PM Baldwin’s speech

THE growing interest of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in India would undoubtedly be welcome if there were evidence that he was taking some pains to study the Indian point of view and the Indian side of questions. There was no evidence of such study in his Aberdeen speech. There is just as little evidence of it in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Show, in which India figured far more prominently than in any previous speech by the present Premier. Of course, there was a good word for the first elected President of the Legislative Assembly. “I read with particular pleasure,” Baldwin said, “some observations of the new Speaker upon taking the office to which he has recently succeeded. Hitherto a strong party man, he expounded the duties and responsibilities of his office in language which would not be unworthy of a Peel or an Ullswater.” This is high praise, and it is perfectly well deserved. But it required no deep study of Indian questions and no familiarity with the Indian point of view to bestow this praise on Vithalbhai Patel’s first speech in the Assembly after his election as President. Patel’s speech was commented upon in appreciative, even eulogistic terms, by leading British journals, including The Times, and Baldwin need not have read anything more than those comments in order to form or express the opinion he did. In any case, it gave no indication of Baldwin’s intentions in regard to India. For such indication we must go to other passages in the speech; and they clearly show that Baldwin has no mind of his own in regard to India, but is merely a gramophone of Lord Reading and Lord Birkenhead.