The Punjab Council’s verdict

THE Punjab Legislative Council deserves to be warmly and sincerely congratulated not only on the result of the debate on the adjournment motion on Wednesday, but on the general tenor of the speeches made by the Indian non-official members on the occasion. The motion itself described the majority report of the Muddiman Committee as “retrograde and unsatisfactory”, and by passing it without a single dissentient voice the non-official members of the council conclusively demonstrated that in this matter, at any rate, there was no difference of opinion between them and the rest of political India. One has only to remember that among those who spoke in favour of the motion and against the majority report were such habitual supporters of the Government as Ch Shahabuddin and Sir Gopaldas Bhandari, to form some idea of the unanimity of opinion that existed in the Indian portion of the House in this vital matter. The former described the recommendations of the majority as being of a trivial nature, while the latter compendiously characterised the report as a whole as unsatisfactory. That this unanimity was partly due to the wise decision of the Government not to take part in the debate must be frankly admitted, and to this extent the thanks of the public are also due to it. It was inevitable that the existence of communal differences would figure largely in the debate, but the general sense of the House was that these differences represented only a transitional stage in the country’s advance towards self-governing nationhood and would disappear when Swaraj was established.