NEW CAPITAL OF INDIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14924, 23 February 1912, Page 7

NEW CAPITAL OF INDIA

THE RE-UNITING OF BENGAL.

PROTEST BY LORD CURZON.

THE VICEROY CRITICISED. Bv Telegraph. -Press Association.— (Received February 23, 12.45 a.m.) London, February 22. In the House of Lords a debate was raised by Lord Curzon (formerly Viceroy of India) on the removal of the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi. Lord Curzon pointed out that this important step was taken on the initiative of a Viceroy (Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, formerly Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office), who had been in India only a few months, without consultation with those responsible for the government of India. For 25 years, he added, not a single representative body in India had favoured this policy. He feared that the removal of the capital would be more serious for the country than for Calcutta. It was undesirable from the military standpoint, and there was also a danger of making the Government more bureaucratic. Lord Curzon also condemned the new policy of a united province of Bengal (which was partitioned during Lord Curzon's Viceroyship). The agitation against the partition of Bengal was dead. Lord Crewe, replying for the Government, said that the Government had not departed from precedent in not submitting the changes to Parliament, Without deprecating Calcutta, he would point out what they all knewthat the Government was carried on there during a short period of the year, and for the rest of the year in Simla. The benefits of changing the capital were greater than the. damage sustained by any class of the community.