C. R. Follows Cripps

C.R. Follows Cripps

When Sir Stafford Cripps left India three weeks ago he felt that, although his mission had technically failed, his visit had not been in vain. For the first time ever, there was hope that India's two great political bodies, the Indian National Congress party and the Moslem League, might get closer together. Last week Sir Stafford heard cheering news.

An outstanding Congress party member who favored accepting Britain's offer is slender, intellectual Chakravarti Rajago-palachariar ("C.R." for short), Congress leader in Madras. Last week, as Madras calmed down after its first panic before the Japanese terror, C.R.'s section of Congress suggested that Congress leaders sit down to discuss wartime and governmental problems with the leaders of the Moslem League. Said the declaration: "It is impossible for the people to think in terms of neutrality or passivity during invasion by an enemy power."

Of striking significance was the fact that the declaration, like Britain's offer, officially recognized the Moslem League's demands for a separate Moslem state. Hitherto Congress has loftily insisted that the separatist talk is merely a threat which would not be strongly supported among India's great 80,000,000 Moslem minority.

Whether this is true or not, the Madras declaration, by recognizing the separatist demands, may paradoxically prove to be an important step toward India's wartime and post-war unity. But the first reaction of some Congress leaders to the declaration was shocked disapproval. In Calcutta Congress President Maulana Abdulkalam Azad said that he was pained by C.R.'s attitude.

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