INDIAN SELF-GOVERNMENT

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 78, 28 September 1918, Page 14

INDIAN SELF-GOVERNMENT

MR. MONTAGU ON HIS MISSION.

Mr. E. S. Montagu (Secretary of State for India) addressed a meeting at the Liberal Club, Cambridge (England) recently, when he was formally adopted as Liberal candidate for the county. Dealing with India, he said everything that India hoped for depended on the success of the Allies. No Indian need delude himself into thinking that his country was not threatened by the German menace, because it was said in, a German pamphlet that the Kaiser was enthusiastic over the coming German conquest of India, when the revenues from that country would flow in a golden stream into the Fatherland, and that the German flag would fly over every other flag. That was the German idea of Imperialism—subjugation, domination, spoliation, theft. No wonder India was taking steps to protect itself. In the coming year half a" million rei cruits would: go into the Indian Army, compared with, the 15,000 per year before the war.'. Speaking of the report on constitutional changes in India, of which he and Lord Chelmsford were the authors, he said personal attacks had been made upon himself. That did not disturb him in the least, but he was sorry there had been attacks in the guise of criticism on the Viceroy. The line of argument taken was that he had embarked on a conspiracy to. destroy the British Empire, and 1 that he was supported by a deluded Viceroy, who had been forced and cajoled to agree with him- He spent the winter in close study of Indian problems with the Viceroy and his Government. It was the Viceroy himself and his Government who first suggested and urged upon the British Government the necessity of declaring their policy in India. It was the Viceroy and his Council', who first asked his predecessor to go to India to study the subject with him, and it was the Viceroy who suggested that the conclusions should be embodied in .a joint report. So much for the conspiracy. Attacks had also been made upon the Indian people, mainly on the educated 1 intelligent people. The educated Indian was the man we had educated in our schools by our own teachers to learn our ideals, and it was no use to find fault with him when lie asked for what we had taught him to ask.

AN IMPOSSIBLE THEORY What was our Government- in India to be? Was it to be domination, subordination, the rule of the iron, hand? Were we to have one principle of government in India and another in the rest of the Empire? Was the idea of Empire geographical and not moral, racial 1 and not one of conscience? Tell that to our American Allies, ( and that we were drawing a line somewhere in the Indian Ocean saying, "Thus far, and no farther!" That sort of theory was absolutely impossible and out of harmony with ourl own expressed principles. Unfortunately, at the moment India was not ready for self-government, and incomparable disaster awaited the giving of Home Rule to her to-day. So far as he could discover, the whole of India was opposed: to Home Rule at the present. The principle, of our government in India should be the progressive realisation of responsibility step by step as India proved herself ready, until one day we should have completed the process, and India took her place as one of the free nations in the Commonwealth of nations called the British Empire. The only way to teach a man to exercise the vote was to give him a vote, and the only way to teach, him to use the vote wisely was to entrust him with the power of doing something worth doing. The first step, as he suggested, was to give* India as direct and wide and representative a franchise as could possibly be devised. There were people who would make a trial , first with a small part of. India. To that he would say there • were enemies of responsible government in India who would seek to make it impossible by bringing it about too fast. In his report it was proposed to give complete government in local affairs, partial government in provincial affairs, and to maintain supremacy over Indian Imperial affairs. We' must go forward with this scheme, and any suggested improvements would have from the Government heartfelt thanks and ready receptivity.