Communal representation

IT is a striking coincidence that about the time when so many leading men belonging to all communities and political parties, assembled at Delhi, were discussing the supposed advantages of communal representation as a means of securing the representation of minorities, a distinguished Indian scholar and politician (Dr Paranjpye) from another province was demonstrating to a Lahore audience the infinitely greater advantages of a better method. It is worthy of note that no one in Delhi was able to claim that communal representation was in itself a good rather than an evil. The utmost that has been claimed for it by any of its advocates whose outlook is not wholly communal is that it is a necessary evil in the present stage of our development, and the lesser of two such evils, in their opinion, being that large sections of the people should be content to go unrepresented or be inadequately represented. Whether this last one would be really a greater evil than the undoubted mischief which communal representation, under any system that necessarily tends to stereotype it, does to the vital interests of national life is open to very grave doubt. Our own opinion is that it is far better that communities and classes, who are in a minority, should for a time be under-represented than that a form and system of representation should be devised in their supposed interest. Being of doubtful benefit to themselves, it would tend to materially injure the whole of which they were parts of by giving it not merely the appearance but the character of a house divided against itself.

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