CHAPTER XIII.
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS.
When Lord Minto closed at the end of March the first Session of the Imperial Council, as the Viceroy's Legislative Council, enlarged under the Indian Councils Act of 1909, is now officially designated, in contradistinction to the enlarged Provincial Councils of Provincial Governments, his Excellency very properly described it as "a memorable Session." It was, indeed, far more than that. Even to the outward eye the old Council Chamber at Government House presented a very significant spectacle, to which the portrait of Warren Hastings over the Viceregal Chair always seemed to add a strange note of admiration. The round table at which the members of the Viceroy's Legislative Council used to gather, with far less of formality, had disappeared, and the 59 members of the enlarged Council had their appointed seats disposed in a double hemicycle facing the Chair. They sat for the most part according to provinces, and the features as well as, in some cases, the dresses, of the Indian members showed at a glance how representative this new Council really was.
The tall burly frame of the Kuvar Sahib of Patiala was only more conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry, whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper classes, has adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West. The bold, hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the Rajah of Mahmudabad's more delicate features of the Mahomedan aristocracy of the erstwhile kingdom of Oudh. The white swadeshi garments affected by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, from the United Provinces—who opened the last meeting of the Indian National Congress at Lahore with a presidential address which lasted for two hours and a quarter, and wound up with an apology for its brevity on the ground that he had had no time to prepare it—testified, at any rate more loudly, to the sternness of his patriotic convictions than the equally swadeshi homespun, cut at least in European fashion, of another "advanced" politician, Mr. Bhupendranath Bose, of Bengal. More worthy of attention was the keen, refined, and intellectual face of Mr. G.K. Gokhale, the Deccanee Brahman with the Mahratta cap, who, by education, belongs to the West quite as much as to the East, and, by birth, to the ruling caste of the last dominant race before the advent of the British Raj. The red fez worn by the majority of Mahomedan members showed that their community had certainly not failed in this instance to secure the generous measure of representation which Lord Minto spontaneously promised to them three years ago at Simla. The peculiar glazed black headdress of the Parsee and the silk kerchief of the Burman in turn indicated the racial catholicity of the assembly in which Sir Sassoon David, of Bombay, worthily represents, by his authority as a financier, the small Jewish community of India.
Nor were the different interests and classes, with two important exceptions, less adequately represented than the different races and creeds. Besides the great territorial magnates, of whom I have already mentioned two or three by name, there were not a few other well-known representatives of the landed interests which, in a country like India where agriculture is still the greatest of all national industries, have a special claim to respectful hearing, even though they have hitherto for the most part held aloof from the fashionable methods of political agitation. There was indeed a good deal of disappointment among the urban professional classes, in whose eyes a Western education—or rather education on what are, often quite erroneously, conceived to be Western lines—should apparently constitute the one indispensable qualification for public life. But they too had secured no inconsiderable number of seats, and if the voice of the Indian National Congress did not predominate it had certainly not been reduced to silence.
Doubts were freely expressed among Englishmen before the meetings of the new Councils as to the competence of the Anglo-Indian officials for the novel duties allotted to them in these assemblies. It was argued, not unreasonably, that men who had never been trained or accustomed to take part in public discussions might find themselves at a disadvantage in controversial encounters with the quick-witted Hindu politician. It is generally admitted now that the first Session at any rate of the Imperial Council by no means justified any such apprehensions. Not a few official members, it is true, were inclined at first to rely exclusively upon their written notes, and there was indeed, from beginning to end, but little room for the rapid thrust and skilled parry of debate to which we are accustomed at Westminster. Most of the Indian members themselves had carefully prepared their speeches beforehand, and read them out from typed or even printed drafts before them. In many cases the speeches had been communicated two or three days ahead to the Press, and sometimes a speech was printed and commented upon in the favoured organ of some honourable member, though he had ultimately changed his mind and preserved silence, without, however, informing the editor of the fact. In other cases a speech was published without the interruptions and calls to order which had compelled the orator to drop out some of his most cherished periods. As it was the custom for Indian members to communicate also to the departments immediately concerned the gist of the remarks which they proposed to make, the official members were tempted at first to frame their replies on similar lines and to read out elaborate statements bristling with figures, which would have been much more suitable for circulation as printed minutes. But gradually many of them took courage and showed that they could speak easily and simply, and quite as effectively as most of the Indian members.
Indeed, one of the best speeches of this kind was that delivered on the last day but one of the Session by Mr. P.C. Lyon, a nominated member for Eastern Bengals, in reply to the fervid oration of Mr. Bupendranath Bose on the threadbare topic of Partition. On this, as on other occasions, the florid style of eloquence cultivated by the leaders of the Indian National Congress fell distinctly flat in the calmer atmosphere of the Council-room, as indeed Mr. Gokhale warned some of his friends it was bound to do. During the last two days discussion was allowed somewhat needlessly under the new rules, to roam at large over all manner of irrelevant subjects, but on this occasion it served at least one useful purpose. If it were not that the Bengalee politician has no other grievance to substitute for it, the question of the Partition of Bengal should, one would think, have received its quietus, for two excellent speeches, delivered with much simple force by Maulvi Syed Shams ul Huda, Mahomedan member for Eastern Bengal, and by Mr. Mazhar-ul-Haq, another Mahomedan who sits for Bengal, completed the discomfiture which poor Mr. Bose had already experienced at Mr. Lyon's hands.
Needless to say that amongst the Indian members it was the politician, and especially the more "advanced" politician, who figured most prominently in the discussions. The more conservative Indians were usually content to listen, with more or less visible signs of weariness, to the facile and sometimes painfully long-winded eloquence of their colleagues. When they did intervene, however, their speeches were usually short and none the less effective. In most of the divisions that were taken they supported the Government, and in no single instance was the Government majority hard pressed. The minority in support of any resolution resisted by Government never reached 20, and generally fluctuated somewhere between 16 and 20. The only resolution which would have certainly combined all the native members in support of it was Mr. Gokhale's resolution with regard to the position of British Indians in South Africa, but, as it was accepted by Government, it was passed nem. con. without a division.
That in these circumstances the official members who are at the same time heads of the most important administrative and executive departments should be kept in constant attendance during debates in which many of them, are not in any way directly concerned, and that they should thus be detained in Calcutta at a season when their presence would be far more useful elsewhere, constitutes one of the most serious of the many practical drawbacks of the new system for which a remedy will have to be found. It is as if not only the Parliamentary representatives but the permanent officials of our own great public departments were expected to sit through the debates in the House of Commons, without even the facilities which the private rooms of Ministers, the library, and the smoking rooms at Westminster afford for quiet intervals of work between the division bells. Nor is that all. The Council sat during the very months of the short "cold weather," when it is customary and alone practicable for heads of departments to undertake their annual tours of inspection. The reductio ad absurdum is surely reached in the case of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the Staff. Though the Imperial Council is itself debarred from dealing with Army questions, they could be seen any day sitting through the debates merely because their votes might conceivably be required to maintain the official majority, and, except for one or two short excursions in the intervals between the meetings of Council, they were tied to Calcutta when they ought to have been travelling about the country and inspecting the troops. Yet, it is generally admitted that at no period since the Mutiny has it been more important for the Commander-in-Chief to maintain the closest possible contact with the native army—especially when the Commander-in-Chief is as popular with the Indian soldier as Sir O'Moore Creagh.
Another obvious drawback of the present arrangements is the inconvenience to which members of Council from the provinces were subjected by the irregular intervals at which the Council held its actual sittings. Either they had to waste their time at Calcutta during the intervals, to the detriment of their interests at home, or they had to spend days in railway carriages rushing backwards and forwards from their homes to the capital, for in a country of such magnificent distances there are few journeys that take less than 24 hours, and from Calcutta, for instance, either to Madras or to Bombay takes the best part of 48 hours. Unless arrangements are remodelled so as to enable the Council to transact its business, whether in pleno or in committee, either in one session or in two short sessions, but in any case continuously, many of its most valuable members, who have important business, of their own which they cannot afford to neglect, will cease to attend, and the Council will not only lose much of the representative character, which is one of its best features at present, but will fall inevitably under the preponderating influence of the professional politician. In his closing speech Lord Minto outlined a scheme which would in some measure meet this difficulty, but it is doubtful whether it will prove by any means adequate. Another point which requires consideration is whether it is desirable for the Viceroy to preside himself over the deliberations of the Council. Even if he could properly afford the time for it, it seems hardly expedient that the immediate representative of the King-Emperor should be drawn into the arena of public controversies. Proceedings are bound to grow more and more contentious, and delicate questions of procedure will arise and have to be settled from the chair. These are all matters in which the Viceroy should not be committed to the premature exercise, on the spur of the moment, of his supreme authority.
One of the chief purposes which the creation of the new Councils is intended to achieve is that of enlightening Indian opinion throughout the country by means of the enlarged opportunities given for the discussion of public affairs. But that purpose will be defeated unless the discussions receive adequate publicity. They certainly did not do so this winter. Not only is the art of gallery reporting still in its infancy, but many of the Indian newspapers have still to learn that "it is not cricket" to report only the speeches of their political friends and to omit or compress into a few lines the speeches of their adversaries. A glaring instance of this shortcoming was afforded by the Bengalee. The Nationalist organ published Mr. Bupendra Nath Bose's speech on the partition of Bengal in extenso, as he had intended to deliver it, without taking the slightest notice of the fact that he was repeatedly called to order by the Viceroy and had in consequence to drop out whole passages of his oration, and it published practically nothing else—though perhaps no other indictment of the Government during the whole session was more successfully refuted, both by the official spokesman, Mr. Lyon, and by other Indian members. Apart, however, from any such deliberate unfairness, the communication of speeches in advance to the Press should be strenuously discountenanced. Many official members showed that they could perfectly well dispense with the doubtful advantage of knowing beforehand exactly what their critics were going to say, and, if once this practice is stopped, newspapers, relieved from the temptation of giving undue preference to easy "copy," will learn to cultivate and to rely upon more legitimate methods of reporting. It is to be hoped also that the Gazette of India, which publishes the official verbatim reports, will not in future lag so far behind the actual proceedings.
All these are minor points. The dominant feature of the Session was that in spite of wide divergences of views, the proceedings were generally dignified, sometimes even to the verge of dulness, and with one or two exceptions they were marked by good feeling on all sides. It would be unfair not to give to Mr. Gokhale his full share of credit for this happy result. Though often an unrelenting critic of the Administration, he struck from the first a note of studied moderation and restraint to which most of his political friends attuned their utterances. He naturally assumed the functions of the leader of his Majesty's Opposition, and he discharged them, not only with the ability which every one expected of him, but with the urbanity and self-restraint of a man conscious of his responsibilities as well as of his powers. His was, amongst the Indian members, not only the master mind, but the dominant personality. The European members, on the other hand, showed themselves invariably courteous and good-tempered, and not a few awkward corners were turned by a little good-humoured banter. Nor was it unusual to see the Englishman come and sit down by the side of the Indian member to whose indictment he had just been replying, and in friendly conversation take all personal sting out of the controversy. As Lord Minto aptly put it, the Council-room "has brought people together. Official and non-official members have met each other. The official wall which of necessity to some extent separated them has been broken down. They have talked over many things together." From this point of view, if future sessions fulfil the promise of the first one, the Imperial Council may grow into a potent instrument for good.
Of the deeper significance which underlay the meeting of this remarkable assembly it is still perhaps premature to speak. But cautious and tentative as was the attitude of all parties concerned, and free as, from beginning to end, the proceedings were from any startling incidents, no one can have watched them without being conscious of the presence of new forces of vast potentiality which must tend to modify very profoundly the relations between the governors and the governed in India itself, and possibly even between India and the Mother Country. They are the forces, largely still unknown, which have been brought into play by Lord Morley's Constitutional reforms, and though they made themselves naturally more conspicuously felt in the Imperial Council at Calcutta, they were present in every one of the enlarged Legislative Councils of the Provincial Governments.
It is no part of my purpose to recount in detail the long, though generally dispassionate, controversy to which these reforms gave rise. We may not all be agreed as to the necessity or wisdom of some of the changes embodied in them, and some may think that we are inclined to travel too fast and too far on a road which Indians have not up to the present shown themselves qualified to tread without danger. But there are few Englishmen either at home or in India who do not recognize the statesmanlike spirit in which Lord Morley, loyally seconded throughout by Lord Minto, has approached the very difficult problem of giving to the people of India a larger consultative voice in administration as well as in legislation without jeopardizing the stability or impairing the supremacy of British control. The future alone can show how far these far-reaching changes will justify the generous expectations of their author, but taken as a whole they undoubtedly represent a constructive work which is fully worthy of the fine record of British rule in India.
How very far-reaching they are the merest indication of their most salient features will suffice to indicate. For the sake of convenience, though they form a homogeneous whole, they may be divided roughly into two categories—those that affect the Executive Councils and those that have remodelled the Legislative Councils. To the former category belong:—
(1) The appointment of an Indian member to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Mr. S.P. Sinha, a Bengalee barrister in large practice, was appointed to be legal member, and the ability and distinction with which he discharged the duties of his high office have gone far to remove the misgivings of many of those who were at first opposed to this new departure. It is the more to be regretted that his services will be lost to the new Viceroy, as he has announced his intention of retiring, for personal reasons, at the end of Lord Minto's Viceroyalty[15].
(2) The appointment of one Indian member to the Executive Councils of the Governors of Madras and Bombay. The Rajah of Bobbili has been appointed in Madras and Mr. M.B. Chaubal in Bombay. An Indian will also be appointed to the Executive Council of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal as soon as that body has been finally constituted[16], and similar appointments will be made to the Executive Councils of the chief Indian provinces when the powers taken to create those bodies shall be put into operation.
(3) The appointment of two Indians, one a Hindu and the other a Mahomedan, to be members of the Council of the Secretary of State, generally known as the India Council, in Whitehall. Mr. K.G. Gupta and Mr. Husain Bilgrami were appointed by Lord Morley in 1907. Mr. Bilgrami retired early in 1910 owing to ill-health and his place has been taken by Mr. M.A. Ali Baig.
In principle, the introduction of natives of India into these inner lines of the British Executive power undoubtedly constitutes, as Lord Lansdowne has said, a "tremendous innovation," but it may be doubted whether in practice the consequences will be as considerable as those of the changes effected by the India Councils Act of 1909 in the composition and attributions of the Imperial and Provincial Legislative Councils. These changes are of a twofold character. In the first place the total number of members has been very materially increased—e.g., in the Imperial Legislative Council from 21 to a maximum of 60; in the Madras and Bombay Legislative Councils from 24 to a maximum of 50; in the Bengal Legislative Council from 20 to 50, &c. Room has thus been made for the introduction of a much larger number of elected members, of whom there will be in future not less than 135 altogether in the different Legislative Councils, as against only 39 under the old statutes. Still more important than the mere increase in the number of elected members is the radical change in the proportion they will bear to official members. Except in the Imperial Council, where, at the instance of Lord Morley, a small official majority has been retained which Lord Minto himself was willing to dispense with, there will no longer be any official majority. The regulations determining the electorates and the mode of election have been framed with praiseworthy elasticity in accordance with local requirements, and care has been taken to provide as far as possible for an adequate representation of all the most important communities and interests. In view of the manifold and profound lines of cleavage which exist in Indian society, it is extremely improbable that all the elected members will ever combine against the official minority except in such rare and improbable cases as might produce an absolute consensus of Indian opinion, and in such cases it is even more improbable that Government would ignore so striking a manifestation. Nevertheless, as a safeguard against the possibility of factious opposition, the right of veto has been reserved to the Provincial Executives and in the last resort to the Governor-General in Council.
Thus the Indian Councils Act of 1909 cannot be said to have actually modified the position of the Indian Legislatures. With regard to the most important of them—viz., the Imperial Council—Lord Morley was careful to make this perfectly clear in his despatch of November 27, 1908, in which he reviewed the proposals put forward in the Government of India despatch of October 1. "It is an essential condition of the reform policy," the Secretary of State wrote, "that the Imperial supremacy should in no degree be compromised. I must therefore regard it as essential that your Excellency's Council, in its legislative as well as in its executive character, should continue to be so constituted as to ensure its constant and uninterrupted power to fulfil the constitutional obligation that it owes, and must always owe, to his Majesty's Government and to the Imperial Parliament." The Indian Executive therefore remains, as hitherto, responsible only to the Imperial Government at home, and the Imperial Council can exercise over it no directly controlling power. The same holds good, mutatis mutandis, of the Provincial Executives and their Councils.
Indirectly, however, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 materially modifies the relations between the Legislative Councils and the Executive by giving to elected and non-official members opportunities which they have never enjoyed before of discussing public policy and making their voices heard and their influence felt on both administrative and legislative matters. The revised rules of procedure, under which supplementary questions may be grafted on to interpellations, and resolutions can be moved not only in connexion with the financial statements of Government, but, with certain specified reservations, on most matters of general public interest, are undoubtedly calculated to afford a vastly larger scope than in the past to the activities of Indian Legislatures, and it will depend very much upon the ability and resourcefulness of members themselves to what extent they may utilize these facilities for the purpose of ultimately creating real powers of control. In an extremely interesting and dispassionate study of the Indian Constitution, and of the effects which the new reforms may have upon it, Mr. Rangaswami Iyengar, a Hindu journalist of Madras, comes to the conclusion that "if the powers now entrusted to the Councils are used with care, wisdom, and discrimination, precedents and procedure analogous to those of the House of Commons might gradually grow up, and might serve as a useful means if not of directly controlling the Executive—a power which under the present constitutional arrangement of the Government of India it is impossible that the Council should possess—at least of directing the Executive into correct and proper channels in regard to administrative policy and administrative action." Not the least important of the changes are those made in regard to Budget procedure. Indian Legislatures will no more than in the past have power to vote or to veto the Budget, but they will have henceforth an opportunity of setting forth their views before the Budget has assumed its final shape. Members will be able to discuss beforehand any changes in taxation, as well as any new loans or additional grants to local governments, and they will be taken into the confidence of Government with regard to the determination of public expenditure. No doubt important heads of revenue are still excluded from the purview of the Councils, but members will have the right of placing on record their views in the form of resolutions on all items not specifically excluded from their cognisance, and the Finance Member will be bound to explain the reasons why Government declines to accept any resolution that may have been passed in the first two stages of the Budget. Much will depend upon the reasonable and practical use which members make of these novel opportunities, for, to quote Mr. Iyengar again, "the progress of constitutional government is not dependent so much upon what is expressly declared to be constitutional rights as upon what is silently built up in the form of constitutional conventions."
In the great speech in which Lord Morley gave the House of Lords the first outline of his Indian reforms scheme there was one singularly pregnant passage. "We at any rate," he said, "have no choice or option. As an illustrious member of this House once said, we are watching a great and stupendous process, the reconstruction of a decomposed society. What we found was described as a parallel to Europe in the fifth century, and we have now, as it were, before us in that vast congeries of people we call India, a long, slow march in uneven stages through all the centuries from the fifth to the twentieth. Stupendous indeed, and to guide that transition with sympathy, political wisdom, and courage, with a sense of humanity, duty, and national honour, may well be called a glorious mission." Whether we succeed in that mission must depend largely upon the loyal assistance we receive from those Indians who claim, in virtue of their superior education, to represent this twentieth century. Lord Morley has fulfilled in no niggardly spirit his pledge to associate the people of India with the Government far more closely than has hitherto been the case in the work of actual day-to-day administration as well as in the more complex problems of legislation. It rests now with the Indian representatives both in the Executive and Legislative Councils to justify Lord Morley's expectations by using the new machinery which he has placed in their hands not for purposes of mere destructive criticism and malevolent obstruction, but for intelligent and constructive co-operation with the British rulers of India, to whom alone, whatever may be their shortcomings, India owes it that the spirit of the twentieth century has spread to her shores.