Dr Besant’s view on panel discussions

IN the course of an interview with a representative of the Advocate of India, Dr Annie Besant supplemented the statements and observations she made to our representative during her brief stay at Lahore. Regarding the sub-committee appointed by the Committee of the All-Parties Conference, she said it had branched off into two smaller sub-committees, one for framing a scheme of Swaraj and the other for settling the Hindu-Muslim question, and that while the latter had adjourned without doing any tangible work, the former had finished its labours within the prescribed time and submitted a unanimous report to the General Secretary, which would, however, not be issued to the Press until the other branch of the sub-committee had finished its work. We do not know if this does not mean an indefinite postponement of the publication of the report, because so far as the Hindu-Muslim branch of the sub-committee was concerned, Dr Besant said in the same breath that its “discussions could really never end if they were conducted as at present by both sides.” “After all the discussions that had taken place,” she added, “we were no wise than we were before, and when the committee met again on the 28th instant, it would probably begin its work afresh. Of the nature of the difficulties that confronted this branch of the sub-committee, she incidentally gave some idea to the interviewer. “The way Mr Jinnah put his case,” she said, “was indeed very clever, but it really in substance amounted to this, that the Mussalmans ought to have representation on the population basis where they were in a majority and special representation where they were in a minority.”