of such problems as the introduction of grave constitutional changes in
India, was countered by the argument that the same Imperial Government
seemed to find no difficulty in sparing time for such measures as Irish
Home Rule, votes for women, and a large extension of the franchise in
the United Kingdom.
The long delay, whatever its causes, perplexed and alarmed even moderate
Indian opinion, which had lost the most popular of the leaders capable
of guiding it, and waited in vain for any comforting assurances from
responsible official quarters. Moreover, it allowed the Extreme wing to
set up a standard of political demands which it became more and more
difficult for any Indian to decline altogether to endorse without
exposing himself to the reproach that he was unpatriotic and a creature
of Government. As soon as it became known that Lord Chelmsford was
engaged in elaborating a scheme of post-war reforms, nineteen Indian
members of the Imperial Legislative Council hurriedly put forward a
counter scheme of their own, professedly for the better guidance of
British Ministers. Besides pressing for various more or less practical
reforms, such as the granting of commissions to Indians, the Nineteen
demanded full control for the Provincial Councils over the Executive
subject to a limited veto of the Governor of the Province; direct
election to those Councils--although nothing definite was said about the
franchise; and, in the Imperial Legislative Council, an unofficial
majority and control over the Central Government except in certain
reserved matters. The scheme was hazy, bore evident marks of haste, and
aggravated immensely the dangers with which experience had already shown
the Morley-Minto reforms to be fraught. It was an attempt to make the
Central and Provincial Governments in India dependent upon the caprice
of legislatures, with no mandate from any representative electorate and
no training in responsible government, but completely immune to the
consequences of their own mistakes. It must have led to a hopeless
deadlock and the complete paralysis of Government, but even so it did
not satisfy the more fiery members of the Indian National Congress,
where, in complete unison with the All-India Moslem League, finally
captured by some slight concessions to Mahomedan sentiment, resolutions
were passed more crude and unworkable than the scheme of the Nineteen,
and virtually amounting to Home Rule in its most impracticable shape.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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