INDIA AND THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

NO excessive importance will be attached in India to the forecast of the Special Correspondent of the Observer regarding the policy which the Labour government is likely to follow in India. There is certainly nothing in it either to greatly encourage or greatly depress anyone. To say that Labour has every sympathy with Indian aspirations is to repeat what every British government and every British statesman who has had anything to do with India has said in the past. Did not Lord Sydenham and Sir Michael O’Dwyer in their days profess the same sympathy with Indian aspirations? Nor is there anything startlingly new or unexpected in the statement that “the Labour government will not in any way be prepared to dissociate itself altogether from the main principle underlying the Montagu Chelmsford Reforms, namely, that further stages of India’s political advancement must, to some extent, depend on proof furnished by the Indians themselves of increased political capacity and responsibility.” Of course, such an attitude is diametrically opposed to the principle of self-determination to which Labour committed itself in regard to India in the days of its obscurity and impotence. But no one in India ever cherished the delusion that Labour in office would entirely fulfil the hopes roused by Labour when it only occupied a very humble place on the Opposition benches. Nor, for our part, do we believe in one people conceding to another such a thing as the principle of self-determination in circumstances where it implies a measure of self-renunciation, except as the result of pressure on the part of the latter, which it finds more or less irresistible.

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