Official sophistry

WE have now before us the official report of the debate which took place in the Legislative Assembly on the constitution of the Royal Currency Commission. We invite the reader who can procure a copy of this report to go through it carefully, for it will give him an insight into the methods by which, in utter defiance of logic, of fairness, of common sense itself, the spokesmen for the Government in the House sometimes attempt to mislead it in regard to matters of great public importance, though not always with success. The issue before the House was perfectly plain. MA Jinnah had brought forward a motion, which was in effect and in intention a motion of censure upon the Government for the unsatisfactory constitution and composition of the Commission. The main ground of his attack was that, in constituting the Commission as it had done, the Government had deliberately defied the Assembly which had asked that the majority of the Commission’s members should be Indians and that its Chairman should also be an Indian, and had even failed to carry out its own undertaking to the House that the Indian representation would be adequate and effective. It was impossible in a debate of this kind to entirely exclude all reference to the persons actually appointed to the Commission, but so far as the principal speakers were concerned, this reference was both brief and couched in proper language. And yet, in the debate that followed, both the official spokesmen, and especially Sir Basil Blackett, not only did everything in their power to evade the real issue, but actually tried to make it appear as if Jinnah’s sole object was to attack Indian members of the Commission.