An Excellent Suggestion

THERE is one suggestion made by the All-India Moderates Conference which we commend. It has for the first time among public bodies in India, enunciated the principle that “although a community may have a special electorate of its own, it should be open to any individual belonging to it to enroll himself in the general electorate” if he chooses to do so. We welcome this suggestion. In the first place as a matter of general principle every one should be at liberty to decide for himself whether his point of view in politics should be communal or national. If a Hindu or Mahomedan chooses to think that in civic and political affairs he is not only an Indian first, everything else afterwards, it would be absurd for the State to intervene and say he shall not do so. Apart from the general objections to the creation of permanent communal electorates so forcibly stated by the Secretary of State and the Viceroy in their report even the temporary setting up of such electorates is open to the objection that once they are set up it becomes increasingly difficult with the process of time to abolish them.