India, Old and New

by Sir Valentine Chirol

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.