Coll 1/49 'Aden. Administration and control: changes consequent on Indian constitutional reforms; transfer to HMG' [‎448v] (905/968)

RECOEDS OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE
20° Novembris , 1933.] Memorandum by the
Secretary of State for India.
[Continued.
desirability of the transfer of Aden and the conditions and assurances
which His Majesty’s Government are prepared to give if transfer takes
place. Since then opportunity has been given, as promised, for full
discussion in both Chambers of the Indian Legislature, and steps have
been taken to elicit the wishes of the Arab population of Aden itself.
(iv) Thus we now have available all the material required for a full
consideration of the question. For my own part I have carefully
studied the debates in the Legislature and need hardly say that I
attach great weight to the views expressed therein, but I have also
had to consider most anxiously the whole question in the light of all
the facts, the various and extensive interests involved, and the views
expressed in various quarters.
Difficulty of placing civil administration under Indian Federal Government.
5 The debates in the Indian Legislature indicate that the true nature
of the difficulties of fitting Aden into the proposed Indian Federation may
not have been fully appreciated. The only difficulty mentioned in the
debates was the fact that Aden is now a Chief Commissioner’s Province
directly under the Government of India, and members naturally asked
why this difficulty could not be met by retlurning Aden to the Government
of Bombay and making it again part of the Bombay Presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent. . It is
therefore desirable that I should explain more fully the underlying reasons
for the assertions in my statement of 19th June, that Aden “ would not
naturally fit into the new Federation, that it is already to some extent
under Imperial control and that it is inseparable in practice from the Aden
Protectorate, which has already passed wholly out of Indian control.”
They are as follows.
It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make a clean sepa
ration between the Arab town of Aden and its Arab hinterland, the Aden
Protectorate. Similarly, it would be impracticable to effect a complete
divorce between the civil administration of the Settlement on the one hand
and the political and military control of the Protectorate on the other.
For manv prarposes the whole area forms a single whole. At present there
is a condominium, the civil administration of the Settlement being controlled
from Delhi the political control of the Protectorate and the defence of
both being’placed directly under His Majesty’s Government. Naturally
there are very great practical difficulties involved in a condominium of this
character. The only reason why it works efficiently in practice at all is
that in the last resort the decision of all questions arising vests in His
Majesty’s Government. This is so because the Government of India under
its present constitution is in the last resort subordinate to His Majesty s
Government. But when the Government of India becomes a Government in
which responsibility for the civil administration of Chief Commissioners
Provinces rests upon Ministers, the position will be entirely different and
the division of control, which is just workable at present, would become
entirely unworkable. This objection would not be removed, but on the con
trary would if anything be strengthened, if Aden were made a part of a
Governor’s Province under the new constitution. Furthermore, for defence
purposes it is obviously impossible to make a distinction between the Fro-
tectorate and the Settlement, and it is therefore essential that the defence
of the latter as well as of the former should continue to be a direct re
sponsibility of His Majesty’s Government. But a continuance of tne
present system, whereby defence vests in His Majesty’s Government in
respect of the Settlement as well as of the Protectorate, would become con
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