The Indian Councils Act, 1909, fell considerably short of the demands
put forward even by the founders of the Congress five-and-twenty years
before, as the new Councils, greatly enlarged, were still to be merely
consultative assemblies. But it did for the first time admit "the living
forces of the elective principle," and to that extent it met the demand
for representative institutions. Indian Moderates could point also to
the presence of an Indian member, Sir Satyendra (now Lord) Sinha, in the
Viceroy's Executive Council and of two Indian members in the Secretary
of State's Council at Whitehall as a definite proof that India would
have henceforth a hearing before, and not as in the past merely after,
the adoption of vital lines of policy. The Act was accepted by the
Moderate leaders as a genuine if not a generous instalment of reform,
and it restored to some extent their influence as the advocates of
constitutional progress by showing that the British Government had not
been altogether deaf to their appeals. It did not of course satisfy the
Extremists, but their influence had suffered a great set-back from the
wrecking of the Surat Congress, their great Deccanee leader was working
out a long term of imprisonment at Mandalay, and with the tide of
anarchism still spreading and visibly demoralising the student class all
over India, even to the undermining of parental authority, the first
feeling of suppressed and largely inarticulate alarm and resentment
developed into a definite reaction in favour of government as by law
established.
The great wave of unrest which had swept over India was already
subsiding when Lord Minto left India in 1910 amidst genuine
demonstrations of returning goodwill, and the appointment of Lord
Hardinge of Penshurst as his successor was welcomed in the same spirit,
not because Lord Kitchener, who had run him very hard for the
Viceroyalty, was personally unpopular in India, but because he owed to
reactionary supporters the quite unmerited reputation of being "the man
with the big stick."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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