OUR DEMANDS.

(Speech delivered on December 12th, 1917.)

We have been considering the question of Home Rule, in more or less detail, for the last fortnight or three weeks. I myself have addressed Calcutta audiences on more than 3 or 4 occasions and it would be tiresome to me and unprofitable to you if I were to go once more over the grounds that have already been traversed upon.

THE TRIPLE ALLIANCE.

I desire to point out in the first place that Home Rule was coming much nearer to us than we had expected at this time last year. The situation in India during Christmas 1916, when we met in Lucknow, was very different from the situation that faces us to-day. The problem before the politicians of India-the Nationalist politicians of India last winter was how to devise some means by which we should be able to exercise some control, however small it might be, over the government. The government at present, taking the Legislature and the Executive together, is com

posed on the one side of the British Bureaucracy
otherwise known as the Indian Civil Service, and on
the other side the representatives of the people. On
the side of the bureaucracy are more or less the
nominees taken from the people to the Legislative
Council by the Bureaucracy. On the side of the
people are not even all the elected members—a good
many of our elected members have found their places
in the Legislative Councils not in virtue of their
intellectual or moral right to offer counsel on behalf of
the people to the Government but in virtue of their
position and wealth, in virtue of their money-bags and
their acres.
And you cannot always expect that these
gentlemen-estimable gentlemen they all are—we
cannot deny the fact that a good many of these elected
representatives, returned or chosen by special electo-
rates a good many of them are not representatives of
the culture, the intelligence and the patriotism of the
country. We cannot deny it-that a good many of
these gentlemen side with the bureaucracy.

THE OBJECT OF THE CONGRESS-LEAGUE
SCHEME.

Standing against this triple alliance we have a few really representative men and they occupy the position of what is known as the Opposition in Parliamentary

Government. And the object of our political endeavours last winter, and for years previous to that was to strengthen the hands of this opposition to transfer some amount of control from this triple alliance to this opposition-to make it possible for this Opposition— if they cannot help in constructive work, which they are not called upon to do—at least they could be useful as obstructionists to the administration of the Government. That had been the objective of our reforms and the Congress-League scheme was framed with this idea. The Congress-League scheme demands. that four-fifths of the members of the Legislative Councils, both in the Government of India and in the Provincial Governments, should be elected by the people, through some direct method of election, as obtains now in the case of the Mahomedan electorates.

THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF ELECTION.

The present Legislative Councillors are composed, so far as people's representatives are concerned, of three classes. First, the representatives of the Zemindary electorate, second, the representatives of the Mahomedan electorate, third, the representatives of the Municipalities and District Boards. Direct election is exercised by the Zemindars and the Mahomedans. The election of the Municipa

lities and the District Boards is not direct election i.e., the municipal tax-payers and the rate-payers of the district boards have not the right of voting at the election of the representatives of the Municipalities and District Boards in the Legislative Councils. This vote is given not by the rate-payers but by the members of the different municipalities and district boards. The result is this: the real municipal ratepayers know nothing, are not called upon to do anything in the matter of these elections and in consequence we get a number of people in the Legislative Councils who represent the Municipalities, which means their friends and their relations, i.e., with whom they are tied in a variety of obligations. And the worst evil of it is this: that from 1909 to 1917 we have had these members elected by the municipalities and the district-boards, but no progress has been made, during these 8 or 9 years by the people in political education owing to the very imperfect and mischievous way in which these elections carried on. Therefore the Congress-League scheme demanded in the first place 4/5ths of the members of the Legislative Councils, both Imperial and Provincial, to be elected by the people-not indirectly as now, but directly as in the case of the Mahomedans and the Zemindari electorates.

are.

CONGRESS-LEAGUE SCHEME IS SURE TO LEAD TO A DEADLOCK.

The second part of it was that in Provincial as well as in Imperial Governments, the Executive Councils should have one half of the members elected by the elected members of the Legislative Councils. Now, sir, it goes without saying that this is not a practical arrangement-for efficient executive work this arrangement is absolutely impractical. It will create a deadlock, for, the elected members in the Executive Council will either be faithful to their electorates or they will be faithful to their Government. If they are faithful to the electorate, they may not find it possible to always support the policy of the other members of the Council—and if you have an executive council composed of 4 men, two of whom pull in one way and the other two another way, the administration or the executive work cannot go on. We understood it and yet why did we propose it? For this simple reason. We wanted to make the administration impossible. My moderate friends will shake their heads at this expression but the effect of this reform, if it was accepted by the Government-but we knew no sane administration would accept it-the result of it would have been to make the