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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 25, 1983
PAGE 12
WINSTON CHURCHILL, THE WILDERNESS YEARS, published in conjunction with the
current television series of the same name, author Martin Gilbert writes on
page 31:
The centre of Churchill's argument was that there was no single
group in India capable of taking responsibility for the whole of
India, or prepared to act in the interests of the many different
and conflicting Indian interests.
Only the British Parliament
could do that. The individual provinces of India, each one many
times larger than Britain, could indeed, he believed, be governed
by Indians. But the control of all-India, the linking together
of the wider needs, the safeguarding of minority interests, these
could only be done fairly and effectively by a British controlled
central government in Delhi and an ever-vigilant and beneficent
Parliament at Westminster. This had always been Churchill's view
of Empire.
Churchill felt that some of the independence leaders in India's Congress
Party were more interested in personal power than in "improving the wellÂ
being of India." But after his Commons fight was over and he had lost,
Churchill told them to "use the powers that are offered and make the thing a
success."
Though an opponent of Mohatma Gandhi, for example, Churchi11
harbored no malice toward him.
Yet, Churchill's forebodings, so horribly realized in 1947, hold true to
this day.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau