Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

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.