UNDER-PRIVILIGED . . . . . . . . . OPPRESSORS 525
CASTE HINDU DOMINATION
“One thing however there is that we must not do whatever happens: we must not allow British troops or British Officers in the Indian Army to become agencies and instruments of enforcing Caste Hindu domination upon 90,000,000 Muslims and 60,000,000 Untouchables, nor must the prestige or authority of the British power in India even in its sunset be used in partnership on either side of these profound and awful cleavages.
“For such a course to be used to enforce religious and party victory upon minorities of scores of millions would seem to combine the disadvantages of all the policies and lead us ever deeper in tragedy without giving us relief from our burdens, or liberation, however sadly purchased from moral and factual responsibility.
“It is because we feel that these issues should be placed bluntly and plainly before the British and the Indian peoples even amid their present distresses and perplexities that we thought it our bounden duty to ask for this debate.” (Loud Opposition cheers).
MR. BUTLER EXPLAINS TORY STAND
Winding up for the opposition, Mr. R. A. Butler, former Under-Secretary of State for India, said that the opportunities he had of meeting Indian Statesmen convinced him that in the work he had done with them there were no statesmen of higher quality in the world. “There is therefore no difference of opinion about the goal we are setting before us. We (the opposition) have always said in the past that self-government for India can be achieved only under a constitution or constitutions framed by Indians to which the main elements in India’s national life are consenting parties. That has been our first stand. Our second stand has been that we can only transfer our ultimate control over India to a Government or Governments capable of exercising it. We cannot hand over India to anarchy or to civi1 war. The Government’s last statement on the Indian situation gives evidence of acceptance of the first of these obligations.