Third and Final!

Mild, abject Indians who somehow managed to spring bewildering surprises on both the First and the Second Indian Round Table Conference, managed to spring a few more last week, as dignified Scot MacDonald opened what he called, with characteristic optimism, "The Third and Final Conference."

King George opened the First Conference with elegant pomp in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords (TIME, Nov. 24, 1930). Mahatma Gandhi was not present. To everyone's amazement it was India's bejeweled Princes and Maharajas who upset the show by upsetting Great Britain's major premise, namely that the Indian rulers would be unwilling to merge their states into an Indian Federation. One after another Their Highnesses arose in dazzling splendor to say that they were willing.

The Second Conference, with Mahatma Gandhi, was a world sensation and surprise package, opened by Prime Minister MacDonald in Queen Anne's red & gold drawing room at St. James's Palace. On the basis of the Second Conference's agreements & disagreements, the British Government tried subsequently to impose on India a settlement, certain features of which Mahatma Gandhi successfully resisted by his hunger strike (TIME, Oct. 3). Of one thing only the British felt certain: Burma, the eastern province of India, was to receive by her people's wish and by the Round Table's consent a separate status and a separate constitution from Federal India.

So sure were the British of this that they invited no Burmese to last week's third and final Conference. Just as the delegates assembled, however, cables from Rangoon announced that the Burmese Anti-Secession Party leader, eminent Dr. B. A. Maw, had won the Burmese General Election and emphasized his protest by refusing to become Premier at the invitation of Governor Sir Charles Alexander Innes.

Dr. Maw's previously ignored adherents loudly proclaimed that "Burma, if separated, would have to pay higher taxes, would be subject to white religious persecution and would become a white man's paradise and the home of the British unemployed!"

Rebuffed by Dr. Maw, the Governor turned to two other Burmese leaders, U. Ba Pe and U Chit Hia, but both declined the role of puppet premier. In London the British Government saved its face temporarily by ignoring the question of Burma, urging the Conference to talk about India, particularly about the renowned inability of India's Hindus. Moslems and Sikhs to agree upon a system for their "communal representation" in the future Indian Parliament under the future Indian Constitution.

Question of Competence. Most surprisingly at this point the London Conference received a cablegram from Allahabad, where prominent Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs have been holding a ''Unity Conference." The cablegram, signed by Pandit Madan Mohan Mala viva, a Hindu leader much revered and close to Mahatma Gandhi, stated that the Unity Conference had united in rejecting the British proposals for "communal representation" and further agreed that "transference of the government from the British Raj to the Indian people is an indispensable step, preliminary to any other agreement."

British correspondents at Allahabad promptly called the Unity Conference "incompetent" and British officials at the Viceregal Capital, New Delhi, rushed around to Moslem leaders there. Within three days cablegrams from Delhi announced that a committee of the All-India Moslem Conference (which was not in session) repudiated the Allahabad Unity Conference (which had adjourned) and pledged support to the British communal settlement.

The contradictory cables from Allahabad and Delhi raised once more the issue of competence. Who is competent to speak for India? Mr. Ganhdi continued to squat in Yerovda Jail last week, "during His Majesty's pleasure." At the Conference in London sat no representative of Mr. Gandhi's Indian Nationalist Party and not even a Prince or Maharaja of importance. True, the Aga Khan was there but he is the merest British puppet and the head of no Indian state. The Labor Party of Great Britain declined, some weeks ago. to sit in at the Conference because the present British "National" (Conservative) Government has so obviously packed the Conference with Indian yes-men and nobodies.

To save faces all around last week. Acting Chairman Viscount Sankey tried to get the Conference "down to work." Competent or incompetent, the Delegates will meet in sessions expected to be secret, will draft under British guidance a White Paper containing proposals for an Indian Constitution which will then go before the British Parliament. Knotty constitutional questions to be determined by the Conference include: The relationship between the Federal and the Provincial Units, the relative powers of Indian Legislative bodies and the British Parliament. Friends of India and Britain assume that the Constitution will be an enlightened document, according to British lights.

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