§ 26. Again and again fears have been expressed to me by my Indian friends that the reforms will be rendered abortive by the powerful hostility of the Indian Civil Service. The spontaneous loyalty shown by its members to the cause of candid inquiry in advance is surely the best answer to those fears. They laboured to secure an authoritative judgement on merits and facts, even though that judgement might prove contrary to their own. That such men should afterwards labour to nullify the judgement as delivered and ratified by supreme authority is contrary to nature. I do not hesitate to say that if once my Indian friends and those of the I.C.S. could come to see each other as they became known to me the Indian problem would be solved. My dearest wish was to leave gatherings in India where Indians, European officials, and business men would regularly meet in personal intercourse to thresh out the problems of the country in which they are all essential factors that such meetings might be the rule, not contrary to rule. But in that hope I was disappointed. Men with the interests at heart not only of India but of the British Commonwealth, whose differences lie in words rather than in things, are kept apart by a cloud of misapprehension. It is pierced at points by individuals whose friendship and mutual esteem bring them together. And in good time the cloud will disperse and reveal three orders of men to each other in their true character of allies and friends. Between all that is best of the British in India and of Indian nationalism there remains no wall but only the phantom of a wall, which will presently vanish. § 27. The letter was dispatched to Mr. Basu early in April. A number of copies were then typed and sent for criticism to various friends, British and Indian. But the applications for further copies became so numerous that it had to be printed after the circulation of Paper IV in its original form. Paper IV was originally called ' Indian Studies No. 1'. So the letter when printed was called 'Indian Studies No. 2'. These numbers have no further significance, so the letter is here printed in the order in which it was composed. Comments on the Letter to Mr. Bhupendra Nath Basu § 28. In the months following the circulation of this letter volumes of criticism were received from those to whom it was sent. In July a selection was made from the mass and printed, with the prefatory note which appears on p. 125, for circulation to friends who had taken this trouble. This circulation never took place, but copies as well as the original letter were before the Indian and provincial governments, and Mr. Montagu after his arrival. The future student of Indian reforms will find nearly every point afterwards discussed in official papers raised by the authors of these comments. The principle of dyarchy had not at the time become a subject of public controversy. In these circumstances and writing to one who had no official capacity of any kind it is probable that the writers expressed their opinions with more detachment than was possible later in official inquiries.. IV, V, and VI § 29. As stated above I had collected in notes a mass of information on the structure of Indian government. In May I began to embody them in memoranda which, when printed, were circulated to the wide circle of friends from whom the information was drawn. They were asked to write their corrections and comments on the blank leaves with which the printed pages were interleaved. § 30. The text of these papers as now printed differs considerably from that issued in 1917, for the excellent quality of much of the comment received compelled wholesale revision. The corrections have been embodied in the text, and the comments so far as possible have been given in the footnotes and appendices. The assistance of Lord Meston in revising the proofs of No. IV, which largely relates to the United Provinces, of which he was then Lieut.-Governor, must be gratefully acknowledged. § 31. Official literature concerning India is most voluminous. But because it is all written by experts for experts it is for the student, whose life has been spent elsewhere, not equally informing. For one thing, official parlance is full of terms which contain no clue to their real meaning. The Reports of the Royal Commission on Decentralization in 1909 and of the Civil Service Commission issued in 1917 covered the whole structure of Indian government. From a study of these volumes, however, the outsider would find it difficult to get such a grasp of the subject as would enable him to describe with insight and lucidity the machinery of Indian government to an English public school. To this rule the Montagu-Chelmsford report is a brilliant exception. But it was not available then. In my own experience I found that the only way to master the subject was by questioning the men who worked the mechanism. And even so, as the notes to these papers show, the accounts given are sometimes difficult to harmonize; for practice varies not merely in provinces but also in divisions and districts. If these papers have any value for ordinary readers it arises from the fact that they are not written by an expert but by one who had to discover the facts and explain them to himself. They give, as I hope, an intelligible and accurate picture of the system as it was before the reforms were introduced. Such a picture is obviously necessary for an understanding of the changes effected. VII § 32. On August 20, 1917, the famous pronouncement was made in the House of Commons, defining the goal of British policy in India. The operative words used were 'responsible government', not 'self-government', as demanded by the Indian National Congress and the All-Indian Muslim League. I had advocated this change in A Letter to the People of India,1 but there is no reason to suppose that the pamphlet had been seen by or had influenced the authors of the pronouncement. The Imperial Cabinet was quite capable of discovering for itself the danger of relying on a formula 1 §§ 20, 21, p. 81. acceptable to the various parties because it could be made to cover policies which had really little in common. The same conclusion arrived at by different people may be evidence that both have been able to consider the question on its merits. : § 33. A statement of policy at once final and clear was ultimately fatal to any further advance on the lines of the Minto-Morley reforms, though Nationalist leaders were slow to realize that its implications could not be harmonized with their own scheme. The immediate effect, however, was a controversy in the British and Indian press, conducted in Bengal with a bitterness endangering public order. Differences are always easy to emphasize, but some moderate Indians and Englishmen decided to attempt the more difficult task of finding matter for agreement. They invited my assistance in drafting a basis. § 34. Ultimately twelve points of agreement were settled and signed by sixty-four Europeans and by ninety Indians. These together with an address suggesting in outline a scheme of reforms based on the twelve points were submitted to the Viceroy and to Mr. Montagu on his arrival at Delhi. When they came to Calcutta to receive deputations, the attendance of the signatories was invited. The occasion was brightened by the gleam of humour, seldom absent from Anglo-Indian solemnities, and the writer still cherishes the legend officially hung on the walls of the waiting-room-' Miscellaneous body of Indians and Europeans'. To no deputation at that moment could a greater compliment have been paid. To draft proposals on the basis of my previous studies was a simple task. The real achievement lay in the signatures obtained by the authors of the movement. I cannot from memory give a full list of those who took part in the conferences at Darjeeling and Calcutta where the twelve points were settled. Sir Krishna Gupta, Mr. P. C. Mitter, Mr. S. R. Das, Mr. B. C. Mitter, Dr. Suhrawardy, Mr. Bijoy Chatterjee, Mr. K. T. Paul on the Indian side, and Mr. Arden Wood, Mr. Pickford, and Mr. Anderson on the British side, were amongst the number. The present Lord Sinha, as a member of the Government, was unable to sign the address, but his house at Darjeeling afforded an ideal meeting-place for the first gatherings, and the knowledge, firmness, and tact which he showed as their chairman laid the foundations of their ultimate success. In bridging the gulf between Europeans and Indians, Colonel Pugh revealed a positive genius for conciliation. He steered the movement with consummate skill. § 35. The original promoters desired that representative members of all the races and religions concerned should have an opportunity of affixing their signatures before the address was presented and published. But their purpose was frustrated by the laxity which pervades European no less than Indian circles in that country. A number of copies were in circulation during the discussions, and the text was modified from time to time to meet difficulties raised by this and that individual signatory. An obsolete copy was obtained and published by a journalist. The text as agreed by the signatories had therefore to be published by them; whereupon some spokesmen of the Congress on the one hand and of the European Association on the other took it upon themselves to declare pontifically that members of either body were precluded from signing the address whatever their private views might be. But for this incident the address might have reached the Viceroy and Secretary of State with signatures from all parts of India and not merely from Bengal. But nothing could alter the fact that in a province where feeling was most acute Hindus, Moslems, and Christians of both races had come together on common ground in the cause of better government for India, at the moment when Russia had collapsed, the Austrian armies were sweeping the Italians before them, and the fate of the British Commonwealth and its allies hung in the balance. Such was the moment chosen to embarrass an attempt to find common ground for two sections of British subjects who were drifting into dangerous antagonism. It cannot be said too often that the kind of journalism which in critical times refuses to respect the |