India have commanded the attention they deserve, and the Colonial Office has sent out instructions to the Kenia authorities to suspend all segregation measures.  The whole question will, one may hope, be reopened and settled on a new basis of justice for Indians.  The British settlers will surely themselves recognise, on further consideration, that their interests cannot be allowed to override the far larger obligations of Great Britain to the people of India.

The question of the treatment of Indians in the Crown Colonies is one that has to be settled between the British Government and the Government of India, and it could not therefore come before the Imperial Cabinet—­or Conference—­recently attended by the Prime Ministers of all the Dominions assembled in London.  But in regard to that question in the Dominions, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, one of India’s representatives, laid down in their presence firmly and plainly the principle on which all Indians are at one: 

There is no conviction more strongly in our minds than this, that a full enjoyment of citizenship within the British Empire applies not only to the United Kingdom but to every self-governing Dominion within its compass.  We have already agreed to a subtraction from the integrity of the rights by the compromise of 1918 to which my predecessor, Lord Sinha, was a party—­that each Dominion and each self-governing part of the Empire should be free to regulate the composition of its population by suitable immigration laws.  On that compromise there is no intention whatever to go back, but we plead on behalf of those who are already fully domiciled in the various self-governing Dominions according to the laws under which those Dominions are governed—­to these peoples there is no reason whatever to deny the full rights of citizenship—­it is for them that we plead, where they are lawfully settled, that they must be admitted into the general body of citizenship, and no deduction must be made from the rights that other British subjects enjoy.

In commending the matter to his audience for earnest consideration and satisfactory settlement, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri spoke with the added authority of his position as a member of the Indian Legislature and one of the ablest leaders of the Moderate party.  “It is,” he said, “of the most urgent and pressing importance that we should be able to carry back a message of hope and of good cheer.”  He will have to report to the Legislature on his mission when he returns to India, and no part of his report will be looked for with more anxiety or more closely scrutinised.