Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
It is no part of my purpose to recount in detail the long, though
generally dispassionate, controversy to which these reforms gave rise.
We may not all be agreed as to the necessity or wisdom of some of the
changes embodied in them, and some may think that we are inclined to
travel too fast and too far on a road which Indians have not up to the
present shown themselves qualified to tread without danger. But there
are few Englishmen either at home or in India who do not recognize the
statesmanlike spirit in which Lord Morley, loyally seconded throughout
by Lord Minto, has approached the very difficult problem of giving to
the people of India a larger consultative voice in administration as
well as in legislation without jeopardizing the stability or impairing
the supremacy of British control. The future alone can show how far
these far-reaching changes will justify the generous expectations of
their author, but taken as a whole they undoubtedly represent a
constructive work which is fully worthy of the fine record of British
rule in India.
How very far-reaching they are the merest indication of their most
salient features will suffice to indicate. For the sake of convenience,
though they form a homogeneous whole, they may be divided roughly into
two categories--those that affect the Executive Councils and those that
have remodelled the Legislative Councils. To the former category
belong:--
(1) The appointment of an Indian member to the Viceroy's Executive
Council. Mr. S.P. Sinha, a Bengalee barrister in large practice, was
appointed to be legal member, and the ability and distinction with which
he discharged the duties of his high office have gone far to remove the
misgivings of many of those who were at first opposed to this new
departure. It is the more to be regretted that his services will be lost
to the new Viceroy, as he has announced his intention of retiring, for
personal reasons, at the end of Lord Minto's Viceroyalty[15].
(2) The appointment of one Indian member to the Executive Councils of
the Governors of Madras and Bombay. The Rajah of Bobbili has been
appointed in Madras and Mr. M.B. Chaubal in Bombay. An Indian will also
be appointed to the Executive Council of the Lieutenant-Governor of
Bengal as soon as that body has been finally constituted[16], and
similar appointments will be made to the Executive Councils of the chief
Indian provinces when the powers taken to create those bodies shall be
put into operation.
(3) The appointment of two Indians, one a Hindu and the other a
Mahomedan, to be members of the Council of the Secretary of State,
generally known as the India Council, in Whitehall. Mr. K.G. Gupta and
Mr. Husain Bilgrami were appointed by Lord Morley in 1907. Mr. Bilgrami
retired early in 1910 owing to ill-health and his place has been taken
by Mr. M.A. Ali Baig.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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