VICEROY’S BROADCAST DECLARATION

[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]

 

 

VICEROY’S BROADCAST DECLARATION

 

 

It is with profound regret that I have to announce that the conversations which, at my instance, had been inaugurated between the representatives of the Congress and the Muslim League have so far not achieved what I had hoped. The country is entitled to know, in a matter of such moment and at a time of such gravity, what was the nature of the proposition which I invited my friends in those two organizations to consider. I shall tomorrow publish correspondence which will make the position perfectly clear. Let me only say that my object has been, in these discussions, to bring together the leaders of the great parties and to endeavour to secure, as a result of personal contact between them, and with what personal assistance I could myself give, that measure of agreement in the Provinces which, in their view, would enable them to put forward proposals for a constructive advance at the Centre for the period of the war, such as would be represented by some expansion of the Governor-General’s Executive Council and by the inclusion in it of political leaders. My declaration of October 171 contemplated a consultative group. It offered an arrangement relatively so limited as that group only because of marked divergences of view between the great communities, divergences, the existence of which held out no hope of harmonious working at the Centre on the basis of joint membership of my Executive Council at a time when harmonious working was of first importance. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that that group holds out great possibilities for the future possibilities, I feel sure, greater than are commonly realized. I need not say that it is a profound disappointment to me, after so much endeavour on the part of His Majesty’s Government, on the part of those leaders with whom I have conferred and of their friends, as well as on my own part, that we have no more to show and that in so many Provinces we should be left with no choice but to use the emergency provisions inserted for that purpose in the Government of India Act.

As for those provisions, let me emphasize that they are an expedient and not a sanction. My own strong feeling in regard to their use I cannot better convey than by a paraphrase of the quotation that appears in Arabic characters upon the great gateway at Fatehpur Sikri. That quotation says: “Life is a bridge a bridge that you shall pass over. You shall not build your house upon it.” Nor, in the wider field, do I propose to take this disappointment as final, or to abandon the efforts I am making to bring about a friendly adjustment of the differences in this country to the end that we can continue to co-operate over the achievement of our common objectives, differences and difficulties such as those which now threaten to retard even reverse the course of constitutional development in India and the earliest attainment of the common goal will not disappear spontaneously, nor will they be conjured away by any refusal to recognize their existence. They will be resolved only by negotiations, carried out in a spirit of mutual accommodation and trust and with a firm resolve to succeed. I will say no more than that to-night. But I would ask for patience and for the goodwill of the Indian people and of the great political organizations their members and their leaders in the efforts I propose to continue to make. The difficulties are great. How great they are has been most clearly revealed by the events of the last six weeks. But the attempt to reconcile them is one which it is imperative to make and in which, whether I fail or I succeed, I shall spare no effort to bring about the result which is, I know, at the heart of all of those who care for India and for her future.