Indian problem: report on the constitutional problem in India

There lies the core of the constitutional problem which will be examined and discussed in this Report. This first part of it will describe the development of self-government and its corollary, the process of decentralisation, which led up to the existing constitution. The second part will deal in greater detail with the operation of that constitution during the last few years. In the third and last part an attempt will be made to state the main facts that must be faced and to suggest some possible ways of dealing with them if a system of government is now to be devised, both for the great Provinces and for India as a whole, in which the twin principles of freedom and unity are balanced and combined. At each stage it is the interplay of those twin principles that will demand our closest attention. It will be found that for a generation past the stress in Indian politics has been all on freedom, but that now, when the full attainment of freedom is in sight, the balance has swung over and unity has become again, as it was when British rule began, the major Indian problem. The situation in India, in fact, reflects the situation in the world at large. It is primarily for freedom that the United Nations are fighting because its very existence is at stake. But the freedom which our victory will save or restore to all nations will be unfruitful and precarious unless it is combined with the greatest practicable measure of international unity.