Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
Government of India is and must be seated in India itself." Such
relations are clearly very different from those of principal and agent
which Mr. Montagu would apparently wish to substitute for them.
Besides the special emphasis he laid on his definition of the relations
between the Viceroy and the Secretary of State, other reasons have led
to the belief that the Under-Secretary, who spoke with a full sense of
his responsibility as the representative of the Secretary of State, was
giving calculated expression to the views of his chief. I am not going
to anticipate the duties of the historian, whose business it will be to
establish the share of initiative and responsibility that belong to Lord
Morley and Lord Minto respectively in regard to the Indian policy of
the last five years. Whilst something more than an impression generally
prevails both at home and in India that Mr. Montagu's definition does in
fact very largely apply to the relations between the present Viceroy and
the Secretary of State, and that every measure carried out in India has
originated in Whitehall, it is only fair to bear in mind that Lord
Morley has never himself put forward any such claim, nor has Lord Minto
ever admitted it. The Viceroy, on the contrary, has been at pains to
emphasize on several occasions his share, and indeed to claim for
himself the initiative, of all the principal measures carried out during
his tenure of office, and especially of the new scheme of Indian
reforms, of which the paternity is ascribed by most people to Lord
Morley.
The Secretary of State's great personality may partly account for the
belief that he has entirely overshadowed the Viceroy, all the more in
that he has certainly overshadowed the Council of India as never before.
But if Lord Minto has reason to complain, of the prevalence of this
belief, he cannot be unaware that he too has helped to build it up by
neglecting to associate his own Council with himself as closely as even
his most masterful predecessors had hitherto been careful to do.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account