Mr. President and Members of the Legislative Council,
"Great efforts have been made to draw away young men from schools and colleges and to induce professional men to give up their careers. Great efforts have been made to prevent voters from going to the polls. But these efforts have met with little success. The elections have undoubtedly given the province a really representative legislative council. The chief opponents of the reforms have shown by word and act that their aim is not the ordered development of political institutions in India but the expulsions of Western civilization from India—a course involving the reversion to the condition of disorder, lawlessness and internecine strife such as prevailed in the unsettled times before the advent of British rule."
"The tenantry were widely stirred up. The criminal classes took advantage of the occasion and serious trouble ensued in which there was regrettable loss of life. A full report on the Rae Bareli disturbances will be published within a few days. It was fortunately possible to restore order without calling in military aid from outside, and for this I have already congratulated the local authorities and others concerned. Statements, I may say that all reports from both Rae Bareli and Fyzabad indicate that the tenantry are actuated by no hostility to Government or to Europeans. The agitators have endeavoured to stir up such hostility."
"As for my Government I have chosen as colleagues without favour strong and independent men. They will have my complete confidence in all matters, and it is my desire that we should work together as far as possible as one Government. I shall endeavour to secure that we all, Europeans and Indians, work together on harmonious lines as brother-subjects of the King-Emperor; and I pray that the Reforms Scheme which we are commencing to-day will and largely and effectively to the well-being and happiness of this ancient land of Hindustan."
APPENDIX VIII
Extracts from the speech delivered by His Excellency Sir Harcourt Butler
at a meeting of the United Provinces Legislative Council
28th March 1921
Mr. President and Members of the Legislative Council,
"The recent disorder in Rae Bareli has necessitated a further reconsideration of the question. Whereas the former disorders in Rae Bareli were largely agrarian in origin the recent disorders were mainly political in origin and wholly revolutionary".
"The result of the disorders has been an unfortunate loss of life, for which the agitators are directly responsible, and a feeling of insecurity which if unchecked may spread with untoward results, affecting innocent and guilty alike. Confronted with an elemental question as to the maintenance of order, my Government came unanimously to the conclusion that it was necessary to stop the campaign of unconstitutional agitation and lying, propaganda which has been carried on the four south-eastern districts of Outh—Rae Bareli, Partabgarh, Sultanpur and Fyzabad. We therefore applied to the Government of India to extend the Seditious Meetings Act to those four districts. This has been done".
"I believe that this action will have the support of this Council and of responsible people generally in this province. With the non-co-operators we can have nothing to do beyond meeting their mischievous activities. Their movement is a revolutionary movement playing on passion and pandering to ignorance but the mass of people are loyal and all their interests are bound up with the maintenance of order."