Gentlemen, our requirements will not be met by the introduction of a
few more of our countrymen into the Civil Service. My quarrel as I said
elsewhere, is not with individuals. There are Civil Servants who are
honourable men, good men, true men; there may be again those who are
not so good--but that would happen in every community. My quarrel is
not with the individual at all. My quarrel is with the system. It is
the system which is responsible for the bad government of this country.
Why is the system bad? It is for this--that there is no responsibility.
An English friend of mine has pointed out that. What are the Civil
Servants to do? They are not responsible to the people. They have to
take their orders from the Executive Council of Bengal. To whom are
the members of the Executive Council responsible? Not to the people.
They have got to take their orders from the Government of India. To
whom is the Government of India responsible? Not to the people. They
have got to take their orders from the British Parliament. Has the
British Parliament got any time to devote to India? Or to make that
responsibility real? No. My English friend says: they have not. They
have neglected India not out of apathy but because their own interest
required it--they are to discuss so many questions which are of far
greater importance to England than the question of India. So you get a
state of things in this country, where the Civil Service, the Executive
Council, the Government of Bengal and the Government of India are not
responsible to anybody. And under such circumstances, good government
is impossible. That is why the Bureaucracy has failed and that is
why the Bureaucracy has got to be removed by the introduction of
some sort of responsible government--that is why the British Cabinet
has suggested the introduction of responsible government. There is
no further any question of the failure of the Bureaucracy--that is
accepted as a fact, accepted as a fact by people who have the right
to know, by people--not ourselves--but people who have the capacity
to judge, by people who have political insight and wisdom to come to
a correct conclusion. We ought not to waste our energy any more in
discussing the question whether this Bureaucracy has succeeded or
whether it has failed. It is an accepted fact that it has failed.
The question now is what is the Government that we ought to have. What
is the exact character of the representation which we ought to obtain
and, gentlemen, I also ask you to consider another thing carefully. In
framing the scheme, do not be carried away by mere clamour. It does
not matter at all whether your Legislative consists of 100 members or
whether it consists of 300 members. It does not matter at all whether
the Executive Council will contain two more Indians. What is necessary
to consider is how to make the Legislative Council responsible to
the people, how to make the Executive Council responsible to the
Legislative Council and how to make this responsible government express
the true ideal of the people of Bengal.