By "AN INDIAN NATIONALIST"

The recent change of attitude on the part of Sir Samuel Hoare, the Secretary of State for India, towards the Round Table Conference might come as a surprise to those who are uninstructed either in the history of the last twenty years or in the ways of British statesmen. If only we knew what men like Asquith and Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Churchill did to Ireland during the Great War, there would be little room for surprise or even doubt in the matter. It was only to be expected from the teaching of history that India could fare no better after the War than Ireland during a period of national crisis. And too, India is an Oriental country while Ireland is peopled by a nation much nearer to the English people in life, manners and religion. Ireland is a country brought under British domination for about eight centuries and deprived of its identity for over a century. India's subjection is not much over a hundred years.

Certain outstanding events that had happened prior to the Great War and during it, may be profitably recalled at this stage, in order to show the close parallel that exists between the policy pursued in Ireland then and the policy now being pursued here. One witnesses the same prevarication, the same dubiety of aim and purpose, the same dilatoriness of procedure and finally, the same opportunism ending in what amounts to a breach of faith. An Irish Home Rule Bill was projected in 1912, and Ireland was confronted with the same problem of stages that faces India today. Only, with Ireland, the deductions that were intended related to a dismemberment from the outset. Here in India, we have started with a much-advertised unity of the country through a Federation and are perilously near a dismemberment through its failure. Again in Ireland, at first there was no thought of any deduction of power through reservations or safeguards, which however cropped up suddenly towards the end of their ‘Convention,’ while here we have started with safeguards and seem likely to end only with them. In both countries, as we shall see presently, there have been assiduous endeavours to deduct both territory and power from the Nation to which ostensibly the transference of all authority is contemplated and even advertised.

Let us take a few details into consideration. We have already stated that a Home Rule Bill was contemplated in 1912 by Mr. Asquith's Government. Its details were kept a close secret. It was only in 1914 that matters were pressed to an issue. Mr. Asquith promised that his Bill of 1912 would be incomplete without an Amending Bill and would be made operative only when the latter was passed. The fact was that, while the partition of Ireland had been decided upon and was made further inevitable by the minatory conduct of Sir Edward Carson and his followers, the Liberal Government had not the courage to own it up. Their talk of two Bills was certainly dishonest as later events would show. It was to draft the Amending Bill that a small committee was appointed. The object of the Amending Bill was really to make the exclusion of Ulster temporary and limited to the period of the War. Accordingly, heads of agreement were drawn up between the Redmondites and the Government of the day. But when it came to a question of publication of these ‘heads of agreement,’ it was found that there was a total variation from the original. Mr. Redmond, the Moderate leader, loudly protested, but in vain. He was challenged to produce the original by his friends and opponents alike. He would not. Government were challenged to do likewise. They would not. The former would not produce the original, apparently because it contained a clause that the existing Irish members of Parliament should continue to hold their stipendiary positions at Westminster and yet hold office, virtually as ex-officio members of the new Parliament at Dublin. The bargain was nothing creditable to Mr. Redmond or to the nascent nationalism of Ireland. And it was only when Government went back even upon this, that it provoked Mr. Redmond and his men to expose the Government. On the Government side they would not publish the original ‘heads of agreement’ because their version was substantially different from the original, as can be seen from the few specimens indicated briefly as follows:

Mr. Redmond gave Ireland to understand that Home Rule Act was to come into immediate operation.

The actual text said: "The Government of Ireland Act, 1914, to be brought into operation as soon as possible after the passing the Bill, subject to the modifications necessitated by their instructions."

According to Mr. Redmond, an Amending Bill was to be introduced as a strictly War Emergency Act, to cover only the period of the War, and a short specified interval after it. During this War Emergency period the six Ulster counties to be left as at present under the Imperial Government.

According to the actual text, the said Act was "not to apply to the Excluded Area, which is to consist of the six counties of Antrium …, including the Parliamentary Boroughs, Belfast, Londonderry and Newry." As regarded the excluded Area, "the Executive power of His Majesty to be administered by a Secretary of State through such offices and Departments as may be directed by order of His Majesty in Council, those offices and Departments not to be in any way responsible to the Irish Government."

This virtually closes one chapter of the Irish struggle. That jugglery now being practised by Sir Samuel Hoare about a ‘Single Bill’ may be compared with the jugglery practised by Mr. Asquith and Lord Londonderry. In Ireland it was an Amending bill to be simultaneous with the original Bill. But there was no doubt left in the minds of anybody that the Amending Bill was all important as it made the exclusion of Ulster permanent. With us it is a ‘single Bill,’ but everybody knows that it is Provincial Autonomy that counts and Federation is made remote i.e., exclusion of the 670 Ulsters of India is made more or less permanent.

Irish affairs took a new turn with the ebb in the fortunes of England in the Great War. In 1916 and 1917, an earnest attempt was made to secure the participation of the U. S. A. on the side of the Allies, and it was well-known how intense were the American sympathies with Irish aspirations. Lloyd George, who took charge of the Irish Question on the eve of the crisis, therefore thought it necessary to placate President Wilson and organised a show of settlement with Ireland. From this moment forward the analogy between the policy in Ireland and the policy in India becomes markedly identical. A Convention, called "a convention of Irishmen of all creeds and parties" was summoned to draft a "Constitution for the better Government of Ireland within the Empire" and the Prime Minister pledged the Government to carry into law any proposals of the ‘Convention’ which might secure ‘the substantial agreement’ of its members.

Compare with this the objects of the London Conference–as the India Round Table, so called, has all along been termed in official language– as defined by Lord Irwin on several occasions. Lord Irwin stated, in announcing the Conference at first, then on July 9^th 1930 in addressing the Central Legislature in India, and in between, in answering a Muslim deputation, that "the object of the London Conference was to explore the largest measure of unity between the various parties and sections in India, for proposals which it later would be the duty of the Cabinet to place before Parliament.

From the wording quoted above relating to the terms of reference, one hopes that Ireland might have fared better, for, in reference to India it leaves no doubt that the largest measure of unity is to be explored not as the basis of but merely for the Cabinet proposals. If the Government were honest, they could readily have said, "the greatest measure of unity, in accordance with which the Cabinet would later lay proposals." But no such thing was said or meant. With Ireland, however, the language is more definite but as we shall see later, the words ‘substantial agreement’ were even a perverse and impossible meaning, when it was decided to break up the Convention.

So far we have dealt with the terms of reference of the Irish Convention of 1917 and the Indian R. T. C. of 1930-32. Let us study the composition of these bodies. In Ireland as in India, the Convention was a large body composed of a hundred members. In India the first R. T. C. was composed of 92 and the second of 103 members. But more than the numbers, the personnel arrests attention. In Ireland there was to be a substratum of Presidents of Corporations and Mayors of Councils, a middle layer of the elderly Bishops and clergymen, and an upper stratum of the representatives of the three parties from among the Irish members of parliament; to which should be added certain nominees of the Government and a few representatives of Labour. Mr. Redmond's sympathies were easily secured, because the local bodies were chiefly peopled by men who were allied to the Hibernians of Redmond. In India the composition of the two Conferences is too well known. In Ireland, Mr. William O'Brien implored that a Conference should not be an unwieldy body but should be limited to a dozen representatives of different parties, and also advised that the growing party of Sinn Feiners should be given a share in the representation. Government said that they would have to ‘fight’ the Sinn Feiners and carried on with the 100 Convention. Here in India, we know how the Government fought the Congress in the first Conference and stabbed the Conference since.

In Ireland, no secret was made of the fact that Lloyd George’s proposals constituted a war measure and not an Irish measure. His whole object was to keep up a show until the American army was well on its way to the battle-fields in France. And when once that was secured, the assembly of talkers was bundled out of notice. The Convention had a miscarriage after eight months of gestation. By the fifth month it became lifeless. As the American sympathies were being won, the Irish Convention which had been talking all the while with determination not to come to grips with any serious business, was put out of action. A sub-committee was approved in place of the larger Convention consisting of nine members, and in addition two or three roving committees were appointed to investigate the land purchase question, and the Irish mines and minerals question. Compare the Consultative Committee appointed in India and the three roving committees, namely the Franchise Committee, the Federal Finance Committee and the States Relations committee, presided over by ‘junior politicians,’ as Churchill would say such as Lothian, Percy and Davidson. As the Consultative committee in India is virtually stabbed, so was the sub-committee in Ireland put out of action, and the similarity of treatment meted out to the two bodies at this stage is even more complete than, that in the previous stages. In either case, to anticipate the fate of the ‘Convention’ or the ‘Conference’ and to predict that they were only meant to expose the failure of Indians or Irishmen to come to an agreement among themselves, would have looked undoubtedly cynical, had it. not been for the confirmation of such predictions by the later experiences in both cases. In Ireland, Mr. Redmond and his fellow Hibernians started with the utmost faith, in the midst of ridicule and opposition by the younger generation, and doubts of the "All for the Irelanders." In India, the members of the Round Table Conference braved it all and made a pilgrimage to see it through in the midst of thousands of countrymen in prison. When the purpose for which the Irish Convention was convened fulfilled itself and Dr. Wilson joined the War, the Liberal Government under the presidentship of Lloyd George flung two lances at the Irish Convention and put an end to it. The first was a peculiar meaning given to the expression ‘substantial agreement.’ For the first time, it was explained that ‘substantial agreement’ meant and included the agreement of the Ulster representatives in the Convention with the rest. The case of Ireland was prejudged. She was not treated as a single country whose dismemberment was to be arrived at by a substantial agreement in favour of it, but as an already dismembered nationality whose union or reunion was to be contingent upon the consent of a section avowedly hostile to it. It was that the apprehensions of partition entertained from the very outset were fully realised through the disingenuous interpretation of two plain English words by the Cabinet.

But even a more dishonest attitude was taken by Bonar Law when he for the first time intimated towards the fag-end of the sittings of the Convention that, "in any case, Excise and Customs" were to be reserved in the hands of the English Government. There had been no such talk of reservations at any previous stage. Customs represented £2,000,000 while Excise answered for £14,000,000. In the end, the English Cabinet was prepared to abate its demand of Excise but Customs was enough to break the back of the Convention. It is easy now at this distance of time to see why Customs was sought to be reserved. It nearly represented the land annuities which are now the bone of contention between Mr. Thomas and Mr. de Valera. If the Customs had been reserved, there would have been no such contention now. For one reason or another and still another, the Irish Convention came to and end when Mr. Redmond saw the folly of ever having joined it and withdrew.

In India, we have not fared no better. The first Round Table Conference was brought to an end almost with the determination that the Congress should be brought in. The Indian Sin Feiners were no longer to be ‘fought.’ The story of the Peace Pact and Gandhi’s participation in the Round Table Conference is fresh in the memory of the public. He did not mince matters but demanded a complete transference of power and possession, with certain limited rights and privileges to those hitherto in power. This was unpalatable to the British. The very idea of ‘agreed decisions’ between Indians and the British was anathema, and a third Round Table Conference would only mean respecting such agreed decisions however attenuated they may be. Accordingly the Conference was unceremoniously scrapped. And here we stand at a point at which Ireland stood before the ‘Black and Tan’ days.In Ireland they acted for over a year and a half before peace was in sight and the rebel leader de Valera was invited by Lloyd George. Here is a lesson and a warning to the Moderates. Let them not dismiss the issue with the fond thought that in Ireland it was violence that forced the peace. Non-violent Non-co-operation was carried on successfully in India for over eleven months in 1930-31 and may perhaps be again operative much longer now, before an honourable peace can be achieved.

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