Edwin S. Montagu speaks to the House of Commons on the Government of India Bill, 5 June 1919

I BEG to move, 'That the Bill be now read a second time'. The House having now somewhat approximated, but by no means reached its ordinary aspect on Indian Debates, I rise to discharge the highly important task, a task of which I fully realize the responsibility, of asking this House, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, to read, a second time the Bill which has been printed and circulated. I desire to avoid going into details upon this necessarily complicated and technical measure. I have flooded the House, in response to requests, and in order to give information to it as far as I possibly could, with a series of elaborate documents, and these will obviate, because I will assume that the House has mastered these documents, a large amount of technical disquisition. But in view of certain criticisms I want once again to repeat the origin of this Bill. When I took office two years ago much work leading up to the preparation of a Bill of this kind had already been done. Dispatches containing schemes for reform, had passed between the Government of India and my predecessor, and out of their proposals and his criticism of them had emerged this principle, that to my predecessor no reform of the Government of India would be acceptable which did not involve the transfer of responsibility from these Houses to the people of India. I took up the work where the Chancellor of the Exchequer left it, and the pronouncement of the 20th August followed, a part of which was that my acceptance of the Viceroy's invitation to proceed to India had been authorized by His Majesty's Government. No sooner was that pronouncement made than I appointed a very important India Office Committee, presided over by Sir William Duke, an ex-Lieut.-Governor of Bengal, a member of my Council and an Indian Civil Servant--I repeat all his qualifications because it is suggested in some quarters that this Bill arose spontaneously in the minds of the Viceroy and myself without previous Inquiry or consideration, under the influence of Mr. Lionel Curtis. I have never yet been able to understand that you approach the merits of any discussion by vain efforts to approximate to its authorship. I do not even now understand that India or the empire owes anything more or anything less than a great debt of gratitude to the patriotic and devoted services Mr. Curtis has given to the consideration of this problem. But this Committee, presided over by Sir William Duke, sat at the India Office from the 20th August until I left for India, accompanied by Sir William Duke, Lord Donoughmore, and Mr. Charles Roberts, on the 20th of October. We held repeated conferences in the enforced leisure of a long sea voyage, and discussed the problem almost daily on board ship up to the time when we reached India, where we were joined by Mr. Bhupendra Nath Basu and Sir William Vincent, a member of the Viceroy's Executive Council. Spontaneously, as a necessary consequence of all these deliberations, as a necessary consequence of the terms of the pronouncement of the 20th August, and as a necessary and inevitable consequence of an unprejudiced study of the question we reached the conclusion upon which this Bill is based, a conclusion reached after listening to innumerable deputations, after six months of conference with non-officials and officials, after continuous discussion with the Government in the provinces and at Delhi with the heads of all the local governments. From the time I returned to London, a new India Office Committee, presided over by Mr. Charles Roberts, and containing a large number of those Civil Servants who have taken part in this discussion, and whose services I have had the privilege to command, have sat upon and discussed all the criticisms that have reached us on the Bill. Sir William Duke, Sir James Brunyate, and Sir Thomas Holderness were members. Sir James Meston, the present Finance Member of the Government of India, was home last year and helped in the deliberations of this Committee. In recent months it has been assisted by Sir Frank Sly, Mr. Feetham, Mr. Stephenson, and Mr. Muddiman.

        This Committee has been concerned in drafting the Bill, and in considering all dispatches and telegrams and criticisms upon the scheme originally proposed. After this prolonged discussion and deliberation of almost exactly two years in extent, I now ask with some confidence for the Second Reading of the Bill, which I do not hesitate to say has been as carefully prepared and considered in all its aspects as it is possible to consider a measure of this kind.

        I ask for the Second Reading of the Bill to-day for two reasons. First of all, there is so much general agreement on all sides in India and here as to its provisions, so much general agreement and such important points of difference on methods side by side, that I do not believe there is any way of getting on until we examine the details of the measure in a Committee representing Parliament. Second Reading points, as I think I shall show, are points on which there is general agreement, both in India and here. There are very important differences--differences which I do not wish to minimize--as to methods, and you will never get to a discussion of those methods infinitely technical, until you have a small body constituted which will take evidence and consider the alternative merits or demerits of the different plans. It is our intention, if the House gives a Second Reading to this measure to-day, to ask that it should be referred to a Joint Committee of both Houses, and that that Joint Committee should consider all the questions that are involved. I cannot emphasize too strongly that it is the Government's wish that that Committee should discuss the matter not only from the point of view of detailed examination, but from the point of view of the examination of alternative methods. Let it have free scope. Let the House appoint a Committee to go into the whole question, and, as I have said before, so recently as a fortnight ago, although I believe from the bottom of my heart that you dare not and ought not to do less than we propose in this Bill, I shall be glad, and the Government will be glad, to take the advice of the Committee, on any alternative method which really and actually promises at least as much.

        I would only add one thing. We have so many responsibilities in this House, so many important questions needing consideration, that perhaps India looms quite small to many Members; but this problem to 315,000,000 of people eagerly awaiting, so far as they are politically educated, the decision of this House-to India this subject is all-important. Let no man join in this Debate, let no man accept the incalculably responsible task of helping-and we want help, it is a difficult enough problem to require help--of helping on the Committee unless he is prepared to go there constructively, and not destructively, to help on as perfect a plan as can be devised, and not with the intention to delay or thwart legislation, which in my mind, and in the minds of the House I hope, it is absolutely essential to carry out. The second reason why I would urge the assistance of the House in the passage of the Second Reading to-day is the impatience--I think the legitimate impatience--with which India is waiting a start upon the policy enunciated now two years ago. That policy was announced, and this Bill was drawn up with a view to meeting existing conditions in India. Believe me, my experience of India, my experience of the Government of .India now extending over something like six years of office, make me confident that there is no more fallacious platitude, no more obvious fallacy than that which is on the lips of so many critics of Indian affairs--that it is a country which never changes, a country which undergoes none of the emotions which other countries experience. One old Indian friend of mine, who has been engaged upon public affairs in this country, who has been absent from his own fourteen months only, and who returned to it the other day, told me when last I saw him that he thought politically it was a different place to fourteen months ago. The War, the causes of the War, the objects of the War, the speeches of those who conducted the political aspects of the War have had their effect from one end of India to the other, and have even reached, as the documents which I published themselves show, the Government of Madras.

        The pronouncement of the 20th August promised that substantial steps in the direction of responsible government should be taken as soon as possible. There is no use for pronouncements that are not fulfilled; there is no use for pronouncements which take geological epochs to fulfill. Doubts are already beginning to appear. It is suggested already--unworthily suggested, wickedly suggested, but still suggested--that we made the announcement and declared the intention of His Majesty's Government in order to secure loyalty from the Indian peoples during the War, and that now we have achieved victory we are not going on with our purpose. I only mention that to show that, in my opinion, as in the opinion of the Governor of Bombay, delay, inexcusable delay, unnecessary delay, would be fatal to our purpose. For that reason, after two years consideration of this problem, I venture to suggest to the House that I have shown no undue haste in bringing this Bill before the House of Commons. First it used to be said, ‘Oh, you must not introduce the Bill until the opinions of the local governments have been published and we have had an opportunity of reading them.’ I promised the opinions of the local governments, and the opinions of the local governments have been published in accordance with that promise. To a very large extent they are irrelevant, because, despite the letters which have been published and the arguments they have used in them, they have produced, at a subsequent, date, an alternative plan, about which I shall have something to say later on. But they are published. Now, when they are published, comes the new argument, ‘You are hurrying on the Second Reading of the Bill, when we have not had time to read the papers.' So, first you say, ' Do not take the Bill, because we want the papers.' Then, when the papers do appear, you say, ' Give us, time to read the papers.' In other words, for the man who does not want to do something, the day on which you ask him to do something is always the wrong day.

        I have published also, in order to avoid discussion to-day, two White Papers. One White Paper explains, as clearly and as concisely as I could do it, the actual effect of the Clauses of the Bill. The other White Paper shows what the existing Government of India Act, passed in 1915, will look like if these Amendments are made in it, for this Bill has been drafted with a view to automatic consolidation and the Government of India Act, 1915, embraces a very large number of Statutes. It is suggested that when this Bill has been passed by the Houses of Parliament it shall be automatically included in the existing Act, and will itself disappear as a separate Act. In order to see the effect of that process--the best form of legislation, I venture to think, when you have a previous Statute--I have published and circulated a copy. That, I hope, will avoid the necessity at this stage of going into details. A few more words I must say as to the form of the Bill. In the first place, it may be said--it has been said--that we propose to rely so much on rules and regulations under the Bill that the Bill itself is only a skeleton. I need not remind the House that there are many precedents for that procedure, in fact, in almost every Statute referring to the Government of India I think that procedure has been adopted. But I would also remind the House that deliberately, of intention, in accordance with the terms of the pronouncement of the 20th August, this Bill does not pretend to give to India a Constitution that will endure. It is transitional; it is a bridge between government by the agents of Parliament and government by the representatives of the peoples of India. It must be in such a form that it shall not be static, but fluid--that alterations can be made in it from time to time, and that you should not form a rigid Constitution by Statute which could not be altered except by trespassing at intervals upon the over-burdened and over-mortgaged time of this House. Therefore we have resorted to the plan of precedent, of asking that details shall be accomplished by rules. Let me hasten to add that this is one of the points upon which I approach this problem with an open mind. If there is anything which it is suggested should be done by rule which the House would prefer to be done by Statute, let us by all means, in the Committee stage, incorporate it in the Statute, although let us try at the same time to avoid rigidity, which, I believe, would be fatal to our purpose. I would add also that it is not our intention to prevent the control by Parliament of these rules and regulations. The Bill provides that they shall be submitted to both Houses. The principle which it is intended to embody in these rules it is intended should be submitted to the. Joint Committee which it is proposed to set up; and the policy of the rules, if not the actual wording of the rules, will therefore be carefully considered at the same time as the Bill itself. I regard that as essential. It has always been said that the Morley-Minto reforms were largely spoiled by the rules made under it. I am not at the moment prepared to argue whether or not that is so, but I want on this occasion to avoid any possibility of that charge being levelled. Therefore I hope that Parliament will not lose control of the Bill until the policy which is to be embodied in the rules has also been laid down by Parliament.

        I come now to the Bill itself. What I would like to do, if I may, is to start afresh and try to take the House with me, if I can and if it is not too ambitious a project, in realizing that if you start from the place where the authors of this Bill started, the form of the Bill and the recommendations of the Bill are inevitable. Where did we start? We started with the pronouncement of the 20th August 1917. I propose to ask: Is there anybody who questions to-day the policy of that pronouncement? It is no use accepting it unless you mean it; it is no use meaning it unless you act upon it; and it is no use acting upon it unless your actions are in conformity with it. Therefore I take it that Parliament, or at any rate this House will agree that the policy of the pronouncement of the 20th August must be the basis of our discussion--the progressive realization of responsible government, progressive realization, realization by degrees, by stages, by steps--and those steps must at the outset be substantial. That pronouncement was made in order to achieve what I believe is the only logical, the only possible, the only acceptable meaning of Empire and Democracy, namely, an opportunity to all nations flying the imperial flag to control their own destinies. [An HON. MEMBER : 'Nations! '] I will come to nations in a moment, I will beg no question. The hon. member raises the question of nations. Whether it be a nation or not, we have promised to India the progressive realization of responsible government. We have promised to India and given to India a representation like that of the Dominions on our Imperial Conference. India is to be an original member of the League of Nations. Therefore I say, whatever difficulties there may be in your path, your imperial task is to overcome those difficulties and to help India on the path of nationality, however much you may recognize--and I propose to ask the House to consider them--the difficulties which lie in the path.

        Supposing for a moment there are those who consider that empire has justified itself when you give to a country satisfactory law and order, adequate peace, decent institutions, and a certain measure of prosperity under the defence that you have provided ; supposing, in other words, there are people who believe that you have fulfilled your mission when you have run the country as an estate, and not as a country at all; even then, approaching it from the other point, there are large proposals in this Bill which command assent from them. There are the proposals for devolution, the proposals for decentralization. I have heard no critic in these two years who has not told me that it is absolutely essential to get greater freedom for the Government of India from the India Office. I have hardly met a critic who has not told me that it is absolutely essential for the local governments to get more freedom from the Government of India. I think that is agreed. I do not think that anybody questions that, from the point of view of administrative convenience, if on no higher grounds, government by dispatch, with all its cumbrous machinery, all its necessarily delaying methods, all the difficulties attending upon considering and reconsidering plans and projects over thousands of' miles of land and thousands of miles of sea, all that, ought to be got rid of. I ask Parliament to assent to this proposition, that you cannot get rid of it unless you substitute something else for it. Now and to-day you cannot have a Government more bureaucratic and less dependent upon Parliament, without being dependent upon anything else, than you have at present. The only possible substitute for government by dispatch is government by vote. The only possible way of really achieving devolution and making the unit, when you have chosen the unit, responsible for the management of its own affairs, is to make the Government of that unit responsible to the representatives of the people. If you simply say, 'Let us have an irresponsible Government in a province, and lot the Government of India not interfere, and the Secretary of State not interfere, and Parliament not interfere,' you have a policy which is merely the enthronement of bureaucracy and the very negation of the progressive realization of responsible government. Therefore I go a step farther. In order to realize responsible government, and in order to get devolution, upon which there is general agreement, you must gradually get rid of government by the agents of Parliament and replace it by government. by the agents of the representatives of the peoples of India. In other words, you have to choose your unit of government, and you have got in that unit to create an electorate which will control the Government. What is the unit that you are choosing to be? Some people would say, Let us be content with the unit of the local government area--the parish council (I am not using terms of art, but terms which have significance for this country) the county council, the rural district council, the municipalities--in other words, that you should give responsible self-government in the area of local government. That is already being done under the terms of the Joint Report, but that is not enough, for two reasons. The first is this: The policy of complete local self-government was adopted by Lord Ripon in 1883, and we are now proceeding to carry it out, after a delay of something like thirty-five years. It is not enough to answer the new conditions arising out of the world war by fulfilling a promise made thirty-five years ago, and therefore that is one reason why you must give something more than local self- government. But there is another reason. You are not writing on a clear, clean slate. You are writing, and rightly, in continuation of chapters which have been written before. You are building on foundations that already exist. It is in the province that you must look for your unit, because it is in the provinces that the great educational results of Lord Morley's Reform Bill have been achieved. He made the Legislative Councils representative to some extent of the people, with a very small electorate and practically no powers beyond powers of criticism. But it is the existence of those councils which has awakened the appetite for self-government, and have added to the appreciation of self-government in India, and it is therefore, to my mind, absolutely inevitable that we should proceed to devote ourselves to taking the Morley-Minto councils a stage farther in their development. Therefore it is to the provinces that we go, and the provinces are beginning to be the units of local patriotism in India. I do not say that as time goes on you will not substantially modify the size and boundaries of your provinces. Some of them are very artificial. But when you do, it should be in conformity with the wishes of the inhabitants of the provinces, and not by executive action.

        If I have carried the House with me in the suggestion that the province is the unit in which we shall start a progressive realization of responsible government, what are the difficulties that we have to face? They were suggested in the Joint Report. I will emphasize them again. It does India no good purpose to attempt to avoid them, but they are not arguments against our purpose, They are arguments which we must overcome, The difficulties are these. Under the system of education which has been given to India by British rulers, education has not been spread wide. You have a very small fraction of the population highly educated and a very large proportion of the population not educated at all. You have, secondly, great differences of race and religion and great difficulties arising out of the harsh customs and precepts of caste. I cannot help believing that there is no better way of getting over these difficulties than by representative institutions.

        There is no greater stimulus to education, there is no better way of promoting community of action or of overcoming the acerbities of caste than by setting to the population a common task to do together, to work out the prosperity of their country. Many of those who write on India assure us of the insuperable obstacles presented by caste. It can only be a gradual process to get rid of these harnesses and acerbities to which I refer. But every step you take in this direction brings you nearer to the day when the population will not suffer as a consequence of differences of caste. It has begun. It is idle to say there is no difference of recent years in the conditions. When you realize the fact that men of all castes find themselves in the same third-class railway carriage, the way in which soldiers write to me that men of all castes mess together, the work which is being done by the members of the higher caste in helping the conditions and devoting themselves to the social problems afforded by the lower castes you will realize that those problems are on the wav to being solved. The other day I came across a case of a co-operative society run by a committee consisting of Brahmins, non-Brahmins, caste Hindus and Panchamas. They met to discuss this movement of co-operation, which has grown enormously in India, under a tree of three levels--the Brahmins on one terrace, the non-Brahmins a little lower down, and the Panchamas a little lower still. They discussed the business of the co-operative society in that way. Do you imagine that that is going to endure? Some one will have a difference with some one else in discussing the management of affairs and will talk to him. There is no better way of promoting democratic customs than by working them through democratic institutions. Despite all these difficulties, I therefore say the essence of the problem is to train the electors. I desire to express, on behalf of the Government of India and the India Office, and, I hope, of this House, our appreciation of the excellent work done by Lord Southborough's Committee. An electorate has been formed; that is to say, proposals have been made to put 5,000,000 voters on the register. But you do not form an electorate by that mere process. You have to get them to vote and you have to get them to understand what a vote means. You have to get them to appreciate the results of a vote. There is only one way of doing that, and that is to make the vote of some value. If a man is asked to vote, and then nothing happens as the result of it, nothing that he can see, nothing that he can appreciate, nothing that lie can either reward or punish by the transference or maintenance of his vote, you will never train an electorate. Therefore it is a necessary step for the training of an electorate that you must give it power through its representative. If the result of a vote is that a certain person is elected, if lie can not only criticize but get things done, if he can do things, if he can be held responsible for the things he does, then the man who wants to turn him out will soon undertake the task of training the electorate to a realization of the importance of a vote; And therefore in order to train your electorate, which is the only way in which you can transfer the power from this House and its agents to the people of India, you have to give the electorate which you create men responsible to it to carry out its demands.

        If I have carried the House thus far, the next step must be that you have to choose a part of the provincial functions which at the outset you will entrust to the representatives of the people. Any one who has followed me in what I have said about education, about caste, and about religious differences; will realize that it is not right to entrust them with everything at the same moment. There are some things, such as the maintenance of peace and order--I will take the definition which Lord Chelmsford and I suggested in the Report--things in which mistakes are irretrievable, things in which the electorate at the outset should not be able to enforce its demands, things like Land Revenue, which you should keep from the control of the representatives of the people. Immediately you say that, if there is any one in the House who has gone so far with me, I do not know whether they realize it, but they have swallowed the awful, terrible, much criticized principle of dyarchy.

An HON. MEMBER: Say 'duality.'

Mr. MONTAGU: Duality. I have endeavoured to lead them, as I was led myself, to realize that the only way to achieve our purpose was to reserve for the present and for the present only, certain functions of government under the control of the agents of this House, and to transfer other functions to the representatives of the people. That is what Mr. Feetham's Committee proposes to do. That is what the India Office Committee and that is what the Government of India and ourselves in discussion in India came to the conclusion was inevitable--to separate the functions of government, to transfer some, to reserve others and to proceed by gradually taking the functions that are at present reserved and transferring them. Having decided that certain functions are to be transferred and that other functions are to' be reserved, the question next to be decided is, What is the form of ministry that you. will set up to conduct them? Is it to be one or is it to be two? I submit with great confidence to the House that immediately you try and preserve one ministry, always acting together and sharing responsibility for all acts, you obscure the lesson of responsibility. Let us take a particular reserved function-say police-and a particular transferred function-say education. You say, ' It is our intention that the people shall have their way at once in education. It is our intention that, as far as police is concerned, for the moment those who administer it shall carry out the wishes of the Houses of Parliament as the trustees of the Indian people.' If the man in charge of education and the man in charge of police are both equally members of the same Government, each sharing responsibility for the acts of the other, both equally responsible for police and education, the one or the other may at any moment have to carry out a policy of which he does not approve. The man responsible for this House may have to carry out an educational policy of which he does not approve. The man responsible to the Indian electorate may have to carry out a police policy of which he does not approve. If you separate the two functions, if you separate the Government into two parts, when a man who is responsible for education goes to his constituency, he says, ' It is quite true that I have carried out a certain education policy. That is quite right, I am answerable for that, and I am prepared to defend it. With regard to police policy I am not responsible. I am there only in a consultative capacity, with no direct responsibility at all. Your only way of modifying the police policy is ,so to show the House of Commons the excellence of the way in which you have used your educational policy, so that in ten years time they will transfer to you the police policy too, but at present my responsibility ceases with the transferred subject. By this means, it seems to me, you can make clear, both to the electorate and to the individual who exercises power on behalf of the electorate, the extent of his responsibility, and in no other way. The logical sequence to that form of argument would be that you would have two Governments completely separate in the same area, with separate funds, separate finances separate legislatures, separate executive staffs I would suggest most respectfully to the House that that is impossible, and for this reason. I cannot reiterate too often that the basis of this whole policy is its transitional nature. You want to lead on to something else at the earliest possible moment. If you have two Houses, with two staffs, two purses, the net result would be that the people concerning themselves with transferred subjects would never have anything to say on reserved subjects. But if reserved subjects are to become transferred subjects one day, it is absolutely essential that, during the transitional period, although there is no direct responsibility for them, there should be opportunities of influence and consultation. Therefore, although it seems necessary to separate the responsibility, there ought to be every room that you can possibly have for consultation and joint deliberation on the same policy, and for acting together for the purposes of consultation and deliberation, as the Bill provides, in one Government.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: And criticism?

Mr. MONTAGU: And criticism. This procedure would be absolutely indefensible if it were not for the fact that it was transitional, and if it were not for the fact that at stated periods it is proposed to hold a Parliamentary inquiry into its working, with a view to further stages. By that means there is a certain method of progress. By that means everything that happens will come under review, and the attitude adopted by each part of the Government to the affairs of the other part will be one of the prime factors in the decision of the Commission that reviews.

        I have dealt now with the local governments, and the way in which the scheme is evolved. I know it is a very hard thing, I know that it is more than difficult to explain so complicated a procedure, particularly for one who has been saturated for two years past with this sort of argument and discussion. But I have endeavoured as shortly as I possibly could to portray the arguments once again. They are portrayed in the memorandum which I have issued, and the Government of India's dispatch, which have led up to this Bill. I do not think the time has yet come for a similar movement in the Government of India. I think that there we must take the step of one stage only, namely, to make the Legislative Assembly more representative, to give it greater power of influencing and criticizing, but not, at this moment, of responsibility ; and we must make the Government of India itself more elastic in its composition, less stereotyped, by altering certain of the statutory provisions which govern its executive formation. We must also add to its power of dealing with its own work, because we relieve it of the necessity of controlling a large number of provincial functions. In so far as the provincial Government has got to defer to its legislature by statute, that is to say in transferred subjects, you have a government which is responsible to the electorate. Therefore there is no necessity to control it by the Government of India and you get the devolution which the men who want to perfect administration desire. Therefore the Government of India will not be concerned, generally speaking, with transferred subjects, and the Secretary of State will not be concerned with transferred subjects. Therefore, this House will not be concerned with transferred subjects. Therefore, so far as transferred subjects are concerned, we shall have parted with our trusteeship and surrendered it to the representatives of the people of India. There is much more to be done with the Government of India. We have to release it from unnecessary administrative control by the India Office, and for that purpose, incidentally to this Bill, I am awaiting the details of Lord Crewe's Committee's Report, but so far as that is concerned, most of its recommendations, except as regards the composition of the Council, will be administrative and not statutory. At the same time, as was mentioned in the Joint Report, there is very much reason to believe that the secretariat system wants reconsideration and overhauling. I think it is understaffed, and I do not think it is modelled for the transaction of the complicated business which falls to the office at the present moment. The House will be glad to learn that Sir Herbert Llewellyn Smith, one of the most experienced British Civil Servants, has been good enough to accept my invitation, given to him on behalf of the Government of India, to visit India, to consider the secretariat arrangements in the Government of India, and Sir George Lloyd has also invited him to consider those of Bombay.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Does that include the staffs of ministers who deal with transferred subjects, or will they arrange their own staffs?

Mr. MONTAGU: Ultimately, of course, the ministers will arrange their own staffs, but I want them at the moment to take over their departments as going concerns. This question of the secretariat, however, is for the Government of India primarily, and nothing else. Before I sit down, there are some very important matters with which I must deal. The first is that of the alternative schemes which have been presented and which have been rejected in this Bill. There is the Congress and Moslem-League scheme. I will not detain the House with the details of that. It was prepared before the pronouncement of the 20th August 1917. It does not attempt to realize responsible government, but it leaves an irremovable executive at the mercy of a legislature which can paralyse it but not direct it. I do not believe that this House will ever agree to set up a constitution in India which will leave an executive, that is not removable, at the mercy of a legislature which cannot control it. Much more formidable is another alternative proposal, which comes from the beads of the majority of the local governments. Although I cordially agree with the Government of India in rejecting this proposal, I hope the House will believe that I do not underestimate its importance. It is the work of no arm-chair critics. It is the work of the most experienced administrators in India. It is the work of men who are entitled above all others to have their opinions carefully weighed, and, although I believe them to be wrong and desire to show why I believe them to be wrong, and that we shall have to argue this in Committee, yet it is with no sense of disrespect to them that I challenge their conclusions. It is a powerful array. The Government of Madras had no part or share in the elaboration of this alternative proposal, nor had the Government of Bombay, but the heads of five local governments approved the alternative proposal. Yet the Governor of Bengal, Lord Ronaldshay, and the Lieutenant-Governor of Bihar and Orissa, Sir Edward Gait, preferred the scheme of the Bill and the Joint Report. That is the position. But although I do not want to discredit them, I want to suggest that really their views are accidental in this sense, that it must not be assumed that whatever the composition of those governments, and whoever had been their heads, the same results would have ensued. For instance, the Chief Commissioner for Assam prefers the scheme of the majority of local governments. But the late Chief Commissioner of Assam, who left only a few months previously--he came home about a year ago--would have preferred, I know, the scheme of the Joint Report and this Bill. The present Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces prefers the alternative scheme of the local governments, but his predecessor would have preferred the scheme of the Joint Report. A great deal depends upon personality.

        But although these gentlemen are entitled to give a very weighty opinion, they are not unprejudiced. Where men have grown up under a system, they do not like to see it altered. Their proposal is the existing system with another man added to the Executive Council. Nothing much worse than the Morley-Minto scheme--an alleged unity of government, but no real unity of government, because one-half of the Government is in their own words 'necessarily influenced by the opinions of the Legislative Council', and the other half not. And there is no certainty of control by the legislature because on all subjects, if the Governor certifies it is in the interests of his Province, he can override it. It is the same system with just another Indian member added to the Executive Council. Let me put it to this House. After all, the Civil Servant in India is not very different from the Civil Servant in this country. Whoever heard of a political reform in any office in this country coming out of the Civil Service. This House is the place for political reform. You will never get it carried out by the Civil Service. As time goes on, that service must carry out the wishes of those who dictate the policy. It must be first in this House, and ultimately in India, that that policy which the Civil Service is to carry out must be dictated to it.

Colonel YATE: Why did you send Sir Llewellyn Smith to make reforms in India? Is he not a Civil Servant?

Mr. MONTAGU: I am very much obliged to my hon. and gallant friend. His intervention in debate is always valuable. He has given me the opportunity of pointing my argument. I am using a Civil Servant to advise me on administrative changes as to how the secretariat can carry out most efficiently the orders and wishes of its political superiors. That is exactly the function of a Civil Servant. And this is what ultimately, when India is a self-governing country, I hope to see the position of the Civil Service. It is quite true that in what I have said about the local governments' alternative plan I have included Lord Willingdon, because, although be is not a Civil Servant, and although he has a plan of his own, he would, I am certain, have preferred the plan of the majority of local governments to the plan of the Bill. But then Lord Willingdon prefers to rely upon those qualities which he possesses, which made him an astonishing success in the Government of Bombay. He brings all the qualities that ensure for him great popularity and all the qualities which made him in this House a successful Whip. He says, in effect, under a Governor such as Lord Willingdon a more elastic arrangement would be far preferable to the arrangement of dyarchy of the Bill.

        Under the scheme as we propose it to this House, if in any province a governor can so influence his advisers--and there are governors and governors, and lieutenant-governors and lieutenant-governors--if the circumstances of a particular province make it possible, there is nothing in the Bill which would prevent a governor trying to discharge all the reserved functions as if they were transferred. He can call his government together and say, ' I do not believe much in this dual form of government. Let us see if we cannot get on together. Unless I am driven to it I will use none of the powers given to me under this Bill. We will always consult together. I will do my best to work the scheme in deference to the wishes of the legislature on all subjects, and I will only use my exceptional powers on reserved subjects if I am compelled to.' Perhaps if he is lucky he will go through his term of office without being called upon to use them. Therefore, under my scheme, Lord Willingdon would get all he proposes in his letter. But suppose there is another governor, who says, 'I am not going to consult you. I like the good old way. I believe that good government, or what I think is good government, is far better than self-government, than the scheme under the Bill. I know what is good for you better than you know yourselves.' Under the scheme of the Bill, whatever the personality of the Governor, the. transferred subjects are guaranteed to be representatives of the people. Under the alternative scheme, under the wide use of certification and of the local government majority, nothing is guaranteed to them at all. The time, I submit, is not one in which you can be content that certain members of your alleged united government should be necessarily influenced by the opinions of the Legislative Council'. What you want, if you are to launch India upon this road, is that the Government on certain subjects must respond to the wishes of the people. In other words, unless you have that, and more than the local governments suggest, then there is no progressive realization of responsible government.

        Lastly, I come to the scheme of the Indo-British Association. This is a body which gets very angry when I suggest that it does not intend to carry out the pronouncement of the 20th August in any adequate way, and it has done great harm in India by leading people to suppose that it has more influence on the decisions of Parliament than I hope it is ever likely to have. What are its proposals? 'Financial delegation as between the Secretary of State and the Government of India.' As a matter of administration, they are in agreement with the Bill and with the Joint Report. But that does not lead to any progressive realization of responsible government. ‘The reorganization of the India Office intended not only to remedy obsolete procedure, but to obtain more recent knowledge of India.' They are in agreement with the Joint Report on a matter of administration. They are suggesting the work on which Lord Crewe's Committee is now engaged. But that does not lead to the progressive realization of responsible government. 'Decentralization in India as between the Government of India and the Provinces in domestic matters and the transformation into a federal system.' Once again they are in agreement with the Bill and with the Joint Report. But that in itself does not lead them any nearer to the progressive realization of responsible government. Then there are two points about municipal and local government and elementary education. These are not constitutional points at all. And then there comes their one controversial and constructive programme. ' In every Province place one or two districts in charge of a wholly Indian official staff and extend that, if it proves satisfactory, into a Division and finally into a whole Province.' That scheme is a scheme of bureaucrats for the consumption of bureaucrats, intended for the enthronement of bureaucracy. ' Let me, if I am in charge of a Province, be not controlled in any sense by my legislative councils.' I have got somewhere--I will refer to it if I am challenged--their qualifying statement 'that the powers of the provincial government are to remain unimpaired'. They are not to be interfered with by the Legislative Council or by the Government of India or by the India Office. In other words, the Lord Sydenhams of the future can remain upon their throne, untrammelled by control from above and undismayed by criticism from below. How is that to lead to the progressive realization of responsible government?

Brigadier-General CROFT: Was he a successful Governor?

Mr. MONTAGU: I do not want to express an opinion on that. His record is available. I am not concerned with the authorship. It does not matter who is the author. I am only concerned to test the programme and see whether it fulfils the policy of the progressive realization of responsible government. And when I find that the association puts forward a policy which pretends to carry out the pronouncement but which more or less involves bureaucracy, I am entitled to criticize with all the strength in my power. What is the use of ousting a British Civil Servant and replacing him by 'an Indian Civil Servant? The district officer is the very backbone of the administrative machine. I venture to predict that the Indians themselves would be last to wish to see the complete disappearance of the district officer, but we do no good by establishing an Indian bureaucracy instead of an English bureaucrat. Of the two bureaucrats, having regard to Lis training, I infinitely prefer at the present moment the English bureaucrat. If that is the best alternative scheme addressed to this House, and if we really desire to carry out the pledges made to India, then it is far better to carry the Bill as it stands than to pay any attention to this scheme. We shall never get on with all the work that we have got to do in India unless we have settled, as this Bill will settle, the constitutional question and its interminable discussion. I say it 'will settle'. What I mean is that I hope we shall receive from the Joint Committee an agreed Bill, that all these alternative schemes will be considered in far more detail than is possible this afternoon, and that somehow or other a Statute will pass, as a consequence of the Second Reading this afternoon, which will launch India on the road to complete self-government. There is so much other work to do in India that if we can once get a growing constitution for it to win for itself that goal which we have pronounced, we can turn our attention to the-spread of education-to the perfection or at least to the improvement of education-we can turn our attention to the development of her great resources and her great industries, we can consider the reorganization of her defences. But before we can do anything and in order to make these things possible it seems to me to be essential to start her on this road of self- government.

        I implore this House to show to India to-day that Parliament is receptive of the case for self-government and only seeks an opportunity of completing it by the demonstrable realization of the success of its stages. There is too much race prejudice in India at the present time. It is beyond this House to correct it. It does not exist only in India; it exists in South Africa too. But Parliament can help to correct it in the Constitution. If we hold onto power in India and stand fast to the policy of subordination, race friction will continue and ought to continue. If we surrender our trusteeship to the great provinces of India as speedily as they are ready to take it over, then Indians will have something better and more worth doing than fiercely and impotently to criticize those who are at present the agents of Parliament.

        Perorations on Indian affairs have a tendency to great similarity; at least the perorations of my speeches on Indian affairs always seem so. I cannot, however--and I say it once again--believe that Parliament is going to afford any obstacle to the partnership of India in the British Empire. We have recently been so sympathetic to the national aspirations of Arabs, of Czecho-Slovaks, of Serbs, of Croats, and of Slovenes. Here is a country desirous of achieving nationality once again, I repeat, an original member of the League of Nations, developed under our protecting care, imbued to a greater and greater degree with our political thought. Let us pass this Bill and start it, under the aegis of the British flag, on the road which we ourselves have travelled, despite all the acknowledged difficulties of area, of caste, of religion, of race and of education. If you do that, if you pass this Bill and modify it until it becomes a great Statute, I can say-we can say-as I should like to say with the authority of the House to the peoples of India, ' The future and the date upon which you realize the future goal of self-government are with you. You are being given great responsibility to-day, and the opportunities of consultation and influence on other matters in which for the present we keep responsibility. You will find in Parliament every desire to help and to complete the task which this Bill attempts, if you devote yourselves to use with, wisdom, with self-restraint, with respect for minorities, the great opportunities with which Parliament is entrusting you.' That is the message which it seems to me--I say it with all deference--this House should send to the Indian peoples to-day, when you are starting to fulfill the pronouncement of the 20th of August. That message cannot be sent unless the House is determined to pass without delay, and with every desire that it should be improved before it is passed, a Statute which means the beginning of self-government, responsible government, in the Indian Empire.

From: A. Berriedale Keith, ed. Speeches and Documents on Indian Policy, 1750-1921. Vol. II. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1922, 206-236.