Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
When Lord Minto closed at the end of March the first Session of the
Imperial Council, as the Viceroy's Legislative Council, enlarged under
the Indian Councils Act of 1909, is now officially designated, in
contradistinction to the enlarged Provincial Councils of Provincial
Governments, his Excellency very properly described it as "a memorable
Session." It was, indeed, far more than that. Even to the outward eye
the old Council Chamber at Government House presented a very significant
spectacle, to which the portrait of Warren Hastings over the Viceregal
Chair always seemed to add a strange note of admiration. The round table
at which the members of the Viceroy's Legislative Council used to
gather, with far less of formality, had disappeared, and the 59 members
of the enlarged Council had their appointed seats disposed in a double
hemicycle facing the Chair. They sat for the most part according to
provinces, and the features as well as, in some cases, the dresses, of
the Indian members showed at a glance how representative this new
Council really was.
The tall burly frame of the Kuvar Sahib of Patiala was only more
conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former
wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry,
whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper classes, has
adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West. The bold,
hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were
as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the
Rajah of Mahmudabad's more delicate features of the Mahomedan
aristocracy of the erstwhile kingdom of Oudh. The white _swadeshi_
garments affected by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, from the United
Provinces--who opened the last meeting of the Indian National Congress
at Lahore with a presidential address which lasted for two hours and a
quarter, and wound up with an apology for its brevity on the ground that
he had had no time to prepare it--testified, at any rate more loudly, to
the sternness of his patriotic convictions than the equally _swadeshi_
homespun, cut at least in European fashion, of another "advanced"
politician, Mr. Bhupendranath Bose, of Bengal. More worthy of attention
was the keen, refined, and intellectual face of Mr. G.K. Gokhale, the
Deccanee Brahman with the Mahratta cap, who, by education, belongs to
the West quite as much as to the East, and, by birth, to the ruling
caste of the last dominant race before the advent of the British _Raj_.
The red fez worn by the majority of Mahomedan members showed that their
community had certainly not failed in this instance to secure the
generous measure of representation which Lord Minto spontaneously
promised to them three years ago at Simla. The peculiar glazed black
headdress of the Parsee and the silk kerchief of the Burman in turn
indicated the racial catholicity of the assembly in which Sir Sassoon
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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