, to leave out the words "of violence." As the Clause is drafted, it confines the protection which is given to records, and to the witnesses who may bring information to the police, to cases where the Governor apprehends that an attempt to overthrow the Government as by law established is to be made by crimes of violence. I ask the Under-Secretary to consider whether some of the most dangerous attempts to overthrow the Government have not been made by what was alleged at the time to be, not violent methods, but methods of non-violence. That danger has been referred to in the case of agrarian agitation or civil disobedience. We hope that after the passage of the Bill that danger will not be as pressing in the future as it has been in the past, but it is obviously a danger which we have to consider.

I suggest that there is no reason why this power of the Governor should be strictly limited to crimes of violence. I entirely agree with the Under-Secretary that under the special powers of the Governor he will be able to take such steps as he thinks necessary to maintain the peace and tranquillity of the Province. But in India particularly it is of the utmost importance that information which is given to the police should be secured against any danger of being divulged. I recognise that the greatest danger of harm arising from information being divulged exists in connection with the terrorist movement in Bengal, and I am glad that the Clause covers that point; but I hope that the Government will be prepared to consider extending this protection so as to ensure the secrecy of records relating to any attempt to overthrow the government as by law established, even if such attempt does not adopt the method of crimes of violence. Perhaps between this general discussion and the time when I shall have to move my Amendment the Government will find it possible to give the matter sympathetic consideration.

8.57 p.m.

Sir R. CRADDOCK

I have on the Order Paper a new Clause which deals comprehensively with the question of law and order in the Provinces but I do not know whether after this discussion it will be possible for me to submit that new Clause to the Committee or not. I do not know, Sir Dennis, whether it would be possible for you to tell me now.

The CHAIRMAN

I am afraid it is rather too far ahead for me to be able to tell the hon. Member definitely at the moment but I should say, broadly speaking, that if the new Clause which he has put down raises the whole question of the police it is probably one which would not be selected after this discussion.

Sir R. CRADDOCK

In those circumstances I should like to speak for a short time on the real difficulties which surround this subject of law and order. I would lay special emphasis on one preliminary point and it is that when the Statutory Commission went round India, large numbers of people definitely opposed the transfer of this subject to Ministers responsible to the legislatures. They were opposed to the idea and they said so with great emphasis. For example the Government of the United Provinces not only did not want the transfer of law and order but did not want the transfer of land revenue and the Government of Bihar followed the same line. Of the committees selected by the provincial legislative councils to co-operate with the Simon Commission that of Bombay was against the transfer of law and order and every committee—except that of Madras which had apparently forgotten the Moplah Rebellion and said that there was no communal question—every committee of a provincial legislature in India had some reservation to make about law and order. Bengal wanted to have a council or board attached to the Minister consisting of a European, a Hindu and a Mohammedan and minorities everywhere were terrified at the prospect of such a transfer to Ministers as is proposed.

Why do these objections exist? Simply because these people know much better than anybody in this Committee can know how the power involved in holding the keys of law and order can be used and will be used if once control is allowed to pass from impartial hands. That is the fact. Anyone who does not know India, indeed anyone who has not performed administrative work in India would find it difficult to realise the possibilities which exist of intrigues, of false charges, of hushing up cases and other methods of defeating the law and of using the law to favour friends or to wrong enemies. It is difficult for hon. Members here to understand the degree to which communal, racial and religious hatred can be carried and I am sure this Committee would hardly believe instances that can be given of the length to which people in India will go to gratify those hatreds. I have come across the case of a man who killed his own son—which is a terrible thing for a Hindu to do—simply in order to get his enemy punished for the murder. That is an illustration of the degree to which hatred can go and such hatreds pass from one generation to another.

Imagine then the enormous temptation which faces the police at all times. Then the Committee must realise that the police are not the only factor in the situation. In many places the system followed is that of the old village official—the village head man and the village watchman. These are the people who bring the first report of a crime and it is the sub-inspector, probably a man with 50 or 60 rupees a month who has the responsibility of dealing with it. It is the experience of every administrator that if there is slack control in a district or in a corner of a district then the whole system of maintaining order in that district or corner of the district begins to deteriorate. The police become inefficient, the criminals become bolder and there is a general slackness. These Ministers have had no experience in this class of administration and it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to control the police properly. They will be subject possibly to enormous pressure of all kinds. People will endeavour to get them to use their influence to the disadvantage of enemies or the benefit of friends.

When that pressure is going on you never know where trouble may break out. There is every chance in a district where slackness exists of crime being hushed up by village officers and by policemen. At present the constant supervision of British officers and of the best Indian officers is required to keep the police up to the mark. They are scattered all over the country in small stations each perhaps holding 10 to 12 and sometimes grave danger arises as when the non-co-operation and civil disobedience movement began in the United Provinces in 1921. It was then that the famous case occurred in which the ryots were inflamed and attacked a police station and of 24 people there only two escaped to tell the tale. That shows the danger. In that case had there been co-operation among the agitators in the civil disobedience movement the rural police of the whole countryside would have been wiped out.

Therefore, it is most imperative that, whatever else you transfer, you should keep in reserve law and order. I do not propose that it should be kept for good, but what I do propose and advocate most strongly is that it should be kept at most for a few years until the results of these other reforms have shown themselves. The Simon Commission stated quite boldly, frankly and properly the arguments against transfer, but the Foreign Secretary said the other day that when he had shown this to an officer of the police, he said to him, "After you have said that I do not see how you are ever going to transfer law and order." The right hon. Gentleman said, "You wait and see." Of course, he could say that, because he knew the arguments he was going to use to shatter the arguments against transfer. But those arguments are by no means shattered. One argument is that it is a constitutional anomaly to call it provincial autonomy and responsible government and to have law and order transferred for the time being. Who cares about political anomalies over the whole case of India? Do you suppose that criminals care twopence about anomalies of that kind? That is a wasted argument. They do not care about these things in India except to use them to confute us. But they are not arguments that they care about as if they knew all the fine shades of meaning in constitutional methods. We are dealing with practical considerations and the safety of the whole population, and are we to be deflected because people in the West think that this and that is a constitutional anomaly? That argument has no bearing on the situation at all. We have to face realities, and not answer solid arguments by pure theories.

Then comes the most unworthy argument ever put up in connection with this question. It is said, "If you keep the police reserved in this fashion, you will get terrible pressure." Have we come as nation to the position that we cannot do our duty because we shall get pressure? Of course we may have pressure, but we have been having pressure for years. Is it supposed that we did not have pressure even before the reforms? Pressure of various kinds was imposed on us. Who supposes that there will be no pressure in future? Of course, there will be pressure. If ever the Governor exercises his powers, does anybody suppose that there will not be pressure? The pressure will be intensified against the Governor, and there will be no buffers between him and the Legislature. These arguments leave me absolutely cold. I am practical in these matters; I am not speaking about what I do not understand, for I have had responsibilities in these matters, and I have inspected more police stations than most people. The Under-Secretary laid stress on how education and local government and so forth might come into contact with law and order, and said that it would make it still more difficult to carry out law and order if it is reserved, but I pass by all that from my own experience.

The Joint Select Committee were very much impressed by the arguments which wore used by the European Association and by the Police Association and by other people who advised them. They were very much impressed about the dangers of transferring the police particularly—although the dangers of transferring the magistrates were very much greater—and they provided for certain checks in the police regulations, certain provisions for an inspector-general of police, and provisions to keep the secret dossiers really secret, and to keep information from leaking out. The Clauses in the Bill which deal with this matter leave a great deal to be imagined and do not follow in the least the lucidity and definiteness of the Joint Select Committee's proposals. But the Committee thought, when they had dealt with that matter that it was finished, and that law and order could be safely transferred. They did not realise, however, that the inspector-general of police, who is no doubt an important person, is not the person responsible for law and order in the whole Province. He is a departmental chief who looks after discipline, equipment, supply, promotion, and so forth of the rank and file of the police. He is responsible for that section of the work. He has a superintendent of police under him and deputy inspectors-general in between.

In a Province like Bengal, where there are 50,000,000 people to deal with, the inspector-general of police cannot be everywhere, and he cannot be responsible for all the details of law and order. What is entirely overlooked is that, so far as the magistrates are concerned, the police have nothing to say, and it is proper that they should have nothing to say. They put up their cases and naturally, if the inspector-general of police tackled the magistrate as to how he should try a case, the magistrate would probably resent it, and any police officer who did that would be seriously dropped on. The magistrates are responsible, and over them is an officer who is seldom mentioned and who is not mentioned in the Bill. He is the commissioner who has charge of five or six divisions, each with a district magistrate. The whole of law and order is under these officers—the district magistrates and over them the commissioner. He is a kind of sub-governor in the Province. These people will have their future in the hands of a minister, and the inspector-general of police, who will be engaged in his departmental work, is no real solution of the question at all. He can co-operate and advise, and the commissioner and magistrates can ask him to advise, but he cannot control all the prosecutions in the districts or what should be done in certain cases. The district magistrate has executive functions by which he can take stronger measures.

All that will be under the control of a Minister. We hear that certain Indians who are members of executive councils have managed law and order quite well. They have done so, and I admit it, and I have never said that an Indian qua Indian could not manage law and order. What I have said is that once you make this plan you make him responsible not only to the Governor, but to the Legislature. He may be turned out by the kind of legislature we are to get under these reforms. A man who manages that department as an executive counsellor appointed by the Crown for five years, and who issues his orders in the name of the Governor-in-Council, can always tell his friends "I would like to have done so-and-so, but I could not do it because the majority of the council were against it." I know from my experience that he oftens does give that explanation. But the Minister will always find himself faced by somebody who wants to get him out, and the pressure which can be brought to bear out there is not understood in this country.

A case came to my notice only a few years ago in which an attempt was made to interfere with the discretion of a district magistrate in a murder case. It emanated from the executive counsellor, who was a non-European, and had the magistrate not been a really strong and honest man it is very likely that he would have had to give way. What was the object of tampering with him? Because it was thought that the two persons, against whom the charge had been laid in this murder case could be won over to the Government's side if the proceedings could be stopped. I give that as an illustration of the way in which law, and the powers of the law, can be misused to the advantage of one's friends and to the ruin of one's enemies. The Minister himself can set in motion forces which will not appear on the surface. No doubt the ordinary village burglar or thief will be dealt with just as he is now, but a lot of the crime in a district is in the hands of powerful, rich men, and those are the men who get the pull, a pull on the Minister and his friends and relations. It is through hindrances of that kind that criminals get off. In this matter we must look to realities and to the safety of the people of India. Most of the police are thoroughly opposed to this transfer, because they know what will happen if we get that kind of deterioration in the police. If the police were to deteriorate the whole of the reforms and the Constitution and our very safety in India would be imperilled. For these reasons I have tried my best to give the real facts to the Committee, and to make it plain how dangerous it will be if in chasing consistency—which has no meaning whatever when carried into effect among the people at large—we imperil the safety of the country.

9.19 p.m.

Mr. AMERY

My hon. Friend has stated very fairly and temperately, and with all the wealth of his experience behind him, the objections to the transfer of law and order in the Provinces, and has reminded us that when the Statutory Commission visited India the great majority of the provincial governments were either opposed to that transfer or qualified it in one way or another. That is perfectly true, and no doubt the case which my hon. Friend has presented was made out in far greater detail to the Statutory Commission; but for all that the Commission quite definitely and unanimously decided that law and order should be transferred. I do not think it is altogether fair to the Statutory Commission to suggest that this was done merely for the sake of symmetry or following up the logic of the creation of responsible Government. I do not myself think that body was built that way. Their whole attitude towards the Indian problem was one of facing realities, and the two pages and a half in which they sum up their conclusions in favour of the transfer are not two pages and a half of theory but two pages and a half which deal with the actual political situation as it stands and as it will arise in the Provinces. I do not propose to weary the Committee by reading those arguments, but I would remind hon. Members that it was on strictly practical grounds that this was advocated by the Commission, in spite of the advice put before them with the authority of the majority of the provincial Governments.

Since then further facts have emerged. When the Select Committee came to investigate the same question, they endeavoured to do so with open minds and again had before them a great body of evidence, and unless my memory entirely deceives me the great majority of evidence given on behalf of the various provincial Governments last year and the year before was definitely in favour of this change. That being so, it does seem to me a little difficult for us at this stage to take the responsibility of going against all that weight of evidence. No one can read the case put forward there without realising that law and order and every other function of government are undoubtedly bound up together, and that if we cannot transfer law and order then the case against the transfer of any Department becomes very strong indeed. The argument to which the House has just been listening reminded us of the extraordinary complexity of and the curious features in Indian life, but such criticisms can be brought forward in connection with almost any Department.

We are undoubtedly taking a certain measure of risk in the whole administration of Government by introducing any form of responsibility, but I think we shall make the position worse if we maintain a system of dyarchy under which the responsibility for the consequences of ministers' actions would not be their own and the blame for everything that was wrong would be thrown upon a British Governor and his advisers. I have had no experience of the Indian situation, but I have had not altogether dissimilar experiences in connection with earlier days in Iraq. There was a tendency on the part of the Government of Iraq to call in the British Air Force at any and every moment to deal with troubles resulting from their own local administration, and it did become very essential to make it clear to the Iraq Government that they and they alone would have to be responsible for the consequences of their administrative actions. Such little experience as I have had in that connection does encourage me to believe that it is by throwing responsibility for law and order upon Indian ministers, and making it impossible for public opinion or the Press to represent necessary measures taken by the police as tyrannical action by an alien Government, that you have the best chance of a general improvement in the situation.

The little experience we have had in the past 10 years shows that Indian ministers have made a good many mistakes, but there is also a large body of evidence to show that in many cases, I think in the majority, they have endeavoured successfully to rise to their responsibilities. In more than one Province, as the Simon Commission testified, Indians responsible for the control of the police have been successful, and in Madras a succession of Indian Members of Council, Hindus and Moslems have been responsible for law and order and have managed to carry out their duties with success. If we are to embark on this experiment at all, and not go back on what we have already done, we have to rely on the responsibility of ministers over the whole provincial field. But it will be a responsibility strengthened and stiffened by the position in which the Governor is to be placed in his special responsibility vis-a-vis his ministers. The most vital part of the recommendations of the Select Committee is the emphasis they lay on the fact that the responsibility of ministers is not merely to the Legislature, but is first and foremost to the Crown, and to the Governor as representative of the Crown, for governing for the general benefit of the community and not from a sectional point of view. With the powers of the Governor in the background, always there and giving him a very special authority in his day by day relations with ministers, it should give the new Constitution a very good chance of succeeding, a better chance, I think, than you would get in any system of local dyarchy with the friction and difficulties that would be bound to result. I cannot help feeling that the Government are taking the wisest course, and that we should be wise to try it.

9.28 p.m.

Sir WILLIAM WAYLAND

I could agree with the remarks of the Under-Secretary of State if India were one nation, peopled by one people, and with the different sections having the same friendly feelings towards one another as is general in this country and among Western nations. But you are dealing with a country of many nations, speaking many languages, divided very sharply into two great sections, Mohammedan and Hindu, which not only have unfriendly feelings towards each other, but, owing to their religious differences, a deep hatred. In the Provinces we have these two peoples living side by side, in many cases in friendly relationship. But immediately you get the sort of occurrence that we have heard of during the last few days, then religious feeling breaks out, and in that case you can well see what would happen if the police were in charge of an officer who did not belong to the nationality of the crowd creating the revolt. I agree that it is a very dangerous experiment to make, and I believe the Government think that too. Why not then defer handing over law and order to the local bodies until you have given them a chance of proving whether they can govern or not? If at the end of 12 months or two years they prove their fitness far more than we believe at present they will be able to do, by all means give them further power, but do not entrust them with a weapon which you admit is a very dangerous one.

With regard to the reserved powers of the Governor, if he has no force at his command to enforce his orders or his reserved powers, if, for example, he is faced with a hostile Ministry or Assembly, what will be the position? If he cannot call to his aid either police or military, his position will be a very anomalous one. The arguments used by the Under-Secretary of State that it would be impossible to give provincial autonomy without at the same time passing over law and order, I consider very weak and absurd. Even in this great City of London the ruling authority have not the command of a single policeman. Why should provincial bodies in India be considered not to be an effective working force unless they have the command of law and order? The passing over of law and order to these Indian officials without any previous experience in government, the differences which you see acutely expressed throughout the whole of India where Mohammedans and Hindus come into collision, must lead to a state of things in which bloodshed will ensue. For that reason, I hope the Government will reconsider this question before the Bill reaches its final stage.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. RAIKES

Both the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) and the Under-Secretary of State have made a good deal of play on the question of dyarchy. It has been urged that law and order should be transferred, because otherwise there would be considerable difficulty and friction between the Provinces and the Centre. But the whole of this Bill is dyarchy from beginning to end. If the supporters of the Bill are confident that under a system in which four-fifths of the central budget is not votable, which is dyarchy at its worst, it is difficult to imagine why, because law and order are to be transferred, a thing like that should cause friction which will not be caused by the far greater dyarchy which already exists at the Centre under this Bill. There is one thing that has arisen in the last few months which makes the matter somewhat more serious, and that is the communal award. As a result of the communal award, for ever in every Province in India you will have a communal majority, either Hindu or Moslem. In every Province in India the police, if they are transferred, will work as a weapon in the hands of the ruling class, nothing more and nothing less. We are told that if the police are left without local control they will be ostracised, but surely the police would be more unpopular with the minority if they were to work as a weapon of either a Hindu permanent majority or a Moslem permanent majority. They would be hated by the minority and their appointment as police would be regarded as political appointments, and nothing more.

I should like to carry this matter a stage further. We are told that if the police are left as they are to-day, they will be shot at on every side. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spark-brook went out of his way to point out that there had been cases where Indians had taken over the home departments in the Provinces, and had done it well. Nobody denies that, but it is an entirely different situation. In one case you have a sheltered Minister who has no responsibility to the electorate holding his position under the Crown and subject to dismissal by the Crown, and in the other case an elected Minister who can be attacked in the Press every day. Indian ministers who have held the home departments in the various States in India have known perfectly well that, however much they were criticised, they could not be turned out unless they lost the support of the Crown. The new ministers will have to face criticism such as they have never had to face in the past while they will be given a responsibility greater than they had ever had before. The position will not be the same as it is with a nominated minister.

We are told that the police will be unable to stand up alone to criticisms from outside. What did the police do in 1930? They faced, as a result of the civil disobedience movement, the most serious boycott which any body of men has ever had to face. Not only were they attacked equally by all parties, but in many villages if a man was known to belong to the Indian police, he could not even get a wife if he wished to marry. In 1930 the loyalty of the police saved the situation, because they stood firm. They believed that they had the Government behind them, and they were loyal to their salt, as Indians have been in the past. What are we proposing to do now? Hand them over to Indian Ministers, and in many instances the police know that if Congress gets control—Congress will, of course, get control—the police will be under the direction of ministers whom they have had to lock up one or two years ago. Beyond that there is the question of the communal trouble. I do not want to trespass on what I said a short time ago, but if we have Hindu and Moslem ministers running the police, we shall, for the first time, bring the communal question into the police force, and there will be a clash of race, instead of the police force standing together without distinction of caste or race. The morale of the Indian police will, in that case, deteriorate rapidly.

That is not all. Suppose there is one of those communal outbursts such as we were reading about in the newspapers only yesterday and suppose the Minister in charge of the police is a Moslem and a Hindu police official officer has to investigate the cause of the riot? Suppose then that a little party of Moslems of the ruling party come over to the minister and complain that the Hindu member of the Indian police has been investigating the riot and aiming accusations at them. What chance will that police officer have of keeping his position or of holding the balance between the two religions? Very little. Many of us think that the ordinary Hindu police will in such circumstances have no chance of a fair deal. There are other questions relating to the amount of nepotism in the departments. Nepotism must exist as long as the caste system is general. We feel that effort will be made the whole time to promote men who are to some extent akin to the minister. I know that the Governor has this and that responsibility under the Bill, but I doubt whether any member of the Indian police feels that that will protect his interests.

The controversy over the transfer of law and order and of the police boils down to a very narrow compass. It was admitted before the Joint Select Committee and by the Simon Commission that the majority of the Indian police are terrified of the transfer. On the other hand, it was shown in 1930 that, in spite of social boycott and other difficulties, the police are still in our favour. We have a system, therefore, under which the police will remain loyal in face of a strain against which few men could stand, and yet we propose to scrap that system and hand the police over to the control of those who have been disloyal to the Empire. We are told that if the new system breaks down the Governor can assume responsibility. What is the good of taking over responsibility when the weapons with which you should fight are broken and the morale of the men who work under you has been destroyed? I suggest that it is advisable to take no step whatever at the present moment which might have the effect of straining the loyalty of men who have stood by us through thick and thin.

9.44 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir WALTER SMILES

The hon. Member for South-East Essex (Mr. Raikes) has drawn a lurid picture of what will happen to the police. I am particularly glad to speak while the hon. Member for the English Universities (Sir R. Craddock) is still in the House. He has been upon the red carpet while I was one of the people who were privileged to lift my topee to him, while the band played "God Save the King." He was the butterfly upon the wing, while I was a toad beneath the harrow. I wonder if he has drawn a fair picture of what will happen if the police are transferred. If you do not transfer the police, what are you giving to the Provinces? The Public Works, the Education and the Public Health and Medical Departments in the Provinces are transferred now, and practically nothing is left to be transferred except the police. If you do not transfer the police, you might just as well do without the Bill.

I wonder are all these terrible things going to happen? After all, the police do work in a reasonably efficient sort of way in the Indian States. As my hon. Friend the Member for South East Essex pointed out quite fairly, the Minister who controls the police in an Indian State has the whole power of the Prince behind him, and in those oases in the Provinces where an Indian has had control of the police he has had the whole weight of the Governor's authority behind him. Of course, if the police are transferred, things will be entirely different. An Indian Minister will be in command. He will still have the Inspector-General of Police under, him, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for the English Universities said, it does not depend upon the Inspector-General of Police, but upon the people below him—the police officer who draws 50, 60 or 70 rupees a month who will make or mar the transfer.

Taking ordinary crime, there is a tremendous number of dacoities all over India—robbery with violence which ordinarily we do not get in this country. But taking first—though it is perhaps a selfish thing to do—the protection of the European community, after all, if these dacoits break into a European's bungalow, they do not as a rule get very much money; all that they get is probably a few unpaid club bills, because it is not the custom of Europeans in India to keep a lot of money in their bungalows. But many Indians have a great habit of hoarding money and burying it or putting it away in strong boxes, and there is no doubt that, as Kipling says, everyone in India says Gurib admi—" I am a poor man "—but often if you took up the floor of his house you would find thousands of rupees. It is perfectly true that there is plenty of hidden bullion in India. Dacoits have a practice of breaking into somebody's house in the middle of the night and stringing the owner up by the thumbs over a fire until he confesses where his money is. They have only to string up a few of the Minister's friends over a fire in that way for him to take very good care to be taken that the police are efficient. In this country also, at times, we have had people interfering with the police and asking questions. I can actually recollect a Member here being told to turn his lively attention to something else, and I read in the OFFICIAL REPORT when I was in India in 1930, a debate which Members who were here at that time will remember, when we were thinking of transferring the police in India in 1929.

I have pointed out that in the Indian States the police do work in a reasonably efficient manner, and I believe they will work in a sort of way in the Provinces. I will give to those who oppose this proposal the fact that they will not work as well, but things in India are quite different from what they are here. In this country, if a policeman were sent out to investigate a crime—say the finding of a body in a canal near somebody's house—you would not find two or three policemen putting up for the night in that very village and paying nothing for their lodging; but that is the custom all over India at the present time, and my hon. Friend the Member for the English Universities, when he was the Governor of a Province, probably was not able to stop that custom himself when the police were under British control. It is the custom of the country, and is partly due to the fact that the police have to travel such long distances and have nowhere else to go. They are put up and entertained, not only by members of their own caste, but whenever they are conducting these inquiries. Kipling, whom I quote again, says that the red pagri is the sign of oppression all over India, but there is a great deal of respect for the red pagri, just as we respect a policeman in this country.

The police have been made the subject of attack in many legislative councils in India. I can remember myself a debate which came up year after year, like a hardy annual, about what happened in 1921, when the police went to inspect a man's house and inadvertently knocked over a bundle of books, in which was the Holy Koran, of which some pages were destroyed. This was brought up against the police officer concerned for two, three and four years afterwards, and attempts were made to forfeit him his promotion and reduce him in rank until we all became heartily sick of it. It cannot be said that under the present régime the police have always been free from attack. In my experience every possible opportunity has been taken to single out the police for attack, because it was thought that they were a reserved subject, under the protection, if you like, of the Governor, and were not the police belonging to the people themselves. It is my hope and belief that, if you transfer them you will get the people to feel that the police, instead of being their oppressors, are their protectors, and there will be a more friendly feeling for the police. Honestly, I visualise that happening. I do not say that in every case the police will work quite as efficiently as in the past, but I believe they will work well enough, and a good deal better than if things are left as they are at present.

9.53 p.m.

Sir NAIRNE STEWART SANDEMAN

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) talked about the experience of the last 10 years, but personally I do not think the experience of the last 10 years is anything to write home about. In India there has not been much peace, and certainly the police have been busier than ever before. Nor do I think that the home record is very much better, because the unemployment in Lancashire is greater than it has been before. We have heard much talk about these various Services being handed over to the Departments in India. Are they as good as they were before? All the information that I can get indicates that they are all going back.

We have the police force to-day in a first-rate condition, and I would ask any hon. Member here whether, if he were a member of the police force in India, he would want to be transferred? I am certain that he would not. He would be very much more content working under orders that he knew came straight from the correct source, than if he were wondering what might be meant by the performance of his duty under these proposed conditions. I feel certain that the police—and many of them who have talked to us here on the subject have said this—simply hate the idea of being handed over to anyone other than the powers that be at present. I am certain, also, that the people who are being protected by the police in India would very much rather they were left as they are, doing very well, getting orders that they understand and knowing that there is no ulterior motive. The people whom they are protecting are in a very much safer position than they will be if this Bill goes through. We are now having thrown at us the fact that the Simon Commission wanted law and order to be handed over. I never agreed with the Simon Commission, and personally I think that the logical thing to do is to go back to the Act of 1919 and consider what was in that Act. If these Departments have not improved, it is evident that they should be given nothing more, and I am certain in my own mind that nothing that has been handed over to entirely Indian rule has improved in any way.

I think my position is perfectly logical. I do not think that the question was ever closely enough examined, and a great many of my friends who vote for the Government do so because they say we are not being logical. It always happens, when you are a little bit soft, that people say that you are being soft, and they make that an excuse for not voting with you. Many of them have said to me, "If you go back to the Preamble of the 1919 Act and examine whether these changes have gone on, we will vote for you," but they all turn up in the Government Lobby. That is a pretty state of things. A great many of these people will own that they have not read up anything about the police at all, and that they are ignorant.

We have heard a lot about Kipling. I was brought up on Kipling, but Kipling did not teach any of this sort of stuff. If you read Kim's story about the police, you will find a very different story from that which is to be found in these Clauses. How do you think that wonderful story would have worked out if the police had been under an Indian instead of under a Britisher whom they could trust? Kipling's view about the whole of this is not in agreement with that of the Government, and although Kipling may have known India a few years ago, he was very much more knowledgeable about Indians, who have not changed nearly as much as we have been led to believe. I am quite certain that if people would take trouble to read the. Bill and not take it all on the advice of friends who are supposed to have read it all, but most of whom have never been in India, we would not be in the trouble about getting this Bill thrown out that we are in now.

9.58 p.m.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

We have listened to many hon. Members who are not in favour of the proposal to transfer what is called law and order to responsible Ministers, and my impression is that no new arguments have been advanced beyond those which were summarised with great completeness and candour in the report of the Statutory Commission. I am very conscious of the fact that it would not be sufficient justification for the Government's proposals to say that it was necessary to transfer law and order in order to give effect to the transfer to a responsible Ministry which the Government propose in this Bill, but at the same time it is a circumstance not to be overlooked. I do not at all base the defence of the Government's attitude on this question on the logic of the position, but, as I have said, it is something to be remembered. What is called law and order is a very pervasive responsibility. It stretches through all the departments of government, and it has its reactions in the administration of every single Minister. If I may take as an illustration what would be the position if it became necessary to combat terrorism in Bengal, that would necessitate action in the political department, in the judiciary department and in the prison department, but it would also necessitate action in regard to finance, revenue, education; and the local self-government department. The fact is that if law and order were not transferred, you would practically take the heart out of the proposed transfer of everything else to the responsible ministers.

We have got into the habit of using the expression "law and order," but it is not, of course, what lawyers call a term of art, to describe something that can be cut and dried and regarded as a self-contained department of the State. It really is a compendious name for a large number of acts of administration which concern practically every department, and if we were to withhold the transfer of law and order, we should have a very illusory measure of responsibility on the part of Ministers. However, as I say, I do not think the Government is right to defend the proposal merely upon that ground, but I think that the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) as to the examination which this question has had at the hands of various bodies is well worth any Member's consideration. My hon. Friend who has just spoken referred to some of his friends who would be prepared to support him in a proposal to go back to the 1919 Preamble and to work out its consequences in accordance with that Act, and he now complains that they go into the Government Lobby in support of the present Bill. I do not know who the hon. Members are. He did not specify them by name, perhaps for very obvious reasons.

I think I am entitled to call attention to the fact that the hon. Gentlemen who are in agreement with the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) are never tired of telling us that they want the Statutory Commission's Report, but when it comes to close quarters, it appears that they want to take the heart even out of the Statutory Commission's Report. This decision to transfer law and order was most anxiously and thoroughly examined by the Statutory Commission, and upon a balance of all the arguments, they decided in favour of the proposal. They were not the only body to support it. I do not want to repeat what has already been said tonight, or at any rate on other occasions, that every body of inquiry, every commission, and every round table conference that has addressed its mind to this question has come to the same conclusion. My hon. Friend who has just spoken suggested that nobody was really competent to express an opinion upon this question unless he had been in India.

Sir N. STEWART SANDEMAN

No.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

He rather criticised many hon. Members who formed views on the question without having been in India.

Sir N. STEWART SANDEMAN

Without having read the report.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I do not know who the hon. Members are who are in that position. Whether they have read the report or not, the fact remains that the Statutory Commission and all these other bodies have given very careful examination to the matter, and let nobody suppose that they have not set out the arguments. The Statutory Commission have set out in their report the whole of the arguments. The necessity for maintaining the impartiality of the police as between the different communal parties, the necessity for maintaining public confidence in the police, the necessity for maintaining the prestige of the police—all these arguments have been examined and carefully considered, and the net result of the deliberations has been to advise the transfer. It would be a very serious act on the part of the Government if it were to fly in the face of all this weighty opinion, and it does not lie in the mouth of my hon. Friends who, for instance, earlier to-day were attaching such great weight to the Statutory Commission to tell us that on this occasion the Statutory Commission's Report is not worthy of attention. The fact is that the unanimity of the decision which has been arrived at is very remarkable.

If I may for a moment, I will examine the proposal on its merits. The fact is undoubted that the administration of the police at the present time, successful though it is and admirable though the conduct of the police is, as we all know, is very often made the subject of attack in the Legislative Assembly. If law and order was reserved to the Government, it is inevitable, I should think, that the police would still more be the focus of criticism. There would be a sort of general attack on the part of Ministers responsible in other matters upon the administration which had not been entrusted to them. That would surely be most unfortunate, and the Governor who had to administer this branch of Government would start off with a lack of sympathy on the part of his Ministers not entrusted with this power. He would not have the great advantage of having the support of the electorate who had elected the Ministers; and you would handicap the Governor at the very outset in the discharge of his difficult duties if you set him alone in the discharge of this department of State. If you look at the matter from the other point of view, it would seem that the police may be very much stronger if they have behind them one who, as a Minister, has a certain amount of popular backing.

After all, as has been pointed out more than once in these Debates, the maintenance of peace, order and good government is the first interest of the people. You may be quite sure that any Minister who neglects the primary duty of maintaining peace and order among the people to whom he is responsible will very soon have to answer for his default. I do not believe a bit in the theory that public opinion in India, any more than in any other country, would tolerate the sort of outrages to which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Blackburn (Sir W. Smiles) has referred. If they had a Minister popularly elected in charge of this department, you would, I should think on a prima facie view of the matter, very soon have them making the Minister feel that the very best way in which he could court public opinion would be to make a very efficient job of his administration of law and order.

There are one or two other points which have arisen. My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster (Mr. Molson) proposed to leave out the words "of violence" in Clause 57. The effect of leaving out the words "of violence" would be to give the Governor the power to take into his hand governmental powers not merely for the limited purpose of dealing with crimes of violence, but for dealing with all crimes with the purpose of overthrowing the Government. In the first place, I would call my hon. Friends attention to the fact that the Clause is very widely framed. It is not only in the case of an attempt to commit a crime of violence for the purpose of over-throwing the Government that the Governor may take these powers into his hand, but it is also in the case of preparation to commit such crimes. That is to say, you have not to wait until you can prove an attempt, but the Governor can step in when he can see preparations for an attempt to commit a crime of violence.

If you give the wider power to the Governors which would result from the omission of the words "of violence" you really remove from the Ministers responsibilities which they ought to be able to discharge if they are going to be effective at all. Crimes of violence and terrorism stand on their own footing. For one reason, as the next Clause shows, it is necessary to provide certain safeguards to prevent the disclosure of information. In connection with terrorism, it must be remembered that very often the name of the informant never appears at all. The informant is not called as a witness and the persons who are guilty of the crimes of violence are detained under other powers. They are not put on trial, with witnesses who can prove the offence in the ordinary way, and for a very obvious reason. In connection with crimes of violence, if the informant were to have his name published or to be called as a witness in all probability he would be murdered. If it is terrorism or preparation to commit a crime of violence, then the course is followed which I have described. If it is not a crime of that sort, there is no difficulty; there is no objection to calling a witness in open court, and letting his name be declared, and proceeding by the ordinary forms of justice.

At any rate, this proposal has been very carefully considered. I think I am right in saying that my hon. Friend is not putting it forward on his own authority alone. It is a question which has been raised probably by the European community in India. But on the whole it has been thought that you must let the Ministers deal with the other crimes which may be committed in order to overthrow the Government, and deal with crimes of violence as being in a very special category of their own, "ad for the reasons I have mentioned—that it is quite impossible to proceed in the ordinary way to punish the offenders, the Government have decided to give the Governor these powers only for a limited purpose. The other point mentioned by the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) is a question of drafting. When the Section begins with the words: "Where it is proposed" it does use a rather cumbrous expression for what really means: where a proposal is made to the Governor. A suitable Amendment will be made, if need be, to make the words clearer and a little more explicit. I hope that, after this explanation of the proposed transfer of law and order, the Committee will feel that the Government have taken the only course they could possibly take, of following the advice given to them by every body that has studied this very difficult and anxious question.

10.13 p.m.

Brigadier-General Sir HENRY CROFT:

I am aware of the general understanding with regard to time, and I do not intend to offer more than a few remarks to the Committee. But when my right hon. Friend talks about an exhaustive analysis of this matter, I must point out that on this vital subject—

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I referred to exhaustive examinations before the Statutory Commission and all the other bodies mentioned.

Sir H. CROFT

What I desire to point out is that when the right hon. Gentleman speaks about these examinations of this question we must remind him that these ideas which have been put forward here, in this Committee, are very novel. When some of us are spoken of as reactionaries, I would remind him and his colleagues that only three or four years ago they held precisely the same views. Every Member on that bench knows perfectly well that if this Bill had been introduced by the late Socialist Government, everyone of them would have been on his feet night after night attacking every clause of the Bill as being contrary to the principle of the policy of our party. When I am rebuked for holding Conservative views I desire to remind my right hon. Friend, who, as everybody appreciates, is conducting this Debate with great courtesy, that even the late Edwin Montagu declared that if we were to hand over the forces of law in India we should create bloodshed and anarchy, and that the late Lord Morley, who was not really a diehard but who was a very great student of Indian affairs, also-used precisely the same words—chaos, anarchy and bloodshed if we were to part with the forces of law and order in India before the people of India at some distant date had assimilated Western ideas of government. It has been said that if you are to carry out your ideas and democratic institutions it is necessary to give the whole thing, and that you must place these powers in the hands of a responsible minister. Is there anyone in this House who knows anything about the difficulties in countries where you have not established self-government who will deny the fact that there is a grave danger in placing questions of law and order and the control of the police in the hands of ministers, as in the case of India, who will be of one race and one religion and who will have to control great forces of other races and other religions?

If your scheme is to be a success, surely it is better to risk the anomalies, to which reference has been made, and at least see that there should be peace and the preservation of the law when you are pushing forward your reforms in other particulars. Even though it were only for a period of years, it would be wise to endeavour to do that, when one realises the terribly inflammable matter which there is in India at the present moment, and can see on every occasion the great difficulties which arise. Yesterday's story is surely sufficient evidence of the inflammable matter which exists in India. It is such a simple thing to us. If I write a book about the Socialists they are rather pleased that they have their cause referred to, even though it is criticised. But you have this great tragedy. A Hindu wrote a book apparently casting reflections upon the great prophet whom the Moslems venerate, and immediately there was a terrible situation. This was regarded as a most ghastly and awful insult and murder took place, and execution naturally followed. Is there any power at the present time in India which really can influence a situation like that other than the power of a white man on the scene? I am not sure what the number of persons was on that occasion, but I understand from the Press that it may have been a crowd of 20,000. How difficult it would be for a policeman responsible to a Moslem minister to check such a movement before it became some terrible and awful holocaust. Have we not seen it and heard of it again and again? One could give scores of cases. Anyone who has had any experience of affairs in the East must realise the grave dangers that we are running in this Bill.

It has been my privilege or my sorrow to be connected with business affairs in India of one kind or another. Although I have never been to India I have to read reports week after week, and I have realised the enormous influence of what is considered quite correct in the East. In countries in the East where I have been one has seen that it is considered a clever thing to try and persuade somebody to take a bribe. One sees it again and again. Last week I had a most pathetic letter from a warrant officer in the Army—I mention this to show what may happen in connection with the Indian police—informing me that for the first time in history an Indianised recruiting officer had accepted money before any recruits could be enrolled in the Army. When that kind of thing is occurring the dangers are very great. If the Government want this self-government in India to succeed I should have thought that it was imperative to maintain control of law and order in the hands of our people, gradually allowing the Indian Ministers and the Indian policemen to be promoted and allowing them to come forward only by degrees. I shall vote against the Clause with a very clear conscience. Even if I believed in the rest of the Bill I am convinced of the utter folly of allowing our great and wonderful Indian police force to pass into the hands of a communal minister who in turn is bound to be controlled by communal influences.

10.22 p.m.

Mr. BAILEY

I make no apology for rising, seeing that I have only intervened two or three times during these Debates. I would not have prefaced my observations- by these remarks but that I feel the Committee want to go to a Division. Some of the arguments that have been advanced by the Attorney- General and the Under-Secretary ought to receive some consideration from those of us who dissent. The right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), the learned Attorney-General and the Under-Secretary laid the greatest emphasis on the argument that the whole of these matters have been examined. They appealed, as it were, to authority. If we are to accept that argument, why discuss the Measure at all? If we are to accept the authority of the Joint Select Committee as final, surely that argument applies not only to this question but to every other question on the matters that are in controversy. What is the use of debating if we are not to use our own reason?

We have grounds for being a little doubtful as to the infallibility of those upon whose authority we are asked to make our decision to-night. We had an excellent illustration of it this afternoon. We have the fact before us that for four years the Government have believed firmly that this particular Measure was the darling Measure of the Princes, and now they are having to scrape up all their resources to persuade the Princes to accept it. How can we accept the infallibility of those who by the test of experience always seem to be wrong Indeed, I say with all deference that if I were asked whose advice I would rather follow I should say that it is not the advice of those who say, "We cannot argue this question out, we have authority on our side, and it is too late now to give a real and impartial survey to the matter." It is absolutely essential that the House of Commons should exercise its own independent judgment and submit these matters to the crucible of the most searching criticism. I make no apology for doing so.

The Attorney-General taunted us with being untrue to the report of the Simon Commission. I am not in love with the report of the Simon Commission. At the time when it sat the Conservative party was undoubtedly disposed to regard it as extreme as many of us now regard the White Paper. It is only because we have been driven from our principles, from one surrender to another, that we attempt to cling to such vestige of respectability as is left in the Statutory Commission's report. The Government must not blame us for their own sins. We only accept the report of the Commission because we are driven to do so. I would sooner make a small error than a big one, and if you examine the Statutory Commission's report you will find that it is only with great reluctance that they recommend the transfer of law and order. It was not an enthusiastic performance on their part, it was a concession wrung from their reluctant hearts. They had to be unanimous in their report, and as there were members of the party opposite on the Commission it represents the maximum of what those who examined the question on the spot considered to be advisable.

We have progressed very far since those days. The Government have been affected by the party opposite to some extent on these matters especially by those whom they have borrowed or permanently taken), and we must not forget, when we are taunted with being reactionary, that this was a most advanced radical document only a few years ago. We are justified in looking with suspicion on a proposal in that document which was only made by them with reluctance. There is no inconsistency on our part. We never bound ourselves to every proposal of the Statutory Commission. We have said that we are committed up to a certain point, we recognise as practical people that we have to go a certain direction along a road which we do not wish to travel. But that is a basis of negotiation, it is not our ideal, and it is a little unfair on the part of the Attorney-General to say that we are untrue to the Simon Commission's report. The Attorney-General, of course, would never be deliberately unfair, not even to the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill). He could not be unfair, it is not his nature, but at the same time I think he is a little unfair when he throws the Simon Commission's report at us.

He used another argument which was profoundly interesting and rather surprising coming from a Minister with the experience he possesses. He said that law and order runs through the whole administration, that in every department law and order has its ramifications. I quite agree with that. He showed how impossible it would be to work law and order unless there was some degree of co-operation between the Minister for law and order and the other Ministers. I agree with him. But why should not an Indian Minister be prepared to cooperate with an English Minister with powers of law and order? Would he not be willing to co-operate? It is my own view that he would not, and by implication the learned Attorney-General shares that view. Why should it be objected to, if we are handing over all the other powers, defence, land revenue, irrigation and forestly, let alone all the federal proposals—why should they object to our retaining the one vital matter of law and order?

I was very interested indeed in another observation of my right hon. and learned Friend. He said that the police would be targets for all the criticism, that they would represent the unpopular British, and would be a target for all the slings and arrows that would be cast by the critics. I ask this question: Suppose that the Governor has to exercise responsibility and to take over the police, will the police be less the target for slings and arrows? Will their position not then be completely impossible? if in the ordinary state of affairs the Governor having control is to be resented, how much more will it be resented if he takes over control in the teeth of his Indian ministers? My right hon. and learned Friend said that there would be a lack of sympathy if we kept these powers in our hands. Is he not, or are the whole Government or such members of the Government as are interested, not deceiving themselves completely as to there being any symapthy at all? Are they not trying to make a compromise with the absolutely irreconcilable? What evidence have they of sympathy at all, from any form or quarter of Indian political opinion?

I could appreciate very much the argument of the learned Attorney-General if he was able to say: "All the Indian politicians who are likely to be members of the Government in India are devotedly loyal to this Bill, and are anxious to work it, provided we give them control of law and order, but they say that if we do not give them control of law and order they will not work the Bill at all." If that was the position there might be something in the argument of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but can he produce a single first-class Indian politician who has anything but opprobrium for the proposals of the Bill? Where then will he get his sympathy?

I was very interested in another observation that fell from the learned Attorney-General—an observation which struck me as illuminating and as showing his mental processes. I am always delighted to get an inside view of the mental processes of any Minister of the Government—I say that in no disparaging sense—if sometimes their faults may need a little chastening from some of us, though not from me. The learned Attorney-General said that if a minister is not efficient no body of electors would tolerate him; public opinion would not stand him. The whole mistake about this Bill from beginning to end is that the Government are thinking about the East in Western terms. There is no such thing as public opinion in the East, no such thing as the voice of the electors. Is it supposed, with the fierce communal internecine strifes that run through India, that the public opinion of the Hindus will be fiercely declamatory against a minister who exercises his powers improperly against the Moslems?

To talk about public opinion when you have an electorate which cannot, for the most part, read or write, is to imagine something which does not exist and probably will not exist for centuries. The reason why some of us feel so strongly about this matter is this. We were taunted this afternoon on the ground that we were so much concerned about the Princes and so little concerned about the Indian people. That is not true. It is because we believe that the Indian people are going to suffer all along the line as a result of this transfer of law and order; it is because experience has shown, as we see in the reports of the Governors of the Provinces that efficiency has deteriorated where services have already been transferred; it is because we feel for the ryot who will gain no political opportunity and no fresh privileges from this change, that we are opposing this transfer. It is all very well for the hon. and gallant Member for Blackburn (Sir W. Smiles) to say "I daresay it will be a bit less efficient." To us that is merely a phrase, an incident in the process of history. But what is it to the Indian people who will have to experience it? Ask the magistrates, the rank and file of that great body of the British administration in India—not Radical Viceroys who found the organisation there when they arrived—ask those men, whether the ordinary people of India would prefer the police to be under native politicians or under English administration. Ask the inarticulate masses of the Indian people, where you can come into contact with them, a question of that kind and you will get only one answer. [Laughter."] Yes, but ask the politicians who are always prepared to laugh at irrelevances, ask the politicians in India who believe more in gibes and cheap diatribes than getting at the truth, and you will find that they, of course, want this transfer, because it is an additional advantage to them to twist the British lion's tail and fish in troubled waters. Of course, they want the transfer. The politicians in India are setting themselves to break the British connection and we are helping them to do so by transferring law and order. But the ordinary Indian people do not want it and it is because we feel that conviction strongly that we are going into the Lobby, despite the arguments of the Attorney-General, to vote against the Government on this matter.

10.39 p.m.

Earl WINTERTON

I do not think that a Division ought to be taken on this matter without some authoritative reply to the hon. Member who has just spoken.

Mr. CHURCHILL

Authoritative?

Earl WINTERTON

Yes, authoritative and as I have been in a sense responsible as a member of the Joint Select Committee for the recommendations which the Government adopted, I think I am entitled, if no Member of the Government wishes to intervene, to give the answer which I think ought to be given to what the hon. Member has said. Any Member of this Committee, not familiar with the question—and having every excuse for not being familiar with this particular matter since we have so many great issues before the House—would suppose from the hon. Member's speech that the sole authority behind this proposal was the Government's own authority. That is not so. The authorities behind it are, first, the recommendation of the Simon Commission; second the recommendation of three of the Round Table Conferences; and thirdly the recommendation of the Joint Select Committee.

I do not object to the phrases used by the hon. Member except one which I do not think is a good phrase to use in this House. That was his reference to "Radical Viceroys." When anyone is sent to India to represent His Majesty he ceases to have any party politics and becomes the King's representative. However that may be, if the hon. Member thinks as he seems to think that the weight of authority behind this proposal does not amount to more than the opinion of a few senior officials, I would like to assure him of this. So far as the bodies to which I have referred and other bodies were able to judge from the most widespread taking of evidence, there was a consensus of opinion among men who had held office in great and small positions in India in favour of the transfer. They were almost unanimous on the ground that it would be almost impossible to conceive any system of provincial autonomy unless you had the transfer of law and order.

The only other thing I want to say is in reference to what has been said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft). On the previous Amendment he rather objected to my criticising something which he said. I am not going to criticise him by suggesting that he has said anything mischievous, but I do not think he has given—I do not think it was intentionally—an altogether fair representation of the situation. He has led the Committee to believe that for the first time we are experimenting with a system by which we shall have either a Moslem or a Hindu chief of police or a Moslem or a Hindu superior to that officer. That is not so. There have been many cases under the present system in which there have been both Moslem and Hindu serving policemen in very important positions.

Sir H. CROFT

But always under a British head.

Earl WINTERTON

No, that is where the hon. and gallant Gentleman is wrong. There have been several cases since the reforms of a home member of a provincial government who is an Indian.

Duchess of ATHOLL

Has there been any instance of an inspector-general of police for a province being an Indian?

Earl WINTERTON

I do not know whether there has or has not, but I can assure my hon. Friend that this is not such a vital factor as she may think, because in these days, with the telephone and telegraph, the officer in charge of a district has wide powers of authority. It ought not to go out from the Committee that there is any evidence to show from the results of the working of the reforms that where a police officer, whether he be a Hindu or a Moslem, has been in charge of a district he has allowed his communal or religious sympathies to affect him in the carrying out of his duty. Does anyone deny it? I ask any hon. Member who can bring forward an instance where there has been a police officer who has shown communal sympathies and has not done his duty and who is an Indian to rise and say so.

Duchess of ATHOLL

I understood my Noble Friend to say that all the evidence was generally in favour of this transfer. Does he remember that all the police evidence was against it?

Mr. BAILEY

My Noble Friend referred to the use I made of the phrase "Radical Viceroys." I am grateful to him for drawing my attention to it, for the last thing I wanted to do was to cast any reflection on anyone. I realise that it was wrong of me to use that phrase, and I gladly withdraw it.

Earl WINTERTON

The Committee will agree that that is the most generous observation on the part of my hon. Friend. I was not wishing to accuse him; I was only pointing out that it was an unfortunate remark. The point I was making was that I know of no instance in the working of the present system in India in which any police officer, whether he be Hindu or Moslem, in a difficult position has shown what might be described as communal sympathies to prevent him discharging his duties; and the same applies to a home member who has been an Indian. I hope my hon. and gallant Friend will not mind my saying that I think he ought to approach this matter with rather more sympathy than he has done hitherto. While he and I would be in agreement as to the strength of religious feeling in India, he should not think that when an Indian is in a responsible position he does not discharge his responsibility in many cases in the same way as any Member of this House, no matter what his political or religious sympathies, would discharge his duties.

Question put, "That the word 'proposed' stand part of the Clause."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 273; Noes, 44.

Division No. 114.] AYES. [10.45 p.m.
Acland, Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Dyke Elliot, Rt. Hon. Walter Leighton, Major B. E. P.
Adams, Samuel Vyvyan T. (Leeds, W.) Ellis, Sir R. Geoffrey Leonard, William
Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher Elliston, Captain George Sampson Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest
Albery, Irving James Emrys-Evans, P. V. Llewellin, Major John J.
Allen, Sir J. Sandeman (Liverp'l, W.) Entwistle, Cyril Fullard Lloyd, Geoffrey
Allen, William (Stoke-on-Trent) Evans, David Owen (Cardigan) Lockwood, John C. (Hackney, C.)
Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S. Flelden, Edward Brocklehurst Loder, Captain J. de Vere
Apsley, Lord Foot, Isaac (Cornwall, Bodmin) Loftus, Pierce C.
Aske, Sir Robert William Fox, Sir Glfford Logan, David Gilbert
Assheton, Ralph Fraser, Captain Sir Ian Lovat-Fraser, James Alexander
Attlee, Clement Richard Fremantle, Sir Francis Lumley, Captain Lawrence R.
Baillie, Sir Adrian W. M. Gardner, Benjamin Walter Lunn, William
Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton Mabane, William
Banfield, John William Gillett, Sir George Masterman MacAndrew, Lt.-Col C. G. (Partick)
Barclay-Harvey, C. M. Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)
Barton, Capt. Basil Kelsey Gluckstein, Louis Halls MacDonald, Malcolm (Bassetlaw)
Batey, Joseph Goff, Sir Park McEntee, Valentine L.
Belt, Sir Alfred L. Goldie, Noel B. McEwen, Captain J. H. F.
Bennett, Capt. Sir Ernest Nathaniel Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton) McGovern, John
Bernays, Robert Graves, Marlorie McLean, Major Sir Alan
Bevan, Stuart James (Holborn) Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)
Borodale, Viscount. Griffith, F. Kigsley (Middlesbro', W.) McLean, Dr. W. H. (Tradetson)
Bossom, A. C. Griffiths, George A. (Yorks, W. Riding) Magnay, Thomas
Bower, Commander Robert Tatton Grigg, Sir Edward Mainwaring, William Henry
Bowyer, Capt. Sir George E. W. Grimston, R. V. Makins, Brigadier-General Ernest
Boyce. H. Leslie Groves, Thomas E. Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D R.
Bralthwaite, J. G. (Hllisborough) Guest, Capt. Rt. Hon. F. E. Mason, David M. (Edinburgh, E.)
Brass, Captain Sir William Gunston, Captain D. W. Maxton, James
Briscoe, Capt. Richard George Guy, J. C. Morrison Mayhew, Lieut.-Colonel John
Brocklebank, C. E. R. Hamilton, Sir R. W.(Orkney & Zetl'nd) Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)
Brown, C. W. E. (Notts., Mansfield) Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry Milne, Charles
Brown, Col D. C. (N'th'I'd., Hexham) Harbord, Arthur Milner, Major James
Brown, Ernest (Leith) Harris, Sir Percy Mitcheson, G. G.
Buchan, John Harvey, George (Lambeth, Kennlngt'n) Molson, A. Hugh Elsdale
Buchanan, George Harvey, Major Sir Samuel (Totnes) Monsell, Rt. Hon. Sir B. Eyres
Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T. Haslam, Henry (Horncastle) Moreing, Adrian C.
Burghley, Lord Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Cuthbert M. Morris, John Patrick (Salford, N.)
Butler, Richard Austen Hellgers, Captain F. F. A. Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univer'ties)
Butt, Sir Alfred Henderson, Sir Vivian L. (Chelmsford) Morrison, William Shepherd
Cadogan, Hon. Edward Heneage, Lieut-Colonel Arthur P. Muirhead, Lieut.-Colonel A. J.
Campbell, vice-Admlras G. (Burnley) Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller Munro, Patrick
Campbell-Johnston, Malcolm Hornby, Frank Nation, Brigadier-General J. J. H.
Caporn, Arthur Cecil Horobin, lan M. Nicholson, Godfrey (Morpeth)
Cazalet. Thelma (Islington, E.) Horebrugh, Florence Normand, Rt. Hon. Wilfrid
Chapman, Col. R. (Houghton-le-Spring) Howard, Tom Forrest North, Edward T.
Cleary, J. J. Howltt, Dr. Alfred B. O'Connor, Terence James
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D. Hudson, Robert Spear (Southport) O' Donovan, Dr. William James
Cocks, Frederick Seymour Hume, Sir George Hopwood Ormiston, Thomas
Collox, Major William Phllip Hunter, Dr. Joseph (Dumfries) Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hn. William G. A
Colman, N. C. D. Hunter-Weston, Lt.-Gen. Sir Aylmer Orr Ewing, I. L.
Colville, Lieut.-Colonel J. Inskip, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas W. H. Parkinson, John Allen
Conant, R. J. E. Iveagh, Countess of Patrick, Colin M.
Cook, Thomas A. Jackson, Sir Henry (Wandsworth, C.) Pearson, William G.
Cooke, Douglas James, Wing.-Com. A. W. H. Peat, Charles u.
Cooper, A. Duff Jamleson, Douglas Penny, Sir George
Copeland, Ida Janner, Barnett Percy, Lord Eustace
Craven-Ellis, William Jenkins, Sir William Petherick, M.
Cripps, Sir Stafford Jennings, Roland Peto, Geoffrey K. (W'verh'pt'n, Bliston)
Crookshank, Col. C. de Windt (Bootle) Jesson, Major Thomas E. Pickthorn, K. W. M.
Crookshank, Capt. H. C. (Galnsb'ro) John, William Powell, Lieut.-Col. Evelyn G. H.
Croom-Johnson, R. P. Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth) Pownall. Sir Assheton
Crossley, A. C. Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly) Procter, Major Henry Adam
Daggar, George Ker, J. Campbell Radford, E. A.
Davidson, Rt. Hon. J. O. C. Kerr, Lieut.-Col. Charles (Montrose) Ramsay, Capt. A. H. M. (Midlothian)
Davies, David L. (Pontypridd) Kerr, Hamilton W. Ramsay, T. B. W. (Western Isles)
Davies, Maj. Geo. F.(Somerset. Yeovil) Kirkpatrick, William M. Ramsbotham, Herwald
Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton) Kirkwood, David Ramsden, Sir Eugene
Davies, Stephen Owen Lamb, Sir Joseph Quinton Rathbone, Eleanor
Dickie, John P. Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George Reed, Arthur C. (Exeter)
Dobble, William Law, Sir Alfred Reid, James S. C. (Stirling)
Duckworth, George A. V. Law, Richard K. (Hull, S. W.) Rhys. Hon. Charles Arthur U.
Dugdaie, Captain Thomas Lionel Lawson, John James Rickards, George William
Duggan, Hubert John Leckie, J. A. Roberts, Sir Samuel (Ecclesall)
Duncan, James A. L. (Kensington, N.) Leech, Dr. J. W. Ropner, Colonel L.
Ross Taylor, Walter (Woodbridge) Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde) Wardlaw-Mllne, Sir John S.
Rothschild, James A. D Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'morland) Warrender, Sir Victor A. G.
Ruggles-Brise, Colonel Sir Edward Stevenson, James White, Henry Graham
Russell, Albert (Kirkcaldy) Stones, James Whiteside, Borras Noel H.
Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth) Storey, Samuel Williams. Edward John (Ogmore)
Salt, Edward W. Strauss, Edward A. Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Samuel, M. R. A. (W'ds'wth, Putney). Strickland, Captain W. F. Wills, Willrld D.
Sandys, Edwin Duncan Sugden, Sir Wilfrid Hart Wilmot, John
Sassoon, Rt. Hon. Sir Phllip A. G. D. Summersby, Charles H. Wilson, Lt.-Col. Sir Arnold (Hertf'd)
Savery, Samuel Servington Sutcliffe, Harold Wilson, Clyde T. (West Toxteth)
Shaw, Helen B. (Lanark, Bothwell) Tate, Mavis Constance Windsor-dive, Lieut.-Colonel George
Shaw, Captain William T. (Forfar) Thomas, James P. L. (Hereford) Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl
Smiles, Lieut.-Col. Sir Walter D. Thomson, Sir Frederick Charles Womersley, Sir Walter
Smithers, Sir Waldron Tinker, John. Joseph Wood, Sir Murdoch McKenzie (Band)
Somervell. Sir Donald Titchfleld, Major the Marquess of Worthington, Dr. John V.
Soper, Richard Tree, Ronald
Spears, Brigadier-General Edward L. Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Spens, William Patrick Turton, Robert Hugh Lieut.-Colonel Sir A. Lambert Ward and Dr. Morris-Jones.
and Dr. Morris-Jones.
NOES.
Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel Dawson, Sir Philip Perkins, Walter R. D.
Alexander, Sir William Donner, P. W. Peto, Sir Basil E.(Devon, Barnstaple)
Atholl, Duchss of Emmott, Charles E. G. C. Remer, John R.
Bailey, Eric Alfred George Erskine-Boltt, Capt. C. C. (Blackpool) Rutherford, John (Edmonton)
Balfour, George (Hempstead) Fuller, Captain A. G. Sandeman, Sir A. N. Stewart
Bracken, Brendan Ganzoni, Sir John Sanderson, Sir Frank Barnard
Broadbent, Colonel John Goodman, Colonel Albert W. Smith, Sir J. Walker- (Barrow-ln-F.)
Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C.(Berks., Newb'y) Greene, William P. C. Todd, Lt.-Col. A. J. K. (B'wick-on-T.)
Browne, Captain A. C. Gritten, W. G. Howard Wayland, Sir William A.
Burnett, John George Hartington, Marquess of Wells, Sydney Richard
Carver, Major William H. Keyes, Admiral Sir Roger Williams, Herbert G. (Croydon, S.)
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Kimball, Lawrence Wolmer, Rt. Hon. Viscount
Courtauld, Major John Sewell Macqulsten, Frederick Alexander
Craddock, Sir Reginald Henry Manningham-Buller, Lt.-Col. Sir M. TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H. Marsden, Commander Arthur Mr. Lennox-Boyd and Mr. Raikes.
Davison, Sir William Henry Oman, Sir Charles William C.

Question put, and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.