LONDON: The Government of India`s publication of a White Paper on the Congress Party`s responsibility for the disturbances in India was the subject of comments by several British papers today [March 25]: The `Times` says: A study of the full text confirms the impression that the policy of the Congress and especially of Mr. Gandhi left the Government of India no alternative to the painful course it has been compelled to take. The force of this paper does not depend onits advocacy but on its narrative; where it confines itself to a plain statement of facts that must carry immediate conviction to any candid mind. They demonstrate too that Mr. Gandhi`s plan for the immediate future of India is totally impracticable if indeed it can be called a plan ... This proposal was made while the enemy was at the gates of India.

In those circumstances Mr. Gandhi cannot have been ignorant of the inevitable consequences of yielding to his demands and must be held to have expected those consequences. Was the Government of India obliged to arrest Mr.

Gandhi and his associates? The facts disclosed in the White Paper leave no doubt that the answer is emphatically yes.

The issue at stake was the safety of India against the peril of Japanese conquest. It was not the Viceroy or the Secretary of State but Pandit Nehru himself who pointed out that to follow the Mahatma`s line would be to make India a passive partner of the Axis. Dawn Delhi