There are epochs in the history of the world when in a few raging years the character, the destiny, of the whole race is determined for unknown ages. This is one.
David Lloyd George
“Sowing the Winter Wheat.” Speech delivered at Carnarvon, to a meeting of constituents, after becoming Prime Minister, February 3, 1917.
Part II of the Report contains the scheme which Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford propose for the solution of the problem which they had set themselves to solve in Part I. In giving their reasons for a new policy they observe:
“No further development (on old lines) is possible unless we are going to give the people of India some responsibility for their own government. But no one can imagine that no further development is necessary. It is evident that the present machinery of government no longer meets the needs of the time; it works slowly and it produces irritation; there is a widespread demand on the part of educated Indian opinion for its alteration; and the need for advance is recognised by official opinion also.” [Italics are ours.]
The new policy sketched by them is, in their judgment, “the logical outcome of the past. Indians must be enabled, in so far as they attain responsibility, to determine for themselves what they want done
“... such limitations on powers as we are now proposing are due only to the obvious fact that time is necessary in order to train both representatives and electorates for the work which we desire them to undertake; and that we offer Indians opportunities at short intervals to prove the progress they are making and to make good their claim, not by the method of agitation but by positive demonstration, to the further stages in self-government which we have just indicated.”
That is the only basis on which they maintain they can hope to see in India “the growth of a conscious feeling of organic unity with the Empire as a whole.” With these and a few more prefatory remarks about the educational problem and the attitude of the ryot and the enunciation of the general principles on which their proposals are based they proceed to formulate their scheme, starting first with the provinces.
I
The proposals relating to Provincial Government may be noticed under the following heads: