THROUGH THE GREAT WAR TO THE GREAT INDIAN REFORM BILL
The genuine outburst of enthusiasm with which India, whether under
direct British administration or under the autonomous rule of indigenous
dynasties, responded to the call of the Empire at the beginning of the
war came almost as a revelation to the British public generally who knew
little about India, and the impression deepened when during the critical
winter of 1914-1915 Indian troops stood shoulder to shoulder with
British troops in the trenches to fill the gap which could not then have
been filled from any other quarter. The loyalty displayed by the Indian
princes and the great land-owning gentry and the old fighting races who
had stood by the British for many generations was no surprise to
Englishmen who knew India; but less expected was the immediate rally to
the British cause of the new Western-educated classes who, baulked of
the political liberties which they regarded as their due, had seemed to
be drifting hopelessly into bitter antagonism to British rule--a rally
which at first included even those who, like Mr. Tilak, just released
from his long detention at Mandalay, had taught hatred and contempt of
the British rulers of India with a violence which implied, even when it
was not definitely expressed, a fierce desire to sever the British
connection altogether. In some cases the homage paid to the
righteousness of the British cause may not have been altogether genuine,
but with the great majority it sprang from one thought, well expressed
by Sir Satyendra Sinha, one of the most gifted and patriotic of India's
sons, in his presidential address to the Indian National Congress in
1915, that, at that critical hour in the world's history, it was for
India "to prove to the great British nation her gratitude for peace and
the blessings of civilisation secured to her under its aegis for the
last hundred and fifty years and more." The tales of German
frightfulness and the guns of the _Emden_ bombarding Madras, which were
an ominous reminder that a far worse fate than British rule might
conceivably overtake India, helped to confirm Indians in the conviction
that the British Empire and India's connection with it were well worth
fighting for. This was one of Germany's many miscalculations, and the
loyalty of the Indian people quite as much as the watchfulness of
Government defeated the few serious efforts made by the disaffected
emissaries and agents in whom she had put her trust to raise the
standard of rebellion in India. All they could do was to feed the
"Indian Section" of the Berlin Foreign Office with cock-and-bull stories
of successful Indian mutinies and risings, which the German public,
however gullible, ceased at last to swallow. Amongst the Indian
Mahomedans there was a small pro-Turkish group, chiefly of an Extremist
complexion, whose appeals to the religious solidarity of Islam might
have proved troublesome when Turkey herself came into the war, had not
Government deemed it advisable to put a stop to the mischievous
activities of the two chief firebrands, the brothers Mahomed Ali and
Shaukat Ali, by interning them under the discretionary powers conferred
upon it by the Defence of India Act. Indian Mahomedan troops fought with
the same gallantry and determination against their Turkish
co-religionists in Mesopotamia and Palestine as against the German enemy
in France and in Africa, and the Mahomedan Punjab answered even more
abundantly than any other province of India every successive call for
fresh recruits to replenish and strengthen the forces of the Empire.
The British Government and people responded generously to these splendid
demonstrations of India's fundamental loyalty to the British cause and
the British connection. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, declared with
special emphasis that in future Indian questions must be approached from
"a new angle of vision," and Indians, not least the Western-educated
classes, construed his utterance into a pledge of the deepest
significance. For two years India presented on everything that related
to the war a front unbroken by any dissensions. The Imperial Legislative
Council passed, almost without a murmur even at its most drastic
provisions, repugnant as they were to the more advanced Indian members,
a Defence of India Act on the lines of the Defence of the Realm Act at
home, when Lord Hardinge gave an assurance that it was essential to the
proper performance of her part in the war, and it voted spontaneously
and unanimously a contribution of one hundred million pounds by the
Indian Exchequer to the war expenditure of the Empire. India had
thrilled with pride when, at Lord Hardinge's instance, her troops were
first sent, not to act as merely subsidiary forces in subsidiary
war-areas, but to share with British troops the very forefront of the
battle in France, and she thrilled again when an Indian prince, the
Maharajah of Bikanir, and Sir Satyendra Sinha, who was once more playing
a conspicuous part in the political arena, and had been one of the
oldest and ablest members of the moderate Congress party, were sent to
represent India at the first Imperial War Conference in London, and took
their seats side by side with British Ministers and with the Ministers
of the self-governing Dominions.
There was, however, another side to the picture. If India had displayed
in the best sense of the word an Imperial spirit and made sacrifices
that entitled her to be treated as a partner in, rather than a mere
dependency of, the British Empire, was she still to be denied a large
instalment at least of the political liberties which had been long ago
conferred on the self-governing Dominions? Were her people to be refused
in the self-governing Dominions themselves the equality of treatment
which her representatives were allowed to enjoy in the council-chamber
of the Empire? Whilst the Morley-Minto reforms had disappointed the
political expectations of the Western-educated classes, the measures
adopted in several of the self-governing Dominions to exclude Indian
immigration, and, especially in South Africa, to place severe social and
municipal disabilities on Indians already settled in some of the
provinces of the Union, had caused still more widespread resentment, and
nothing did more to strengthen Lord Hardinge's hold upon Indian
affection than his frank espousal of these Indian grievances, even at
the risk of placing himself in apparent opposition to the Imperial
Government, who had to reckon with the sentiment of the Dominions as
well as with that of India. The war suddenly brought to the front in a
new shape the question of the constitutional relationship not only
between Great Britain and India but between India and the other
component parts of the Empire. It was known in India that, before Lord
Hardinge reached the end of his term of office, extended for six months
till April 1916, he had been engaged in drafting a scheme of reform to
meet Indian political aspirations more fully than Lord Morley had done,
and it was known also in India that schemes of Imperial reconstruction
after the war were already being discussed throughout the Empire. The
Indian politician not unnaturally argued that if, as was generally
conceded, the constitutional relations of the Government of India to the
Imperial Government were to be substantially modified and India to be
advanced to a position approximately similar to that of the
self-governing Dominions whose governments were responsible to their own
peoples, this could be done only by opening up to her too the road to
self-government. The Extremist at once pressed the argument to its
utmost consequences. The India for which he spoke was at that time, he
declared, still willing to accept the British connection on the same
terms as the Dominions, but she must be given Dominion Home Rule at
once--not merely as a goal to be slowly reached by carefully graduated
stages, but as an immediate concession to Indian sentiment, already more
than due to her for her share in the defence of the Empire during the
war.
In the Legislative Councils there had been a political truce by common
consent after the Government had undertaken to introduce no
controversial measures whilst the war was going on. But the war dragged
on much longer than had been generally anticipated. India, to whom it
brought after the first few months an immense accession of material
prosperity by creating a great demand for all her produce at rapidly
enhanced prices, was so sheltered from its real horrors, and the number
of Indians who had any personal ties with those actually fighting in far
off-lands was after all so small in proportion to the vast population,
that the keen edge of interest in its progress was gradually blunted,
and political speculations as to the position of India after the war
were unwittingly encouraged by the failure of Government to keep Indian
opinion concentrated on the magnitude of the struggle which still
threatened the very existence of the Empire. Circumstances, for which
the British lack of imagination as well as the ponderous machinery of
Indian administration was in some measure responsible, favoured, it must
be admitted, the revival of political agitation. Some three years
elapsed after India was promised a "new angle of vision" before there
was evidence to the Indian eye that anything was being done to redeem
that promise. Lord Hardinge had taken home with him one scheme of
reforms, and his successor, Lord Chelmsford, had set to work with his
Council on another one as soon as he reached Simla. But time passed and
all this travail bore no visible fruits. Outside events also gave rise
to suspicion. The rejection by the House of Lords of the proposed
creation of an Executive Council for the United Provinces caused
widespread irritation amongst even moderate Indians, and the rumours of
a scheme to hasten on Imperial federation and to give the self-governing
Dominions some share in the control of Indian affairs aroused a very
bitter feeling, as Indian opinion still smarted under the treatment of
Indians in other parts of the Empire and remained distrustful of the
temporary compromise only recently arrived at. The Viceroy was very
reserved and reticent, and his reserve and reticence were made the
pretext for assuming that, as he had been appointed under the first
Coalition Government at home when Mr. Chamberlain succeeded Lord Crewe
at the India Office, he was the reactionary nominee of a reactionary
Secretary of State. No assumption could have been more unjust. Lord
Chelmsford's scheme was completed and sent home towards the end of 1916.
But nothing transpired as to its contents, nor as to any action being
taken upon it. Indians inferred that it was indefinitely pigeon-holed in
Whitehall. The very reasonable plea that the Imperial Government, whose
energies had to be devoted to the life-and-death struggle in which the
whole Empire was involved, had little time to devote to a serious study
of such problems as the introduction of grave constitutional changes in
India, was countered by the argument that the same Imperial Government
seemed to find no difficulty in sparing time for such measures as Irish
Home Rule, votes for women, and a large extension of the franchise in
the United Kingdom.
The long delay, whatever its causes, perplexed and alarmed even moderate
Indian opinion, which had lost the most popular of the leaders capable
of guiding it, and waited in vain for any comforting assurances from
responsible official quarters. Moreover, it allowed the Extreme wing to
set up a standard of political demands which it became more and more
difficult for any Indian to decline altogether to endorse without
exposing himself to the reproach that he was unpatriotic and a creature
of Government. As soon as it became known that Lord Chelmsford was
engaged in elaborating a scheme of post-war reforms, nineteen Indian
members of the Imperial Legislative Council hurriedly put forward a
counter scheme of their own, professedly for the better guidance of
British Ministers. Besides pressing for various more or less practical
reforms, such as the granting of commissions to Indians, the Nineteen
demanded full control for the Provincial Councils over the Executive
subject to a limited veto of the Governor of the Province; direct
election to those Councils--although nothing definite was said about the
franchise; and, in the Imperial Legislative Council, an unofficial
majority and control over the Central Government except in certain
reserved matters. The scheme was hazy, bore evident marks of haste, and
aggravated immensely the dangers with which experience had already shown
the Morley-Minto reforms to be fraught. It was an attempt to make the
Central and Provincial Governments in India dependent upon the caprice
of legislatures, with no mandate from any representative electorate and
no training in responsible government, but completely immune to the
consequences of their own mistakes. It must have led to a hopeless
deadlock and the complete paralysis of Government, but even so it did
not satisfy the more fiery members of the Indian National Congress,
where, in complete unison with the All-India Moslem League, finally
captured by some slight concessions to Mahomedan sentiment, resolutions
were passed more crude and unworkable than the scheme of the Nineteen,
and virtually amounting to Home Rule in its most impracticable shape.
The Congress was at last passing under Extremist control. Its first
session during the war was held in December 1914 in Bombay, and under
the presidency of Mr. Bupendranath Basu, afterwards a member of the
Secretary of State's Council, the proceedings reflected the general
enthusiasm with which India had rallied to the cause of the Empire. But
before the Congress met again a disease common amongst Indians and
aggravated by overwork and anxiety had carried away in April 1915, still
in the prime of life, the founder of the "Servants of India Society,"
Mr. Gokhale, himself perhaps the greatest servant of India that has
toiled in our time for her social as well as her political advancement.
His friends believed that in his case the end was precipitated by an
acute controversy with Mr. Tilak, to whom he had made one last appeal to
abandon his old attitude of irreconcilable opposition. A few months
later, in November, the veteran Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, who had fought
stoutly ever since Surat against any Congress reunion, in which he
clearly foresaw that the Moderates would be the dupes of the Extremists,
passed away in his seventy-first year, but not before he had sent a
message, worded in his old peremptory style, to Sir Satyendra Sinha,
daring him to refuse the chairmanship of the coming session which was to
be held in December in Bombay. Sir Satyendra came, and his great
personal influence kept the Indian National Congress on the rails, and
defeated the projects already on foot once more for delivering it into
the hands of Mr. Tilak and his followers. But the death of those two
pillars of the Moderate party at such a critical juncture proved to be
an irreparable loss. When Mr. Gokhale's political testament was
published, it was dismissed by the Extremists as a well-meant but quite
obsolete document. The Congress found a new and strange Egeria in Mrs.
Besant, who had thrown herself into Indian politics when, owing to
circumstances[2] which had nothing to do with politics, the faith that
many respectable Hindus had placed in her, on the strength of her
theosophical teachings, as a vessel of spiritual election was rudely
shaken. But nothing shook the mesmeric influence which she had acquired
over young India by preaching with rare eloquence the moral and
spiritual superiority of Indian over Western creeds, and condemning the
British administration of India, root and branch, as one of the worst
manifestations of Western materialism. With her remarkable power of
seizing the psychological moment, she had fastened on to the catchword
of "Home Rule for India," into which Indians could read whatever measure
of reform they happened to favour, whilst it voiced the vague aspiration
of India to be mistress in her own house, and to be freed from the
reproach of "dependency" in any future scheme of reconstruction. She
herself gave it the widest interpretation in _New India_, a newspaper
whose extreme views expressed in the most extreme form drew down upon
her not only the action of Government but the censure of the High Court
of Madras. At the Congress session held at Lucknow at the end of 1916
she shared the honours of a tremendous ovation with Tilak, whose
sufferings--and her own--in the cause of India's freedom her newspaper
compared with those of Christ on the Cross. Resolutions were carried not
only requesting that the King Emperor might be pleased "to issue a
proclamation announcing that it is the aim and intention of British
policy to confer self-government on India at an early date," but setting
forth in detail a series of preliminary reforms to be introduced
forthwith in order to consummate the "bloodless revolution" which,
according to the President's closing oration, was already in full blast.
The All-India Moslem League sitting at the same time at Lucknow followed
the Congress lead.
To those feverish days at Lucknow the session of the Imperial
Legislative Council held shortly afterwards at Delhi afforded a striking
contrast. The Great War was in its third year, and the end seemed as far
off as ever. The Government of India announced the issue of an Indian
War Loan for £100,000,000 which was well received and speedily
subscribed, and, as an earnest of the revision of the whole fiscal
relations of the Empire after the war, an increase of the import duty on
cotton fabrics, without the corresponding increase of the excise duty
which had always been resented as an unjust protection of the Lancashire
industry, abated an Indian grievance of twenty years' standing. A
Defence Force Bill opening up opportunities for Indians to volunteer and
be trained for active service responded in some measure to the agitation
for a national militia which the Congress had encouraged. The Viceroy
also announced that the system of indentured emigration to Fiji and the
West Indies against which Indian sentiment had begun to rebel was at an
end, and that the problem of Indian education would be submitted to a
strong Commission appointed, with Sir Thomas Sadler at its head, to
inquire in the first place into the position of the Calcutta University,
and he warmly invited the co-operation of Indians of all parties with
the representative Committee under Sir Thomas Holland, then already
engaged in quickening the development of Indian industries which, far
too long neglected by successive governments, was at last receiving
serious attention under the compelling pressure of a world-war.
Government and Legislature met and parted on cordial terms. But Mrs.
Besant never abated the vehemence of her Home Rule campaign, for only by
Home Rule could India, she declared, "be saved from ruin, from becoming
a nation of coolies for the enrichment of others." Access to some of the
provinces was denied to her by Provincial Governments, and the
Government of Madras decided to "intern" her. The "internment" meant
merely that she transferred her residence and most of her activities
from Madras to Ootacamund, the summer quarters of the Madras Government,
where she hoisted the Home Rule flag on her house and continued to
direct the Home Rule movement as vigorously as ever. But in her own
flamboyant language she described herself as having been "drafted into
the modern equivalent for the Middle Ages _oubliette_," and even Indians
who were not wholly in sympathy with her views were aflame with
indignation at her cruel "martyrdom." The Government of India, whilst
acquiescing in the action of the Provincial Governments, maintained an
attitude of masterly inactivity, and neither in India nor at home was an
authoritative word forthcoming as to the birth of the reforms scheme
known to be in laborious gestation.
The political tension grew more and more acute. When would Simla or
Whitehall break the prolonged silence? The publication of the
Mesopotamian Report only added fuel to the flames, as it was easy to
read into it a condemnation of Indian administration only less sweeping,
if expressed in a more restrained form, than that which Indians had for
years past poured forth upon it. There was no restraint at all in the
fierce attack delivered upon it during the subsequent debate in the
House of Commons by Lord Morley's former Under Secretary of State for
India, Mr. Montagu. He had himself visited India and was personally
known there, and his speech, cabled out at once in full, produced a
tremendous sensation, which was intensified when a few days later he was
appointed Secretary of State for India in succession to Mr. Chamberlain.
There could be no doubt whatever as to the reality of the "new angle of
vision" when on August 20 Mr. Montagu made in the House of Commons and
Lord Chelmsford in Simla a simultaneous announcement, as solemn in its
form as it was far-reaching in its implications.
The purpose of British policy, it declared, was not only "the increasing
association of Indians in every branch of the administration, but also
the greatest development of self-governing institutions with a view to
the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an
integral part of the British Empire."
This momentous announcement was accompanied, it is true, by a
reservation to the effect "that the British Government and the
Government of India, on whom the responsibility lies for the welfare and
advancement of the Indian people, must be judges of the time and measure
of each advance; and they must be guided by the co-operation received
from those upon whom new opportunities of service will thus be
conferred, and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be
reposed in their sense of responsibility." But it was made clear that
the declaration of policy was not meant to be a mere enunciation of
principles, for it wound up with the statement that His Majesty's
Government had "decided that substantial steps in this direction should
be taken as soon as possible, and that it is of the highest importance
that there should be a free and informal exchange of opinion between
those in authority at home and in India." For that purpose Mr. Montagu
himself was authorised to proceed to India and confer with the Viceroy,
in response to an invitation addressed originally to Mr. Chamberlain and
extended after his resignation to his successor at the India Office.
Could this great pronouncement have been made a year earlier, and with
the added authority of a Royal proclamation, it might have been received
with such widespread acclamation in India as to drown any but the
shrillest notes of dissent from the irreconcilables. The Moderates
hardly dared to admit that it fulfilled--nay, more than fulfilled--their
hopes, whilst the Extremists in the Indian National Congress, presided
over on this occasion by Mrs. Besant herself, banged, bolted, and barred
the door against any compromise by reaffirming and stiffening into
something akin to an ultimatum the Home Rule resolutions of 1916 just at
the moment when Mr. Montagu was landing in India. But the Secretary of
State was not the man to be perturbed by such demonstrations. He had the
British politician's faith in compromise, and he did not perhaps
understand fully that Indian Extremism represents a very different
quality of opposition from any that a British Minister has yet had to
reckon with in Parliament. He saw Indians of all classes and creeds and
political parties during his tour through India, but on none did he
lavish more time and more patient hearing than upon the Extremists whom
he hoped against hope to convert. He had an easier task when he tried
to disarm the resentment which his vigorous onslaught on the methods and
temper of British administration just before he took office had aroused
amongst the European members of the public services. He conferred with
governors and with heads of departments, and with representatives of the
European community. He received endless deputations and masses of
addresses, and he remained of course in close consultation with the
Viceroy in accordance with the declared object of his mission. After
four strenuous months Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford signed at Simla on
April 22, 1918, a joint report which was laid before Parliament in July.
Great as had always been the responsibilities of the Secretary of State
and the Viceroy for the government of India "as by law established,"
they were on this occasion vastly greater. For two men of widely
different temperaments had to work out together a scheme for shifting
the very axis of government. They rose to the occasion. The
Montagu-Chelmsford Report will rank with the great State papers which
are landmarks of constitutional progress in the history of the British
Empire. It falls naturally and logically into two parts, the first
setting forth the conditions of the problem, the second the
recommendations for its solution; and even if the second had not
provided the foundations for the Act of 1919, the first would have
deserved to live as a masterly survey of the state of India--the first
authoritative one since the transfer to the Crown just sixty years
before. For the first time since the Mutiny it marked a reversion to the
spirit in which the Bentincks and Munros and Elphinstones had almost a
century earlier conceived the mission of England in India to lie in the
training of the Indian people to govern themselves, and for the first
time an attempt was made to appraise generously but fairly the position
of the Western-educated classes and the part they have come to play in
the Indian polity. The passage is worth quoting in full, as the
constitutional changes effected on the lines recommended by the Report
were to give them the opportunity to prove the stuff they were made of
as the political leaders of their country.
In estimating the politically-minded portion of the people of India
we should not go either to census reports on the one hand, or to
political literature on the other. It is one of the most difficult
portions of our task to see them in their right relation to the
rest of the country. Our obligations to them are plain, for they
are intellectually our children. They have imbibed ideas which we
ourselves have set before them, and we ought to reckon it to their
credit. The present intellectual and moral stir in India is no
reproach but rather a tribute to our work. The _Raj_ would have
been a mechanical and iron thing if the spirit of India had not
responded to it. We must remember, too, that the educated Indian
has come to the front by hard work; he has seized the education
which we offered him because he first saw its advantages; and it is
he who has advocated and worked for political progress. All this
stands to his credit. For thirty years he has developed in his
Congress, and latterly in the Moslem League, free popular
convocations which express his ideals. We owe him sympathy because
he has conceived and pursued the idea of managing his own affairs,
an aim which no Englishman can fail to respect. He has made a
skilful, and on the whole a moderate, use of the opportunities
which we have given him in the legislative councils of influencing
Government and affecting the course of public business, and of
recent years he has by speeches and in the press done much to
spread the idea of a united and self-respecting India among
thousands who had no such conception in their minds. Helped by the
inability of the other classes in India to play a prominent part he
has assumed the place of leader; but his authority is by no means
universally acknowledged and may in an emergency prove weak.
The prospects of advance very greatly depend upon how far the
educated Indian is in sympathy with and capable of fairly
representing the illiterate masses. The old assumption that the
interests of the ryot must be confided to official hands is
strenuously denied by modern educated Indians. They claim that the
European official must by his lack of imagination and comparative
lack of skill in tongues be gravely handicapped in interpreting the
thoughts and desires of an Asiatic people. On the other hand, it is
argued that in the limited spread of education, the endurance of
caste exclusiveness and of usages sanctioned by caste, and in the
records of some local bodies and councils, may be found reasons
which suggest that the politically-minded classes stand somewhat
apart from and in advance of the ordinary life of the country. Nor
would it be surprising if this were the case. Our educational
policy in the past aimed at satisfying the few who sought after
English education, without sufficient thought of the consequences
which might ensue from not taking care to extend instruction to the
many. We have in fact created a limited _intelligentsia_, who
desire advance; and we cannot stay their progress entirely until
education has been extended to the masses. It has been made a
reproach to the educated classes that they have followed too
exclusively after one or two pursuits, the law, journalism, or
school teaching; and that these are all callings which make men
inclined to overrate the importance of words and phrases. But even
if there is substance in the count, we must take note also how far
the past policy of Government is responsible. We have not succeeded
in making education practical. It is only now, when the war has
revealed the importance of industry, that we have deliberately set
about encouraging Indians to undertake the creation of wealth by
industrial enterprise, and have thereby offered the educated
classes any tangible inducement to overcome their traditional
inclination to look down on practical forms of energy. We must
admit that the educated Indian is a creation peculiarly of our own;
and if we take the credit that is due to us for his strong points
we must admit a similar liability for his weak ones. Let us note
also in justice to him that the progressive Indian appears to
realise the narrow basis of his position and is beginning to
broaden it. In municipal and university work he has taken a useful
and creditable share. We find him organising effort not for
political ends alone, but for various forms of public and social
service. He has come forward and done valuable work in relieving
famine and distress by floods, in keeping order at fairs, in
helping pilgrims, and in promoting co-operative credit. Although
his ventures in the fields of commerce have not been always
fortunate, he is beginning to turn his attention more to the
improvement of agriculture and industry. Above all, he is active in
promoting education and sanitation; and every increase in the
number of educated people adds to his influence and authority.
The authors of the Report were at the same time by no means unmindful of
England's responsibilities towards the vast masses still quite content
to accept the system of government which she had given them, and who
looked with undiminished faith to their British administrators for the
continuance of the peace and security and even-handed justice which they
had seldom if ever enjoyed in the same measure under their indigenous
rulers. The problem to be solved was "one of political education which
must be practical and also experimental." The politically-minded classes
had to be given an opportunity of learning how to govern and administer;
and the other classes, which have hitherto accepted unquestioningly the
government and administration given to them, had to be taught to
exercise the critical rights of intelligent citizenship. A sphere had to
be found in which Indians could be given work to do, and be held
accountable to their own people for the way they did it. That sphere had
to be circumscribed at first so as not to endanger the foundations of
Government, and yet capable of steady expansion if and in proportion as
the experiment succeeds, until the process of political education should
be complete and Indians should have shown themselves qualified for the
same measure of self-government as the Dominions already enjoy within
the British Empire.
From a careful examination of the existing structure of Government and
an exhaustive review of present conditions in India, the
Montagu-Chelmsford Report deduced two definite conclusions:
(1) It is on the Central Government, _i.e._ the Government of India,
that the whole structure rests; and the foundations must not be
disturbed pending experience of the changes to be introduced into less
vital parts. The Government of India must therefore remain wholly
responsible to Parliament, and, saving such responsibility, its
authority in essential matters must during the initial stages of the
experiment remain indisputable.
(2) While popular control can be at once largely extended in the domain
of local government, the Provinces provide the sphere in which the
earlier steps towards the development of representative institutions and
the progressive realisation of responsible government promised in the
Declaration of August 20, 1917, can be most usefully and safely taken.
The whole of the second part of the Report was devoted to working out in
considerable detail a practical scheme for giving effect to those two
conclusions. The powers and responsibilities of the Government of India
as the Central Government were left intact, but an All-Indian
legislature consisting of two assemblies, the one as popular and
democratic as a large elective majority proceeding from the broadest
practicable franchise could make it--to be called the Indian Legislative
Assembly--and the other a relatively small upper chamber to be known as
the Council of State which, composed partly of elected members and
partly of members nominated by Government or entitled _ex officio_ to
membership, was expected to provide the desired counterpoise of approved
experience and enlightened conservatism. The Report expressed the pious
hope that "inasmuch as the Council of State will be the supreme
legislative authority for India on all crucial questions and the
revising authority for all Indian legislation," it would "attract the
services of the best men available," and "develop something of the
experience and dignity of a body of Elder Statesmen"--an expression
presumably borrowed, but not very aptly, from Japan, where the Elder
Statesmen have no doubt had immense influence but never any
constitutional status. The Report had, moreover, to contemplate the
possibility of conflict between the Legislature and the Executive, and
in accordance with the first of the two main conclusions at which it had
arrived it proposed to arm the Governor-General in Council with power to
override the Legislature if it failed to pass measures or grant supplies
which he was prepared to "certify" as vital to the peace, safety, and
interests of India.
For the great experiment in the provincial sphere, the eight provinces
of Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces, Behar and Orissa, the
Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Assam, were deemed to be already
ripe. Burma (which is not really India at all, and whose people belong
to another race and to another stage of political development), the
North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan (which for strategical
reasons must remain under the direct control of the Government of
India), and a few smaller areas, whose populations are altogether too
backward, were not to be touched at present. The essential feature of
the scheme was the division of the functions of the Provincial
Government into two categories: the one comprising what are now termed
"the reserved subjects," _i.e._ those with which the maintenance of
peace and order and good government is immediately bound up; and the
other, those which, though less vital, very closely affect the daily
life and common interests of the people, and which were to be called
"the transferred subjects," because it was proposed to transfer at once
the largest possible measure of power and responsibility in regard to
them to exclusively Indian shoulders. While all essential power and
responsibility in regard to "the reserved subjects" were to remain
vested in the Governor-in-Council, _i.e._ the executive body consisting
of the Governor and (under the new scheme) one British and one Indian
member of Council, real power and responsibility for dealing with "the
transferred subjects" were to be conferred on Indian Ministers
accountable to a Legislative Council in which there was to be a large
Indian non-official majority, elected also on the broadest possible
franchise. The Provincial Government would thus itself be divided into
two compartments: in the one the Governor-in-Council, responsible as
heretofore to the Government of India and to the Secretary of State,
_i.e._ the British Parliament; in the other the Governor--but not "in
Council"--acting with Indian Ministers responsible to an Indian
legislature.
This was the system of partial but progressive devolution that had
already come to be known as "Dyarchy," having been propounded in a
somewhat different form by an independent inquirer, Mr. Lionel Curtis,
whose "Letters to the People of India" on responsible Government, though
they at first caused almost as much displeasure in official as in
Extremist circles, did a great deal to educate the mind of the
"politically-minded" classes, and to prepare the ground for the
Montagu-Chelmsford Report. The authors of the Report were themselves
fully alive to the demerits as well as to the merits of dyarchy, and
they were careful to state it as their intention that "the Government
thus composed and with this distribution of functions shall discharge
them as one Government, and that as a general rule it shall deliberate
as a whole." The Governor-in-Council was to have, on the other hand,
within his narrower sphere, powers similar to those retained by the
Viceroy for overriding the Provincial Legislature in extreme cases of
conflict.
General principles were alone laid down in the Report, and its authors
confined themselves to a rough preliminary indication of their views, as
to the distribution of "reserved" and "transferred" subjects in the
Provinces and as to the constitution of electorates. The latter problem
they stated in brief terms: "We must measure the number of persons who
can in the different parts of the country be reasonably entrusted with
the duties of citizenship. We must ascertain what sort of franchise will
be suited to local conditions, and how interests that may be unable to
find adequate representation in such constituencies are to be
represented." But it was perhaps Mr. Montagu's doctrinaire Radicalism
that betrayed itself in the treatment of the question of "communal"
representation, _i.e._ the creation of separate constituencies for
various communities, which, however important or however much entitled
to make their voices heard, might be submerged in constituencies based
solely on territorial representation. "Communal representation" had been
conceded to so powerful a minority as the Mahomedans under the Indian
Councils Act of 1909; and the Report admitted that it could not be
withdrawn from them, and that it might have to be conceded to other
communities, such as the Sikhs. At the same time it developed at great
length all the theoretical arguments against the principle, viz. that it
is opposed to history, that it perpetuates class division, that it
stereotypes existing relations based on traditions and prejudices which
we should do everything to discourage.
At the risk even of travelling somewhat beyond the expressed terms of
their reference, the Secretary of State and the Viceroy could not but
recognise that the effects of great constitutional reforms, of which the
statutory application would be necessarily confined to that part of
India that is under direct British administration, must nevertheless
react upon that other smaller but still very considerable part of India
which enjoys more or less complete internal autonomy under its own
hereditary rulers. A growing number of questions, and especially
economic questions, must arise in future, which will affect the
interests of the Native States as directly as those of the rest of
India; and their rulers may legitimately claim, as the Report plainly
admitted, to have constitutional opportunities of expressing their views
and wishes and of conferring with one another and with the Government of
India. For such purposes the Report included suggestions which were to
take shape in the establishment of the Chamber of Princes.
One other recommendation of the Report deserves special notice, as it
shows the authors to have realised how seriously Parliament, though more
directly responsible than ever for the exercise of due vigilance over
Indian affairs after the transfer to the Crown, had lost touch with
them, since, with the disappearance of the East India Company after the
Mutiny, it ceased to hold the regular and exhaustive inquiries which the
renewal of the Charter had until then periodically required. As their
own scheme was designed merely to give Parliament a lead in the first of
a progressive series of constitutional reforms, they recommended that a
Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the working of the new Indian
institutions and the general progress of the people of India should at
stated intervals determine the further stages of advance towards the
final goal of self-government. Such a Commission, armed with power to
examine witnesses, would not only enlighten British public opinion, but
also probe Indian opinion in a much more searching way than can be done
by impassioned and irresponsible arguments and counter-arguments in the
press and on platforms. It would, above all, assist Parliament to master
from time to time the many-sided problem whose progressive solution it
would have constantly to watch and periodically to determine.
The Report was a document of such magnitude and complexity, and went so
boldly to the roots of Indian government and administration, that even
amongst the absorbing preoccupations of the war, which was only just
emerging for the Allies from the terrible crisis of March-April 1918,
its publication at once provoked a considerable stream of criticism. On
the whole, British public opinion was favourable, though there was a
small but not uninfluential group of British reactionaries who at once
took up, and have ever since maintained, the position that the Report
meant, not the mending, for which they saw, moreover, very little need,
but the ending of British rule in India. Equal divergencies occurred in
Indian public opinion. An Extremist gathering in Madras declared roundly
that "the scheme is so radically wrong in principle and in detail that
in our opinion it is impossible to modify or improve it." In vain had
Mrs. Besant been released from her modern _oubliette_ before Mr. Montagu
started for India. "The scheme," she wrote in her haste, on the very day
of its publication, "is unworthy to be offered by England or to be
accepted by India." In vain had Mr. Montagu allowed himself to be
garlanded by Mr. Tilak, who was not far behind Mrs. Besant in
pronouncing the scheme to be "entirely unacceptable." The Calcutta
Provincial Conference of the Congress party held a few days later
abounded in the same sense, and a special session of the whole Congress
convoked in August in Bombay was only in form somewhat less bitterly
uncompromising, and only because it began to realise that the secession
of the more moderate elements was likely to reduce "the Parliament of
India" to a mere rump. Moderate opinion had not committed itself to
acceptance of the scheme as precipitately as the Extremists to its
rejection, but against rejection pure and simple it set its face at
once, and it rallied so steadily and surely to acceptance that few of
the Moderates attended the Provincial Congress, where they were promptly
howled down, and they determined to hold a Conference of their own in
opposition to the special Congress session. At this Conference, as well
as in the Committee of non-official members of the Indian Legislative
Council, there was a good deal of disjointed criticism of various
recommendations in the Report, not infrequently due to misunderstanding
of their import, but on the whole it was recognised as representing a
great triumph for the cause of political progress on constitutional
lines and therefore for the educated opinion of India. The breach
between the Extremists and the Moderates was clearly defined by Mr. B.L.
Mitter, a prominent Moderate of Calcutta and a member of the new
Moderate organisation, the "National Liberal League":
The Extremists would have nothing to do with the English in the
Government or outside; the Moderates consider co-operation with the
English necessary for national development, political, industrial,
economic, and otherwise. The Extremists would straightway assume
full responsibility of Government; the Moderates think that would
lead to chaos, and would proceed by stages. It is the difference
between cataclysm and evolution. The Extremists' ideal is
destruction of the existing order of things in the hope that
something better will take its place, for nothing can be worse than
what is; the Moderates' ideal is formation of a new order of things
on definite progressive lines. One is chance, the other is design.
The primary difference (so far as methods are concerned) is that
the Extremists' method is not necessarily constitutional; the
Moderates' method always constitutional. Some Extremists use
violence, others work secretly and spread discontent and
disaffection. Others again, pretending to follow legitimate methods
of agitation, take care not to discourage unconstitutional methods
or even crimes, nay, they miss no opportunity to applaud criminals
as martyrs. There are others, again, who merely idealise and are
content with rousing the passions of the people. Intrigue and abuse
are the general weapons in the Extremists' armoury. The Moderates
always act openly and with dignity, and follow lawful methods of
agitation. The Extremists always oppose the Government. The
Moderates co-operate with authority, and oppose when necessary in
the interests of the country. Lastly, the Extremists appeal only to
the passions of the people; the Moderates appeal to their reason.
Later developments in India itself were unfortunately to play once more
into the hands of the Extremists, and the leadership was to pass from
Mr. Tilak, who was growing old and died in the summer of 1920, and from
Mrs. Besant too, who, after being bitterly reviled by her former ally,
at last saw the error of her ways and finally went over to the Moderate
camp with the diminishing remnants of her influence, into the hands of a
new and strange figure in Indian politics, Mr. Gandhi, endowed with very
different qualities and greater spiritual influence than either of them.
But before bringing him on to the stage it may be well to follow the
progress of Indian reforms at home after the publication of the
Montagu-Chelmsford Report. It had been laid before Parliament without
any _imprimatur_ from the Cabinet, and some months passed before, with
the conclusion of the war, His Majesty's Government found leisure to
give it their collective consideration. Not till June 1919 was Mr.
Montagu in a position to move in the House of Commons the second reading
of the great Bill drafted with their authority to give effect in all
essentials to the recommendations of the Report. His powerful and lucid
exposition of its provisions and of the whole situation with which
England was confronted in India made a deep impression on the House,
though it by no means disarmed opposition, and the Bill was remitted for
consideration to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses which, chosen
impartially from all parties, proceeded to take a large mass of evidence
from British and Indian witnesses of every political complexion, and
delivered a very weighty report in November. The views of the Government
of India and of the Provincial Governments, by no means always in accord
amongst themselves, had also been before the Committee, as well as those
of the members of the Secretary of State's Council. But the alternative
proposals submitted were either impracticable or ineffective, and the
Bill which, in so far as it was modified in accordance with its
recommendations, assumed an even more liberal character. Mr. Montagu's
hands were thus strengthened for the final debates in the House of
Commons in which the opposition proved sterile in argument and weak in
numbers, and the Bill was passed through both Houses of Parliament in
time for the constitutional assent of the Crown to be given to it and
for the King-Emperor to address a solemn proclamation to the Viceroy,
Princes, and people of India on the eminently appropriate date of
Christmas Eve 1920. This Royal message of peace and goodwill set forth
in simple language both the purposes and the genesis of the Act:
I have watched with understanding and sympathy the growing desire
of my Indian people for representative institutions. Starting from
small beginnings, this ambition has steadily strengthened its hold
upon the intelligence of the country. It has pursued its course
along constitutional channels with sincerity and courage. It has
survived the discredit which at times and in places lawless men
sought to cast upon it by acts of violence committed under the
guise of patriotism. It has been stirred to more vigorous life by
the ideals for which the British Commonwealth fought in the Great
War, and it claims support in the part which India has taken in our
common struggles, anxieties, and victories.
In truth, the desire after political responsibility has its source
at the root of the British connection with India. It has sprung
inevitably from the deeper and wider studies of human thought and
history which that connection has opened to the Indian people.
Without it the work of the British in India would have been
incomplete. It was, therefore, with a wise judgment that the
beginnings of representative institutions were laid many years ago.
Their scope has been extended stage by stage until there now lies
before us a definite step on the road to responsible government.
The Act, which implemented all the principal recommendations of the
Montagu-Chelmsford Report, superseded within little more than fifty
years the Government of India Act of 1858, under which the Crown first
assumed direct responsibility for the government and administration of
India. The Royal message certainly did not exaggerate its significance.
Its actual provisions are indeed of less moment than its larger
implications and the spirit in which it will be interpreted and carried
into effect. For the right spirit to crown the new Constitution with
success we must look to Indians and British alike, not forgetting that
the changes introduced into the structure of Indian government and
administration are themselves only ancillary to the still more important
changes which must result from the recognition of Indian public opinion
as a powerful and ultimately paramount influence in the shaping of
policy. Such recognition must follow not only from the creation of
Indian representative Assemblies with a large majority of Indian elected
members but from the appointment of Indians, three in number already in
the Government of India, three in the Secretary of State's Council in
Whitehall, and in varying numbers both as Ministers and members of the
Executive Councils in Provincial Governments. Side by side with this
progressive Indianisation of the Executive of which we are witnessing
only the first stage, the Indianisation of the administrative
departments and of the public services, and not least of the Indian
Civil Service, is bound to proceed with increasing rapidity. Indians can
hardly fail to realise that, perhaps for a long time to come, they will
require the experience and driving power of Englishmen, but they will
inevitably claim increasing control over policy, now formally conceded
to them in a large Provincial sphere, until it shall have extended in
successive stages to the whole sphere of Provincial Government and
ultimately to the Central Government itself. Then, and then only, India
will actually emerge into complete Dominion Self-Government. But we
shall do well to remember, and Indians will certainly not allow us to
forget, that the terms of equality, on which her representatives are now
admitted to the innermost counsels of the Empire, have already in many
respects outstripped the Act of 1919.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _The Evolution of Mrs. Besant_, by the Editor of _Justice_,
Madras, _Justice_ Printing Works, 1918.