DAWN OF A NEW INDIA

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 58, 1 December 1917, Page 12

DAWN OF A NEW INDIA

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR STATESMANSHIP

FUTURE REFORMS

(By S. K. Ratcliffe, in the Loudon "Daily News.")

We stand upon the threshold of momentous changes in India. The Government has proclaimed it, and, what is even more significant, official India is accepting the logic of events. In political thought; no less than in practice, the war is overturning the world; and the completeness of the revolution is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the field of imperial government. Tho war had not been going on for half a year when the most, thor-ough-going standpatters in our midst were repeating as a commonplace that peace would bring "with it a new Imperial Commonwealth in which India would be, no longer a dependant, but a partner. ' To thoso whose contact with India goes back over a decade or more this is one of the startling, and most hopeful, facts of the world situation. One 'recalls, for example, the Curzonian regime, with its resonant insistence upon administrative rigour, its confident assumption that India must not, and would not,"be subject to constitutional change. The India of Lord Ourzon's conception called, not for political reform, but for executive mastery, and when tho hand of the master was withdrawn the hierarchy looked for the enjoyment of its reinforced authority under less exigent vice-regal direction.

.Morloy, the Liberator.

Tho epoch of movement dates, in India as olsewhero, from the great election of 1906. Mr. John Morloy went to the India Office, and his Councils Act came as the fitting 6econd stage in that scheme of Imperial statesmanship which made a brilliant beginning with Campbell-Bannerraan's constitution for South Africa. It may bo said that the Morley reforms were small in content; and so, regarded from our standpoint to-day, thoy were. But no Liberal of lower power and prestige could have carried them in 1909, when desperate anarchic outrages were furnishing the Lords and the bureaucracy with an effective argument against concession. Lord Morley'b splendid service to India and tho Empire can be stated in a sentence. Ho broke the hard ring of bureaucratic privilego; established tho principle of direct election, and of nonoffioial majorities in the Indian Legislatures: appointed the first Indian Cabinet Ministers at Simla and the first Indian councillors in Whitehall, while, moreover, he carried the whole discussion of Indian affairs into a> fresh atmosphere of fine and generous debate.

True, the bureaucracy was to some extent successful in whittling down the reforms. Indian official regulations reduced the influence of the new bodies, and Anglo-India generally said to th 6 party of reform: "Now you have got your councils, be satisfied; show what you can do with, them, and above all, holp us to stamp out your revolutionaries, and don't ask for anything more." The hope of official India, manifestly, was that the changes woulo. suffice for at least a generation; that, in a word. Lord Morley in Indian history would be"Finality John," precisely as Lord John Russell was made to stand in the England of the first Reform Act. 'Without the war,, that hop 6 must have proved foolish; in 1914 it melted swiftly away.

Responsible Partnership. During the past three months one statement of liberal policy after another has rovealed the Government's, purpose. Both Mr. Montagu and his Under-Secretary (Lord Islington) hav6 spoken, and the Viceroy, addressing the Legislative Council in August, sketched in broad outline the proposals upon which the Homo and Indian Governments are working, in advance of the Secretary of State's visit. Lord Chelmsford indicated three lines of advance: 1. Liberal reconstitution of tho legislative councils, with greatly extended powers of control. 2. Increased opportunity for qualified Indians in the higher posts of the administration, 3. Decentralisation and local selfgovernment, with elective villag6 and urban councils as the basis o»

a system of provincial autonomy. The one essential principle to b6 established is responsibility. The on 6 blunder that would- imperil the scheni6 is the refusal, for any reason or through any fear, of an adequate measure 01 responsibility to Indian representatives and legislative bodies. Here is, o. course, an almost irresistible temptation to an all-powcri'ul Government having hohind it an unbroken tradition of-authority. There is something to be said for autocracy; there is, as the English-speaking- world believes, everything to be said, when a certaTn stage has been reached for selfgovernment. But the system for which there is nothiug at all to be said is a 6ystem possessing the appearance of autonomy with none of its reality.

Self-Covsrnment. Now the main and governing fact of tho pioblem, as Mr. Asquith used to say, is that in the Imperial Commonwealth of to-morrow there must be room for a self-governing and responsible India. This is the place which the greatness of India involves, which the extraordinary loyalty of India has earned. The wheel, as everyone who follows the Indian Press can see, has came full circle. There has been nothing like tho consensus with which today the organs of Anglo-Indian or semi-official opinion, such as the powerful "Times of India," are declaring that the immediate goal of all parties is a self-governing India in an Empire standing before the world as a great confederation of democratic peoples. The opportunity calls for a splendid decision and a fine gesture; and one is convinced that, after the experiences of these years, the authorities of Delhi understand this as fully as it is understood in London and. throughout England. If the war has taught us anything, said that brilliant and beloved soldier-professor, Tom Kettle, killed a year ago on the Somme, it has taught us that the great thing must be done in a great way. That is true in tho affairs of all peoples. It is supremely truo in relation to Britain and India.