India for Indians: Enlarged EditionDas, Chitta Ranjan
History
India for Indians: Enlarged Edition
Das, Chitta Ranjan
India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947
That is, roughly speaking, my idea of the provincial government. I said
that the first thing which should strike us is provincial autonomy.
But do not forget that there is a wider interest to consider. These
provincial governments must be bound together by a Central Government.
I believe it was John Bright who said that the future of India was the
United States of India. So far as idea is concerned, it is a grand idea
and the idea of provincial autonomy to which I have referred is part
of that ideal. But John Bright went further; he said that the several
provincial governments should be connected with the British Parliament.
To that view I do not assent because the result of that would be that
the wider interest of Indian nationality would be overlooked. So we
want a central government. What the character of that government is
to be, must also be considered i.e. how they could have most fully
represented all the provincial governments.
AN IMPERIAL FEDERATED GOVERNMENT
Gentlemen, the third need which you must not forget is the need of
another Imperial Federated Government to which all the governments of
the empire should belong--a Government to which the English Government
should belong as one unit, the Indian Government should belong as
another, the Government of Africa, Australia and Canada should belong
as other units. It will be a sort of federated Parliament. I ask you
to consider the grand ideal which is contained in that proposal. I do
not think in the history of the world there ever was another instance
of an empire so vast of an empire, in which so many different races and
nationalities and creeds were represented. When you consider all this,
you will find what a grand opportunity there is within the British
Empire of fulfilling that yet still grander ideal of the federation
of the human race. If the federation of the human race is not always
to remain the poet's dream, if it is ever to be fulfilled, I feel sure
that fulfilment will come through the federation of this vast empire,
to which we have the honour to belong.
A WORD OF ADVICE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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