Bolus

The British Government offered an administrative bolus to its No. i political ward case--India. From his palace in New Delhi, Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, Viceroy of India, broadcast a new proposal to break the country's three-year political deadlock and put her "on the road to self-government." In London, Leopold Amery, Secretary of State for India, announced the proposal to an approving Parliament. High points: Toward Dominion Status. The British Government considered its new plan only a "step forward during the interim period [before the granting of Dominion status].

. . . The main constitutional position remains ... as it .was." London still stood by the postwar self-government proposals brought to India by Sir Stafford Cripps in 1942, and roundly turned down by India's fractious factions.

To show that the British Government meant what it said, Lord Wavell ordered the release of eight Congress party leaders interned since 1942. Heading the list were: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, leftist disciple of Mohandas K. Gandhi; Congress President Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a Moslem opposed to Pakistan (the idea of an independent Moslem India); Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Bombay party boss. Then the Viceroy invited Congress and other political leaders to confer with him at Simla, the summer capital on June 25.

Among those invited was the Congress' "spiritual" leader, Mohandas K. Gandhi.

He promptly replied that he would favor the Viceroy's plan, but would act only in an advisory capacity to his party. The Moslem League's president, Mohamed AH Jinnah, pledged cooperation. But some Indian nationalists sniffed the British plan cautiously. The Bombay Chronicle suspected that the 1,200 Indian political prisoners still in jail were being used as "bait" to lure Congress leaders into acceptance of the proposed Executive Council. But generally it was believed that Britain's offer would not be rejected.

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