“Who that has followed his career with some care can deny that far from drawing England and India nearer to one another, Lord Reading has, by the manner in which he has dealt with the Indian people and their concerns, sensibly widened the gulf separating them? The greatest blunder which he committed …. is his failure to enlist the services of Indians of experience and undoubted patriotism, notably of that pure and noble soul, Mahatma Gandhi, in the cause of India’s progress. The Viceroy courted an ignominious failure by underrating Mahatmaji’s influence and hold on his countrymen. By persisting in that folly he has destroyed India’s faith in British intentions and professions….”
MARCH 26, 1926
Lord Reading’s administration
The Viceroy while maintaining and consolidating the good relationship which exists between the princes of India and their States, has at the same time to lead a proud people throbbing anew with race consciousness and with national consciousness as far as in him lies, along the only successful road, the well-ordered road to the highest destiny that awaits any country, partnership in the British Empire: What nobler work can any citizen of this country be called upon to undertake if it succeeds, and it is bound to succeed, what a triumph for all that is best in humanity! and if it fails – God forbid it should fail! – how indisputably the world would be the poorer! -E. S. Montagu.
IT IS A COMMONPLACE IN THE HISTORY OF HUMAN ENDEAVOUR that promise inevitably tends to outrun performance. Since it is impossible, humanly speaking, to obtain absolute parity, one has necessarily to pass judgment on results according to the size of the hiatus that may intervene between the two. Furnishing as he does a most pathetic object-lesson in the tragedy of an idealist degenerating into a helpless and pathetically self-satisfied opportunist, Mr. Montagu’s utterance quoted above has an ironic appropriateness as coming from one victim of missed opportunities to his successor. For these words were spoken at a function held in honour of Lord Reading prior to his departure to India five years ago. How has His Excellency discharged the task, the noblest task which “any citizen of this country (Great Britain) can be called upon to undertake”? Has he succeeded, or has he failed? Is humanity (that collective entity without invoking which no oratory would be complete) richer or the world poorer to-day after five weary years of stewardship of India on the part of one whose proud claim it was to act as the harbinger and the high-priest of justice in general and British justice in particular? We may say at once that India does not heave one sigh of regret at his departure, that he is leaving her shores unhonoured, unwept and unsung and that, though she has no particular reason to be enthusiastic over his successor, there is nevertheless a widespread feeling of relief that a tenure of office, which has been one of lost opportunities, of unparalleled repression, of the prostitution of law, has drawn to a close. In his unimpressive but self-gratulatory farewell speech yesterday at Delhi, Lord Reading laid the flattering unction to his soul by boasting that he had omitted no step which was likely in his view to conduce to the successful realisation of Dominion status by India. Now there are two roads to that goal, one the way of generous recognition of the nation’s demand and the other of denying it and goading the people by repression and oppression. Only in the latter sense can His Excellency’s remarks be true. Who that has followed his career with some care can deny that, far from drawing England and India nearer to one another, Lord Reading has, by the manner in which he has dealt with the Indian people and their concerns, sensibly widened the gulf separating them? The greatest blunder which he committed, one which his successor, if he is wiser, would do well to avoid in the interests of his own reputation and of both the countries, is his failure to enlist the services of Indians of experience and undoubted patriotism, notably of that pure and noble soul, Mahatma Gandhi, in the cause of India’s progress. The Viceroy courted an ignominious failure by underrating Mahatmaji’s influence and hold on his countrymen. By persisting in that folly, he has destroyed India’s faith in British intentions and professions and by ignoring the united demand of a proud people “throbbing anew with national consciousness,” he has dealt a serious blow at the prestige of his country the credit of which with the Indian public is very very low indeed at this moment, as testified to even by the most moderate of Moderates. The following brief review of the chief events of Lord Reading’s administration would show how the above estimate of his achievements is by no means overdrawn.
Lord and Lady Reading have, of course, discharged their social obligations in the fashion required by custom and the spontaneous tributes paid to Her Excellency and the amount of sympathy expressed for her when she fell ill a few months ago, bear evidence to the popularity she has won by her work for the sick, the poor and the needy. It is said that but for Her Excellency’s desire Lord Reading would not have remained in India for the full period, but the new Act, passed by an accommodating Parliament, allowing heads of Governments to take leave, which is already resulting in an epidemic of migrations from India on the part of Governors, came in at the right moment and helped to break the monotony. Pomp and circumstance is the traditional badge of Viceroyalty born of the comfortable notion that the inheritor of the Grand Moghul burden of rule, should live up to the Grand Moghul’s tradition of influence. Pomp and circumstance Their Excellencies did not certainly thrust aside and not only did they pay homage to them in their own way, but wished very much that their guests should exhibit themselves at their best and thus add to the grandeur and gaiety of their parties. The story is told how a certain Prince, the romantic account of whose acquisition of a garland of pearls they had heard, rushed a motor car to his capital for the purpose of fetching the precious jewel in order that it may adorn the person of the ruler at a function the next day.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that because His Excellency followed the usual precedents in regard to his social duties, he was either free or cordial or communicative at such functions or at interviews with leading men and women, Indian or European, official or nonofficial. In fact, he maintained a reserve and a coolness which offended not a few and his sphinx-like attitude and aristocratic hauteur could not be expected to have contributed to his success. It is incredible, but it is nevertheless true, that the Viceroy would not talk on political topics with Indians even when far-reaching decisions were pending on questions which had greatly agitated the public mind. He told the members of the Central Legislature yesterday that he kept “an impartial mind free from the trammels of parties or interests.” This was true enough at the stage when he began to study a question, but he invariably came to the conclusion suggested by his advisers, though in doing so he would assume an independent attitude and even disagree with them on subsidiary matters such as the manner and method of refusing the demands of the people. But what does the beggar care so long as alms are refused him, if the pompous and imperious mother-in-law does it, it is not different from the refusal of the daughter-in-law. Sir Charles Innes has told the world how he was struck by the memory, method and manner of Lord Reading. We are unable to say anything of the first quality, but of his method and manner the less said the better. The unconscionable delay in the disposal of papers, the unaccountable deferring of passing orders in regard to important questions and appointments are the common talk of Simla and Delhi; there would be some compensation if the decisions ultimately reached were satisfactory, but that they were utterly disproportionate to the time spent – or unspent – is only too well-known to the public.
Of the Viceroy’s Liberalism, it is not necessary to say much. In certain quarters much was expected from his influential and intimate association with India, drawing, as he has professed to do, his political inspiration from Gladstone, but even within a few months of his Viceroyalty it had become pretty clear that there was nothing in his politics which was even remotely related to robust Liberalism, but that what distinguished him were those political virtues which made Charles II’s reign a shining success from his own point of view. Else, the public should have expected a stern stand when Lord Curzon described the Government of India as a subordinate branch of the British Government, a title which ill-fitted with the spacious times which the new Viceroy was to assist in ushering; else he should be expected to have experienced not only difficulties but twinges of conscience in serving five different Prime Ministers and four different Secretaries of State, as he himself stated yesterday, belonging to the three political parties of his country and necessarily of divergent political views and tendencies. It is a strain on the principle of loyalty of servants of the Crown to seek to apply it to persons holding such an exalted position as the Viceroyalty of India. Either Lord Reading had his own way with his superiors, a supposition which, if true, would be eloquent of his reactionary attitude, or he was pliant, which appears to be the more correct assumption. It has appeared to many to be a marvel, as damaging to his reputation as it is inconsistent with his antecedents, that Lord Reading should have proved to be such a docile agent of the Secretary of State for the time being; this phenomenon is variously explained, but the meek acquiescence is the triumph of the unseen but ever present influence of the Civil Service. The paucity of positive achievements during the Viceroyalty has been admitted by Sir D. E. Wacha who, conscious of a bankruptcy of tangible achievements to hold up for adulation, could only bid his countrymen to wake up after fifty years when, on a fine morning, Lord Reading’s great and noble deeds for India would suddenly leap to light in all their glory. If supine surrender, at every point, of the interests that he had been set to guard the while making a virtue of surrender, constitutes success then has Lord Reading deserved well of this country. As things are, his country and his countrymen have reason to be grateful to him in that he has ensured them conditions adequately to discharge what in the Pecksniffian post-war phraseology is called “trusteeship” but which a franker generation was content to dub “exploitation”.
As a new comer, who sincerely wished to study things for himself, Lord Reading kept himself aloof for some time from the corroding and anaesthetizing influence of the bureaucracy. He even, with that avidity for immaculateness generally ascribed to new brooms, kept it at some distance, preferring to judge for himself. The steel-frame speech of Lloyd George, in which that super-opportunist said that he could see no period when India could dispense with the European element in the Civil Service, was unpalatable, there is reason to think, to the Viceroy who secured a revised version of it for Indian consumption. He further sent a circular to local Governments on the future of the Indian Services – known as the O’Donnell circular – embodying some admirable sentiments and enunciating some wise principles. Lord Reading at first resisted the extravagant conditions required by the services in regard to the scheme of proportionate pensions. But the pressure from above became irresistible, and the Viceroy yielded where the public had a right to expect him to stand firm. Here again there was an ignominious surrender, European members of the Services having appealed to the Secretary of State over the head of Lord Reading’s Government, who, they openly said, could not be trusted to champion their cause. The Lee Commission, agreed to by the Viceroy without reference in the first instance, we understand, to his Executive Council, came as a packed body and recommended extravagant salaries and emoluments all of which have since been accepted and given effect to in the Parliamentary Act since passed, in spite of protests of the Legislative Assembly, thrice repeated, and of local Legislative Councils. It is noteworthy that the Government of India have plainly stated that all the proposals in regard to the Indian Medical Service are not going to be adopted, obviously because they prejudicially affect Britishers. Moreover, they are gradually receding from the position they took up in regard to Europeans appointed for and serving under Local Governments who are presumably to be granted the Lee concessions against which Simla stood out at one time. It is curious that though the Viceroy has always appeared to be over and above the Services, keeping them at a distance, he has not only sought to grant them higher emoluments at the expense and against the declared wishes of the Indian tax-payer, but has fallen a victim to their machinations, accepting their view as to the unrest and the methods of combating it and resisting with them, the Indian demand for Swaraj. But while the European element has thus been pampered, very little progress has been made in the matter of the Indianisation of the Services, though the preamble to the Government of India Act, which he has been never tired of quoting, has enjoined on the authorities the necessity for closer association of Indians with the administration.
Before, however, reference is made to the reign of terror inaugurated under the auspices of His Excellency and the stem refusal to grasp the hand of fellowship extended by Indian leaders, it would perhaps be useful to examine whether in other matters the Viceroy was able either to conform to his own standard of public duty or to satisfy Indian public opinion. Let us take law and order and the administration of justice. Early in his career, Lord Reading had told the public that he was determined to render as impossible as circumstances would permit the judicial scandals in racial cases and to reform judicial procedure. The Civil Justice Committee and the Indian Bar Committee owe their inception to him and their reports contain recommendations which are yet being examined; except in certain important particulars, it is only right to say that the changes advocated by them might, if adopted, make judicial procedure free from the evils which beset it to-day. But we can scarcely congratulate Lord Reading on his policy in regard to racial distinctions in judicial trials, for all these distinctions have not yet been removed, his Government having weakly surrendered to the British Government in regard to the widening of the definition of the European British subject so as to include colonials and to the ousting of the jurisdiction of courts lower than the High Court in cases against soldiers. In regard to the repeal of repressive laws, it is now a matter of notoriety how the removal of Deportation Regulations, the Seditious Meetings Act and Part II of the Criminal Law Amendment Act from the Statute book was refused in the first instance and how attempts to secure the reforms afterwards were defeated by having recourse to the help of the Council of State. One who has been bred up in the atmosphere of British justice could not tolerate, it may be presumed, the use of firearms on a crowd without warning; but a legislative measure actually brought forward by the Government themselves was afterwards withdrawn and non-official attempts in the same direction have been unsuccessful. The rule of law is yet to be applied to land revenue and the Bill in this respect sent up from Madras has yet to be sent down from Simla. It is astonishing that Lord Reading’s Government should still hesitate to allow Local Governments to separate executive from judicial functions though at one time they told the Assembly not to trouble itself with this question as it concerned the Provinces. What is behind this retrogression except the vigilance of the bureaucracy which has learnt to perfection the art of bending even the stoutest champions of the rule of law to its purpose? The little reputation Lord Reading had completely disappeared when he refused to interfere with the prostitution of the preventive sections of the Criminal Procedure Code, of which more anon.
Lord Reading belongs to a race which had experienced oppression of a galling kind through the long course of history, and as such he should be ordinarily expected to sympathise with Indians in their struggle for liberty at home and abroad. What the Viceroy’s contribution to the former is we shall see by and by, but it is a matter for profound regret that he never allowed himself to express hearty condemnation of the unrighteous policy followed by the Colonies and Dominions in dealing with Indian nationals; he could never bring himself, except at a very late stage and then in a half-hearted manner, even to reach the height attained by an Englishman predecessor of his, Lord Hardinge. There was more of eternal balancing of the pros and cons in his utterances on the subject than the plain talk that the circumstances demanded. The emigration policy of the Government of India during the last five years can be summed up by saying that precious little has been achieved. The equality resolution of the Imperial Conference of 1921 is a dead letter; Mr. Sastri’s mission to the Dominions has, while leading to improvements in Australia, been barren so far as Canada is concerned; the position in Kenya is not a whit better, while that in South Africa is darker than it was ever before. In regard to Kenya, the proposal to send an officer to report on the desirability of Indians settling in the Lowlands mooted by the Viceroy was withdrawn only after an indignant protest by the public. The Government have steadily refused to put into force the Retaliation Act passed by the Indian Legislature or impose countervailing duty on South African coal, even though it was necessary in the economic interests of this country. The circumstances under which the Paddison deputation was sent to South Africa are now well known; it was a move calculated to bring humiliation on India, especially as this step was taken after the Union Government had declined to accept the round table conference proposal. The Viceroy’s reference to the object of this deputation as being to smooth the way for repatriation, his distinction between South Africa-born and other Indians, and his acquiescence in the principle of selection of the personnel of the deputation dictated for him by the Hertzog Government were greatly resented in the country. And the story of the refusal of a passport to a prominent Indian public worker who wanted to go to South Africa and enlist the support of Christian organisations in the country on behalf of the Indian cause, will, when told in full, which we hope would one day be done, rouse the indignation of the public. The fact is that he had no real living interest in the cause and his cold calculating nature was not suitable for the growth of the righteous wrath against wrong which is the mark of truly noble minds.
Of the military policy of Lord Reading’s Government much need not be said. The forward policy has been subjected to much criticism and it is by no means established that success has attended the efforts to bring the turbulent tribes under control, even after the uncivilised warfare carried on by bombing from the air. The only tangible results of Lord Reading’s policy, so far as the public are aware, are the Khyber Railway on which the Government have poured money like water and the magnificent if costly motor roads which traverse Waziristan and are meant to dominate the tribal tract. The possibilities of these brilliant undertakings for catering to the pleasure-bent tourists have been amply demonstrated, but of their value either as instruments for the pacification of the area or, much less, as adding perceptibly to our military strength, we have as yet very little evidence. The tribes, as Lord Reading has had occasion recently to know, are by no means scared by these enveloping movements; indeed, they ask for the extension of the railway building activities to other areas for, as they assured Lord Reading, they contribute immensely to their gaieties no less than to their convenience. Time alone will show whether, far from contributing to our security, these enterprises have done anything more than helped to relieve the tribes of part of the drabness and boredom of their life and thus made them more fit than ever to ply their age-long trade. The War Office still dominates the Government of India and refuses to accept the proposals of the latter. The more important resolutions of the Legislative Assembly on the Report of the Esher Committee, adopted with the approval of the Government, have yet to be brought into effect, while the recommendations of the Territorial Force Committee still adorn the Secretariat shelf. The Government have been strenuously opposing non-official suggestions regarding Indianisation of the Army, while the eight units scheme, which has been a colossal failure, has been laughed to scorn by the Indian public. The Army expenditure, the Commander-in-Chief has pontifically stated, cannot be reduced to the limit of Rs. 50 crores as suggested by the Inchcape Committee. The puny proposals regarding the Indian navy, especially the Indianisation part of it, are too recent to need any elaboration at our hands. If Sir P. S. Sivaswami Aiyer, to whose labours on this aspect of the subject the public is. much indebted, is disgusted with the policy pursued by the authorities, it must be taken that the last word has been said on it.
It is perhaps true that under Mr. Montagu’s inspiration Lord Reading looked forward to intimate co-operation with the Indian legislature, so regulating the relations between his Government and the representatives of the people as to result in complete understanding and necessarily in the working of the reforms in the spirit in which they were conceived. Sir Frederick Whyte had early foreseen the difficulty of an irresponsible Executive getting on smoothly with an Assembly containing an elected majority. Lord Meston in his article to the current number of The Contemporary Review says: — “A regular body of pledged supporters of the Government cannot be looked for so long as the Government is amenable to the British Parliament and to the will of its own Legislature.” A policy of give and take can alone, in these circumstances, tide over the delicate transition stage. The first two years saw the spectacle of taxation being mounted up and the repeal of many objectionable repressive laws on the basis of compromise, the members of the Assembly, belonging as they did to the moderate section, being temperamentally unequal to pitching the demands of the people high. Obviously the bureaucracy in India could not contemplate with equanimity the existence of cordial relations between the Executive and the Legislature because it was leading to the sensible dimunition of its prestige and power. And then began that constant and irritating interference with the decisions of the Assembly which has become the normal feature of Government business. The Princes Protection Bill, which the Assembly would not even look at, was placed on the Statute Book with the assistance of the Council of State, a packed body which has never failed the Executive. The Finance Bill of 1923, containing the enhanced salt tax was also similarly dealt with, despite the vehement protests of the Assembly and the whole country, a transaction which was unnecessary because only a paltry deficit had to be covered up and which was flagrantly opposed to the principle of no taxation without representation which, Lord Reading knew so well, was the very breath of Englishmen. Dr. Rushbrook Williams, unaware of the extent to which exceptional powers were going to be utilised in the coming years, wrote as follows in his annual review for 1922-23: – “It is extremely doubtful whether they can be utilised in future, in anything but the very gravest of emergencies, without detriment to the general political situation. This fact is the more important on account of the natural, indeed, inevitable tendency for the Central Legislature to increase the scope and influence of its deliberations at the expense of the sphere which technically has been reserved from its control.” But a whole host of legislative measures which the non-official members of the Assembly promoted in the second period were ruthlessly destroyed, thanks to the servile help of the Elders who faithfully repeated their master’s voice. The Criminal Law Amendment Bill, the bill to abolish reservation of third class carriages to Europeans and Anglo-Indians, the Special Laws Repealing Bill and the Fire Arms Bill were thus got out of the way, the Viceroy having come to look upon the exercise of his special powers as a necessity in the circumstances which faced him. The Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Supplementary Bill, to which the Assembly objected as it related to the policy of repression in Bengal, was certified and enacted, the Council of State again proving a faithful ally. And only the other day, the Council adopted a motion, previously rejected by the popular House, favouring the official proposal to pay enhanced salaries to two members of the Privy Council. It was hoped by the champions of the Reforms that the special powers would not be frequently used, but certification and restoration have become very common, reducing the prestige and usefulness of the Assembly. The Viceroy prided himself the other day on the fact that he was following the practice of nominating to the Council of State non-officials where he could nominate officials but the way in which he has chosen members recently, deliberately keeping out those who were likely to hold independent views and preferring non-entities, has completely exposed the real object of the manoeuvre, which is to counteract the accession of strength to the party of fighters by the return of a number of Swarajists. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the Upper House and Lord Reading had come to constitute themselves into a mutual admiration society.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I