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A PPENDIX XVI
THE WAVELL PLAN
( i ) White Paper presented to Parliament on 14th June 1945 by the Secretary of State for India, containing His Majesty’s Government’s Proposal relating to the Government of India.
During the recent visit of Field-Marshal Viscount Wavell to this country His Majesty’s Government reviewed with him a number of problems and discussed particularly the present political situation in India.
Members will be aware that since the offer by His Majesty’s Government to India in March 1942 there has been no further progress towards the solution of the Indian constitutional problem.
As was then stated, the working out of India’s new constitutional system is a task which can only be carried through by the Indian peoples themselves.
While His Majesty’s Government are at all times most anxious to do their utmost to assist the Indians in the working out of a new constitutional settlement, it would be a contradiction in terms to-speak of the imposition by this country of self-governing institutions upon an unwilling India. Such a thing is not possible, nor could we accept the responsibility for enforcing such institutions at the very time when we were, by its purpose, withdrawing from all control of British Indian affairs.
The main constitutional position remains therefore as it was. The offer of March 1942 stands in its entirety without change or qualification. His Majesty’s Government still hope that the political leaders in India may be able to come to an agreement as to the procedure whereby India’s permanent future form of government can be determined.
His Majesty’s Government are, however, most anxious to make any contribution that is practicable to the breaking of the political deadlock in India. While that deadlock lasts not only political but social and economic progress is being hampered.
The Indian administration, over-burdened with the great tasks laid upon it by the war against Japan and by the planning for the post-war period, is further strained by the political tension that exists.
All that is so urgently required to be done for agricultural and industrial development and for the peasants and workers of