"Partnership & Co-Operation"

(See front cover)

As has so often and so fortunately occurred in English history, a Scotsman, Victor Alexander John Hope, Marquess of Linlithgow, was making good last week in one of the Empire's greatest jobs, that of Viceroy & Governor General of India. This tall, strongly-built and stanch lowlander arrived at the Viceregal Capital of New Delhi last spring with the especial confidence of Britons. Here was no glittering snob of a Lord Curzon, no "friend" of Mahatma Gandhi like Lord Halifax, and above all no amateur who would have to study India from tne isolation of his golden Throne and might begin to understand it just as his five years as Viceroy were up, a misfortune which has more than once occurred.

The Marquess of Linlithgow, a banker whose hobby is agriculture, minutely traveled over India for almost three years as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India (1926-28). Because of his aloofness from partisan politics he was made Chairman of Parliament's Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (1933) and he and Sir Samuel Hoare, then Secretary of State for India, are together responsible for drafting and carrying through Parliament against brilliant die-hard Tory opposition the present new Indian Constitution, famed "Longest Bill ever to pass the Mother of Parliaments" (TIME, Aug. 12, 1935 et ante).

In these circumstances to appoint Lord Linlithgow the next Viceroy of India, so that he might expertly install and adjust the new Constitution to its 350,000,000 souls, seemed quite the most obvious and also quite the wisest decision taken last year by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in what was otherwise his Year of Bumbles. But would the Indian people take either to the Constitution or to Linlithgow? When he arrived in Bombay there was not a single native newspaper which did not oppose the Constitution, and the earliest date by which Britons dared hope to put it into effect was 1940. The Marquess of Linlithgow had only just resigned as a Director of the Bank of Scotland, and was frankly both Capitalist and Conservative.

"Children, I Speak to You!" At 5:30 p.m. the day after he arrived in India the cream & gold Viceregal Train brought Lord Linlithgow to New Delhi. Out stepped the tallest Viceroy of India ever, with his 6-foot Marchioness and their three young and pretty daughters, Lady Anne, Lady Joan and Lady Doreen Hope. With cannon thundering the 31 guns of the Viceregal salute, the Hopes of India drove off in a carriage drawn by six prancing bays, guarded before and behind by cavalry & the Viceroy's Body Guard, their tunics eddying in glittering waves of scarlet. All this might have fallen flat, but the new Viceroy, after taking the oath in Durbar Hall--where new Emperor Edward VIII has the pleasure in store of sitting on India's golden Throne (see cut, p. 22)-- the Marquess of Linlithgow made a radio broadcast which can be compared in its surprising effect only to the "fireside talks" with which friendly "Frank"' Roosevelt kindled nationwide acclaim in his first few weeks as President.

Many of the phrases a Viceroy must use are formalized and stereotyped, but others of rare charm were added by Linlithgow. This was his way of telling the diverse and quarrelsome Indian people something they had heard from many a previous Viceroy and seldom or never believed --that he would be a Father to them: "God has indeed been good to me, for he has given me five children. They came into the world each one with a nature and with characteristics different from their brothers and sisters. I have tried my utmost to understand those differences and to deal with each one of my children in a fashion appropriate to his or her nature; to give support where support has seemed to me to be needed, and in each to cultivate natural gifts and good qualities. I have sought, too, to encourage them at all times to be tolerant of each other. I love them all most dearly, but among my children I have no favorite. I would have you know that I am incapable of preferring any one Indian community before another."

This happened to strike the adult Indian children of the British Rajas straight, sincere and moving talk. Into quite another part of his address the new Viceroy tucked the following, for Indian boys and girls who might be listening in: "Children, I speak to you as your King-Emperor's Viceroy and as your friend. Remember that when you grow up it will be with you that the honor of your country will rest. I shall very often think of you. Fear God, honor the King-Emperor, and obey your parents."

It was this "fireside talk" quality of the Marquess of Linlithgow's speech--afterward broadcast in native tongues--which popularly caught on, but the speech also contained extraordinarily meaty and precise encouragement and instructions for thousands of Britons and Indians performing all sorts of functions vital to the Raj. For example the District Officers, many of them Britons of fine calibre doing their best for local Indian communities but harassed by having to write interminable reports to the Centre, were given a kindly hint by the Viceroy to ease up on this scrivening and get out on more camping trips among the people. "You may count upon my steady support," said Linlithgow, sounding as if he meant it, then added with wise humor: "For you District Officers it remains abundantly true that the tent is mightier than the pen." Indian journalists, accustomed like English journalists to official hauteur and snubs, imperceptibly warmed to a new Viceroy who said: "Like the rest of us, newspaper men cannot be expected to make bricks without straw. . . . I intend to do my utmost to give them such assistance as properly I may."

In the most vital portion of his speech, Lord Linlithgow faced candidly the fact that the new Constitution is so drawn that his personal exercise of the powers conferred upon him as Governor General will largely determine whether it proves to be liberal or repressive, whether it promotes greater harmony than ever before by establishing an Indian Federation, or rekindles the flames of "Civil Disobedience" and attempted insurrection (TIME, March 24, 1930 et seq.). With everything dependent on the Viceroy's personal success in winning Indians to ignore the malcontents who were urging them to boycott the first election under the new Constitution and make it unworkable, the Marquess of Linlithgow was not uttering a platitude but making a particularly crucial appeal when he keynoted with Scottish straightforwardness: "Trust me--I will trust you." King of Kings. In the Orient many a peewee potentate styles himself

"King of Kings," but daily exercise of the prerogatives suggested by that title actually falls to just about one man on earth, the Viceroy of India. Immediately within his charge are not only the eleven provinces of British India but the 562 jealously and ornately sovereign native States, each ruled by an Indian Prince who to his subjects is in effect a king. Over these the Viceroy must reign for Edward VIII with that blameless private life and awful magnificence which British school children are taught to see in His Majesty the King & Emperor. Last week it became the function of Lord Linlithgow to see that each of the Indian Princes who must sign a so-called "Instrument of Accession" in order for his State to enter the Indian Federation actually takes pen in hand and signs. For this purpose the Viceroy last week sent on tour as his personal emissaries to each of India's potentates three resolute political officers on special mission. Respectively the three are an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, namely: handsome, epigrammatic Sir Courtenay Latimer, crusty Agent to the Governor General in the States of Western India, who will get potentates to sign in Baroda, the Deccan, the Gujarat Agencies and the Western India Agencies; astute and charming Francis Verner Wylie, the Resident at Jaipur, who must cope with the rulers of Jammu & Kashmir, Rajputana Agency and the Punjab States Agency; and scholarly, muscular Arthur Cunningham Lothian of the Political Department of the Government of India who must obtain the signature of "The Richest Man in the World" in Hyderabad, as well as those of the native rulers of Mysore Travancore, Cochin, Central India and the Eastern States Agencies.

Thus each of the three Political Officers on Special Mission has as his chief assignment one of three Indian super-potentates who are entitled to a salute of 21 guns. These are (see cuts, p. 22): first, the venerable dean of the Indian Princes, His Highness the progressive and benign Gaekwar of Baroda; second, the acquisitive and stern "Richest Man in the World," His Exalted Highness, the also progressive and enlightened Nizam of Hyderabad; and third, the weak and pleasure-loving Prince who was the victimized "Mr. A" of a notorious blackmail case in England twelve years ago (TIME, Oct. 25, 1925 et ante), His Highness the polo-playing Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir. Of these three paramount potentates only the Nizam has had gumption to battle the British for every possible concession Hyderabad can wangle out of the new Constitution. Chief battler for the "Richest Man in the World" is fox-bearded, gimlet-eyed Sir Akbar Hydari whose importance far eclipses his modest title of Finance and Railway Member of the State Executive Council of Hyderabad (see cut, p. 22). It was he who so stirred up the Chamber of Princes that eventually the British Raj, which when Lord Curzon was Viceroy acquired Berar from Hyderabad, was constrained to agree that Berar "has always belonged" and should now be returned to Hyderabad. Thus appeased, the Nizam of Hyderabad may well be the first 21-gun Indian potentate to sign, or foxy Sir Akbar at the last moment may advise His Exalted Highness to hold out for more. In any case the British Raj, which only four years ago sent troops to prevent the Maharaja of Kashmir from being overthrown by a native insurrection, felt last week that they could count on the early signature of "Mr. A."

Meanwhile last week India was reading the speech with which His Excellency for the first time addressed both Houses of the Indian Assembly. These are now meeting for the last time--to be replaced next year by a new legislature after elections in the eleven States of British India this winter.

Agents of the Raj have had considerable success in frightening Indian public opinion with the notion that the rise of Hitler and generally of Dictatorship in Europe is a growing trend which makes the Constitution now offered India by Britain positively the country's "last chance for Democracy." In elegant and persuasive terms the speech of the Marquess of Linlithgow presented the positive and pleasant side of these ominous and negative fears. "By the joint statesmanship of Britain and India," said the Viceroy, "there is about to be initiated in this country an experiment in representative self-government which for breadth of conception and boldness of design is without parallel in history. . . . The British people and Parliament have seen fit to offer to India a Constitution which by its liberal principles stands in impressive contrast to those political tendencies which are evident over wide areas of the world. . . . These changes connote a profound modification of British policy towards India as a member of the Commonwealth. . . . They involve nothing less than discarding old ideas of Imperialism for new ideas of Partnership and Co-operation!"

By the phrase "India as a member of the Commonwealth," the Viceroy gave firm notice that India is NOT being offered that "Dominion status with the right of secession" for which Mahatma Gandhi used to ask. Mr. Gandhi, having found Britain adamant, and having had no great success with his campaign in behalf of India's depressed "Untouchables" (TIME, July 24, 1933 et ante), was last week living in-- one of the most malarial Indian villages he could find, suffering from malaria and refusing to depart, as a gesture to awaken his people to the importance of draining malarial swamps.

With Gandhi out of the way, the Indian National Congress once led by the Mahatma was last week loudly expostulating that "the Constitution is unworkable" while at the same time assisting it to work by electioneering to win Nationalist seats next February in the new legislature. Almost every other Indian political faction was similarly talking against but working for the Constitution last week, and the Viceroy thus far had definitely triumphed in avoiding another great Indian mass movement of Civil Disobedience, such as the Mahatma led, which could wreck the Constitution.

In an immensely exciting political accouchement last week India was preparing for Provincial elections in which the number of voters will be enlarged beyond all comparison with Indian polls hitherto. Whole new Indian parties were being formed to represent groups hitherto unrepresented or to catch the votes of others. "Having myself had some share in party management in my own country," said the Viceroy, "I am observing with no little interest the progress of events. ... I am able to assure you that for such time as I hold my present office it is my intention to interpret my duty with a liberal and sympathetic mind ... to work to the best of my power with any and every political party willing to work the Constitution."

The Constitution is What? In discussing what will happen in India after the elections, so great an authority as Viscount Halifax has written of the Indian provinces, "We cannot say, for example, how cabinets will be formed." Nevertheless they will be formed, under the guidance of the Marquess of Linlithgow, and the new Cabinet Ministers will be Indians with greater powers than they have ever had before, subject to the intervention and control if he sees fit of the Viceroy of India. Large though the new electorate is, another way of looking at the matter is that only 14% of the people of British India have the vote.* The entire country is so politically preadolescent that to be moving in India toward heeding the voice of the people or letting them decide anything at all is to move, for the Orient, fast. The Chinese people have no effective suffrage and in Japan masterful forces of Dictatorship in the name of the Emperor have made Japanese elections a mockery today. The new written Constitution of India is hundreds of years behind the unwritten Constitution of the United Kingdom which features at the same time Democracy and Monarchy; but the Indian people under the sort of Father which the new Viceroy is trying to be to them have indeed a chance for Democracy, though it may be their last. Either a Fascist or a Soviet Dictatorship--and it is not impossible, however unlikely, that one might arise--would swiftly reduce India to the status of Ethiopia or one of the Central Asian so-called "Soviet Republics" now exploited from Moscow and made to jump at the commands of Stalin. Last week, with the initial stage of Provincial Autonomy set to click into action in 1937, the provisional date for full coming into effect of the Indian-Federation was set forward from 1940 to take place within a period which the Viceroy called "very short." Most observers of Indian affairs thought the date would be 1938, credited the Marquess of Linlithgow with having "saved two years" by his fireside diplomacy and intelligent firmness.

*Unlike Occidental voters, under the new constitution Indians must qualify for the franchise by satisfying elaborater education and property ownership requirements. Composition of the Federal Legislature, partially appointed by Viceroy and Princes, partially indirectly elected from the provinces, is likewise a complicated affair. Its seats are constitutionally apportioned among fixed numbers of Hindus (including the "depressed" classes), Moslems Britons, Indian Christians, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, representatives of Landholders, Commerce & Industry, Labor, Woman.

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