Current Topics

CHINA

One is apt readily to advise India to follow in the wake of China. While China's strugg1es are not without a bearing on India's striving after Swaraj, there is really no comparison between the two. China, for one thing, was never under the heel of the foreigner. That does not mean that foreigners like Japan, England, Russia and America had no influence over the progress of Chinese history during the last decade. That influence may have been for good or for evil. Albeit the interposition of the alien was not. designed to establish an overlordship so as to prevent China remaining as its own master and lord. China's drawwas the absence of a duly organized Central Government. There is no question of federal or unitary forms in countries where the constituent provinces have been for long integral factors of a compact, homogeneous nationality. The whole trouble arose from Manchuria, one of the provinces, not seeing eye to eye with the rest, and having fallen an easy prey to the blandishments of foreign 'friends' of China. Fortunately the disappearance of Chang from the scene of internecine war has led to the formation of a Central Government to which all provinces alike own allegiance now. Once again, Cathay stands in the array of nations on terms of equality and with a sense of pride and self-respect.

Why then do we say that India has nothing to learn from China? The reasons are obvious. There is nothing so deleterious and detrimental to the fostering of the national spirit or the assertion of nationalistic forces as the settled and orderly government duly established by a foreign race,-more so by an alien bureaucracy. Two evils are sedulously fostered and encouraged. The subject people enjoy a sense of false security, and succumb to the narcotic effects of a soporific administration. Nothing is left to the energy, resources or initiative of the children of the soil, while officialdom volunteers to be the custodian of their rights and responsibilities. And if an awakened section of the country should feel any pang over the thraldom imposed on the nation, good and timely care is taken to win over the less vocal elements to the side of Government. And the result is internal factions superimposed over external slavery. That spells national disaster once for all, making impossible all concerted action and joint effort. Every time the national movement raises its head, it is crushed with irresistible force, before it has time to make headway. In China there was no such complication. People were at liberty to drown the country into chaos, but out of that very chaos was evolved a cosmos in due time under the influence of time, if of nothing else. When therefore people ask in disdain what India would do, if the British left her shores, our only reply is that she would do what China did,-fight, create confusion and bloodshed, and then evolve an orderly Government.

THE SIMON COMMISSION

If ever people thought that the antipathy to the Royal Commission was on the wane, the results of the gesture made by Sir John Simon to the Punjab Committee must set at nought all doubts in the matter. If the promise of equal treatment in the matter of taking evidence could have satisfied notable Liberals like Sir Chimanlal Setalvad and Sir P. S. Sivaswami Iyer, Sir Tej Bhadur Sapru and Sir Pheroz Sethna, then surely we might have said that the days of boycott were numbered. But the refusal of these eminent Moderates to view the concession to the Punjab Committee as aught but puerile, leaves no doubt whatever in the matter. Indeed the strength of the boycott movement lay not in the refusal of the Congress to countenance the procedure of the Commission but of the Liberals,-men who had, in the midst of cavil and abuse, worked dyarchy and whose co-operation with the Royal Commission should have been taken for granted and as natural. Ah, that is the very thing now not forthcoming. That day boycott will have been blasted in India when a body of able, patriotic and distinguished men could be enlisted as the protagonists of the coming Reforms.

Will such a day come? It may, for, of the whole range of the boycott movements there is not one ideal, one motive power. To Jinnah, it is enough if a Royal warrant sets its seal upon the appointment of the Select, Committee of the Assembly. The Moderates themselves would be satisfied with even less-the inclusion of a number of Indians on the Commission. Of the two, the former is more exacting, while the 'latter is more impracticable. Neither may be conceded and boycott may remain unassailed. Either may be granted and the boycott may be broken. But we have had evidences of the breakdown of the boycott, even on simple show of concessions. Remarkable response has been forthcoming from South India merely on the announcement of equal treatment in the matter of taking evidence. What matters really is not evidence but report, and the authority with which that report would go before Parliament. As things stand, the Indian counterpart of the Report is but an addendum to that of the Royal Commission. It would be one out of a huge pile of enclosures. Neither tradition nor Royal warrant would sanctify the Indian product. Nor could a Royal warrant facilitate matters, for even if that were possible, there would be two conflicting reports of equal authority,-one British and the other Indian. To appoint Indians on the Royal Commission would be to court dissentient minutes; to prop up the Indian Committee by a Royal warrant would be to place before Parliament two conflicting reports of equal authority. Not to do either would be to court for the Royal Commission a fate worse than that negotiated for the Montford Reforms. If the longest path is really the shortest way home, why not Lords Birkenhead and Irwin take courage in both hands and settle the Indian problem by a Round Table Conference?

S. P.

BUDDHIST SCULPTURES IN ANDHRA

We understand that negotiations are in progress for the removal of some of the finest pieces out of the recently excavated sculptures of Nagarjunakonda and Gummadidurru to the Indian Museum at Calcutta. This is a colossal example of the mania for centralisation in all spheres. It was bad enough that, long years ago when national self-consciousness was not aroused in Andhra, most of the famous Amaravati sculptures were taken away to London. But at the present day, the Andhras are ready to resent any violation of their just rights. At Bezwada in the centre of Andhradesa, there are the beginnings of a fine Museum. What could be more appropriate than that these ancient monuments of Buddhist Art in Andhra-in fact, these are among the earliest specimens of that Art in all India-should be preserved on the banks of the Krishna? Next to Bezwada, Madras is the fittest place for them. But, no. They are wanted at Calcutta which already treasures the Bhattiprolu casket of the Buddha's relics. Public opinion in Andhra is unmistakably against a step which might appear to savour of vandalism. In the realm of Indian Art, Amaravati is a name to conjure with, and the Andhras who are inheritors of a rich tradition ought in all fairness to be permitted to preserve in their midst these remnants of a glorious era in Indian artistic expression.

K.R.