SIR SAMUEL HOARE’S SPEECH, October 26, 1939

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

SIR SAMUEL HOARE’S SPEECH, October 26, 1939

 

 

Mr. Wedgwood Benn and I have very often confronted each other in the field of Indian debate. We have sometimes disagreed, and very strongly disagreed, but we have sometimes agreed. Tonight.  let us for a few moments look back upon the occasions on which we have agreed. I very well remember one of them when he and I, some eight or nine years ago in this House, were defending Lord Irwin from criticisms of those who said, he ought not to have had conversations with Mahatma Gandhi. I am sure that he and I are agreed that today it is a matter of satisfaction that the Viceroy should see leaders of the principal parties concerned, even the most extreme leaders, even my old fellow-Harivadan, Pandit Nehru. Since Mr. Wedgwood Benn and I last took part in these Indian debates, many events of staggering importance have taken place in the world. At a time when democracies were being destroyed in Europe, we have seen eleven great democratic Governments come into being in India and join their forces with democratic peoples of the world. These ought surely to be grounds for great satisfaction to every member of the House.

It was with this background on the Indian achievement that on September 3 of this year India and the British Commonwealth of Nations were faced with war. The crisis found India united in its determination to resist brute force and in the realization that the danger was a common danger threatening every part of the British Commonwealth of Nations. It was in the face of this unity that the Viceroy showed his whole-hearted and sincere desire for Indian goodwill and co-operation. he had a series of interviews with the leaders of Indian opinion and he made two definite proposals. The first was rather in the nature of a pledge. It was a clear and definite statement that, at the end of the war, there would be a reconsideration of the constitutional problem in the light of the experience of recent years. Secondly, with a view to availing himself of Indian advice and with the intention of bringing Indian leaders within his confidence, he suggested that a Consultative Committee should be formed to discuss with him many problems arising out of the war, and to bring him into the closest and most constant contact with the trends of Indian opinion. The proposal regarding the Consultative Committee was made with the full desire to obtain the greatest possible co-operation with the principal bodies of Indian public opinion. The Congress, admittedly the greatest party in India, rejected it. Non- Congress India representing, it must be remembered, many millions of Indians, substantially accepted it. It may be asked; would it not have been possible for the Viceroy to have gone further and made some kind of proposal that would have avoided this division of opinion between Congress and non-Congress India? This is the first question, and it is a very important question, to which I would invite the attention of the House.

If the members are to follow its implications, they must recall to their minds some of the most important discussions that took place over the Government of India Act. They centred round the pledge of Dominion Status and the aim of the Indian policy. These pledges, as Mr. Wedgwood Benn has said, were repeated time after time. They were reaffirmed in very precise terms in the speech with which I introduced the second reading of the Government of India Bill. I made it clear, and I make it clear again today, that we stood by Lord Irwin’s pledge and that when we spoke of Dominion Status we meant what we said, and did not mean some system of government that deprived India of the full status of equality with other members of the British Commonwealth. There are no two kinds of Dominion Status as some people seem to think. The Dominion Status that we contemplated was the Dominion Status which has been described by Mr. Wedgwood Benn the Dominion Status of 1926. I went on to state that Dominion Status is not a prize that is given to a deserving community, but is the recognition of the facts that actually exist. As soon as these facts exist in India, and in my view the sooner they exist the better, the aim of our policy will be achieved. If there are difficulties in the way, they are not of our making.

They are inherent in the way they are between the classes and communities in the great sub-continent. It must be the aim of the Indians themselves to remove these divisions just as it should be our aim to help Indians in their task. So far are we from wishing to divide and govern that we regard these divisions as a calamity and are ready to do our utmost to remove them. We have shown our good faith in the matter. We showed it when we made the Communal Award. At that time supposing we had wished to divide and conquer, we might very well have said: Settle your own communal differences first. Until you have settled them there can be no constitutional advance. We did not take that course, but at great risk to ourselves and in the face of much criticism, we made the Communal Award without which provincial autonomy would have been impossible. But in spite of our Award, these divisions still exist, and, until they are removed, we have responsibilities to the minorities that we cannot repudiate. That was our position in 1935, and it is our position today. We wish to see these divisions removed, but we shall never get them removed if we shut our eyes to their existence and refuse to admit that they are there.

It is these divisions that have made so difficult the task of setting up responsible government at the Centre and of achieving the great ideal of an All-India Federation. The Princes are afraid of domination by British India; the Muslims are firmly opposed to a Hindu majority at the Center. The Depressed Classes and other minorities genuinely believe that responsible government meaning a Government dependent on the Hindu majority, will sacrifice their interests. These anxieties will exist. I wish they did not. But as long as they exist, it is impossible for the Government to accept the demand for immediate and full responsibility at the Centre on a particular date. If we did so we should be false to the pledges that time after time we have given in the most solemn words to the Muslims, other minorities and the European community. It may be said, ‘Supposing that full and immediate responsibility at the Centre is impossible, are there not other steps that could be taken to show our good faith and to make clear to India that the goal is just as much in our minds today as it was when we made those pledges four years ago?’ Mr. Wedgwood Benn himself made a number of these suggestions this afternoon and I will try to deal with them. Firstly, let me disabuse him of the idea which I think he held that we are contemplating in the near future on Imperial War Cabinet in London and that in it India ought to be represented by more than a single representative. At present there is no intention to set up an Imperial War Cabinet of that kind. If and when the time comes, I will certainly remember the observations he has made on the subject, and I imagine they will be given extremely careful attention. Next he spoke on the project that has been discussed more than once before.

He asked: “Would it not be possible to introduce into the Viceroy’s Council political leaders who would hold portfolios in certain of the great departments?” I have said, this is not a new proposal, as I remember its being made during the discussions of the Joint Select Committee. I think the Leader of the Opposition himself made it at one time. We went fully into it then and at that time we found ourselves confronted by certain difficulties in the way of its adoption. I do not enumerate those difficulties tonight. I wish to close no door; I wish to explore every possibility within the ambit of the Government of India Act. Mr. Wedgwood Benn then spoke of the discussions that took place in the last War on the Subject of the constitution. He mentioned the Montagu-Chelmsford discussions and asked whether it would be possible for discussions of that kind to take place in the course of this war. I do not wish to give a final answer but I would point out that in certain respects the situation today differs a good deal from the situation at the time of the Montagu-Chelmsford discussions. The issues had not then become so bitter as they have today. I am thinking more particularly of the communal issue. Further, at any rate at the beginning of a war, it seems to me impossible for discussions of that kind to take place.

The Montagu-Chelmsford discussions only took place I think, three years after the beginning of the last War. As I have said, however, I would rather not give a final answer tonight on a point of that kind. Nor indeed would I give a final answer on another point, Mr. Wedgwood Benn has risen, namely, that there should be a general election in India. At any rate, at the beginning of a war general election would seem to me to be almost impossible. In India, officials are working night and day on war work. Moreover, there would be the fact that the communal feelings would, I am sure, be very much aroused in an election and while again I do not want to dogmatize and use terms like ‘never’ and ‘in no circumstances’ I would say that as things are today, a general election to the Central Legislature would in my opinion be impossible. To come back to the broad question of consultation, the Viceroy has not tied himself down to the exact methods of this consultation. It is essentially a question to be settled between him and the political leaders. I am able to state that he is ready to discuss the method and details with the leaders, and he proposes without delay to send an invitation to meet him for these discussions. Until these and other discussions take place, I claim that it would be a blunder of the first magnitude to take up an irrevocable position.

Let the Indian leaders weigh these possibilities. Let them meet and discuss them once again with the Viceroy, and let them also ponder once again upon the alternatives. As regards the alternative of direct and immediate responsibility at the Centre, I hope I have convinced the House that in the present circumstances it is impossible to accept an alternative of that kind. I come to another alternative, and I would ask the Indian leaders seriously once again to ponder upon it. I wish indeed that I had not to make any reference to it at all. It is the alternative under which are Indian Congress goes its own way, and the British Government and the minority communities in India go theirs. If it came to this issue, we should have no choice. The King Emperor’s Government must be carried on, and it would be carried on with efficiency, with strength and with justice. We, like any other Government in similar circumstances, would give the Viceroy our full support. But let every man of goodwill in India and Great Britain contemplates the waste that such a chapter of non co-operation would mean. There would be a waste of all our constitutional efforts with these many years of Round Table Conferences, Joint Select Committees and debates in this House.

I hoped that when the Act came into force, this chapter would be brought to an end. But it is there now in the face of the greatest crisis that has ever confronted the world, a crisis in which our danger is India’s and India’s danger ours, in which our determination to set up new and better order in the world is as great as India’s and India’s is as great as ours. There is grave risk of our drifting into a position in which we shall be wrangling with each other instead of fighting the enemy on the common front. I am told, though I can scarcely believe it, that it being said in some quarters in India that the British Government is searching for a conflict. I repudiate that suggestion with all the power I have. The British Government wants co-operation and not conflict. The British Government wants to see the aim of its policy achieved and conditions realized in which India can take its true place in the British Commonwealth of free peoples. Non-co-operation may put the clock back for years. Whether its promoters desire it or not, non-co-operation leads to civil disobedience, to breaches of law and order and to a vicious circle of riot and repression from which we had hoped to have escaped forever. Until these things actually happen, I will not believe that they are going to happen. I shall continue to believe that when these great peoples of our own and the peoples of India are faced with a common danger and inspired with a common ideal, that non-co-operation of any large section of a community would be a calamity and futility of the first magnitude.

Millions of Indians in British India and in the States agree with this view. They wish to co-operate with us just as much as we wish to work with them. And the Congress party itself I quote the words of Mr. Gandhi spoken three days ago “wanted to help Britain by giving her moral support which was its specialty. The Congress would no give this unless it was clear that Britain’s morality was wholly sound.” I claim that our position is as sound as a bell. In good faith and perfect sincerity, we have started India on the greatest constitutional experiment that the world had ever seen. We have long ago set aside imperialistic ambitions. We believe that our mission in the world is not to govern other people but to help other people to govern themselves. It was in this spirit that Parliament passed a series of great Acts which gave the Dominions their free constitution. It was in this spirit that we passed the Government of India Act of 1935 and under which, of our own free will, we transferred wide authority to the Indian Government. It is in this spirit that we intend to administer the Act and during the war to do our utmost to remove the divisions that stand in the way of the full achievement. And when the war ends, and ends victoriously as a result of the Empire’s united efforts, we mean to proceed at once to deal with the constitutional difficulties that have emerged in the experience of recent years. Non-co-operation, and non-co-operation alone, will stop this swift and steady progress. . . . Such a breach in the common front would be a repudiation at once of the gravest moments in the world’s history of the call to both of us to resist the aggressor, to fight brute forces and to build by a new and better order in the world.  “It was not” I quote the Prime Minister’s weighty words of October 12 “with any vindictive purpose that we embarked on the war but simply in defence of freedom.” It is not alone freedom of small nations that is at stake. There is also in jeopardy the peaceful existence of Great Britain, the Dominions, India, and the rest of the British Empire, France and indeed of all freedom-loving nations. Whatever may be the issue of the present struggle and in whatever way it may be brought to a conclusion, the world will not be the same world that we have known before.

In this new world India has a great part to play, perhaps in area the greatest of any Asiatic country, a great part also in the British Commonwealth of Nations, for it will be an outward and visible sign that with us there is no racial discrimination. It has a great part also to play in the world at large, for India should stand out as a model of a League of Nations from which war has for generations been banished and the rule of law and justice firmly set. With this great hope before us let us once and for all abandon the barren paths of non-co-operation and help each other to win the war and to win peace and in this double victory to take a great step towards the fruition of India’s hopes.