"Partnership with Imperialism?"

The new Constitution, given to India mainly by Sir Samuel Hoare when he was Secretary of State for India (TIME, Aug. 12, 1935, et ante), was tested in its first trial-by-ballot last week. The voting was in what an ignoramus might call "only provincial elections" but several of the Indian provinces involved are each as large as Italy. Out of 350,000,000 people who inhabit India, some 35,000,000 cast the votes counted last week and of these about 6,000,000 were women. It was the claim of Mother Britain, voiced in her London Times, that as nearly as possible the new Constitution arranged that the ballots cast "represent the general mass of the people, depriving no section of the community of the means of giving expression to its opinions."

About 5,000 candidates sought election to 1,585 seats in the new Legislative Assemblies of the eleven provinces of British India. There was, of course, no voting in the Native States ruled by India's bejeweled potentates. The only nation-wide party is that of M. K. Gandhi who is a Hindu, and amid the Indian conglomeration of religions and races and sectional rivalries, this Indian National Congress Party won 715 seats, with returns complete except for eight seats still in doubt. At this Mr. Gandhi last week arose from his squatting retirement in a tiny country village. He literally walked back into Indian politics, trudging seven miles over a dusty road to take part in a Congress strategy committee at Wardha, no short walk for a spindly old fruitarian.

Mr. Gandhi retired from official leadership of the Congress in 1934, but his scrawny fingers have never entirely left the helm. He is Conservative and friendly to Britain by comparison with violent Congress President Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who is always preaching about "Socialism" and has keynoted that for Congressmen to take office under the new Constitution "would inevitably mean a kind of Partnership with Imperialism in the exploitation of the Indian people!"

In ensuing weeks it remains to be seen whether Congress members will sit down in the Legislature seats they have won and take the large share of lucrative offices in provincial administration due to them under the Constitution -- or whether they will adopt "wrecking tactics." The Constitution was written with both alternatives firmly in the mind of Sir Samuel Hoare. Thus, if the 1,585 Deputies cooperate and join Viceroy Lord Linlithgow in making the Constitution work, well and good. If they resort to wrecking tactics, the Constitution empowers first the provincial governors and ultimately the Viceroy completely to overrule the new Legislatures. At the special Wardha strategy committee last week, Mr. Gandhi was said to be for cooperation, President Nehru for wrecking. The Congress bigwigs who conferred with them were "about equally divided."

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