India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
There are epochs in the history of the world when in a few raging
years the character, the destiny, of the whole race is determined
for unknown ages. This is one.
DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
"Sowing the Winter Wheat." Speech delivered
at Carnarvon, to a meeting of constituents,
after becoming Prime Minister, February 3,
1917.
Part II of the Report contains the scheme which Mr. Montagu and Lord
Chelmsford propose for the solution of the problem which they had set
themselves to solve in Part I. In giving their reasons for a new policy
they observe:
"_No further development (on old lines) is possible unless we are
going to give the people of India some responsibility for their
own government._ But no one can imagine that no further
development is necessary. _It is evident that the present
machinery of government no longer meets the needs of the time; it
works slowly and it produces irritation_; there is a widespread
demand on the part of educated Indian opinion for its alteration;
and the need for advance is recognised by official opinion also."
[Italics are ours.]
The new policy sketched by them is, in their judgment, "the logical
outcome of the past. Indians must be enabled, in so far as they attain
responsibility, to determine for themselves what they want done
"... such limitations on powers as we are now proposing are due
only to the obvious fact that time is necessary in order to train
both representatives and electorates for the work which we desire
them to undertake; and that we offer Indians opportunities at
short intervals to prove the progress they are making and to make
good their claim, not by the method of agitation but by positive
demonstration, to the further stages in self-government which we
have just indicated."
That is the only basis on which they maintain they can hope to see in
India "the growth of a conscious feeling of organic unity with the
Empire as a whole." With these and a few more prefatory remarks about
the educational problem and the attitude of the ryot and the enunciation
of the general principles on which their proposals are based they
proceed to formulate their scheme, starting first with the provinces.
I
The proposals relating to Provincial Government may be noticed under the
following heads:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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