ALTERNATIVE PROPOSALS 97

120,000 square miles, containing a population of nj
millions. The majority of the population, to quote the
words of the Report,

" do not ask for self-determination, but for security of land
tenure, freedom in the pursuit of their traditional methods
of livelihood, and the reasonable exercise of their ancestral
customs. Their contentment does not depend so much on
rapid political advance as on experienced and sympathetic
handling, and on protection from economic subjugation by
their neighbours."

The Commission recommended that the responsibility
for the people living in the backward tracts should
be in the hands of the Central Government. Since the
administration and development of these tracts are linked
with the Provinces, the Central Government should use
the agency of the Governors for their administration.

We have now concluded this rapid survey of the main
recommendations of the Commission. It will be interesting
at this point to consider some of the alternative proposals
that emanated from responsible Indian quarters during the
Commission's period of investigation.

CL ALTERNATIVE PROPOSALS

In spite of the vigorously organized movement for
withholding co-operation with the Statutory Commission,
there were, as stated above, seven provincial committees
and a central committee through which the Commission were
able to come in contact with a large section of Indian
opinion. In response to their invitation for the sub-
mission of memoranda, some eight hundred documents
representing various interests were submitted to the
Commission.

It is interesting to record here how it came about that
the intransigent parties, while goading their volunteers to
declare hartals and to cry the slogan, " Simon, go back/'
with that " peculiar raucous intonation not unlike the cry

7