Sitting of 29 April 1932

Preamble
The House met at Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Rochdale Corporation Bill,
South Wales Electric Power Bill,
Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
Walthamstow Corporation Bill [Lords],
As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (Derby and Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield Tramways and Electricity Board) Bill,
Read the Third time, and passed.
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (Lindsey and Lincoln Joint Smallpox Hospital District and Wandle Valley Joint Sewerage District) Bill,
As amended, considered; to be read the Third time upon Monday next.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY.
  [8TH ALLOTTED DAY.]
  [FIRST PART.]
  Considered in Committee.
  [Captain BOURNE in the Chair.]
  CIVIL ESTIMATES, 1932.
  CLASS II.

  INDIA OFFICE.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £81,110, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1933, for a Contribution towards the Cost of the Department of His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council, including a Grant in Aid."
  [Note: £33,600 has been voted on account.]
  The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Sir Samuel Hoare): If a foreign visitor came over here to-day, not for the purpose of making political propaganda but with his mind open, I am inclined to think that, having read a good deal of the partisan stuff that has been circulated in recent months and having followed many of the questions that have been asked in this House, he would imagine that this country and India were in a state of war. But he would find that the only war between England and India that is in progress is the cricket match which started this morning between an All-India cricket eleven and an All-England eleven in this country. At any rate, that eleven solves the problem of an All-India Federation. I am inclined to think, further, that if he went to India, also with an open mind and not with the idea of making political propaganda during his visit, he would find in a great many even of the towns in India, certainly in 999 out of a thousand villages, the people to-day are much more interested in the price of their produce, whether it is going to be a good monsoon or not, and wondering how they are to meet the terrible weight of their private debts, than they are in
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  the kind of constitutional wrangle that is constantly going on on the Floor of this House.
  I make this observation not to suggest that my visitor in seeing this side of the problem was not seeing the whole of it. —I should be foolish if I denied the existence of a very difficult constitutional problem—but I am saying it for the purpose of asking the Committee to keep a balance in their minds when they consider Indian questions and to try to look at this very intricate series of problems in India as a whole, and not be biased by thinking only of it in the terms of partisan and constitutional wrangles. Before I say anything about the constitutional issue I am purposely going to say a word about those other not less important phases of Indian life, namely, the day to day administration that goes on in the towns and villages of India, quite apart from the political agitations and the constitutional wrangles of which we have heard so much here.
  First of all, I should like to begin at the top and to pay a tribute to the energy of the Viceroy. The Viceroy has reached an age at which he is entitled to an old age pension. None the less he is showing a physical vigour and fitness which anyone in this House, even our hurdler champion, might envy. He is flying about from one end of India to another, now in Calcutta for the purpose of encouraging our friends, British and Indian, in Calcutta; then up on the North-West Frontier, instituting the new North West Frontier Council and, incidentally, seeing something of their first general election, which has not gone too badly. I have noticed with interest, for instance, that the percentage of polling in the first North-West Frontier election was considerably higher than the percentage of polling in Marylebone yesterday. Then flying over across the mountains from Peshawar to Quetta for the purpose of installing in Baluchistan the Khan of Kolat on his gadi.
  I know from personal experience what these long flights in India really mean. Particularly do I remember attempting the flight from Peshawar to Quetta, which the Viceroy made with such success only a few days ago. My pilot

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  and I started across the mountains, and about half way across neither of us could quite make up his mind which was going to be frostbitten first. Eventually, we had to come down and to admit we could not get to Quetta. The Viceroy succeeded the other day in making this flight in a very short time and in carrying out a heavy series of engagements, first in the North-West Frontier Province and then in Baluchistan. I cannot help, in speaking of the achievements of the Indian Administration during the last 12 months, mentioning these remarkable achievements of the Viceroy during the last few months. From all sides I hear that wherever he goes his cheery optimism, his keenness and his interest is encouraging to all he meets, British and Indian.
  I pass from the Viceroy himself to certain features of Indian administration during the last 12 months. It has been a very difficult year. Great economies have had to be made over the whole field of administration. Very regretfully we have had to sanction cuts in the salaries of officials who are none too highly paid and let me in passing pay a tribute to the patriotic way in which they have accepted this unfortunate situation. Yet in spite of these cuts, in spite of a series of political difficulties with which they have often been faced, I can tell the Committee that the administration in India, both Central and Provincial, has behind it a record of very fine achievement over the last 12 months. I will give the Committee one or two examples, quite short examples, of the kind of achievements I have in mind.
  I begin first with the really great achievement of the opening of the Sukkar Barrage in Sind, one of the greatest works of irrigation ever undertaken in the history of the world. The man who made this great conception a practical reality was Lord Lloyd. Lord Lloyd is a public man who makes many friends and who does not hesitate to enter into political controversy with his opponents, but none the less we can all, whatever views we hold about some of his opinions, pay him a tribute to-day for the great inception of the Sukkar Barrage and congratulate him on the opening of the Barrage in January this
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  year. Let me tell the Committee what this great work of irrigation really means. It means that we shall be able to bring under cultivation a tract of territory almost the size of half England, capable of growing successfully a whole series of valuable crops. A complete agricultural organisation has been created in the Barrage area, with a central research station and a chain of experimental farms for a practical test of research results. Special attention is being paid to the selection of suitable strains of wheat and cotton and to the soil problems peculiar to the irrigated land, such as the waterlogging of farms.
  Wheat and cotton will be the most important crops cultivated. A yield is expected of one million tons of wheat and 500,000 bales of cotton, Rice, oil seeds, and other crops will also be cultivated. The Barrage was opened by His Excellency the Viceroy on the 13th January this year and a part of the canal system will be available during the present season. The canal as a whole will not be completed until 1934. It is hoped that the nett revenue will give a return on capital of 5.83 per cent. ten years after completion, and 9.78 per cent. 30 years after completion. I think every member of the Committee will agree with me that this is a considerable achievement in the field of Indian administration.
  I give the Committee another instance. Take the Punjab hydro-electric scheme, of which the first stages have been completed in recent months. This scheme was commenced in 1925. The head works are on the Jehlum River at a height of 6,000 feet, and railway communication has to be carried up to 8,000 feet. The work of construction itself involves the construction of two considerable hydro-electric stations, and living accommodation has to be found for 3,000 workers. Two years were spent in preliminary work. The actual scheme consists of three stages. First, the utilisation of the ordinary discharge of the river which will develop about 36,000 kilowatts. The completed scheme will more than treble this power. The principal item of the first stage was completed when the Governor on the 20th March opened the main tunnel, which is 3¼ miles long and 9¼ feet in diameter.
  Work has now been started on the main transmission line, and it is hoped that

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  current will be available by the end of 1932. The power will be used for industrial and agricultural purposes. As regards the former it will supply, in. its completed stage, about 47 towns in the Punjab and the United Provinces, Delhi and various Indian States. It is confidently expected that the available supplies will be readily taken up. Agriculture will benefit by the drainage of waterlogged land and electrically worked wells will mean the addition of six rivers to the Punjab and the provision of artificial fertilisers. I am not sure but that works of this kind are not the best testimony of all to the success of British rule in India. If the aqueducts of Rome are still the great memorial of the Roman Empire in the Campagna and the deserts of Northern Africa, these works of irrigation and hydro-electric power will foe the greatest of all the fine memorials to the British Raj.
  I give the Committee one or two other instances of administration in certain other fields of work. I have always thought that perhaps the two greatest gifts that the West can give to the East are improvements in communications and improvements in health. I am afraid that I have not much to report about communications in the last 12 months. It has been a difficult year for Indian railways and they have had to make drastic economies in their programmes, but I can report certain definite improvements in the province of health. Let me give the Committee three short instances. First, the advance that is being made in mastering the terrible scourge of leprosy. Leprosy surveys are being continued and have already led to a great increase in the number of cases treated at small cost in clinics. These number over 24,000 in the Central Provinces and 28,272 in Madras, although a decade ago only about 8,000 lepers were being cared for in the whole of India.
  Then, again, a very interesting advance has been made in the measures for dealing with another scourge of India, cholera. There is what is called a bacteriophage, which has been discovered. It is a very minute parasite growing in the cholera bacillus, and it can now be isolated for obtaining a pure culture. The varieties obtained have the power to destroy the bacilli of cholera
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  very rapidly, and they are added to the water supply where cholera has broken out or is likely to break out. This has been done in the last 12 months in the Nawgong district of Assam. In this cholera season and the last two cholera seasons practically no cholera occurred in the area dealt with. If this is confirmed by further observations, it will constitute the most important advance which has ever been obtained in dealing with the most serious epidemic disease of India. If I had the time I could tell the Committee about the progress that has been made with the malaria survey. There, again, a quite definite advance has been made during the last 12 months in coping with another of the great scourges of the East.
  I hope I have given the Committee sufficient examples—quite obviously I could add to them indefinitely—of the excellent work that from day to day and from week to week the noble body of officials, British and Indian, are achieving in India. I know that these men like to feel that their work is noticed and appreciated by the House of Commons. Many Members who, like myself, have travelled to distant parts of the Empire, know what encouragement it gives these men, very often in distant stations with no friends or relations near them, to feel that we in this House are thinking not only about political and party controversies, but are very conscious of the noble work that they are doing not only for the country in which they are living, but for the Empire as a whole.
  Then there is the economic position in India, about which I would like to say something. If there had been in progress a great political revolution in India, if there had been a state of war between Great Britain and India, we should surely have been faced to-day with a very formidable economic crisis. Yet what do we find? We find, I admit freely and frankly, a whole series of economic troubles. We find the prices of primary commodities much too low, with the result that the Indian cultivator is greatly suffering. But we do find that in spite of these formidable difficulties the economic and the financial position of India to-day is much better, judged by every standard, than it was six months ago. Prices are beginning to rise. I do not want to exaggerate the effect of these

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  rises, and I do not want to appear to be too optimistic. None the less it is a fact that, whilst agricultural prices in India were, in 1928, as 138 to 100 in 1913, in 1930 they had fallen to 112 compared with 100 in 1913, and in September of last year they had been subjected to the gigantic slump which brought them down to 76. Since then they have been definitely rising.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: Was that 76 in gold?
  11.30 a.m.
  Sir S. HOARE: I think it is gold, but I will check that statement afterwards. Since then there has been a decided rise, at any rate in sterling prices, and the result to-day is that the difficulties are less formidable than they were a few months ago in many of the country districts. Taxation is coming in fairly well. Rents are being paid. That all shows that economically India is in a stronger position than it was last September. Then let the Committee remember the very great change that has come over the financial position of India during the last six months. I suppose that six months ago India could not have borrowed even a small sum of money in the market in London or in the money markets of the world, except at altogether prohibitive rates of interest. Indian stocks were standing upon a seven and eight per cent. basis. I think that everyone who was in touch with the financial markets during the autumn would have said that it would have been quite impossible for India to have raised a loan except at altogether prohibitive rates, in the months before Christmas. Now Indian credit is on a 5¼ to 5½ basis, and two days ago we were able to issue a long-term loan of £10,000,000 at 95, and the loan was heavily over-subscribed. I am glad to be able to tell the Committee that it now stands at a considerable premium. These facts speak for themselves. I ask every Member of the Committee to take them into constant consideration when he is deciding upon his general outlook on the Indian problem as a whole. They are a directly relevant part of the Indian problem. No one can look fairly at the Indian problem who does not take these facts into account.
  I said at the beginning of my speech that this was one side of the Indian problem,
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  and a very important side of it. I cannot end my speech without making at any rate some allusion to the other side of the problem, the political and the constitutional side of it. There is the fact—I do not deny it—that there are to-day in prison and interned in India no fewer than 26,600 men and women. I wish that there were not. I wish that there were not so many people in India or any other part of the world who fail to realise the fact that every advance, constitutional, political, economic, means compromise and co-operation. But I would deny altogether the charge that, because there are 26,600 men and women imprisoned in India, that means that India is suffering under the iron heel of a Russian tyranny. If that is the case then the Russian tyranny must have been twice as bad in the days when the Leader of the Opposition was a member of the late Government and when there were twice as many men and women imprisoned in India.
  I would rather ask members of the Committee to look at these facts and figures calmly and not to assume because of these figures, that India is in a state of revolution, but rather to assume that India is passing through a phase through which many countries in the world both in the East and in the West are passing at the present time. This is a period of great change. It is a period when the foundations of government are. being minutely scrutinised, and, I would go as far as to say that my considered view is, not that there is an overwhelming crisis in India at the present time, but that the situation in India is, on the whole better, than we might expect considering all the upheavals which are going on in the other parts of the world.
  Since the last discussion which we had on this subject in this Committee, I have gone very carefully into the series of charges made in the last Debate about the abuse of the emergency powers and about the conduct of the police. I can tell the Committee quite definitely that I have satisfied myself, first of all, that the powers are being sensibly administered and secondly that there is in progress in this country, on the Continent and in India a very unscrupulous propaganda for the purpose of vilifying British rule and British officials in India. There is a document which has been freely circulated

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  here in London called the "Indian Bulletin." It is supposed to be published by the Friends of India. I see this document regularly. I have never seen more gross or outrageous charges made for the purpose of political propaganda in any other document. I have a number of instances of them here, but as time is going on, I do not propose to occupy the Committee with them. Then again, there was a Swiss gentleman who came here and addressed a number of Members of the House of Commons the other day. I do not know why so much importance was attached to this particular gentleman here in Westminster. I understand that nobody pays very much attention to him in his own country. He made a series of quite groundless charges including one particularly gross charge which is the only one I will mention, namely, that the only place where women were not safe in India was under the walls of British barracks. That is a gross and outrageous charge, so gross and outrageous that in this Committee of members who know the record of the British troops in face of great difficulties during these recent years, it is not worth while even to give an answer to it.
  Let any Member who doubts the good conduct of the troops, British or Indian, go to a district like Chittagong where, perhaps, we had the greatest difficulties to face—where we had to face a ruthless terrorist campaign. There, I hear, tributes are paid from all sides to the good nature, to the fairness and to the kindness of the battalions that are in or near Chittagong at the present moment. I would venture to suggest to the good people, and there are many excellent people who may be influenced by this type of propaganda, that they ought not to be too credulous of these wild and unscrupulous stories. I would also venture to suggest to them that they would in any case do well to reserve some of their sympathy for the wives and children of the British officials who have been murdered by ruthless terrorists during the last year or two.
  I can assure the Committee that the Government have not the least intention of being deflected from their course by this flood of unscrupulous propaganda. The position of the Government to-day is exactly what the position of the
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  Government was when last I addressed this Committee. We are going straight ahead with the policy approved by an overwhelming majority of this House last December. We are going straight ahead with a policy based upon the two foundations of order and progress. We believe that you cannot definitely maintain order without progress and we are quite certain that you cannot have progress without order. I challenge any hon. Member whether he sits on the benches opposite or in any other part of the Committee to produce a better policy or to suggest or to give any reason to this Committee to think that the Government are not, in spirit and in letter, carrying out the programme of the White Paper which was approved by such an overwhelming majority last December.
  Mr. LANSBURY: I will reserve what I have to say on the right hon. Gentleman's speech until the end of my remarks. I wish, first of all, to say to the Committee that the difference between hon. Members who sit here and hon. Members in other parts of the Committee on the question of India is a very vital difference of principle. We do not believe that any material benefits which the conqueror may confer on the conquered race, can take the place of self-determination and of the right of that people to say for themselves what they think is of benefit to themselves. I shall say a few words about that at the end also, but I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman some questions on quite important and vital considerations both for this country and for India. The Indian people are to be represented, or someone is to speak on their behalf, so we are told, at the Ottawa Conference. I understand that, so far as fiscal policy is concerned, it has been laid down by the Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, on the 17th November, 1919:
  "Whatever be the right fiscal policy for India, for the needs of her consumers as well as for her manufacturers, it is quite clear that she should have the same liberty to consider her interests as Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. In the opinion of the Committee, therefore, the Secretary of State should as far as possible avoid interference on this subject when the Government of India and its Legislature are in agreement, and they think that his intervention, when it does take place, should be limited to safeguarding

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  the international obligations of the Empire and fiscal arrangements within the Empire to which His Majesty's Government is. a party."
  It is commonly supposed that this arrangement works in such a way as to place the Indian Assembly in a really autonomous position. The right hon. Member for Bewdley (Mr. Baldwin), when he was Prime Minister, said:
  "India has been given economic liberty."
  It is true that if the Government of India and the Assembly are in agreement, the Secretary of State does not oppose it, but the Secretary of State is consulted before anything is put before the Assembly by the Government of India. Consequently, at this prior stage, it is in the power of the right hon. Gentleman to stultify the Convention which I have just quoted. To show the importance of this, under the administration of the Labour Secretary of State for India this position. was called in question because it was thought in the Assembly that Mr. Wedgwood Benn had interfered in certain fiscal proposals, and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, Pundit Malaviya walked out of the Assembly because of his firm belief that the Government had not carried out that obligation. Therefore, it is obvious that this question is one about which there should be a perfectly clear and distinct understanding, and I want to ask how it is going to be applied at Ottawa. I have not the least desire to say anything against the appointment of the gentleman who, I understand, is the leader of the delegation that the Government of India has selected, but that is not quite the point. Sir Atul Chatterjee is probably one of the best public officials for such a position, but I want to know who instructs him. No doubt the Secretary of State will say that any further proposals will be submitted to the Indian Assembly, but who will instruct them in making the bargains at Ottawa, which will concern the economic relationships between Great Britain and India? Then I want to know if the Cabinet on this side is to make the British proposals through the right hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Runciman) and the Cabinet make "appropriate" Indian suggestions through the voice of the Secretary of State for India.
  In this case it is a sort of contract being made, as if you had the same
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  lawyer to defend the economic interests of both sides, and we may assume that a certain preference might favourably affect the interests of Indian exporters. But there is a great deal of British capital sunk, as we are continually reminded, in India, especially in tea plantations. Who is going to decide whether the Protection should be in the direction of assisting tea or in the direction of assisting exportation in the hands of purely Indian concerns? The fact is, I think, that any attempt to use the present machinery is bound to fail. The Statutory Committee long ago recommended that this should be changed into a definite Act of Parliament laying down in an unmistakable manner the right of the Indians themselves to decide such questions, and I should like to ask whether the Government, without any new Act of Parliament, in the questions that will come up at the Ottawa Conference, are going to give the Indian Legislature, without the nominated members voting, and without anyone except the elected Indian members voting, the power to decide what fiscal arrangements shall be made.
  The Government, it is evident, can make arrangements for Colonies and Dependencies, which are subordinate, and you may bargain with the Dominions, which are independent, but India is in neither position and cannot, as I see it, be made to fit in the picture, either as a recognised Dominion or as a Colony; and, therefore, I want the right hon. Gentleman to tell us definitely, Will the nominated members vote, or will it be a free and decisive vote of the elected members alone, when whatever is decided or proposed at Ottawa comes up for decision? I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that on many of these questions the delegates at the Round Table Conference came very near to agreement, and I should think that at this juncture, when we are told that a new policy is to be adopted throughout the Empire, that is to say, when we are to have fiscal arrangements for the benefit of this country and the Dominions, I think the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that it is important that, whatever arrangements are made with regard to India, they shall be arrangements which the merchants and others in India accept, and voluntarily accept, without their being imposed upon them.

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  I should like also to say that on that question—the rest of the Committee may be in entire disagreement with me, but I hold the view very strongly, and my colleagues do too—the people in India, the merchants, the Indian capitalists, and others, have the same right to say that India, so far as they can help it, shall be developed on capitalist and present-day commercial lines, to the advantage of Indian capitalists, as British capitalists have to say that here in Britain British trade and industry shall be carried on for their benefit. We have heard in many speeches during the last few months in this House that Britain has a natural right to be master in her own house, and especially in these matters, and I am claiming the same rights for the Indian capitalist. An hon. Gentleman interjects that they have those rights. I only want the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State to tell us this afternoon who will have instructed the delegation appointed by the Indian Government to speak at Ottawa, and who will be the people to say what is or is not acceptable to the people of India. I maintain that that cannot be said by anyone but the people of India themselves. That is the position I take up.
  The right hon. Gentleman has told us this morning that the policy which he is carrying out is the same policy as that laid down by the Prime Minister and the National Government. I think the one test which will prove that will be the speech of the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) to-day. Up to a certain point in these discussions, the right hon. Gentleman has poured scorn and contempt on the policy of conference and reconciliation with the Indian people, and I shall be very curious to hear whether he has been converted, or whether he has converted the Government on this subject. I remember quite well his speech on the Statute of Westminster, and I remember quite well his speech on the Motion to approve the Hound Table decisions, and if the right hon. Gentleman's policy during the months that have intervened since then has been satisfactory to the right hon. Gentleman—not satisfactory to me; that could not be, because I profoundly dissent from the statement he then made—I will suspend judgment until I hear this afternoon
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  the speech of the right hon. Gentleman.
  That brings me to the real point. Lord Irwin and the late Secretary of State, Mr. Wedgwood Benn, pursued a certain policy, and the right hon. Gentleman to day has called attention to the fact that during that administration, of which I was a member, double the number of persons were imprisoned. Whatever criticism can be levelled against the late Government on that score, I stand here and accept my share of responsibility. I never run away from responsibility, and if during the administration of Lord Irwin and my friend Mr. Wedgwood Benn they carried out a policy of putting people into prison which was unjustifiable, if they made mistakes in their policy, and if I supported them in their mistakes, then all the criticism that you like to throw at me will be like water on a duck's back, for this perfectly simple reason: I do not think any honest person who looks at the policy of the late Government can deny that from the very beginning of that administration, and before we came into office, right from the day Lord Irwin went to India, he did his best to do a very difficult thing, and that was in the midst of very great trouble and difficulty also to maintain the principle of co-operation and conciliation. It is true that this policy was not able to go through without imprisoning people, but no one can deny that he never lost his faith and never lost any opportunity of upholding the full right of the Indian people to self-government. We must remember that a very difficult situation had been created before we came into office by the appointment of the Commission. We agreed to the appointment of the Commission, and we probably must take our share of responsibility for its composition, but men do the best they can in the circumstances facing them as our men did on that occasion. The right hon. Gentleman himself was also responsible for the appointment of the all-white Commission, and, I think, anyone who knows anything about India will agree it would have been better if the—
  12.00 p.m.
  Mr. CHURCHILL: It was agreed to by the leaders of the three parties.
  Mr. LANSBURY: I said we agreed to the appointment of that Commission, and we agreed to it in good faith. It was the best thing to be done.
  Mr. CHURCHILL: You agreed to the nomination.
  Mr. LANSBURY: Certainly we nominated our own people; we did not have to agree to the right hon. Gentleman's. The right hon. Gentleman knows that perfectly well. The only people for whom we were responsible were our own, and therefore we do not want any nonsense about it. I was saying that when men are faced with any proposal they have to make the best decision they can in their judgment; but everyone knows after the event—there are lots of things we know after the event. The right hon. Gentleman told us about his change of view on the Gold Standard—we know now that it would have been better that the composition of the Commission should have been different from what it was, not merely from the point of view of Englishmen. It would have been better to have had a mixed Commission of Indians and Englishmen. The Tory Government had to face all the difficulties which arose, but when Lord Irwin and Mr. Wedgwood Benn were together in office, they tried to overcome those difficulties by bringing about the Round Table Conference in place of a Statutory Commission to consider the report of the Simon Commission, and it was in working toward that end that Lord Irwin brought down upon himself the condemnation of the ultra-Tory Members of the then House of Commons. In spite of that, he persevered, and, in the end, did bring the Conference into being, he did persuade Mr. Gandhi to come to this country, and when the late Government went out of office the Conference was in being.
  I know that there are Members in this House, Anglo-Indians and others, who think that the whole of the business was a mistake. They think that the Round Table Conference ought never to have been held. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear !"] I am glad to get that assenting cheer, because that really strikes the dividing line between the policy of the late Government and the policy of the present Government. We do not think that the present Government, if they were given the opportunity, and could start all over again, would dream of carrying through a Round Table Conference. They found it there, and very
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  soon they packed it up and sent it away. That Conference, despite the humorous contempt with which some persons have viewed it, was very representative. It brought together representatives of every shade of opinion in India and gathered them here in London for the purpose of discussing with one another and with representatives of this country how best to settle the difficulties which had arisen and which the right hon. Gentleman agrees had arisen. But the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State has sent that Conference home. I would like to know whether it is to be reassembled. Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that it is still in being?
  The right hon. Gentleman and Lord Willingdon have clapped the principal member of the Conference into prison. The right hon. Gentleman omitted to tell us on the last occasion when this was being discussed why Mr. Gandhi had not been given the least opportunity to do anything when he got back from this country but was immediately clapped into prison. Mr. Gandhi, I know, left this country believing that the right hon. Gentleman and himself were in agreement that when Mr. Gandhi reached India he would be able to meet the Viceroy and discuss the situation. About that there is no question whatever, and it is a great pity, when there are two men who respect each other—we know that that is true, because Mr. Gandhi has publicly said so—and who accept each other's word on any question, that on this vital matter there should be this disagreement. We would like to know whether it is not possible to have this cleared up because I am of the opinion still that had Lord Willingdon and Mr. Gandhi met, much of the trouble and difficulty that has arisen since would not have occurred. I believe that Mr. Gandhi and Lord Willingdon would have found a way out of the difficulties. This man who was welcomed in this country who sat at the Round Table Conference, who was received by His Majesty, and was an honoured guest in this country was not allowed a word of conference when he landed in India, but was put into prison. This is hard to justify. It is extremely hard to explain it, and I would like the right hon. Gentleman to tell us if he is able to tell us something more

  719
  about it. I would also like to ask him if he considers that the Round Table Conference is still in existence.
  Just look at the Conference for a moment. Mrs. Naidu, one of the few women delegates, has just been arrested for doing nothing. As far as I know, it was not even for making a speech. It was because she was on her way to a meeting of the Congress. I listened very attentively to the right hon. Gentleman the other day in his answer to a question that was put to him as to whether the Congress was an illegal body. As I understood him, the Congress is illegal under certain conditions and in certain places. That is an extremely difficult situation, because apparently to-day a meeting of the Congress may be legal in Bombay and to-morrow it may be illegal. It is a sort of in and out arrangement, and it really depends not upon any legal instrument, but upon the decision of the magistrate or of some other official at a particular moment. That is an impossible situation, and it is really an outrage that the delegates who were making their way to the meeting of the Congress which it was proposed to be held in Delhi should have been stopped. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the contentment and peace in the villages. Why was it necessary to take all this action to prevent a meeting of the Congress? There are 26,000 people in prison, including their leaders, and yet the Government dare not allow this Congress meeting to be held, and in order that it shall not be held, they arrest some people and prevent others leaving their villages to attend.
  I should like to ask what has become of Mr. Iyanger? He is the owner and editor of the "Hindu" newspaper. What has happened to him? Does the right hon. Gentleman think that he will under the present circumstances co-operate with the present Government in order to find the way out? Will he also tell us where are Mr. Purshotamdas Thakurdas and Mr. Birla, both of whom represent Indian commerce, and whether he thinks that they would come again to a conference in London? I should also like to know what he has to say about the arrest of Pandit Malaviya. I know that people in this country, when men in a country like India happen to disagree with us,
  720
  develop a sort of contemptuous attitude toward them. I happen to know this gentleman and have known him for some time. I know that in administration he was looked upon as one of the most effective and able men of affairs in India. That man has just been thrown into prison for nothing at all. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to tell us what crime he committed, and what crime Mrs. Naidu committed? Let him tell the Committee right out.
  Sir S. HOARE: Yes, I shall!
  Mr. LANSBURY: The right hon. Gentleman may say that they were going to attend an illegal meeting. I should have thought that the illegal act, if it were illegal, would have been committed when they got there. What right has anyone to say, if a meeting is proclaimed in London, that I shall not be allowed to leave my house and travel? This one thing proves the absolute futility of the right hon. Gentleman's policy. He has no one in India on his side to-day, no one at all who speaks for the Indian people. Everyone who might help us or might do anything to improve conditions has been put under lock and key. There are a few Indian Liberals who have made great sacrifices in order to try to discover a constitutional way out. Where are all those men to-day? The policy of the right hon. Gentleman has alienated nearly all of them. That has been the effect of what I can only call "the policy of the iron hand." I understand the Ordinances lapse at the end of six months, and I want to know what the right hon. Gentleman will do then. I am not a lawyer, as everyone knows, and I wish to know whether it is a fact that he has no legal power to re-enact them as Ordinances, and whether, in that case, he proposes to let them lapse. If he does, of course I have nothing to say except to congratulate him; but if he means to try to continue them, will be submit them to the various councils, or the Legislative Assembly, in the expectation that they will be passed; or does he expect that Lord Willingdon will exercise the power of a Russian Czar and certify them, imposing them by his own will? I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give me an answer to those questions.
  I do not believe many people in this country realise what is happening under

  721
  these Ordinances and how they are being administered. The right hon. Gentleman reminded me to-day of Mr. W. E. Forster when he was the defending coercion under Gladstone's Government in 1880. If he looks up the speeches of Mr. Forster and of Lord Balfour, when Chief Secretary for Ireland, he will find that the speeches to-day are very reminiscent of their speeches. Everything was all right; Ireland was coming through; only a few people, relatively, were giving trouble; 90 per cent. of the people were all right and if only those wretched agitators were away everything would be satisfactory! As to punishments, well, people brought those on themselves. The soldiers, the police, were very humane, very good-tempered and did everything in the best possible way. I used to agree then, I was younger at that time, that if a man took service in a certain force and was called upon to do disagreeable things he had to do them— however disagreeable they might be to those upon whom they were inflicted. None of us want to get away from that position. I do not think any of my hon. Friends here bring any definite charges against the police and soldiers as a body, but when they are administering such a law they cannot help being repressive and hard and making things difficult for the persons with whom they are dealing.
  Under these Ordinances a parent may be made responsible for something his child has done, a man may be told that he must not leave his village, people can be practically confined to their own homes or to a circumscribed area round their homes. That means tyranny of the very worst description, and the carrying out of such orders brings human beings into such relationships one towards another as are bound to lead to all kinds of violence and hardship. An hon. Friend who will speak later will be able to put some evidence as to these things before the Committee, and if the right hon. Gentleman wishes it I will give him some of the packets that come to me week after week. I suppose they come without being opened—there is nothing to show that they have been opened—and so he probably has not seen them. They do not come from people who can be said to be prejudiced and who are inventing lies, but from people who have just written down what they
  722
  saw day by day. Only the other evening a visitor came to see me at this House— not the Swiss gentleman to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred. It happens that I have no personal acquaintance with him; I have met him once, and that is all. But whenever an alien Government is governing another country it always resents criticism from any outsiders, and attempts, as the right hon. Gentleman has done, to belittle what they say. It would be very much better, if the right hon. Gentleman has a note of the statements the Swiss gentleman has made to issue a categorial denial of them. That man stated what he said he saw, not what he was told, and if he is a liar then he ought to be branded as a liar by the right hon. Gentleman. I do not believe he is.
  The gentleman who came to see me the other day was not a foreigner. He is a Scotsman who has been in service in India for many years. He does not take quite the same view on the Indian question that I take, but he is quite convinced that the policy being pursued by the English administration in India will mean both the ruin of India and the breaking of the connection between ourselves and India. I would like to tell the Committee what is said by this Scotsman, who is neither a Socialist nor a Nationalist in regard to India, as I am. He says the thing that has stirred life in India most of all is education; that it is a mistake to think it is Communism, or Socialism, or even the economic conditions—except in so far as education has enabled men and women to understand the economic conditions. He is quite certain too of something else, and that is that the Indians who came to this country both in the Great War and before the Great War, had become infected with the same sort of virus that got into young people during the period when the Italian people rose against the Austrian yoke. No one who was not brought up in the atmosphere that surrounded Garibaldi and Mazzini can have any idea of the influence that that rising had upon young people. It was just the same in the case of Ireland and her struggles for freedom.
  This kind of sentiment is something which the people of this country do not seem to understand, more especially those of us who call ourselves the English side of the British Isles. There is a difference

  723
  in this House between hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies and those representing the Southern part of England. Anyone who sits in this House will see the difference in the relationships when it comes to a Scottish question, for then my hon. Friends below the Gangway and others join together in the spirit of nationalism which is much stronger in Scotland than it is in the South of England. Hon. Members have to understand that there is something which is called the spirit and the soul of a nation. We like to think in the Southern part that we have that in ourselves; but we have behind us a very materialistic outlook all the time. In India, the people have the same sort of spirit and awakening that took place in Europe in the 40's of last century. It is said that Mr. Gandhi is merely a blind revolutionary thinking of a great ideal. The Scotsman to whom I have referred, and who ought to be able to judge, said that we were making a great mistake when we looked upon Mr. Gandhi as an idealist, because he is a most practical person teaching discipline of mind and body and the spinning wheel is only a symbol. All the Ordinances imposed upon Mr. Gandhi's followers in regard to discipline simply give them the strength and courage to endure. Whatever the right hon. Gentleman may say, and whatever may be said as the Debate goes on, I do not believe that in the history of any national movement there has ever been a people who have stood up without arms and without violence, except on very few occasions, so solidly and have endured so much suffering and misfortune and hunger and privation on behalf of their cause. There has been no case in the history of the world which is superior to what is happening in India to-day. It is simply marvellous what suffering the people of India are going through to-day. It is all very well to say:
  "The dogs bark, but the caravan marches on."
  That slogan will be remembered for a good many years in India. I ask the Secretary of State for India whether he thinks that he is going to do to-day what Russian Tsardom was unable to do with Poland. I remember the struggles of the Poles. I ask this House to remember that the great empires of Germany, Austria and Russia carved up
  724
  Poland and shared it among themselves and for a few short years that country endured untold suffering. Those people after they had revolted were treated exactly as the Secretary of State for India is treating the people of India to-day. Where are those three great Empires now? Poland is now a great republic in the centre of Europe but where is the country of the Tsar and the other two empires. They have gone. Does the Secretary of State think that he is going to succeed with his policy? He has to remember that Russian Tsardom was unable to crush a people who, following the example of Mr. Gandhi, met him with passive resistance and refused military service. They refused to acknowledge the Tsar under the conditions that were being imposed upon them, and the Tsar was unable to crush them. Passive resistance, especially when it is adopted by a nation, or by a large portion of the nation, cannot be crushed by any amount of repression. At the risk of being called a sentimentalist, I wish to say that history shows that the spiritual force in men always overcomes material force in the long run, and that is what is happening in India to-day.
  12.30 p.m.
  The Secretary of State opened his speech to-day by telling us of the great prosperity that Britain is bringing or has brought to India. The right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do the horrible conditions of thousands of villages in India, and he also knows the horrible condition of the Indian industrial districts. You may build in India a great aqueduct or a great reservoir, you may speak of the material wealth and of how you can float loans for India and get money so cheaply; you can do that in Britain to-day, but hon. Members should not forget that we have 2,000,000 unemployed people in this country. You can have all these things taking place, and yet have great masses of people living under poverty-stricken conditions. The right hon. Gentleman opposite spoke of Rome, but I do not like to speak of Rome in these discussions. I heard the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping talk of this country calling the eagles home.
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I said the legions.
  Mr. LANSBURY: The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that what he was telling the people of this country was that we were following in the wake of the Roman Empire, and calling our people home because we felt that we could not maintain our position any longer. That was with regard to Egypt.
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I was protesting against the policy of the late Administration in withdrawing troops from Cairo.
  Mr. LANSBURY: I was referring to the statement about withdrawing troops from the territory occupied by the Romans. Why is it that every Empire which has adopted an Imperialist policy has gone one way? Why is it that each of those Empires prospered to a certain pitch and then went down? I should like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping, when he speaks later on in the Debate, to tell us why it is that Roman civilisation prospered in this way at first and was then destroyed. Does anyone deny that this country relapsed into barbarism after the Roman occupation? Of course not. Why was it? It was simply because no one nation can impose civilisation or virtue on another nation. The Romans were in their day, relatively speaking, as strong and as powerful as the British. [Interruption.] Someone says that they were more so. I do not know; I have not all the wisdom and knowledge of the world; I am only stating a fact, which the right hon. Gentleman, or whoever else may challenge it, cannot deny. The Romans were in this country for 400 years. We have not been actively in India for more than about 60 years. After 400 years, the civilisation of which the right hon. Gentleman boasted, and which he said was something for us to recognise, was just blotted out. It was blotted out because the Romans attempted, as we are attempting, an absolute impossibility, namely, to impose a civilisation upon other nations.
  The right hon. Gentleman is attempting to bring the people of India into a condition that he and the people of this country may think good for them. I believe that that attempt will fail. I said just now that we have been in active control in India for only about 60 years; it is probably nearer 80 years since the
  726
  British Government took over the actual administration. The right hon. Gentleman's attitude of mind and his complacency are best expressed by the fact that he opened this Debate, on what I should have thought was one of the most serious questions of the day, by telling us of the cricket match that is just taking place, somewhere, I suppose, in London—at Lords—
  Mr. CAMPBELL: The Oval.
  Mr. LANSBURY: I cannot help feeling that that is typical. We go into a country, whether India or any other, and we flatter ourselves that what we think is good must be good, and that those people who come in our way must be put out of our way. There are 300,000,000 people in India—300,000,000 men, women and children of all sorts of religions, of all sorts of beliefs; and between two huge sections of them, the Mohammedans and the Hindus, there is great jealousy. We used to have the same argument about poor little Ireland that we are having about India—that, if only they would agree among themselves, everything would be all right, and that we must stay there in order to prevent them from cutting one another's throats. I stand here this afternoon in defence of the policy that the only people who have the right to settle how India shall be governed are the Indian people themselves. We may be stronger than they in aeroplanes, poison gas, tanks or soldiers, and perhaps you are more clever than they in all the things that make for material wealth and for the building up of what you think is wealth; but I think that real wealth is to be found in the happiness and contentment and well-being of the people according to their own lights and standards.
  It may very well be that the Indian people have some advantages, though I am still incredulous about that, but what the Indian people claim is the right to develop their own personality in their own way, the right to say that their lives shall be determined, not by what we think is good for them, but by what they themselves think is good. This country has had to fight its way through along those lines, and I want the Indian people to have the same right. We talk sometimes about the blessings of self-government that we have spread throughout the

  727
  world, but let us remember that we have never yet given to what has been a subject race the right to do its own work in its own way. Some of us believed that the Round Table Conference was the beginning of a real effort to say that Great Britain would be the first nation to give absolute freedom and self-determination to a race other than its own. We think that the right hon. Gentleman and his friends have given up that idea and have gone over to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping, and that they are using the iron hand to put that policy through. We believe that it will fail, because all history teaches that such a mode of government has failed wherever it has been tried; and we believe, further, that, when it does fail, it will crash this country as well as the Dominions and world civilisation.
  Wing-Commander JAMES: During the short time that I have been in the House of Commons, I have been very assiduous in listening to Debates on India, and I think it is some indication of the complexity and diversity of the problem that, of the two facets of the problem which occupied the greater part of my time during my brief period of some two or three years in India, only a passing reference has been made to one, and the other has not been referred to at all. I should like, if the Committee will bear with me, to endeavour to touch upon those two subjects. The first is the problem of the North-West Frontier Province, particularly in relation to its policing and to dealing with disaffection; and the second is the position of the primitive tribes of Central and Southern India. With regard to the first point, I think, although I hope my anticipation may not be realised, that, although as regards the current year the danger season of the early spring is nearly over, sooner or later, either in anticipation of disturbances or in order to prevent disturbances, bombs will have to be employed on the tribesmen, and then naturally, the House of Commons will want to know why this apparently barbaric method has been employed. I do not think that anyone who has suffered from being bombed will underrate the horror of aerial bombing, but, curious though it may seem, it is apparent that,
  728
  while bombing, like other modern scientific devices of war, is a very unpleasant and very horrible form of warfare, it is probably going to be the most potent factor that the world has ever seen in bringing about international peace—more potent than all the peace armies and Leagues of Nations in the world, since its very horror is likely to make war too unpleasant to be worth while. I wish to contrast the mental attitude towards war of Europeans and of the North-West Frontier tribes. To Europeans, until comparatively recent years—say the year 1870—war, to fighting men at any rate, was, comparatively speaking, fun. It flattered common instincts, appealed to patriotism, provided excitement, and, by comparison with present-day warfare, casualties were not unduly high. To present-day Europeans, at all events, modern war has become something utterly horrible, wasteful, and destructive. Not so to a Pathan of the North-West Frontier. To a Pathan war and fighting is the breath of life, whether it is a blood feud between individual and individual, between family and family, village and village, tribe and tribe, or whether it is in the form of an invasion by a large number of tribesmen upon an outside enemy. War is still to the Pathan the be-all and end-all of his existence. It is his hobby. He makes it an extremely profitable hobby when he gets the chance. The Pathans are a very large body of fighting men. Take the whole of the Trans-Frontier tribal area. They number something over 3,000,000, and on our side of the border there are something like 2,250,000 Pathans. It is perhaps not quite fair to include the whole area north of the Khyber and Malakand passes, northwards towards Chitral, since this area is somewhat outside the area under direct consideration. But even so this represents much less than half the total area concerned. As a standing and perpetual temptation to the warlike instincts of the Pathan there lies the Fat Peshawar vale, and beyond that we have India, to him an enormous wealthy area, a potential source of plunder.
  It is worth while considering the terrain concerned. The tribal territory, a strip of land on the west of the Indus some 200 miles long—or over 300 miles

  729
  long if you include the area north of the Malakand—with a maximum depth of 60 or 70 miles, is one of the most tangled masses of ragged mountain country in the world. Limestone ranges and deep gorges ranges running up in the case of the Safed Koh to 14,000 feet, incredibly rough, incredibly jagged, yet carrying, relative to its apparent resources, a very thick population. The country is further fortified by a very severe climate—terrifically hot in the summer and exceedingly cold in the winter. These conditions make the employment of ground troops, either for repressing disturbance or for reaching the objective in which the disturbance has originated, very difficult indeed. Ground troops are, therefore, exceedingly slow and exceeding costly. Above that, the employment of ground troops against Pathans provides the tribesmen with an immense amount of fun. He thoroughly enjoys seeing an expedition trying to enter his territory, himself immensely mobile and an extraordinarily good shot. He simply lines the heights, retires from vantage point to vantage point, cuts off stragglers and thoroughly enjoys himself.
  But that does not apply when aircraft are employed against them. In fact, the exact reverse takes place. Aircraft are, first, extremely swift in their operations. Within a few hours a squadron of aeroplanes can penetrate to the most remote villages, to the actual point of disturbance or disaffection and, not only that, but they are able from their very nature to give precise warning by dropping messages to the people who, if they do not mend their ways, will receive swift punishment. The policy is to give warning before employing this weapon on the Frontier. But, above all, the employment of aircraft provides the tribesmen with none of the pleasures of war. A target which it is almost impossible to hit makes little appeal to their marksmanship. Contrary, too, to what might be supposed this weapon is surprisingly humane. From the nature of the area, and under the conditions under which aircraft are used, that is, after due warning, the non-combatants do not have to suffer to anything like the extent that might be expected, and it is humane to the tribesmen because the damage that you wish to do for punitive
  730
  purposes is almost entirely confined to cultivation. These people for generations have used ravines and caves in which the population itself retires when warned. But, by bombing the cultivated areas, damage is done to the very intricate irrigation system whereby the tribesmen obtain their scanty crops, and this damage, although it may appear trivial, causes them the greatest possible inconvenience and loss, and immense labour in repairs. To summarise, the employment of aircraft instead of ground troops is exceeding economical; it is humane; it is efficient. It is impossible to estimate the trouble that has been entirely prevented, apart from that which has been punished during the past few years. I hope nothing I have said may appear to be crabbing the Pathan as a man.
  I have enjoyed his hospitality and friendship in several areas, and on many occasions. The Pathan is one of the most attractive races on the earth. They are a people who must have a very great future. They have almost every qualification that must appeal to a European. They have the most glorious physique, they have the most perfect manners, their hospitality is proverbial, they have a great sense of humour, the latter a rare characteristic in the Indian sub-continent; they are a people of very great intelligence. In complaining about their present predatory habits, it is only fair to remark that they are very much in the condition of the Highlanders of Scotland before the Rebellion of 1745. [Interruption.] The hon. Member's forbears before 1745 were nearly as fond of blood feuds as the Pathans. They were in some cases just as treacherous. The hon. Member might refer to our Campbell's and Macdonald's in this House. There are many points of similarity between the present day Pathan and the Highlander of the early part of 18th century. Certain Pathan tribes are now comparatively pacified and settled. There are the Yousefsai for example who are the biggest cis-border tribe. But, even so, the events of the last few weeks at Mardan, have shown that even the Yousefsai have not quite appreciated democratic institutions. Above all, this must always be remembered, in connection with the Frontier and the Pathans, that the Pathans are not Indians. If you want to insult a Pathan, you call him an Indian. When a

  731
  Pathan is going to cross the Indus he talks about going into Hindustan. You cannot insult him more than by calling him an Indian. He despises and dislikes the Indians. For a present purpose he may combine with certain Indian factions, but that is bound to be a passing phase.
  No problem is more vital to the future of India than the settlement, if it can ever be achieved, of the frontier problem, and no body is less capable of handling the frontier problem than the Congress party. I remember very well a few years back spending a night in the train with a very prominent Indian politician, in fact no less a person than a former Chairman of the Congress party. We sat up for the greater part of the night discussing India and its problems, and when it came to the question of the frontier, he simply brushed the matter aside and said, that if their political demands had been satisfied the frontier problem would have settled itself. Such an attitude of mind, such unwillingness to face unpleasant realities, is one of the greatest obstacles to progress in India.
  I make an apology for asking the Committee mentally to shift some 900 to 1,500 miles south east to the Deccan and South India, about which I should like to say a few words. Although the primitive tribes are rarely mentioned in discussions upon India, those people are not by any means negligible either in numbers, or importance, or in the extent of areas which they occupy. In British India alone there are. something like 6,500,000 of those primitive tribes. In the Indian Native States there are something like 3,000,000 of them, and they occupy, although they are generally confined to hill tracts, so called, a very large area of the country. I wish to bring out one vital point which is going to be of the utmost difficulty in the future administration of India. The educated Indian, to whatever caste or race he may belong, at the present time, suffers from something approaching a horror of jungle areas, the word "jungle" not meaning, of course, a forest, but a wild area. It is a not uninteresting fact that it appears that at a certain stage in evolution towards higher culture people lose their appreciation
  732
  of wild life and wild surroundings. That fact again may be paralled by the position in Scotland before 1800 when the Scottish laird never thought of going out to kill a deer for his own table but sent out his forester.
  1.0 p.m.
  In India the great majority of educated people loathe and detest the wilder parts of the country, and they despise and look' down upon the inhabitants of the wilder parts of the country. That applies especially to practically every Indian politician of whatever race or caste. They are essentially townspeople and are far too inclined to think of India in terms of towns and industries. India is, above all, a land of the countryside and of the village. There is a right hon. Member of this House who, when I have heard him speak on the subject of India on several occasions, always refers to trade unions and coal mines, but I venture to think that, however fluent he might be in the vernacular, over the greater part of India he would have the utmost difficulty in making an audience understand what either a trade union or a coal mine was, so small a part do such things as these play in the life of the overwhelming majority of the people. India is, above all, an area of small cultivators, and in the background you have this large population of primitive tribes. These people are Britain's special charge. They are very charming people but very primitive. Only a few years ago I met, to give a particular instance, a couple of gonds seeking their daily food with bows and arrows. I have also been informed by a forest officer of great experience and by an American medical missionary who had been in the district for 20 years that in that particular remote area that I have in mind, they had little doubt that if the rains held off long after the normal beginnings of the monsoon, infant sacrifices still took place, on occasion, to the rain god. I only mention those facts to show how primitive these people really are. One fears that in future developments these people will not receive consideration. They are inarticulate, and unorganised. They have been desperately hard-hit by Indianisation, and that particularly applies to the forest service. It is so easy to Indianise the forest service, and

  733
  yet this Indianisation has had the most disastrous effect upon inhabitants in very large areas of country. It must be remembered that it is almost impossible to find an Indian of any caste or creed who would not be more alien and certainly less sympathetic to the simple folk than the British forest officer.
  When it is possible to consider a controversial subject in a non-controversial atmosphere, it is the best way of dealing with such a subject. Fortunately for those who wish to study this sort of problem there was published between, say, 1840 and 1890 a very large volume of literature upon India written by officials, planters and others simply for the edification and amusement of their countrymen at home. Some of these books give a wonderful picture of the Indian countryside. Books by such authors as Forsyth, Sanderson, Stockley and others give descriptions that cannot be suspected of political bias, and I would urge hon. Members opposite who seem inclined to think that the British only went to India as oppressors or exploiters to get that idea out of their mind and to read some of these reminiscences which give such a wonderful picture of what the condition of the backward areas and tribes was in the middle of the last century, and to compare their former state with their condition to-day. I appeal to the Secretary of State to make these very charming primitive tribes his special charge. I do not think that anyone else will do so.
  There is another topic I wish to touch upon briefly. It is probably due to my inexperience of this House, but I seem to detect on the benches opposite a certain inclination to assume that both official and unofficial Europeans in India are unsympathetic to Indian aspirations and are opposed to reforms and progress. That, in my experience, is emphatically not the case. I have frequently, and in many different parts of India, been amazed at the liberal outlook expressed by members of, for example, the Indian Civil Service, the Indian Police, the Forest Service and by planters towards Indian aspirations. To assume that they are what is commonly called reactionary is the greatest possible mistake. It is an assumption, incidentally, which they resent and which does an immense amount of harm both among the Europeans and
  734
  among Indians. It is essential, in considering India, to trust the men on the spot, rather than to rely upon preconceived notions that may be founded upon inadequate knowledge or upon prejudice. There is one fact regarding administration which admits of no dispute. It is immaterial whatever the complexion of the Government of India may be, or whatever its composition—it is immaterial however liberal and progressive the central government may be, or even whether it is progressive or not—whatever its composition or outlook, there is in India no alternative whatever between strong Government on the one side, and anarchy, corruption and utter chaos on the other.
  Mr. KINGSLEY GRIFFITH: I rise with great pleasure to extend on behalf of everyone in the Committee the very heartiest congratulations to the hon. Member who has just spoken. He has spoken on this matter with such real knowledge that I am certain everyone will be anxious to hear him again. On this question we need above all things to be guided by knowledge and not by vague benevolence, which is very charming and delightful in its place, but may lead to the most disastrous results if it is pursued unchecked. It is perhaps fair to remind hon. Members opposite that the present administration differs only in degree and not in mind from their own when they were in power. I am not saying that every step has been the same, but the methods of coercion and compulsion are not being employed for the first time by this Government, by any means.
  What I particularly wish to deal with are the historical allusions which the Leader of the Opposition chose to give. He placed a great deal of emphasis on analogies from the past, particularly that of the Roman Empire. If a right hon. Member on the Front Bench opposite thinks fit to give us a history lesson he might at least get his history right. It is quite obvious that in this matter he had not gone into history very carefully. He suggested, as something by which we should be guided, that the reason for the collapse of Roman civilisation in this country was the withdrawal of Roman troops, dictated by the pressure of the inhabitants and arising out of the unpopularity of Roman rule in Britain.
  Mr. DAVID GRENFELL: In the absence of the right hon. Gentleman, may I say that he never suggested that?
  Mr. GRIFFITH: I heard the whole of the speech and I am trusting to my memory for the words. Reference to the OFFICIAL REPORT will decide the point. The suggestion was that the Roman Empire had failed because it had tried in our country to use force and that that use of force had failed. The withdrawal of the troops from our country was due entirely to the fact that they were needed elsewhere, but Roman civilisation remained a very real thing in Britain a long time after the withdrawal of the troops. Why did it fail? Here, I think, there is a lesson to be drawn to guide us in the present circumstances. It failed because entirely different peoples, barbarian peoples, less civilised than Roman and Briton came and swamped all that remained, and they succeeded because the strong hand had been withdrawn, or had been withdrawn prematurely. I think that is a lesson that can be learned as to what would be the probable result if, in response to the mere vague worship of the name of freedom and without consideration of realities, we left this vast and still somewhat chaotic land to its own destinies, as some would desire.
  The Leader of the Opposition, towards the end of a most eloquent peroration, asked us where all these Empires were— the Empire of the Tsars, the Empire of Austria and the rest of them. It is a commonplace that no Empire, no nation, lasts in its period of strength for ever. The end comes for them and the end will come for us—
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: No.
  Mr. GRIFFITH:—or, at any rate, so great a change will come that we shall not recognise ourselves in our descendants. That may well be and that is only the course of history. What we have to do in the meantime is to try to be true to our responsibilities and to carry out our trust to those people who still necessarily are to a large extent in our care. I feel that this Government in their present administration—of course, steps are taken which are forced upon them and are dictated very largely by action on the other side—are trying to carry out that principle and to carry out those
  736
  responsibilities with the kind of knowledge behind them that was displayed in the admirable maiden speech to which we have just listened. For that reason I am far more happy to have the rule of that country in the hands of those who are at present administering it rather than in the hands of those who, with all their great parade of freedom, might do irreparable harm in the fulfilment of that great imperial responsibility.
  Mr. MAXTON: I have listened with very great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough (Mr. Griffith). It is interesting to note the very rapid progress that he has made in imbibing the political philosophy of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen with whom I understood up to now he had only a temporary association. With the imperialist outlook that he has displayed, I do not see any reason why he should not make it a more permanent abode than we have been led to believe it would be. I think the news ought to be wired to Clacton that the boys are deserting the old ship while they are praying by the sea-side. Perhaps it was not expected that in this Parliament I should be saying a word in defence of the Leader of the Official Opposition, but I think the strictures of the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough were scarcely justified in respect of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that it will never be the case that a speech will be dismissed as being vague ideas because an hon. or right hon. Member in the course of a well-informed speech, which raises all the practical matters of difficulty as between this country and India, permits himself to voice some aspirations for the future. If one does in this House allow ideals sometimes to penetrate into the more practical utterances, that surely ought not to be a matter for condemnation.
  I am sorry that the hon. Member for West Middlesbrough permitted himself to express the belief that perhaps at some date in the dim and distant future the British Empire may collapse. He based that belief on the history and experience of other great Empires, but he will learn, if he continues to sit on the other side, the phrases of one of our great national songs which, while referring to nations not so blessed as we are, suggests that they must in turn to tryant fall, but we

  737
  shall flourish, great and free, and be the envy of them all. That is our philosophy. While other Empires fall the British Empire will never never fall at any time, even supposing its affairs may be handled in somewhat foolish ways. I believe that at the present juncture the Government, having dealt with its own population in a very tyrannical and domineering fashion, are mishandling and fumbling very badly in their dealings with other parts of the Empire. I will only make a passing reference to the Irish situation, which is permitted by way of illustration. The attitude that is being displayed in regard to Ireland is very similar to the attitude which is being displayed over India. We are going to govern with the strong hand. There will be perfect justice, because Britain always stands for that, and strong Government. We are the masters of the situation and all the nations of the world and the Empire must recognise that we intend to be masters. That is entirely wrong.
  Someone told an Englishman a long time ago that he had a genius for ruling subject races. I do not know who it was, but the Englishman believed it, and he has always plumed himself on his capacity to deal with subject races. As a matter of fact, the only two races which England has been able to rule successfully are Wales and Scotland, and they were only successful because we saw the joke. I have never appreciated the humour of being ruled by England and India does not appreciate the humour of being ruled by England. Just as the British Government on trivial issues lost all its influence in the great area which is now the United States of America, so to-day, in the handling of Indian affairs, we are step by step making all the mistakes that can possibly be made and which may open up a very black page in world history. I am not primarily concerned with Indian nationalist independence. India, I think, should rule itself. In spite of all the irrigation schemes and electricity schemes of which the Secretary of State told us to-day, it is not a record which justifies a long term imposition of British Government in India. The results which we have been able to produce over a period of years in the economic development of India, in the social condition of the people and in the standard of education, are nothing about which any great nation should boast.
  738
  I am always twitted about Russia. In Russia we have a government that has only been in power for 14 or 15 years, but in that time it has practically abolished illiteracy among large sections of the people, who are of the same Asiatic type as those which Britain is dealing with in India; and in India, after a century of British government, only a small proportion of that great community are literate. They could not have done worse in the way of social economic and educational progress if they had been left entirely to their own devices during the last century. It may be true that they would have fought with one another. It may be true that there would have been internecine warfare and religious feuds, but we have not been out of warfare during the last 100 years and we have never been quite free from religious feuds either. In the East the one nation that has gone ahead and established itself, which has kept step with the general progress of the world, the Japanese nation, is the nation that has refused to have the domination of European nationalities of one kind or another. Japan was ready to learn from the West, ready to import Western expert knowledge, but at the same time absolutely declined to allow her sovereignty to be taken away; and she kept it in her own hands.
  Those hon. Members who genuinely desire general world progress and who see in Britain the forward superior nation helping weaker brothers on to a higher level of civilisation, are probably mistaken in believing that that is the way in which India can rise to a higher plane of progress and civilisation. My concern in India is not primarily one of national independence, my concern is the same as I have here—namely, in the struggle of the poor people, the working classes, for economic and social liberation. I am not disturbed about Gandhi being in prison, or even Mrs. Naidu being in prison, although it is getting rather low when we start chucking women into prison because of their political beliefs. That is not in keeping with the boast of an Englishman's ability to play cricket. It is not quite cricket to start flinging women into gaol because they hold political views which are not acceptable to the majority of people in this country. I had a letter from a friend of mine last week telling me of a boy, 15 years of age, who was publicly whipped

  739
  in open court because he had taken part in picketing in connection with the non-co-operation movement. Is it necessary for the maintenance of the dignity of the British Raj to clap ladies into gaol and publicly whip the bare bodies of boys of 15 years of age. Before I came to the House of Commons I was a teacher and I know perfectly well that in the interests of sound discipline that sort of thing is not necessary or desirable, and I would suggest that even if we accept the general policy of the mailed fist as being the natural one we should expect from the Government, it is not necessary to carry it to the extent of barbarism— [Interruption.] The hon. and gallant Member for Enfield (Lieut. - Colonel Applin) laughs. I do not think my language is too strong to describe the situation, and from what I know of his temperament I should say that if anyone suggested that he should ill treat a woman or man-handle a boy, he would resent it as an insult to his manhood.
  Lieut.-Colonel APPLIN: I was laughing because I have often been whipped publicly on the bare body when I was at school, and I do not think that the hon. member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) has ever been whipped in his life.
  Mr. MAXTON: I might have assented to the first part of the hon. and gallant Member's remark as being sound and true if he had not thought it necessary to add the latter portion, about which he must know that he is completely uninformed. If I had been publicly whipped I certainly would not come into a public place and start shouting about it as a matter of pride. But I was not talking about what had been done to the hon. and gallant Member. I was talking about what I believed he would not do to other people. I may have been mistaken in him; one always makes errors in the estimates of men. I said that if anyone asked him to maltreat a woman or publicly to whip a boy, he would resent it as an insult to his manhood. I suggest that to maintain British power in India these things are unnecessary. If they are necessary, it is only another argument against our being there at all.
  But my interest is more with the small minority in India whose struggle is a working-class struggle against economic depression, that section in India who do
  740
  not believe that Indian self-government will abolish poverty among the Indian people, who are prepared to agree that, given power in India, that power would be liable to gravitate into the hands of wealthy Indians, into the hands of native Potentates, who would be anxious to use that power in even more tyrannical ways than the British Government uses it. I am concerned with that section of the Indian people, who, while recognising that, recognise that they have to develop in India, a working-class movement that is prepared to fight economic tyranny, whether it is imposed by British rule, and British capitalism or by Indian rule and Indian capitalism.
  I want to raise my voice in strongest protest about that horrible thing that has been going on there, namely, the trial of the prisoners at Meerut. I want this Committee to realise that I have sat here in three Parliaments, that in the Parliament before last this trial was started, that it continued during the whole of the last Parliament, and that it is going on now. These prisoners, some of them Englishmen, have been for these years subjected day after day to all the gruelling experiences of the Law Courts, always with the possibility of a heavy sentence coming at the end of it all, and never one word of strong resentment from this House. I am asking again whether this will pass the test of any ordinary standard of fair play and decency that we set up in our own country. I ask my hon. and learned Friends on the other side of the Committee, who have experience of law courts and judicial proceedings, whether they can remember any criminal trial in recent times, here or in Europe, that has gone on day after day, month after month, and year after year as that trial has gone on in India—a trial for which we are responsible.
  1.30 p.m.
  Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT: I share the view of my hon. Friend that this. deplorable trial has been a scandal. But is it not the case that its prolongation has been largely due to the way in which the defence of numerous prisoners has been conducted? If you have a trial in which 30 to 40 prisoners are concerned, and the defence is conducted in the way that

  741
  this defence has been conducted, undoubtedly a prolongation of this character is involved.
  Mr. MAXTON: I know that that is the official excuse which the Secretary of State has only been able to produce in the last few months.
  Sir S. HOARE: I have produced it ever since I have been at the India Office.
  Mr. MAXTON: But the right hon. Gentleman has been at the India Office only during the last few months, and it is only during that period that the excuse has been available. It was not the excuse of his predecessors in office, because the excuse was not available to them. Here you have the prosecution taking up two years and six months of the time, and then in the last six months, when the men are working out their reply to this extended prosecution, the Minister says "The fault now is yours. Close your case at once and the trial will be finished." The Secretary of State knows perfectly well, as his predecessor knew, that the attempt of the defendants to make the best defence possible accounts for only a very small fraction of the delay, and that only in these latter months has the official excuse been made. The excuse before was the slow procedure in the Indian Courts, by which every single word spoken by everyone had to be taken down in handwriting. Imagine that as an excuse from a Government that is prepared to impose ordinances which abolish the judicial procedure of whole provinces. When the Government want to speed things up, old customs, old traditions, and the procedure of the ordinary law do not stand in their way.
  But this case is a good lesson to the people of India. Be an ordinary political offender and you will be brought speedily to trial. But, if you are struggling for a fundamental social change, if you are engaged in a working-class battle and not in a nationalist battle, then in addition to the ordinary penalties and processes of the law you are going to be subjected to long-term torture. The whole of India can watch it—all the Indian people can watch it—and learn that, whatever else you do in India, you must not struggle for economic and social liberty. I and my friends here particularly associate ourselves with that element in India
  742
  which is struggling for fundamental social change. There is a struggle for the abolition of British rule in India, indubitably, but, over and above that struggle, and of much more importance, is their struggle for the overthrow of economic tyrannies in India, just as we here are struggling for the overthrow of economic tyrannies in Great Britain. Those tyrannies have not been overthrown here although Great Britain has had self-government for many centuries now.
  I understand from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that owing to the fact that on this occasion only a half day is available for discussing Indian affairs, he does not propose to divide the Committee against this Vote and that another opportunity for its discussion will be available. I do not propose, in those circumstances, to divide against the Vote to-day, because I do not want it to be sent out to India, as it would undoubtedly be sent out to India, that there were only four or five people in this Committee prepared to make a protest in the House of Commons by vote on this question. I know what has happened on previous occasions when the Opposition have allowed the Indian Vote to go, for Parliamentary reasons, after having stated their case perfectly clearly. I know that the fact that the Opposition did not vote on such an occasion has been broadcast all over India as evidence that the House of Commons was unanimously in agreement with the policy of the Government. I want my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition to remember that fact and to make it plain that, in not voting today, we are not in any way assenting to any of the political barbarities which are being imposed by the Government; that we are not assenting in any way to the treatment of the Meerut prisoners, and that we 'are not accepting the Government policy of to-day as an adequate way of dealing with the Indian situation. For those reasons and on the clear understanding that another opportunity will be given to us on the Indian question, and that on that occasion there will be a definite vote against the Government policy, I do not propose to-day to ask for a Division.
  Mr. LANSBURY: May I be allowed to intervene to say that this Debate was arranged very hurriedly because the Minister who was to have dealt with the

  743
  subject originally chosen for to-day was unable to be present. We wanted another subject, but it was found that another Minister could not be here, and, in the circumstances, we were thrown back on this Vote. But I can assure my hon. Friends below the Gangway that we shall have another full Supply day for the discussion of India, and we shall have a Vote then which will indicate, whatever number votes with us, that there is a. dissentient minority in the House of Commons to the policy of the Government and that we represent 7,000,000 of the people of this country.
  Rear-Admiral CAMPBELL: As one who has never been in India I do not propose to take up the time of this Committee in the expression of any opinions as to how India ought to be governed. I am content to leave that subject to the Secretary of State for India, but there are two questions upon which I should like the right hon. Gentleman to give the Committee some information when he replies. In the first place, there has recently appeared in the Press a statement as to communications which are supposed to have passed between the Secretary of State and Mr. Gandhi since Mr. Gandhi was recently in prison. The "Daily Herald," I think, stated, according to its Bombay correspondent, that there had been definite correspondence as to the conditions on which Mr. Gandhi might be released. Other papers, on authority which was supposed to have come from the India Office, have denied that any such correspondence has taken place. I should be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman if he would clear up that matter, and let the Committee know whether any such correspondence has taken place, and, if so, what is the nature of that correspondence. My second question is in reference to the Indian Civil Service. During the short time that I have been a Member of the House of Commons I have noticed that when the subject of India has been under discussion, the Debate has invariably been about the military, the Air Force or the police, but very little has been said about the Indian Civil Service. I should like the Secretary of State to give us some information about that very fine service which the whole world has admired in years gone by. Twenty years ago the
  744
  Indian Civil Service was the ambition of some of the greatest scholars from Oxford and Cambridge, but in recent years there have been rumours that the career offered by that service is not what it used to be. I, like many others in the country, have a particular interest in this question and I should be grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for some information on the prospects of the Indian Civil Service as a career for the youths of this country.
  Miss RATHBONE: Like the hon. and gallant Member for Burnley (Rear-Admiral Campbell) I have no record of service in India and I think those of us who sit on the back benches, if we are in that position, feel a diffidence about entering into Indian Debates. At the same time I have never been able to agree with those who seem to think, judging by their absence on occasions when India is under discussion, that the British Parliament's responsibility for the Government of India can readily be delegated to the Members of the Government in immediate charge of the India Office, and to some gentlemen, whose experience as officers in the Army or as officials in the Indian Civil Service, however great, is, in many cases, an experience of a considerable number of years ago. For several years, if my body has not been in India, I may venture to claim that my mind has spent more time on the subject of that country than on all other subjects put together and I wish to-day to deal shortly with one subject on which the Secretary of State touched in his speech. I refer to the effect of the Ordinances in India and the question of what is to come after the Ordinances.
  My one brief experience of India has been a short six weeks' tour, from which I have only recently returned, and it did enable me to see as far as an outsider could, the reactions of the general public in India to the Ordinances and the kind of atmosphere that the Ordinances were producing. I would not venture to presume any opinion as to whether the Ordinances were justified or not. I realise, as anyone must who has read the paper issued by the Government in February on the East India Emergency Measures, that in imposing the Ordinances the Government of India acted under very great provocation. They believed, and I think that publication shows that they had good

  745
  reason to believe, that the Congress was not playing fair during the period of truce, when Mr. Gandhi was attending the Round Table Conference. In the document concerned, the Government state their case for the Ordinances on three or four specific offences on the part of the Congress party: first of all, the agrarian agitation in the United Provinces, then the "Red Shirt" movement in the North-West Frontier Province, but chiefly on the general trend of Congress policy all over India.
  So far as the United Provinces go, I should like to know whether I am right in thinking that actual incitements not to pay rent followed and did not precede the Ordinances; that the charge rather is that Congress used the truce
  "to consolidate and extend Congress influence in rural areas".
  and
  "to intervene between Government and landowners in regard to the payment of land revenue and between the landlord and the tenant in regard to the payment of rent".
  It seems to me that the Congress claim to act as an intermediary between landlord and tenant is not inexcusable, when dealing with the interests of the vast majority of peasant tenants, who have no trade union to speak for them; and the claim of Congress to act in that respect can hardly, however inconvenient to the landlords, be regarded as an act of provocation. Further, the charge that they used the period of the truce to consolidate their machinery in view of the possibility of a breakdown in the truce seems to me to be a charge which could be countered, because there is not much doubt that the Government of India themselves also used the truce, as any Government would do, to consolidate their machinery.
  The gravamen of the charge is surely—and that is the point on which stress is laid in the Government's Paper—that Congress used that period to create an attitude of complete distrust in India as regards the result of the Round Table Conference, and it appears to me that the great crime of Congress in the last two years is that it has deliberately encouraged a defeatist atmosphere in India. Instead of making the most of every pledge made by the British Government, they have taught the Indian people to expect bad faith and failure, and in that sense I
  746
  think that Congress undoubtedly during that period was treacherous both to Mr. Gandhi himself and to those Indians on the Round Table Conference who were striving to arrive at an agreement. Mr. Gandhi himself has plainly spoken with two voices but I think everyone who has studied the details of the correspondence between the Viceroy and Mr. Gandhi, at the time when the latter arrived in India in January, that fateful moment before he was thrown into prison, must admit that the Viceroy was the more provocative and that Mr. Gandhi showed the greater "will to peace". At the same time, at the very first meeting at which he spoke in India, did not Mr. Gandhi use words which wore really incompatible with the "will to peace" when he said:
  "We have no reason to believe that the Ministers in England are dishonest in their convictions. They sincerely believe that we are not fit for Swaraj. This is how they are tutored by the men on the spot."
  He went on to encourage his excitable Indian audience
  "to get rid of the fear of death and to face it with courage".
  There was not a word about definite pledges given when Mr. Gandhi was attending meetings of the Round Table Conference in London, and he must have had ringing in his ears the speeches in this House and in the House of Lords on the 3rd December, when the pledges, given by the previous Government and by the Viceroy to grant self-government to India subject to safeguards were reiterated by the National Government and assented to by all three parties forming that Government. Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Gandhi was thrown into prison, and I greatly regret that, whatever the technique and etiquette of the matter might have been, the Viceroy did not get over the difficulties and manage to see Mr. Gandhi. But Mr. Gandhi is in prison, and the point in the mind of everyone who has been in anything like close touch with Indian feeling—not the feeling of the members of the Congress party, but the feeling of the ordinary rank and file of the Indian people—is as to what actually is the effect of the Ordinances on the temper of India and on the chances of future peace there.
  I think sometimes that those who only read the accounts given in the British

  747
  Press of the terms of the terrifically drastic Ordinances are quite unaware of the effect that they must have on the feelings of the ordinary man and woman in the street in India. Take the Ordinance under which, I suppose, the greater part of the arrests which account for the 26,000 prisoners are being made. The Ordinance permits a man to be thrown into prison if
  "there are reasonable grounds for believing that any person has acted, is acting, or is about to act in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or peace … without warrant".
  When I was in Bombay day after day the papers were filled with records of people who were being taken up under that Ordinance, not because of anything which they had done, but because they were expected or likely to act in a manner prejudicial to public peace, and were thrown into prison for a period which could not exceed two months under that particular Ordinance, but the custom was, after keeping a man in prison for two months or less, to let him out, subject to the instruction that he should report to the police daily. If he failed to report to the police he was again thrown into prison, when the charge against him of disobeying the order of the police was invariably followed by a sentence of six months or two years, but generally one year's rigorous imprisonment, supplemented by a fine.
  Then there is the Ordinance which permits a man to be told to leave his place of residence or business and to go to some town where he may have neither house nor office and to continue to reside there till further notice. I will not go into details with regard to these Ordinances, but here we have the general public of India seeing day after day swarms of arrests under these Ordinances, not because people have committed an offence, but because they are likely to do so, or, if an offence is committed, it is that they have merely been waving a flag or leading a procession. The Secretary of State called attention to the fact that the number of arrests was about half the number made during the last Administration, but is not that because the policy has changed and is now to cut the heads off the highest tulips, to deal with the leaders rather than with the mere rank and file? There
  748
  is much to be said for that policy, but it has the result that all those who are likely to give expression to or to assert public feeling are clapped into gaol, and therefore we have very little means of knowing whether the surface peace that is being produced in India is a real peace.
  During the period when I was in India, in Bombay particularly, the atmosphere appeared to me, as an outsider, to be one of sizzling discontent, and in some cases of sullen discontent, and large numbers of people who had previously been hostile to Congress and disliked the general disorder and insecurity created by Congress during its past activities were becoming sympathetic towards Congress, because all that they saw was, not the offence, but merely the fact that, without any reason assigned, people were taken up and clapped into prison or, if there war an offence, for a purely technical offence, and condemned to stay there for two months, a year, or two years. The result was that no one who was not willing to face the risk of imprisonment had any method of legitimately expressing national feeling. What struck me particularly was that students in the colleges, both men and women, were unable to give any expression to their feelings of nationalism by joining in processions, waving flags or writing to the papers— every method of expressing their sympathy with the national movement was cut away from them.
  The right hon. Gentleman himself recognises the drastic nature of the ordinances, and does not wish to keep them in force a moment longer than is necessary. What is going to come out of the ordinances? What is the plan of the Government? You cannot keep people in prison for ever for purely political offences. The next stage in constitution building is when these three committees come home with their reports, and you have to frame a Statute to give self-government to India subject to safeguards. Is there not an opportunity of ensuring that that vital stage in constitution building shall be taken in an atmosphere of greater good will and greater will to peace than is possible when all the leaders, and many of the rank and file, who are by far the best organised party in India are not present,

  749
  or are disabled from taking any part in political affairs? Lord Irwin, in that noble speech which he made in the House of Lords last December, described very briefly the idea that had passed through his own mind when in power, that the civil disobedience movement might be brought to an end by a short, sharp period of repression. He said:
  "I believe it to be a profound delusion to treat this Indian opinion as the work of an insignificant minority which, rightly, firmly, courageously, effectively handled, would quickly fade away and give you no more trouble."
  Then he played with the idea of rigid repression.
  "I always came to the same conclusion, that supposing it had been a possible thing to do, where would you have been at the end of one, two, three or five years as regards the main problem which it is the concern of this House to solve? You would have been not only no further forward; you would have been many laps behind. Therefore, we have to turn our mind to the way of constructive agreement."
  The question I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State is, Has he abandoned the way of constructive agreement? Is he going to hand over the Statute, which is to give full self-government to India, in the spirit in which a pound of flesh was to be handed over to Shylock—"Here it is; take it or leave it," or is it going to be handed over in an atmosphere and under conditions which make constructive agreement possible? And is constructive agreement possible as long as all the leaders of the Congress movement are shut up in gaol under the ordinances? Granted that they were necessary in the beginning, when are they coming to an end?
  2.0 p.m.
  Mr. CAMPBELL KER: I feel sure that many Members of the Committee, in fact, most Members of the Committee, will agree very largely with what the hon. Lady has said on the subject of these ordinances. That is to say, every Member of the Committee will deplore the necessity for those ordinances being imposed. I am sure that no one regrets more than the Secretary of State himself that ordinances of that kind should have been necessary, but what is overlooked by many of those who object to the principle of the ordinances is that it is only on a basis
  750
  of law and order in India that it is possible to build up this advance in constitution to which we all look forward. We must consider this question of law and order from two very different aspects. The first is with regard to individuals, and the second is with regard to the masses of the people. As far as individuals are concerned, one of the chief reasons why these measures became necessary was that a couple of years ago, under the regime of the last Government, the usual methods of law and order were disregarded. I will go back to the time when, as everyone will remember, Mr. Gandhi, with the definite intention of challenging the Government of the day, set out on his march to the sea coast to break the law in the face of the Government of India and of the Government at home. Everyone knows perfectly well that there is no offence in saying that you intend to break the law. The mere statement of your intention to break it is not an offence that can be dealt with. We all know that it is easy for a man to begin to take his coat off and to announce his intentions, but that is not an offence against the law of this country. So that when Mr. Gandhi started on his march he was not disobeying or breaking any law.
  I agree that at that time no action could have been taken, and that the proper thing to do was to make it clear why action was not taken, namely, that so far no breach of the law had been committed. But the stage came when, having reached the sea coast, he began to make salt and distribute it to other people. As soon as he did that, there was a definite breach of the law on that subject, and action should then have been taken against him under the ordinary law, and the law ought to have shown that it was no respecter of persons. It was most unfortunate that from that date onwards the impression grew in India during the regime of the last Government that the law was a respecter of persons. We got to know, from instructions given to certain magistrates, that they were not to arrest certain Indian leaders, and there was one case in which a magistrate in a district in the Bombay Presidency which I know very well almost got into serious trouble because he arrested an Indian leader who had broken a regulation promulgated in that district. As long as any

  751
  party thinks that the Government are going to be respecters of persons, and that the law will not be carried out, immediately public opinion veers rounds and you see breaches of the law on all sides.
  It is for that reason that it has been necessary to arrest and imprison so many leaders of Indian public life. They have attempted to carry out the idea that they would be immune from arrest, that the Government would do nothing against them, and that is why, in the long run, it has been necessary to arrest such prominent persons as Pandit Malaviya and Mrs. Naidu. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition stated to the House that he had known Pandit Malaviya for many years. Everyone associated with public life must recognise that Pandit Malaviya has performed great services to his country, but always on the extreme left wing. He has always been associated with the most extreme side of Indian politics since the year 1907, to my certain knowledge. Mrs. Naidu, although she has a great reputation in certain quarters as a poetess and a political leader, belongs to a family which has been notorious for many years as being out to destroy the British connection and to separate India from the British Empire.
  When you come to the question of the masses in regard to law and order, a similar position arises as in the case of individuals. The reason why there has been so much undermining of security in India in the last two years is a fairly recent occurrence in 1930. In a large city in India a procession wanted to go through the streets. It was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration. The police, in exercising their powers, intervened to stop the procession taking place. The leaders of the procession interviewed the police, and the result was that the procession was allowed to go on. The effect on the public mind was that the Indian political leaders had become equal or perhaps superior to the police in their control over the people. The result was the mass disobedience which we have seen during the last two years and which has made necessary the repressive measures which are now in force. When we present these facts to the political leaders of India, they always say that
  752
  these troubles are due to the bad characters from the bazaar and to people over whom they have no control. On the other hand, if the Government try to put a stop to these disorders, the political leaders say that they are guilty of political repression. These leaders cannot have it both ways. They must either accept responsibility for the disorders which they create, or they must say that they are mass disorders which are beyond their control and leave them in the hands of the Government to put right in their own way.
  The only other subject to which I would like to refer is the question of the future of India and the form which the Government of India is to take. That is of course a very wide question, but at present everything seems to be in favour of a system of federation. One reason why federation is now so popular in many circles is that the Princes of India, when they came to the first Round Table Conference, declared themselves in favour of federation. When that happened those who knew the Princes began to wonder how it was that they had changed from their former views. We have recently had an example of a case in which a person under the influence of another speaks with a different voice and sometimes with different sentiments from those used in real life. I do not know whether the Princes, when they declared in favour of federation, spoke in deeper tones than their usual tones, but I am sure that many who listened to them must have wondered, when they declared themselves so out and out in favour of federation, whether they were listening to the Prince or to the Pundit. A commitee has now been formed to report on this question, but there will be very great difficulties in the way of federation which includes the Princes. The view of the Princes is that they are the friends and allies of the British Government; they have always shown that they are the friends and allies of the Government, and their real desire is to be treated as such. Whatever final settlement is made in India, I am sure that every member of the Committee will agree that we must retain the rights and privileges of the Princes and keep inviolate those treaties which we have made with them.

  753
  After all has been said and done, we have to consider what should be the ultimate object of our policy in India. The ultimate object must be in the direction of making India as prosperous and contented as possible. I think that even my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) will agree with that as the goal of our policy because he is most interested in the economic development, especially of the poor classes in India. He appears, however, to have misunderstood to some extent the position of the British Government in India with regard to these problems. In actual fact, the people who have done most to help the working classes of India to secure better conditions of labour and living have been mostly European officials in India. I can say this quite definitely because it was my business for some time to be responsible for the affairs of a department which looked after the labour conditions in Bombay city. While, of course, conditions are still very bad, while wages are very low, and while the terms of service may be said to be a disgrace in many parts of the country, the European officials and the British connection have raised the state of the working classes of Bombay to the position in which they are now from the very much lower position which they occupied in the past. I feel sure that if my hon. Friend would care to examine it with me at his leisure, he will come to the same conclusion.
  The remarks of the hon. Member for Bridgeton disclosed a curious divergence of opinion between himself and the Leader of the Opposition. On the one side, we found the right hon. Gentleman zealously taking the side of the capitalists in India and saying that they had a right to decide how the economic conditions of that country—
  Mr. LANSBURY: What I said was that as between the British capitalist and the Indian capitalist, the Indian capitalist has more right to decide.
  Mr. KER: It must have come as a great surprise to the Committee to find the right hon. Gentleman speaking on the side of the Indian capitalist. That is the dilemma which faces the Opposition at the present time. They are supporting in India men who are mostly members
  754
  of the capitalist class and the learned, educated and privileged classes. These are the Congress members, and they are those whom the official Opposition principally back in the present business. The hon. Member for Bridgeton is at least consistent in the attitude he takes up, and while I cannot agree with him over the Meerut case, and though to a certain extent he does not appear to be fully informed, I can say that as far as the working classes of India are concerned, it is the British connection which has improved their status.
  To return to my original proposition, it is that the object of our policy in India must be to increase the prosperity and contentment of the people; it does not appear at present as if the policy which is being adopted, namely, the policy of Ordinances, is the quickest or best way to promote that object, but in taking a long view of the matter, it is clear that the only way in which you can build up India is on the basis of law and order and of understanding and good will. I have heard it said that Indians are most exasperating people. Those who know them best will know that many of them are most exasperating, and that many of them are not. Speaking with long years of experience, I should say that good will on our side will always find a ready response from the people of India; and I hope that our policy which, unpromising as it appears, is the only policy on which we can build up a secure foundation, will be continued and will be successful.
  Mr. NUNN: I wish to offer a few remarks upon one aspect of the question of India which always astonishes those who have had the opportunity of living in the Far East and among native peoples, and that is that whenever a member of the party which is in Opposition at the present time speaks upon India, or produces any so-called facts about India, his opinions and his facts are always adverse to the general British policy in India. Any so-called evidence which can be produced to show that a British official, a British soldier, a British policeman, or a native official, a native soldier, or a native policeman, acting under British orders, has done something which is disgraceful or outrageous is always believed, whereas

  755
  evidence to the contrary is never considered for a moment. We have heard the Leader of the Opposition talking quite reasonably to-day, so far as one is able to estimate his usual standpoint when speaking about India, but suggesting that by the very nature of their duties British soldiers in India have been acting in an outrageous manner. Surely it is time we ceased to foul our own nest. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State reminded us that nothing is more comforting to the exiled official, living, perhaps, under very trying conditions, than to know that this House has approved the work he has been doing. The right hon. Gentleman did not say, as he very well might have said, that nothing is more discouraging or more disheartening to them than to know that whenever a Debate on India takes place in this House certain members invariably take the opportunity to blacken, as far as they can, the character of every British official in India.
  Let anyone consider the conditions under which the members of the Forest Service work, living quite apart from their fellow men for months at a time. Let them consider the lot of such an official in the early days of the monsoon, when the monsoon has not quite broken, and when it seems that there is not a breath of fresh air about. The man may, perhaps have a touch of fever on him, the last mail that has reached him has brought him bad news about his people at home, his child is not well at school. Under those depressing circumstances he opens his mail and finds a report of a Debate in this House, and reads the sort of thing we have heard being said too often in this House about the work of British officials in India. It is high time something in the nature of a vigorous protest was made against speeches of that character. Such speeches are circulated throughout the length and breadth of India. The Leader of the Opposition said that certain other facts are circulated throughout India, but we do know that the body which is setting itself to work to disturb peace and order in India makes it its business to circulate throughout India all this adverse propaganda. It is time the Government of India took much more vigorous steps to counter that propaganda.
  756
  For too long we have allowed the people of India to be taught that the British Empire is interested in India only for the purpose of exploiting it. There is no historical foundation for that assertion. Let hon. Members look back to the origin of our position in India, at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. The first of our merchant adventurers who appear in India had gone there for a very plain and straightforward purpose, their object being to trade. They had no control over the Government of the country, they had no connection with the Government. In their early days they found there a fairly strong Government, which, however, very soon broke up. The condition of India became one of the greatest disorder after the break up of the Mogul dynasty, but for many years our merchants carried on their work there courageously, in spite of the conditions. Then came the great war in which France and England came into conflict in India. The break up of the Mogul dynasty led to our trading venturers getting some sort of establishment in India, by agreement with the various powers there, an establishment which gradually led on to their getting a hand in the government of India. We know what the old East India Company did in India. Their work was not always done in the way we should approve of now, but in the circumstances of the time they did admirable work.
  I would ask hon. Members opposite what they think would have happened to India had the Indian Mutiny succeeded? What condition would India have been in to-day? When they say the British Empire is attempting to exploit India, do they realise that India owes all that it has to the people of this country and to the Government of this country? Do they realise that throughout these generations we have been giving to India all that it knows of modern civilisation? The Leader of the Opposition referred to education in India. The Indians owe their present education system to the work of Lord Macaulay, primarily. I myself think Lord Macaulay made a mistake in cutting off the education system of India so completely from the old Indian traditions. And what do they owe to us in the way of health services and irrigation? When irrigation was referred to by the Secretary of State I heard the hon. Member for Bridgeton

  757
  (Mr. Maxton) interject: "A bit late". If the hon. Member had had some experience of what it means to get such works going in any country, let alone a country like India, he would have been gratified to know that it had been done so soon, and would not have said, "A bit late." Everything that India has she owes to us, and we have been carrying on the work of late years under the very greatest discouragement from those people of our own race who ought, if they had any real regard for the people of Indja, to have been supporting us through thick and thin.
  After all, what is the aim of our Government in India? The aim is to give the Indian people the opportunity, ultimately, to take over their self-government. Something has been said about "self-determination"—one of the most misleading phrases of modern times. There is precious little self-determination in this life. We cannot determine for ourselves when we are going to be born, or determine for ourselves into what circumstances we are going to be born, or even always determine for ourselves whom we are going to marry. You cannot determine whether you are going to have health or ill-health, or when you are going to die. The only thing you can determine is what your character will be, and self-determination means very little indeed. Surely it is for the ultimate good of the Indian people that there should be a strong and sympathetic Government doing its level best to secure the greatest possible amount of happiness for the greatest number that can be secured.
  We have a great responsibility in India. It has been suggested that the easiest way to carry out that great responsibility would be to shift it on to the shoulders of the Indian people. In my view, the courageous way is to shoulder the full burden of responsibility ourselves, and carry out the policy which has been adopted by the present Government. In India we have a great trust, and, in the carrying out of that trust, we are responsible for the destinies, not only of a small group, but of millions of people in India who are totally illiterate, and do not really know what is going on. If we fail to carry out that trust, we shall have betrayed not only India but our own Empire, and a failure to carry out our
  758
  trust would be the first step towards the breaking up of the Empire.
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I shall not follow my hon. Friend the Member for White-haven (Mr. Nunn) so far back into the past as he has seen fit to go in the most admirable speech, both in matter as well as in manner, which he has delivered to the House. I shall, however, have to go back some way into the more modern history of India. Only six months have passed since I had the opportunity of taking part in an Indian Debate in this House, and a great change in policy and in the scene we survey has taken place in that recent period. From the date of Lord Irwin's unfortunate declaration about Dominion status in October, 1929, down to January of the present year the policy which had been declared and consistently pursued by the Socialist Government and the two National Governments which succeeded it was consistently based upon the hope of co-operation with Mr. Gandhi and the Indian Congress. Not merely Dominion status but a Dominion constitution was in contemplation for all India, and in that Congress was to play a vital part.
  There followed from this all the visionary speeches and perorations which characterised the first Round Table Conference. There followed the landslide of British political opinion of 1930 and a newspaper propaganda of the type of which the "Manchester Guardian" was the most distinguished contributor. That paper declared that we were the rear guard retreating in the face of a victorious and aggressive enemy and we must lose no time in putting such friends as we have in India in positions where they could cover our further withdrawal. There followed the release of Mr. Gandhi from prison and then came the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. That Pact was foolishly cheered by a number of Conservatives, some of whom may be sitting on any bench in the House, and whose memories no doubt prick their conscience now. Then there followed widespread disorders in India and hideous massacres of Moslems by Hindus and severe reprisals by Moslems upon Hindus. Then came the second Round Table Conference at which Mr. Gandhi was treated with exceptional ceremony, and he was even permitted to visit Buckingham Palace in an attire so

  759
  scanty that it excluded him from the Vatican. I am only showing how far we went in these matters. The second Round Table Conference, like predecessor, was remarkable for all kinds of platitudes and flowery speeches, none of which had any relation to the realities of Indian Government or to the true needs or loyalties of the mass of the Indian people. "My Dear Mahatma," was the way in which Mr. Gandhi was addressed by the Prime Minister when he was returning to India to resume his agitation. We found the National Government using all the pressure of its party Whips to compel the House of Commons to endorse the loosely-phrased and far-reaching commitments of the Prime Minister's valedictory speech.
  2.30 p.m.
  Such was the situation when I last addressed the House, but in January there came a great change. Then the new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, supported, and I have no doubt inspired by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for India, and, feeling that he had behind him the life and strength of the new House of Commons, resolved to arrest Mr. Gandhi and the Congress leaders, and, by enforcing a series of most drastic Ordinances, to restore law and order firmly throughout India. This decision, so courageously and soberly carried out, makes a great difference in my attitude towards the Indian policy of His Majesty's Government. When I spoke at a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel in January, 1930, I said:
  "Sooner or later you will have to crush Gandhi and the Indian Congress and all they stand for."
  That statement of mine was more censured than any other that I made and more condemned by those politicians who were at that time controlling Indian affairs. It was thought to be a shocking thing to say, but see what happened? I and those who thought as I did in both Houses of Parliament, including the high experts of the Indian Empire society which contains many experts thoroughly acquainted with the conditions not only of India but of the East, were condemned as men who wished to plunge India into a welter of bloodshed, using machine guns and artillery upon unarmed mobs, and as people desirous of exposing this
  760
  country to the risk of having to send several divisions of troops in order to dragoon the people of India. It was in vain that we declared on every occasion that there would be no need for any serious use of force, and that a firm policy of maintaining law and order in India would not be attended by serious bloodshed or serious risk. What has hap-pended? The Government of India, and the National Government at home, have adopted this very policy of crushing Gandhi and the Indian Congress. For nearly four months, Mr. Gandhi and his principal lieutenants, together with many thousands of his followers, have been in gaol; the Indian Congress has been proclaimed as an illegal organisation—[HON. MEMBBES: "NO!"].
  Mr. MORGAN JONES: May I ask the Secretary of State if that is so?
  Sir S. HOARE: No, it is not.
  Mr. CHURCHILL: Put it as you will; the Indian Congress has been proclaimed in many of its branches—[Interruption] —I am very glad to accept that correction—as an illegal organisation; its meeting at Delhi has been prevented, and those who sought to attend it have been arrested. The Red Shirt movement on the Frontier, which was for so long a time a bugbear, has been suppressed, apparently without serious difficulty. And through all this, as I used to point out in my travels in America, probably fewer people have been killed by Government bullets in India than have been killed by gangster bullets in the same period in the United States. Except on the North-West Frontier, where our troops shield the defenceless and helpless millions of India from the incursions of formidable warrior Pathan tribes, there has not, I believe, been any need to use a single company, or even a platoon, of British soldiers for the maintenance of internal order. The Indian Police, that admirable and devoted force, under their handful of British sergeants and inspectors, have been able to assert the Imperial authority with ease and with sure-ness, and, I thank God, with hardly any loss of life. Certainly not a tithe as many Indians have been killed or injured in the various sporadic riots which have occurred this year as were massacred by their own fellow-countrymen at Cawnpore and other places in the year 1931.

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  We must consider these events as most important, and, in view of the immense, inalienable responsibility that we have for the welfare of the people of India, we must consider them encouraging and satisfactory. This afternoon I should like to congratulate, first of all, Lord Willing-don and his Council; secondly, and not less, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State; and, not least, this new House of Commons, whose resolute and patriotic spirit makes itself increasingly manifest throughout all quarters of our reviving Empire. To have achieved so great a measure of re-establishment of law and order by methods which have involved so little violence, is a signal example of what may be done by coolness and sagacity. I abhor terrorism in every form, as my record in Indian Debates will show. Most of all do I abhor it in a Government so powerful as is the British Government in India. That nothing of this kind has occurred, that no grievous or frightful incidents have happened up to the present, is a very powerful tribute to the patience, tact, and slow endurance with which situations of the utmost difficulty have been handled, and it should secure gratitude for those responsible for it, not only from their fellow-countrymen at home but from the large and overwhelming majority of law-abiding people throughout India.
  At the same time, I cannot help regretting the weakness and pusillanimity, the poor and low view taken of our rights and duties in India, which has caused so much needless suffering. While I approve of the measures now taken by His Majesty's Government, and rejoice in their success, I cannot but regret that a sound and straightforward policy was not adopted sooner. There are, no doubt, a great many difficulties confronting the Indian Administration; we are not by any means out of our difficulties yet; but those difficulties are, very largely, the price of previous unwisdom. My right hon. Friend told us to-day that 26,600 persons were interned or imprisoned for seditious or riotous conduct. I believe, and I think there are others who share my view, that if, when Mr. Gandhi first began his campaign of salt making in open defiance of the law, he had been promptly arrested and brought to trial in the ordinary way; if the Lahore Congress in the Spring of 1930 had been broken up after it had publicly insulted
  762
  the British flag; if there had not been that tendency to share the Government of India with the Congress through the pact between Lord Irwin and Mr. Gandhi, and if the whole of India had not been profoundly disturbed, distressed and excited by widespread rumours that the end of British authority was approaching, and that England was exhausted and impotent under the rule of the Socialists —I believe that, if all that had not been going forward, it is probable that three-quarters of those who are in gaol to-day in India would be peacefully pursuing their daily avocations; and that applies still more to the very much larger number of persons whom the Socialist Government locked up as a result of throwing the country into a condition of instability and disorder.
  Never have we witnessed such a spectacle of an Imperial Government undermining the foundations of its own authority, sapping its own prestige and reputation, spreading rumours and imparting an ever-rising sense of some great change among enormous masses of primitive people, as we saw in those evil years—violent, audacious defiance on the one hand, matched by needlessly dangerous surrenders on the other. It is a remarkable proof of the stability and solidity of British rule throughout India, and of the great measure of acquiescence which it receives in the fundamental loyalty of the Indian peoples, that the whole Peninsula, as large and as populous as Europe, was not thrown into a frightful convulsion by this method of handling the situation. We survey to-day a situation incomparably better both for England and for India, a situation far better from every point of view, than that which gripped and almost seemed to paralyse us at this time last year.
  Here let me say without hesitation that I do not feel that this reassertion of law and order closes, or ought to close, the door upon Indian constitutional advance. On the contrary, I think that from some points of view it clears the air. I think that we are moving towards conditions which make it possible for us to resume our settled policy of bringing the strong, loyal, able elements in Indian life ever more closely and more directly into responsible association with Indian affairs. To make or promise constitutional changes while we seem to be

  763
  incapable of preserving law and order, to buy off dangers which we have not the strength or the resolution to meet, would assuredly lead by the shortest road to anarchy and revolution. But once the Imperial Government is, beyond all doubt and question, master of the situation, then wise constitutional improvements stand on a healthy and honourable foundation, conferring benefits alike on those who give and on those who receive. Therefore, I certainly do not ask—I never have, but certainly not today do I ask the Government to close the door upon sane and well-conceived constitutional reform in India.
  I should be out of order, under the somewhat awkward rules of these Supply Debates, if I were to enter upon any detailed discussion of the alternative constitutional methods which lie before us. I am only going to deal with the problem as it affects administration. I will say to my right hon. Friend, first of all, that I hope and trust he will not descend again into the dark places from which we have been to an important extent extricated by the belated but salutary action of the Viceroy and himself. As I have said so often, do not go on raising expectations which you know are not going to be fulfilled. I believe that, in dealing with Oriental people, it is a great mistake to overpraise what you are yourself intending to do. I believe we should state what we are giving at its minimum in words, and let it be at its maximum in fact and in deed. Let us reverse the process of the last few years.
  Instead of making all these vague and general commitments, let us take quite soon and quite swiftly the necessary precise executive action to make an advance as soon as an opportunity occurs. Let us freely give all that can be given, and let us bluntly and frankly refuse anything which would not suit us, would not suit British interests, or would not be good for Indian interests. Let us, in the late Lord Birkenhead's words, tell the truth to India. That is, I am sure, the keynote to which we ought to have been attuned throughout the last few years, whereas, on the contrary, the whole endeavour has been to wrap up the ugly facts of the situation in smooth words. There is the Secretary of State
  764
  for Scotland. He is not here, but I have his speech in mind. He said he was remaining in the Government in spite of differences on Free Trade because he wished to support the policy of appeasement which we were carrying out in India. 26,600 people have been sentenced to various terms of appeasement. How characteristic it is of our method of handling these questions. You have to find some word which is smooth and which veils the actual truth. I believe we do not gain in our relations with the Indian people by adopting these rather smooth forms of speech which are sometimes helpful at political or party gatherings.
  I know many of the difficulties of the Secretary of State, but they are not by any means all in India. It is possible that the greatest difficulties that he has to cope with are the obligations which have been entered into on this side of the ocean. I am very much afraid of the danger that India will be again thrown into a state of trepidation, palpitation and perturbation by the continued, gratuitous, vexatious stirring of the deep pools of Indian life, not because of any Indian needs, but because of British party or British political needs. I am in favour of a constitutional advance in India, but it ought to be a point of honour with us so to shape the advance that it is solely conceived upon its merits according to India's needs. We ought to do what we have to do entirely from the point of view of the well-being of India, and we ought not to shape our policy in order to save the face of someone or other in a high position over here. What India needs for her welfare is what ought to rule us and not what British politicians, who have so often been wrong, need in order to make a show of consistency and continuity of policy for their themselves. India has suffered a great deal in the past through their ignorance and through their foolish habit of imagining that the ideas and processes of democracy, to which Western nations are attaching less faith year after year, are the sole means by which the welfare of the Indian people can be secured. I hope that that, at any rate, will be borne in mind.
  There are also, undoubtedly, great difficulties on the spot. We must remember that not one of the real obstacles that brought the Round Table Conference

  765
  to failure has been removed. The agreement among the Princes has not advanced from where it was 18 months ago, and it is still veiled in clouds of generality which surround the serious differences which undoubtedly exist. The differences between Moslems and Hindus, Untouchables and Sikhs have been sadly exacerbated. They may be calming a little now, when there is a feeling of greater assurance beginning to spread over the face of India, but they have undoubtedly become much more acute than in former years. The elections for the Frontier Province have been, I am informed, a dangerous and a scandalous farce. Violence of every kind has been threatened. A very small percentage of the electors have voted. Those electors themselves are a tiny proportion of the population, and yet the body so resulting is to be entrusted with the widest powers of administration of that province, of all the provinces in India the most susceptible to explosions of violence. The condition of Bombay is still discreditable to the administration. The boycott has not yet been effectively broken. Our three committees, which have been peregrinating, are now returning to us bearing with them, no doubt, their bulky and indigestible sheaves of reports. As to the safeguards, upon which we are told we must put so much reliance, what is happening on the other side of the St. George's Channel should surely be deeply instructive on that point.
  All these difficulties stand in the way, and I think we run a great risk of overemphasizing the importance of political change in India as contrasted with material and moral advance. I will borrow, if I may, a phrase Sovietic in its origin and therefore likely to gladden the heart of the Leader of the Opposition. I say that we ought to look at the broad proletarian masses. We ought to see that their well-being is our supreme care and our noblest duty. What do we care in this House of Commons for all the feuds which surround the life of Hindu and Moslem in India? We are not concerned with the theocratic ambitions of the Hindus. We are not concerned with the old traditions of class and of sovereignty which belong to the Moslems. We are apart from these and above these, and we have no interest in supporting harsh usurers and pitiless landlords against the unprotected humble masses, nor have any of our officers or agents. What do we
  766
  care for the monopolist intrigues of the wealthy cotton spinners and manufacturers of Ahmedabad or the speculators of Bombay? Our concern, and our ruthless concern, must be, as my hon. Friend said in his speech, the greatest good of the greatest number of the people of India. If ever a British interest clashes with the greatest good of the greatest number, then I say without hesitation that the British interest in question should be properly subordinated. I believe that the interests of the Indian proletariat and the interests of Great Britain are in absolute harmony. The clashes which take place are only in the political classes which stand between us and the great masses of the people. Impartial justice, increasing care for the weak and the poor, the upholding of able and honest officials whose lives are devoted to the land of their service, the scientific organisation and apparatus of modern life—all these are alike needs of India and the duties of Britain.
  I hope and trust—and it will be the point on which I shall close—that we are not going to dissociate ourselves at all from this prime duty of sustaining the welfare of the great mass of the Indian people. When I moved an Amendment six months ago asking to add the words, "peace, order and good government in India," to the Resolution, the Prime Minister said that "peace, order," was quite all right, but "good government"—and there he hesitated, and I felt that the door was being opened to what I can only consider would be the most humiliating and unpleasant situation. I cannot agree that we ought to abandon in any constitution which we may give our ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the masses, and, in the cheap and specious guise of giving what is called "more freedom to India," it would be monstrous if we were to hand over these hundreds of millions of human beings to he exploited and harried by small, bitter and unrepresentative groups, gangs and cliques. It would be a moral degradation for England to say that we are not concerned with domestic misgovernment, domestic tyranny or injustice. So long as we have equal trading rights and the control of foreign relations and our ultimate military ascendancy, we are not concerned with what goes on within the ambit of

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  self-government. That is not a scheme in which the glory of Britain and the genius of India could ever be partners. I say without hesitation that it would be better by far that we should quit for ever the soil of India than that we should take by armed force such profit as can be made out of association with India and shamelessly ignore our duties to its innumerable peoples.
  3.0 p.m.
  What an ignominy it would be to us if we built a kind of hard shell or crust of British interests, exclusively reserved around India, within which every kind of native oppression and misgovernment would flourish and sat there mouthing the formulas of an inapplicable Liberalism or invoking the name of self - government. The task which we have to do in India is by no means ended as some people seem to think. The task is to raise the material and cultural level of the great masses. The right hon. Gentleman opened his speech to-day—and I was glad to hear him do it—and dwelt at some length upon the great public works now coming into full activity in India. There is Lord Lloyd whose views are very old-fashioned compared with the more enlightened sections of the Socialist and Conservative parties. Yet I expect that the Lloyd barrage with its opportunities of cultivable land and hearth and home to literally millions of Indians—3,000,000, I think—will be found to have done far more good and will be far more honoured in Indian history than all the constitution mongering upon which for the last ten years Governments of India have been unduly engaged, that it will do far more good than all the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms put together, and that it will even outweigh the perorations of Lord Lothian, Lord Sankey, and Lord Snell.
  If we feel that the task of guiding and leading forward the masses of India to a wider and more rich material prosperity, if we feel that that is beyond our strength, if we feel compelled to renounce them altogether, then I say indeed our day in the Orient is done, and we had better quit a scene of faded splendours. We had better divest ourselves of associations which, once our duty to the Indian
  768
  peoples was ignored, would become not honourable, but degrading. But if we are still capable of making exertions in a worthy cause and still have confidence in our mission and in ourselves, then the case for perseverance, as the Secretary of State has put it to us to-day, holds the field.
  The Leader of the Opposition at the close of his interesting and discursive oration dwelt with relish upon the frequent and inevitable fall of Empires and the effacement of their civilisations. He even seemed to me to represent the fall of the Roman Empire as a most fortunate and auspicious episode in the history of mankind. He gleefully prophesied that if and when we were driven out of India the Indians would soon make short work of any vestiges of modern civilisation or improvement which we had imparted to them. He may be right. I think that it may well be so. It may well be that the departure of Great Britain from India would be followed by something very like the dark ages which succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire. Some of us on this side of the Committee at any rate think that it is our duty to labour long and to labour earnestly and to stand between the peoples of India and so lamentable a fate.
  Mr. MORGAN JONES: The right hon. Gentleman has engaged the attention of the House on many occasions in discussing this very difficult and complex problem of our Indian affairs, and this afternoon he succeeded in sustaining our attention once again. I observed that in entering upon the discussion he began his review of modern history at an appropriate date from his point of view. It is nice to be able to write the opening chapter of your history at some point of convenience. The right hon. Gentleman poured the vials of his wrath upon the Simon Commission, upon the late Viceroy of India, upon the late Government and, in a more moderate and restrained way, upon the present Government. I must leave the present Government to defend itself.
  I would invite the right hon. Gentleman to give me a precise answer to a question. He chastised the late Viceroy, Lord Irwin, for having made an unfortunate declaration about Dominion status. He spoke about visionary speeches and perorations, and said they were very mischievous.

  769
  The right hon. Gentleman himself was a member of the Government in 1921 and in that year, as a Minister of the Crown, not in his private capacity at the Cannon Street Hotel, but speaking for the Government of the day, of which he was then a distinguished, powerful and influential member; speaking not to an irresponsible or unimportant body of people, but to the representatives of the several Governments of the Empire who were assembled in London at that time, made an important statement. Speaking in that representative capacity he used these words:
  "He well knew how tremendous was the contribution that India made in the War in 1914. …They owed India that deep debt, and he looked forward confidently to the day when the Indian Government and people would have assumed, fully and completely, their Dominion status."
  Mr. CHURCHILL: The hon. Member must bear in mind the speech which I made in November of last year. He will see how I differentiated between Dominion status and Dominion constitution. I stand by what I said.
  Mr. JONES: The right hon. Gentleman was then speaking on behalf of the Government of the day. He used the phrase, "Dominion status" quite explicitly, and he does not deny it. Whatever he may have said in November, 1931, there was a very clear and understandable definition of the word "status" as used by him in 1921, and the right hon. Gentleman now, when it is convenient to him, 10 years later, must not try to say: "When I used the words 'Dominion status ' in 1921 I did not mean what you think I did. I meant Dominion constitution." How does he propose to establish and guarantee Dominion status without embodying it in some form of constitution? Yet he presumes to chastise the late Labour Government and the late Viceroy of India for using the phrase "Dominion status," and attributes to them responsibility for the trouble that has occurred since then. He started by way of an official declaration in 1921 to give real authority, governmental imprimatur, to the use of the phrase "Dominion status." The right hon. Gentleman now says that he is not the author of the phrase. He was not speaking for himself on that occasion, he was speaking for the Government of the day and in a representative capacity,
  770
  and presumably he did not use the phrase on that occasion without the authority of the Government for whom he was then speaking. Does he deny that?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I have several times stated that in those days "Dominion status" was always interpreted in its ceremonial aspect. [Interruption.] I know what I am saying, and the Prime Minister of those days, the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) will certainly corroborate it. During the period of time the meaning has been completely altered into Dominion constitution, which is quite a different thing.
  Mr. JONES: Really, this is most extraordinary! A Member of this House, not an ordinary member who has never occupied a responsible position but an hon. Member who has occupied distinguished positions in Government after Government for at least 20 years, makes an explicit public declaration on behalf of the Government of the day, not at a public meeting but at an assembly of representatives of the Governments from various parts of the Empire and uses the phrase "Dominion status"; and now, eleven years later, he presumes to get away from it by saying "Oh, when I used that phrase I only meant it in the ceremonial sense." A more shameful abuse of public confidence, a more shameful abuse of words, could not be found. If anyone is to be accused of having misled the Indian people there is no greater sinner than the right hon. Gentle-man himself. The right hon. Gentleman has dared to accuse distinguished officials of governments during the last 10 years of having misled the Indian nation. What was he doing in 1921? Did he say to the Indian people "You must not take this too seriously, I only mean it to apply in the ceremonial sense." Why did he not flay so then? He did not say so because he meant to imply, and he meant the Indian people to understand, that Dominion status was to be established between this country and India.
  May I pass to another observation of the right hon. Gentleman. He has somewhat shifted his ground. He says to-day that he is not as hostile in spirit towards the present Government as he felt bound to be in November last. The right hon. Gentleman takes some comfort from the

  771
  fact that a measure of force has been applied in India during his absence. I am very interested in these observations because during his political life there have been two occasions when he has had to meet a situation where force had completely failed. The right hon. Gentleman started his political career as a member of a Government in 1906 as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and was closely associated with one of the most statesmanlike acts of reconciliation which we can recall during the lifetime of this generation. The right hon. Gentleman knows that that act of reconciliation was necessary, because it was necessary to get away from the old atmosphere of bitterness that supervened after the Boer War. Now, nearly 30 years after that great Act was passed, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not deny that the work in which he participated in 1906 and later, was a piece of work that redounds eternally to the credit of the Government and of this House.
  Later, in 1922, soon after I came into this House, the right hon. Gentleman was again closely associated with another, shall I say, an act of reconciliation? I refer to the Act which brought to an end the crisis over Home Rule for Ireland, which had been occupying the political stage for 40 or 50 years. Again the right hon. Gentleman made tremendously powerful speeches in appeals, not to us on the Labour benches, but to those on the Liberal and Tory benches, and he was ably supported in the other House, I believe, by the late Lord Birkenhead. They both agreed that some such act of reconciliation must be carried through if the era of force was speedily to be brought to an end in Ireland. Again I ask, are we to create in India another Irish situation? Are we to rely—the right hon. Gentleman shakes his head— upon the application of force, believing that force can settle the problem? That is the point.
  I do not deny for a moment that temporarily you can crush the Congress movement by the application of force. You can put all the leaders, as you have done, into gaol. You can take, if you like, all their bank deposits and do all sorts of things which indicate that, so far as force is concerned, you are in the position
  772
  of power. If the right hon. Gentleman will only be good enough to follow me for a moment, perhaps he will answer this question: Is this period of force to last for ever? To what is this period of force to lead? What is the next step? You have gaoled the leaders, you keep Mr. Gandhi in captivity. You remove all those who are in a position to conduct negotiations. Very good. What next? At what point is this period of oppression to stop? Does the right hon. Gentleman or does the Secretary of State contemplate the arrival of a time presently, speedily, when negotiations, discussions and co-operation can be resumed? Does anyone suppose that you can resume conciliation under conditions in which people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are fighting for the good of their country, are being kept incarcerated for long periods of time and unjustifiably?
  The right hon. Gentleman tells us that he does not wish to keep the door closed against well-considered constitutional advance in India. So far so good. But what does the right hon. Gentleman mean by that statement? What does it mean? How can you get constitutional advance in India except by some measure of consent. The right hon. Gentleman may deplore the influence of Mr. Gandhi but he cannot deny the existence of the influence of Mr. Gandhi. After all Mr. Gandhi can speak authoritatively on behalf of a large number of Indian people. I go further and say that you cannot implement in India, now or in the future, a solution by agreement of this problem unless you secure the co-operation of Mr. Gandhi and his followers. [HON. MEMBERS: "No".] I say you can impose one but you cannot get one by agreement.
  I pass to the speech of the Secretary of State for India. I leave on one side the discussion into which the right hon. Gentleman entered as to the social and economic developments of India under the present Government. I am not complaining of that discussion. It was something which ought to have been done and it was done, adequately it seems to me, by the right hon. Gentleman. Let me say, frankly, that there is no one who rejoices in this social and economic development, or who will rejoice in it to a greater degree than those who sit on

  773
  these benches. We welcome every advance achieved against the forces of darkness, in whatever form they may manifest themselves, but the question remains, and it is a question which I address emphatically but with as much restraint as I can to the right hon. Gentleman "What of the future"?
  I must take exception to some remarks which fell from the right hon. Gentleman concerning a meeting held in the precincts of this House recently. The right hon. Gentleman rather unkindly and I thought a little unfairly made a very slighting reference to an address which was delivered by Dr. Privat at a meeting upstairs. I take responsibility for that meeting. I accepted the chair at that meeting and I offer no apology to the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else for having arranged that meeting. I can give the right hon. Gentleman this information that of a meeting of more than 30 Members there was not more than four Labour Members, the rest being supporters of this Government. Dr. Privat delivered a speech which in my judgment was a model of moderation. He spoke with great circumspection and in circumstances of great difficulty, because obviously, for a foreigner to discuss a subject like this was a very delicate task indeed. I may further inform the right hon. Gentleman that next day I received congratulations to be conveyed to Dr. Privat not from Labour Members but from supporters of this Government—and not the most revolutionary of those either—upon the excellence of his speech. If Dr. Privat is so beneath contempt as the right hon. Gentleman has suggested, how came it that the Viceroy received him? He was also received, if I am correctly informed at the India Office. But so careful was he not to betray any sort of confidence that neither in public nor in private would he utter a word that was said to him, confidentially, either at Government House or here in London.
  Sir S. HOARE: He asked to see me and I refused.
  Mr. JONES: Well, he was seen. After all, it is usual not to make attacks of that sort upon people who are not here to defend themselves, and as I was chairman of the meeting—
  Captain RAMSAY: The hon. Member has given a very false impression of the
  774
  meeting. I was present at that meeting, and I should think that there were about three people who agreed with him and that all the rest of them thought he ought never to have been allowed to make the statement which he did make.
  Mr. JONES: I have never said that anyone agreed with him. What I have said—and I stick to it—is that on the following day numbers of Members who were present at the meeting came to me to invite me to express their appreciation of Dr. Privat for the way in which he had presented his case—not their agreement with him.
  Captain RAMSAY: The numbers must have been very small indeed, according to what I heard.
  Mr. JONES: The hon. and gallant Member can draw his own conclusions, but he cannot controvert what I say. Now may I turn to another side of the question? I want to say quite frankly— and I wish I did not have to say it, but I propose to say it—that I have made it my business to discuss this problem with all sorts of people, to read all that I can read concerning events in India, and people's opinions about events in India, and I say to the right hon. Gentleman that the opinion, the impression, which I get from all quarters is that there is a steady deterioration in the outlook in India. I have said what I know to be a grave thing, but it is no use our blinding ourselves to facts, and we must face up to these facts as frankly and as quickly as we can. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman himself, in his attitude here to-day, has disclosed a certain change in his own personal approach to this matter. He has become a little more sensitive to criticism, a little more resentful of criticism, than he was some six months ago, and the change that he himself has shown to us, as it seems to me, is only too apparent concerning Indian affairs at this moment.
  Why do I say that there is a deterioration? Practically all the responsible leaders of the opposition are in gaol. There is no one left to negotiate; and if you have no one left to negotiate with the Government, how can you guarantee that the situation will not develop into one that will make reconciliation almost impossible for the future? Another impression which I get

  775
  is this: You can, it is true, reduce the power of Congress openly, but you are driving the movement underground, and I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to deny it. This movement has been driven underground, and not only so, but the young people of India are being so steadily alienated that the prospect of co-operation, when your reforms come, is being reduced almost to a minimum. The right hon. Gentleman and his friends may be relying perhaps upon moderate opinion, and I very much hope that they will be able to retain the support of moderate opinion for a very long time to come, for they need it, but as far as I am able to read documents, the danger is that even moderate opinion, the most moderate opinion, may be speedily alienated, and there may be no bridge left between the Government and the forces that are opposed to them. What I fear so much is that the Government are ruining confidence, not on the part of the people whom they deem to be extremists, but also the confidence of people who hitherto have been said to be moderate in their outlook.
  3.30 p.m.
  My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked a question, and we would like to have an answer to-day. I think that 16th June next is the date for these ordinances to expire. What is to be put in their place? Do you expect suddenly, when you remove these ordinances, to find a desire for cordial cooperation with the Government, or are you proposing to continue the ordinances? Are you going to create a state of emergency? What is going to be the excuse for the continuation of the ordinances? I have said that there is a steady deterioration as far as I have been able to understand. There have been Lord Lothian's Committee and other committees. Am I right in saying that one or two of those committees have scarcely been able to get any evidence of any representative worth as they have travelled up and down the country? The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, indicating his dissent from that statement. I hear evidence of people having declined to give any measure of co-operation, because they take the view that the Government are not genuine in their attitude
  776
  towards the people, and towards the proposed changes in governmental institutions. You can, of course, impose a crushing victory temporarily upon these people. There is no doubt about that. But is that what you want? Do you not want at some time or other, and sooner rather than later, to have another attempt at contemplating the task of the Round Table Conference, and how can that task be completed if the only association we know with these people is the association of victor and vanquished?
  I am not going to trouble the Committee this afternoon with a long tale of outrageous treatment of people here and there, but if the right hon. Gentleman cares, I can give him one or two cases which, in my judgment, indicate that in some parts neither is sex respected nor age revered. I asked the right hon. Gentleman the other day whether it was true that five young girls had been stripped naked and whipped, and the right hon. Gentleman said "Yes."
  Sir S. HOARE: To what did I say "Yes"?
  Mr. JONES: I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether it was true that five young girls had been stripped naked and whipped, and, further, whether it was true that action had been taken against some men, and the answer was "Yes."
  Sir S. HOARE: The answer was that an inquiry was being held into allegations which had not yet been substantiated.
  Mr. JONES: There seems to be a misunderstanding. The question I put was, whether it was true that a certain number of girls had been whipped, and, if so, was it not also true that the people who were alleged to have done it were prosecuted?
  Sir S. HOARE: Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to clear this up? There really should be no misunderstanding on this question. Charges of this kind were made in a vernacular Indian paper. After the charges had been made, an inquiry was ordered and court proceedings are now actually in course, but, until the proceedings are over, nobody can say that the allegations were true.
  Mr. JONES: It seems that there is not much difference between us.
  Sir S. HOARE: We shall see it in the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow.
  Mr. JONES: Very good, but may I say, in passing, that if the right hon. Gentle man's view of it is right, and I am wrong, no one will be more ready to withdraw than I shall, because I take no pleasure in this. Then there is the Doctor Paton case. There again is a case where the right hon. Gentleman's Department agreed that they were in the wrong. Dr. Paton had personal influence and friends. The point is that the right hon. Gentleman is bound, as I am to rely upon evidence given to him by people who are implicated. There can be no other means to get information. The whole history of the world has shown that where the spirit of a people has been roused, where they have got hold of an idea that thus and thus they can secure their liberty, no application of force, either of machines or of men, can destroy the spirit or the soul of the people. As we found it fail in the case of the American Colonies, as we found it fail in South Africa, and as we found it fail in Ireland, so in the end we shall find it fail in India. There must be another way. The other way is the method of discussion, negotiation and conciliation, and I beg the right hon. Gentleman, before it is too late, to step back on to another course.
  Sir S. HOARE: Before I deal with the many political issues raised in this Debate, I should like to say a word of congratulation to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Wing-Commander James), who made a very interesting maiden speech. He spoke, first, about a subject in which I have been more interested than almost any other subject in the world, namely, aviation, and he said a well-merited word of praise of the work of the Royal Air Force on the North-West Frontier. It is interesting to know that only during the last few days we have had testimony to the work of the Royal Air Force from the Government of India which will dispel a good many suspicions which were at one time prevalent as to the value and wisdom of using the Air Force on the Frontier. This experience, in the view of the Government of India, goes to show that upon the whole the work of the Air Force is not only exceedingly economical but extremely
  778
  humane. It is avoiding the necessity of long-drawn-out punitive expeditions, and the last experience of the Air Force particularly goes to show that it is perfectly practicable now to discriminate between one building and another, and almost between one individual and another in any action that the Air Force has to take. My hon. and gallant Friend as a former member of the Royal Air Force will, I feel sure, be glad to hear this testimony by the Government of India. I can assure him also that I am taking a very close interest in the question of the backward districts and the less civilised populations of the great continent of India.
  I turn to the more political issues raised in the Debate, and I begin at once with the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, who asked me a number of very important questions. He began with the question of the Ottawa Conference, and asked under whose instructions the Indian delegation was to act; on the one hand, whether the Secretary of State for India was to control Indian politics from the Cabinet in Downing Street, or, on the other hand, whether Indian opinion was to have no controlling voice in the negotiations and decisions. I cannot do better than repeat what I said in answer to a question in this House the other day. So far as I am concerned, the last thing in the world that I wish to do is to dictate the course of the negotiations, from the Indian point of view, at Ottawa. Naturally, I have taken a very close interest in the delegation, and in the general problem of Empire-Indian trade, but I have purposely left the authorities in India a very free hand in making the selection of the delegation, and I am most anxious that Indian interests —I say this deliberately—should be the predominant interest considered by the Indian delegation at Ottawa. That is exactly the attitude taken up by every other part of the Empire. I do not at all want to see Indian interests in any way ignored. I think I cannot do better than read to the Leader of the Opposition the considered answer that the Government of India gave in the Assembly upon this question the other day:
  "The Government of India have accepted the invitation to send a delegation to the

  779
  Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa in July. They have been informed that the Agenda will be to discuss a policy of trade agreements between the different countries of the Empire, and they have been invited in particular to consider the question whether, having regard to the new tariff policy of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, Great Britain and India should enter into a tariff agreement embodying a reciprocal preferential regime so designed as to benefit the trade of both countries. His Excellency the Viceroy has, with the approval of the Secretary of State for India, nominated the following delegates to represent India at the Conference."
  Then follows the list of delegates. I am sure that anyone who understands the economic life of India will agree with me that the delegation, upon the whole, is very representative of the different phases of Indian economic life. At the end the Government of India stated:
  "If the conclusion of a trade agreement is recommended as a result of the Conference, any changes in tariffs which may be involved will be placed before the Legislature for its approval. The Government of India have no wish to put any such changes into effect unless the Indian Legislature is satisfied that they are in the interests of India."
  The right hon. Gentleman asked me what would happen if the Legislature and the delegates at the Conference disagree. I do not wish to contemplate such a disagreement, and I am not prepared here and now to answer a hypothetical question of that kind. I do not myself believe, in view of the constitution of the delegation and the statement made by the Government of India, that there is the least probability of such a disagreement, and I am not prepared to contemplate it.
  Mr. LANSBURY: Will there be a vote in which the nominated Members will take part?
  Sir S. HOARE: I am not prepared to go any further than the statement made by the Government of India. I hope that no such difference of opinion in the Legislature as the right hon. Gentleman contemplates will occur.
  Mr. LANSBURY: It very often does happen.
  Sir S. HOARE: No, not as often as people think. Then the right hon. Gentleman asked me about the policy of
  780
  the Government in relation to the Emergency Ordinances. There, again, the position to-day is very much the same as that which I described to the Committee during the last debate on India. I said then and I say now that the Ordinances will be kept in force so long as the emergency requires. I can say no more— [Interruption]. We have full powers to deal with any emergency that arises, and, if the emergency demands the continuance of the Ordinances, they will be continued. It is much too soon to come to any decision on that matter.
  Mr. LANSBURY: The question I asked was whether the Government of India have power to reimpose these Ordinances under the present law or must there be legislation?
  Sir S. HOARE: That is a technical legal question upon which I am not prepared to give a considered answer. My general answer would be "Yes, the Government of India has full power to deal with any emergency that may arise." It is much too soon to come to any decision in the matter, and it all depends upon what Congress is going to do two months hence, and what their attitude may be at that time toward the Government. Whatever measures may be necessary will be taken. I have also been asked whether the Government propose to take any steps, for example, by using an intermediary, to secure the co-operation of Mr. Gandhi. In this matter of co-operation the record of the Government is quite clear. His Majesty's Government and the Government of India persisted with success in their efforts to secure Mr. Gandhi's presence at last winter's Round Table Conference, and, as Mr. Gandhi himself would, I think, admit, we co-operated with him in the fullest and frankest way, not only in the Conference but outside it. We did our utmost to-maintain the relations so established, but our endeavours were frustrated by the action of Congress, particularly in the United Provinces and the North-West Frontier Province, and, finally, by the renewal of civil disobedience in January. There clearly cannot be any question of co-operation with anyone associated with civil disobedience. If Mr. Gandhi has a disposition to restore the relations which existed at the Round Table. Conference,

  781
  he will not find the slightest difficulty in conveying that fact to the Government without any intermediary, and the Government will earnestly consider the position thus created. But one thing is quite clear, that there will be no question of making a bargain with Congress as a condition of its co-operation.
  My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Burnley (Rear-Admiral Campbell) asked me a personal question as to whether I have had any correspondence with Mr. Gandhi since he was in prison. Reports of correspondence were published originally in the Indian Press. Those reports were repeated here, and I let it be known to the Press in London that there had been correspondence between us, but that the correspondence had nothing whatever to do with any negotiations of any kind for Mr. Gandhi's release. The correspondence was entirely connected with certain personal misunderstandings that were supposed to have arisen in a conversation between Mr. Gandhi and myself before he left London, and the only additional matter in the correspondence was certain observations of Mr. Gandhi on the present state of affairs. I tell my hon. and gallant Friend this so as to remove any possible misunderstanding. There was no question of any kind of negotiation. At the same time, there was this interchange of letters, and it was a very necessary interchange, because the last thing in the world that anyone wishes is that there should be any personal misunderstanding between two people who have had in recent months to play a rather prominent part in these negotiations.
  I come now to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill). We missed him very much in the last Indian Debate, and we are very glad to have him back once again to make one of his very eloquent speeches. I thought that, underlying a good deal of his speech, there was a feeling of satisfaction that, having gone to America, he had come back to find that the National Government had adopted in spirit and in detail the policy that he has so often propounded in recent years in this House. He was kind enough to congratulate me upon what he imagined was my change of heart. I have made,
  782
  over a period of two or three years, a long series of speeches upon Indian questions. Most of them have been very dull speeches; they have compared very badly with his own; but, looking back over that long series of speeches, I cannot see that I have altered in any detail. I have not moved either to the right or to the left, from those early days when first I became a member of the Round Table Conference.
  I have always said from the beginning that we have the two problems in India, the problem of law and order and the problem of constitutional advance; and we cannot dissociate the one from the other. I do not believe that I have changed in any way from the attitude that I took up, now more than two years ago. Let not my right hon. Friend think that there is any difference of opinion between myself and my colleagues on this matter. There is no difference of opinion between myself and my colleagues. Our policy to-day is just what it was when my right hon. Friend went to America in the winter; it has not changed at all. What has changed is the attitude of the representatives of Congress towards us. We have not altered our attitude in regard to co-operation; we have always been ready to co-operate with anyone who was prepared to co-operate with us. What has changed is the attitude of non-co-operation adopted by the Congress since last December. I am sorry that that change has taken place—
  Mr. BRACKEN: Did it not exist a long time before last December?
  Sir S. HOARE: I am not going back earlier than that, and I do not think it alters my argument. It is quite sufficient for my argument to say that our policy to-day is exactly the policy that we described when we discussed the White Paper last December. While I am delighted to have my right hon. Friend's congratulations on anything that I may do or not do at the India Office, I do not want to have them under false pretences, and I do not want him to assume that there has been any change of policy by me or by any Member of the National Government.
  Lastly, I come to the question that the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) asks me in almost all these Indian Debates. Time after time he brings up

  783
  the question of the Meerut trial. I have said to him over and over again that I very much regret the delays that have taken place. This trial has been going on for years. The hon. Member seemed to think to-day that the reason was not the reason that I gave in our last Debate, namely, the incessant delays made by the prisoners and the lawyers defending them, but delays made by the prosecution. I can tell him categorically that that is not the case. It is entirely due to the obstructive tactics adopted by the prisoners and their counsel. In the last Debate I suggested to him that the should use his influence with the prisoners to bring these dilatory tactics to an end, and I would repeat that invitation to him and tell him that, so far as the Government of India is concerned, we should like to see the trial brought to an end at the earliest possible date.
  Mr. MAXTON: I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman has the power to bring it to an end now by dismissing the whole thing.
  Sir S. HOARE: I am afraid I cannot adopt that suggestion. If the hon. Member wishes to end it, the real way is to stop the prisoners and their counsel adopting these dilatory tactics. There is not time to deal with all the details that have been raised. We are to have another Indian Debate, and they can be
  784
  dealt with then. I can, however, answer the question put by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones). He asked whether we were always going on governing by force. I cannot do better than read him this sentence:
  "Our reign in India, or anywhere else, has never stood on the basis of physical force alone, and it would be fatal to the British Empire if we were to try to base ourselves only upon it. The British way of doing things, as the Secretary of State for India, who feels intensely on the subject, has pointed out, has always aimed at the most effectual co-operation with the people of the country."
  Those are the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping ten years ago, and I cordially re-echo them this afternoon.
  Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again," put, and agreed to.—[Captain Margesson.]
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
  Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.
  Adjourned accordingly at Four o'Clock, until Monday next, 2nd May.

  FOREIGN OFFICE (STAFF).
  FOREIGN OFFICE (STAFF).
  POOR LAW RELIEF, SHROPSHIRE.
  POOR LAW RELIEF, SHROPSHIRE.