Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
Thus the Indian Councils Act of 1909 cannot be said to have actually
modified the position of the Indian Legislatures. With regard to the
most important of them--viz., the Imperial Council--Lord Morley was
careful to make this perfectly clear in his despatch of November 27,
1908, in which he reviewed the proposals put forward in the Government
of India despatch of October 1. "It is an essential condition of the
reform policy," the Secretary of State wrote, "that the Imperial
supremacy should in no degree be compromised. I must therefore regard it
as essential that your Excellency's Council, in its legislative as well
as in its executive character, should continue to be so constituted as
to ensure its constant and uninterrupted power to fulfil the
constitutional obligation that it owes, and must always owe, to his
Majesty's Government and to the Imperial Parliament." The Indian
Executive therefore remains, as hitherto, responsible only to the
Imperial Government at home, and the Imperial Council can exercise over
it no directly controlling power. The same holds good, _mutatis
mutandis_, of the Provincial Executives and their Councils.
Indirectly, however, the Indian Councils Act of 1909 materially modifies
the relations between the Legislative Councils and the Executive by
giving to elected and non-official members opportunities which they have
never enjoyed before of discussing public policy and making their voices
heard and their influence felt on both administrative and legislative
matters. The revised rules of procedure, under which supplementary
questions may be grafted on to interpellations, and resolutions can be
moved not only in connexion with the financial statements of Government,
but, with certain specified reservations, on most matters of general
public interest, are undoubtedly calculated to afford a vastly larger
scope than in the past to the activities of Indian Legislatures, and it
will depend very much upon the ability and resourcefulness of members
themselves to what extent they may utilize these facilities for the
purpose of ultimately creating real powers of control. In an extremely
interesting and dispassionate study of the Indian Constitution, and of
the effects which the new reforms may have upon it, Mr. Rangaswami
Iyengar, a Hindu journalist of Madras, comes to the conclusion that "if
the powers now entrusted to the Councils are used with care, wisdom, and
discrimination, precedents and procedure analogous to those of the House
of Commons might gradually grow up, and might serve as a useful means if
not of directly controlling the Executive--a power which under the
present constitutional arrangement of the Government of India it is
impossible that the Council should possess--at least of directing the
Executive into correct and proper channels in regard to administrative
policy and administrative action." Not the least important of the
changes are those made in regard to Budget procedure. Indian
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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