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For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com;dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net

 

 

LORD ZETLAND’S STATEMENT, November 7, 1939

 

 

I am grateful for this opportunity to make some observations on this matter and the House will, I hope, forgive me if my answer runs to some little length. I need hardly say that His Majesty’s Government shares the profound regret of the Governor-General at the failure of the consolations which he had been holding during the last week to produce an agreement between representatives of the Congress on the one hand and the All-India Muslim League on the other. May I remind the House briefly that the previous discussions, which the Governor-General had been so patiently conducting for several weeks past, had convinced him that there was little, if any, prospect of securing an agreement on plans which he had been considering with the object of bringing Indians into association with the Central Government of India on the conduct of war, unless some accommodation could first be reached on the difficulties felt by the Moslems as to their position in the Provinces where the Congress Governments were in power? As the House will have seen from the documents published yesterday, that the Congress has definitely refused to consider any concrete plans such as those outlined by the Governor-General, unless His Majesty’s Government should be willing first to make a declaration to the effect that India is an independent nation and that His Majesty’s Government will raise no opposition to her future form of Government being determined, without their intervention, by a Constituent Assembly called upon the widest possible basis of franchise and by agreement in regard to communal representation.

The Congress have further consistently taken the line which they still maintain that the fact there are racial and religious minorities in India is of no relevance in that connection and that it has always been the intention of the Congress to secure through the constitution to be framed by Indians themselves such protection for their rights as may prove acceptable to the minorities. His Majesty’s Government fined it impossible to accept this position. The long standing British connection with India has left His Majesty’s Government with obligation towards her which it is impossible for them to shed by disinteresting themselves wholly in the shaping of her future form of Government. Moreover, one outstanding result of the recent discussions in which the Governor-General has been engaged with representatives of all parties and interests in India has been to establish beyond doubt the fact that a declaration in the sense proposed with the summary abandonment by His Majesty’s Government of their position in India would be far from acceptable to large sections of Indian population. But this does not mean that we had in any sense weakened in our determination to assist India by such means as are in our power to reach without avoidable delay the position to the British Commonwealth of Nations to which we are pledged. Let me take this opportunity for removing some doubts and suspicions which appear to have been felt in India about reference in the recent India about in the House of Commons by Lord Privy Seal to “Dominion Status of 1926” as being the status we contemplate for India. The suggestion, I understand, has been made that the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 has produced for the Dominions to which the Statute applies a status which is somewhat different from and is superior to the relationship described in the Balfour Declaration contained in the report of Imperial Conference of 1926.

This House at all events will have no difficulty in believing me when I say that there is no foundation for any such suggestion. My Right Honourable friend (Sir Samuel Hoare) referred to Dominion Status of 1926 because it was in that year the Imperial Conference described the status of the Dominions and the status so described has not been altered by anything which has since occurred, the Statute of Westminster having merely given legal effect to certain consequences of the constitutional position as was then recognized. It was our hope that the plans which the Governor-General has indicated, including as they did the incorporation of the leaders of the main political parties in India in the Central Government, if they could have been brought into play, would have done much towards facilitating the hoping for a reconsideration by the parties interested and His Majesty’s Government warmly approve the readiness which he has expressed to be of such service as he can whenever an opportunity occurs. Meanwhile the position at the moment is that in Bengal, the Punjab and Sind Ministries which in those Provinces do not owe allegiance to the Congress Party remain in office; in five of the remaining eight Provinces where the Congress Governments have been in power, those Governments have now resigned and in the other three Provinces the Governments are expected to resign in the very near future. There appears to be in one Province Assam—the possibility of an alternative government, but with this one exception the Governors have found or will very shortly find themselves with no option, since alternative Ministries in a position to command the confidence of the legislature are not forthcoming, but to assume to themselves by proclamation powers which the provisions in the Act enable them to assume in such a situation. Let me make it plain that Section 93 of the Act under which this action has been taken is in no sense a penal provision; it simply provides a machinery the possible necessity for which Parliament in its wisdom foresaw if, to quote the words of the Act, “a situation has arisen in which the Government of Province cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Act for carrying on the King’s Government.”

It is our hope that in the absence of opposition from supporters of the Congress or from other quarters, the Governors with the aid of their official advisers and members of the public services will succeed in conducting smoothly and efficiently the administration of the Provinces, the difference being obviously a fundamental difference that their actions will be decided in responsibility to this House, to this Parliament; and not in pursuance of advice tendered to them by Ministers responsible to the Provincial legislature. We greatly regret that the Ministries which have with so much zeal been carrying on the Government of their great Provinces and tackling with energy and resource the many problems with which administration has naturally brought them into contact should have found it necessary to withhold their further services from their country, but we refuse to believe that this withdrawal will be for long and we shall continue to hope, so long as any grounds for such hope remain, that proclamations by the Governors need have only a temporary duration, for I can assure the House that the Governors will be only too ready to recall to their counsels responsible advisers as soon as they are available.

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