352	THE   BRITISH   APPROACH  TO   POLITICS
was at first expected, and Congress has made progress with
education,, and the improvement of social conditions. In so far as
Congress is prepared to work the new Constitution at all, its
most hopeful policy is to concentrate on such matters as these,
and, by its handling of them, to demonstrate beyond doubt its
fitness for more freedom than the 1935 Act affords. Several
prominent persons in Congress, notably Jawaharlal Nehru, have
made it a party which, without lessening its opposition to British
control, concerns itself also with the need for social progress.
It is certainly true that the root problem of India is the poverty
and illiteracy of many of her people; constitutional framework,
and the relation between Britain and India are only important
in so far as they affect this fundamental matter. The 1935 Act,
and any future reforms, must ultimately be judged by the extent
to which they help the ordinary Indian by education, agricultural
improvement, religious reform, and trade union organisation, to
secure the economic advancement without which other concessions
will be of little value.
THE  COLONIAL  EMPIRE,
British Control. The British Parliament rules, through the
Colonial Office, about sixty million people, of whom nearly fifty
million are in Africa, and the rest scattered throughout the world.
The Africans, and the inhabitants of some Asiatic territories, and
islands in the Pacific, have a primitive way of life; other possessions
in Asia, such as Ceylon and Burma, have a civilisation in which
Eastern and European elements are combined; in the West Indies,
there are European populations, and a number of Negroes,
descendants of slaves imported from Africa in the past. These
lands are connected with Britain by the usual economic links of
trade and investment. There remain some smaller possessions,
such as Gibraltar and Malta, whose chief importance is as naval
All these possessions, except Mandated Territories which are
considered later, are divided into Crown Colonies on the one