United Kingdom Opinion on a Multi-Racial Commonwealth
| Author | H. V. Hodson |
| Published date | 01 March 1950 |
| Date | 01 March 1950 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070205000500102 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
United
Kingdom
Opinion
on
a
Multi-Racial
Commonwealth
H.
V.
Hodson
T
he
multi-racial
Commonwealth
came
into
being,
if not
by
accident,
at
any
rate
'with
little
prevision,
and
certainly
with
no
planning.
Before
the
second
world
war
there
were,
indeed,
a
handful
of
thinkers,
such
as
the
late
Lord
Lothian,
who gave
warning
that
there
would
be
problems,
up
till
then
unconsidered,
when
the
half-dozen Dominions
we
then
knew
became
a
dozen
or
a
score.
But,
even
to
the
longsighted,
the
problems were
conceived
largely
in
terms
of
the
complication
of
having many
and
varied
members
of
the
Commonwealth,
instead
of
a
few
and
kindred,
rather
than
in
terms
of
reconciling,
in
a
family group
like
the
Commonwealth,
new
nations
whose
approach
to
public
affairs
might
be
quite
different
from
ours,
not
only
because
of
their
different
history
and geography,
but
also
because
of
their
different
race.
Yet
the
undertaking
to
afford
India
"Dominion
Status"
was
already
ten
years
old
when
war
broke
out,
and
it
was widely
recognized
that
this
step
necessarily
implied
that
in due
course
other
countries
in
the
Empire
would
grow
to
national
maturity
and
follow
where
India
had
gone
ahead.
There were
a
number
of
reasons
for
the
lack
of
forethought
about
a
multi-racial
Commonwealth
that
was
thus
admitted
to be
the
logical
and
natural
outcome
of
accepted
British
policy.
For
one
thing,
India's
case
was
regarded
as
both
exceptional
and
experimental.
Burma
was
thought
of
as
following
India
at
a
distance,
if
the
experiment
succeeded,
and
nobody
was
prepared
to
name
a
date
at
which any
of
the
Colonial
territories
would
become
a
fully
self-governing
Dominion.
Moreover,
very
few
political
thinkers
fully
comprehended
the
fact
that
an autonomous
India's approach
to
international
affairs
would
be
different,
on
account
of
her
race
and
her
history
as
well
as
her
geographical
position,
from
that
of
other
Domi-
nions,
of
European
stock
and
British
by
historical
connection.
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