A ridiculous suggestion

Lahore, Friday, September 12, 1924

IT has scarcely even been our lot to come across a more ridiculous suggestion than that made by the Statesman in a recent with reference of Mr CR Das’ proposal that a pact should be concluded between Great Britain and India. Starting with the assumptions that “the maintenance by the British of internal order and external security is indispensable to schemes of the government in this country,” and that “now as in the time of Clive and Warren Hastings, England supplied the sole possible bond of union between Hindus and Muslims, Bengalis and Baluchis, Rajputs and Tamils, Sikh and Lingayats, Marwadis and Moplas,” the journal has no difficulty in arriving at the comfortable and self-satisfying conclusion that “those who take dominion status as their ideal must begin by recognising that such a position can never be conferred on India, but only on the British Government of India.” Since the conferring of dominion status on a government, which in its constitution no less than in its personnel is alien, is a contradiction in terms, this means in plain English that India is never to have dominion status, a responsible government, self-government, Swaraj or by whatever other name one may call what every patriotic and self-respecting Indian regards as his country’s inalienable birthright, the right to manage her affairs in her own way without let or hindrance from any outside authority. Let not the reader imagine for one moment that we are going to insult his intelligence or patriotism by entering into an argument with the author of this infamous suggestion, a suggestion of which it is enough to say that it is neither true nor false, because it is absurd.