Disposed of?

To an accompaniment of shrill Babu squeals from Hindu lawyers and muffled Moslem mutterings, both Indian round table conferences have foundered on the same rock: the problem of proportional Hindu and Moslem representation in Indian provincial legislatures. Since May 14, 218 people have been killed, more than 2,500 seriously injured in riots over this point.

Last week reporters were called to No. 10 Downing St. to learn that so far as the British Government was concerned the problem of Indian proportional representation was solved in the elaborate bill which Premier MacDonald had just drawn up. If Indian communities could agree among themselves to specific objections to this solution, Britain would listen to them, but the Government would waste no more time with the plaints of individual minorities. Mr. MacDonald added:

The MacDonald solution (who did the actual work on it could not be ascertained last week) affects one-fifth of the population of the earth, but an actual electorate of only 36,000,000. It will not apply to the Indian native states, but to the nine provinces of British India. The worst knots in the problem of communal representation were untangled as follows:

Seats. The number of seats in provincial legislatures will be increased to more than 1,500. At the same time the European representation, which has enabled the Indian Civil Service to railroad bills through provincial legislatures for years, will be cut from 232 to 25. Other seats will be distributed thus:

General electorate, including Hindus 705

Moslems 489

Depressed classes (Untouchables).... 71

Commerce & industry .54

Labor . . 38

Sikhs 35

Landholders 35

Backward areas 20

Indian Christians 21

Anglo Indians 12

Universities 8

Women. Though enfranchised Indian women have protested that they did not want special privileges, the MacDonald settlement prepares for the future by setting aside 37 seats especially for women: 25 Hindus, 9 Moslem, one Sikh, one Indian Christian, one Anglo-Indian.

Untouchables. The depressed and malodorous Untouchables of India will not only vote for the new Indian legislatures, but they will vote at the same time and at the same polling places as other Hindus as a move toward breaking down caste restrictions.

Indian Ulsters. British officials like to call the complex states of Bengal and Punjab the Ulsters of India. There the pugnacious Moslems are in actual majority, but most of the money, most of the educated classes, nearly all of the newspapers, are Hindu. In the Punjab, whence come the bearded fighting Sikhs of the Indian army and police force, the Moslem peasants are hopelessly in debt to crafty Hindu moneylenders. The MacDonald commission has solved the problem of the Indian Ulsters to its own satisfaction by not giving the Moslems a statutory majority in either province but protecting their rights by giving the balance of power to Europeans in Bengal, and in Punjab giving the Sikhs a separate 19% representation which will insure a working Moslem majority in any straight Moslem-Hindu dispute.

Reaction. To U. S. observers the system seemed quite as fair as Scot MacDonald said it was. Just as Scot MacDonald had predicted, its publication raised an immediate tohu-bohu in the Indian native Press. Shrilled the Hindu Nationalist Advance:

"Communalist bullies have won the day. MacDonald has paid his reactionary supporters the price of his office. Churchill and his understudy at the India Office have realized their dream. . ."

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