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INTRODUCTION

§ 1. THE measure passed in the closing weeks of last year brought to a decision the issues raised by the pronouncement on Indian policy made by the Imperial Government in August 1917. Ten, twenty, and thirty years hence, Parliament will send commissions to India to review the results. Their reports showing how far hopes and fears expressed in advance have been verified in practice should remove many things from the region of guess-work and prove valuable additions to political science. The arguments for and against the principle upon which the Government of India Act, 1919, is based are scattered through vast numbers of official dispatches, proceedings of committees, debates in Parliament, and writings in the Press. After many years the future commissions may find some difficulty in collecting and digesting all these papers. As most of the leading points will be found argued in the documents contained in this volume, I have availed myself of the generous offer of the Oxford University Press to place them on record in this form.

§ 2. These papers may also be of use to young civil servants and to future governors who, without previous knowledge of India, are called on to work the new system. To be understood, the Government of India Act, 1919, must be studied with a knowledge of the facts as they were before the changes were made. In Papers IV, V, and VI these facts are stated in outline. The papers are printed in the order in which they were produced; but inquirers approaching the subject with no previous knowledge would, perhaps, do well to read these studies of Indian government before turning to I, II and III, which presume some knowledge of the facts they contain.

§ 3. Those who can see in the new reforms little but a road to the ruin of England's greatest achievements in India

have pointed to myself as the author of the mischief. The papers here printed together with the facts noted in this introduction will enable these personal questions to be seen, for what they are worth, in truer perspective. They show that the principle of dyarchy was evolved by much anxious thought and inquiry brought to bear on a great problem by a large number of people possessed of a knowledge and experience to which the writer of most of them could not pretend. My own part in the matter was to build a continuous channel in which information drawn from a large number of sources could collect. For evil results which may follow I have no desire to escape any blame which is due. But at least the reader will see that pains were taken to verify facts and test theories, before conclusions were offered for public consideration.

§ 4. The first part of the story is told in great detail in A Letter to the People of India (printed as Paper II) and need not be repeated here. A reader approaching the question from the angle of history may prefer to read it at once before perusing the rest of this introduction.

I

6

§ 5. It is necessary to explain why the Duke Memorandum' (printed as Paper I) is so called, and why it has never been published before. In the autumn of 1915 some friends with first-hand knowledge of India undertook to help me in the study of the subject upon which I was engaged by answering questions. This group, which met once a fortnight in London, included men like Sir William Duke, and the late Sir Lionel Abrahams, who was then in charge of financial questions at the India Office.

§ 6. The object to which the inquiry was directed is shown in the first paragraph of the letter addressed to Mr. Bhupendra Nath Basu, which appears on p. 97 of this volume.

The subject which I am trying to study is the relation of India to the rest of the Empire-the place which India

ought to occupy in a reconstructed Commonwealth after the war. I began, as you know, by studying the relations. of the self-governing Dominions to the rest of the Commonwealth and have published certain conclusions on the subject. This part of the problem is comparatively simple because the Dominions are, so far as their national affairs are concerned, like separate clocks each with their own mainspring in themselves. It is possible, therefore, to consider their future place in the larger mechanism of the whole Commonwealth without reference to any changes in their own internal structure. India, on the other hand, has not as yet attained this domestic independence, though there are an increasing number of Indians who desire to attain it. At present the mainspring of your domestic government is closely connected and, in fact, identical with the mainspring which works the mechanism of the Commonwealth as a whole. This mainspring is the Imperial Parliament. Hence it is impossible to study any change in the mechanism of the Imperial Government without reference to the effect that such changes would have on the internal government of India. Herein lies the greatest difficulty which the student of the subject has to face.'

§ 7. My first questions were framed to elicit an accurate account of the position in India as it stood at the moment. The process by which the legislative councils had developed, and how by the Minto-Morley reforms they had come to include elected members, who in the case of Bengal were an actual majority, was explained to me. I learned that the Nationalist leaders were now demanding a decisive majority of elected members in all the legislative councils, as a recognition of the active part which India was taking in the war.

Political reform, however, was not a thing to be granted as the price of services rendered in the war. On the other hand, the attitude taken by Indians in the war proved, in the judgement of my friends, that the country was riper than had been supposed for a further instalment of reform. And if this was so, the one course more certainly fatal than any other was to do nothing. Long before the war political life in India had begun to move; and the appeal which the British Commonwealth had made against German designs fell to the ground unless England fostered such movement.

Clearly India must move; but whither? It was dangerous and useless to discuss practical steps until we were clear in our minds as to what was the end towards which those steps were directed. In plain terms what was the goal of England's policy in India?

§ 8. To this question which I pressed, the answer given was self-government'. There was general agreement on that point, but when the term self-government was examined it was found to cover a number of different and quite incompatible projects of reform. This analysis of the word self-government is fully developed on p. 357, and need not be repeated in this introduction. The only meaning of self-government as a goal which bore the test of examination was responsible government for India within the Commonwealth on lines which could not stop short of those by which the Dominions had reached their present position. For the purpose of the inquiry it was therefore agreed to assume responsible government as the goal towards which India should be consciously and earnestly helped by her rulers.

§ 9. That India could not advance, as the Dominions had advanced, by one step to full responsible government was generally accepted. To reiterate reasons for a view adopted by Parliament, by every agent commissioned by Parliament to examine the subject, and also by the more responsible leaders of the Nationalist movement is unnecessary. Indian electorates trained to the task of assuming the final decisions which now rest on the British electorate were essential foundations of real responsible government. In the various Dominions such electorates were in visible being when responsible government was granted. In India they had to be created, and could not be called into being with a stroke of the pen. The essence of the problem was how to create them.

§ 10. To create electorates, to render the executives dependent on their votes, and yet to leave them irresponsible for the task with which the executives were charged was clearly no step in the direction of responsible government.

But this was the inevitable outcome of a further advance on the lines traced by the Minto-Morley reforms. It would give the electorates power to paralyse government at every turn, but no power, and no responsibility, therefore, of conducting government for themselves. Such a step would mean the training of electorates and those they elected in irresponsible action. On analysis it proved to be nothing but a step away from the goal proposed.

§ 11. On these further conclusions agreement was reached. But what was the alternative? The question reduced to this point led on to the suggestion of a principle to which the term dyarchy has since been applied. Could not provincial electorates through legislatures and ministers of their own be made clearly responsible for certain functions of government to begin with, leaving all others in the hands of executives responsible as at present to the Government of India and the Secretary of State? Indian electorates, legislatures, and executives would thus be given a field for the exercise of genuine responsibility. From time to time fresh powers could be transferred from the old governments as the new elective authorities developed and proved their capacity for assuming them. Powers already transferred could also be recalled whenever elective authorities had shown themselves unable to exercise them properly.

This proposal of course presumed the coexistence of two authorities in the same areas, the one responsible for certain specified functions to local electorates, the other, as at present, for all other functions to the British electorate through their agents the Secretary of State and the Government of India.

§ 12. By all the members of the gathering who had actual experience of Indian administration this suggestion when first broached was at once rejected as without precedent and dangerously inapplicable to Indian conditions. Most if not all the arguments against it which were afterwards raised in India were suggested at these meetings. The proposal was definitely set aside, and the gathering returned to the task of searching the field for some line of advance