GREAT BRITAIN: India’s Open Door?

In the House of Commons Leopold Amery, Secretary of State for India, raised an angry fist. A roar of applause broke when he said: “We are not quitting India on anybody’s orders.’

There is not the slightest intention, the Secretary of State for India said, of allowing the Indian Government to negotiate with jailed Indian National Congress party leaders, “or allowing others to do so,” unless the Congress abandons “the policy of control of India by illegal and revolutionary methods.”

“The door remains open,” said the Secretary of State for India, “for the consideration of any proposals agreed to by the leaders of the other main parties within the framework of the British Government’s declaration of policy.” But the Secretary of State for India did not state how a representative wartime national Government could be formed without at least a nod toward the Congress.

With little more than a bandying of the words “liar” and “rat” by two excited members, the House approved the Government’s policy, 360-to-17.

The vote showed a surprising docility among Labor M.P.s, some of whom were rumored earlier to be urging Sir Stafford Cripps to resign his War Cabinet post in protest against Tory policies. It came a few days after 56 prominent Britons had signed a 400-word appeal to liberal, able Chakravarthi Rajagopalachariar (“C. R.”) urging him to form a national Government. C. R. flatly contradicted a recent Cripps statement that Gandhi had personally aborted an attempt at an Indian settlement last spring. Of the Secretary of State for India’s speech, Rajagopalachariar said: “The drift is far too perilous for the United Nations to be satisfied with Amery’s whitewash.”