A MONTHLY PERIODICAL DEVOTED TO THE DISCUSSION OF ALL TOPICS OF INTEREST EDITED BY MR. G. A. NATESAN.

THE SOUTHBOROUGH REPORTS

I. BY MR. G. A. NATESAN

should like to premise the few observations here noted down by stating that they are based mainly on a perusal of the published summaries of the Reports in the newspapers.

un

The Reports of the two Committees, I should consider, are, on the whole, satisfactory, specially having regard to the limitations under which the Committees worked in India, and the want of sympathy towards their mission displayed by at least one local Government—I refer to the Madras Government as it was then constituted. The Reports have, I notice, met with general approval, and this is not surprising when it is contrasted with the exceedingly unsatisfactory and disappointing character of the recommendations of the Government of India on the two Reports. The line adopted by the Government of India is to be deeply deplored; for, it accentuates an fortunate feeling of distrust and suspicion which, rightly or wrongly, has been lurking in the minds of certain politicians who have been persistently preaching to their countrymen not to look to the bureaucracy for any help in the matter of Reforms. It seems strange that anything like even a satisfactory beginning in Responsible Government could be made at all without education being a transferred subject. Next to poverty, illiteracy has been the curse of our Motherland. Making acknowledgements to Government for what it has done to promote education, there is no use disguising the fact that its policy has not been broad, its expenditure on education has been poor and its enthusiasm not marked. Our hope lies in education. It has been the chief lever to the

No. 5

progress of every civilised country and to deny the control of education to a popular Legislative Council and its minister will be denying to the people of this country the most potent means for promoting the welfare of its citizens. I totally dissent from the view taken by the Government of India on this point and I must say that the Reform Scheme cannot meet with popular favour if education is not to be a transferred subject.

Our economic condition has been sad and has excited the sympathy of even some of our AngloIndian well-wishers. Readers of Dutt's Economic History of India cannot but recall to their minds many things done and undone, first by the East India Company and later by His Majesty's Government in the matter of the industrial and commercial development of this country. Why, for the matter of that, the Report of the Industrial Commission itself contains some sad admissions of the failure of the authorities to make India industrially self-sufficient. Had a sound and a large industrial and commercial policy been adopted in the past, India in addition to men and money she poured forth as her contribution during the war, would have been enabled still further to supply a great deal of her products shaped for immediate use for fighting the enemies of the Allies. It will be somewhat a queer experiment indeed in Responsible Government if the people's representatives have no control over their educational policy and their industrial future.

In regard to the budget control, the Government of India's proposals take away even the

small privilege accorded to their popular representatives in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report.

If the suggestions of the Government of India regarding the status and position of the minister are to be adopted, it will be somewhat difficult to find many self-respecting Indians willing to accept the office.

I can only conclude by saying that the present situation, the happenings in the Panjab, the unsatisfactory and retrograde and in many respects reactionary proposals of the Government of India on the Southborough Reports, and the reported resignation of Sir Sankaran Nair who has earned the undying gratitude of his countrymen by his remarkable minute of dissent, make one feel grave concern

their influence, and that too when it is too late. In consequence of this deplorable attitude, several unexpected things have happened in the past. Often in his public utterances and in his pathetic appeals to the Government Mr. Gokhale pleaded for the abandoning of such an attitude and of the policy of doling out small doses of reforms, while the craving of the nation has been for a large and substantial measure of Self-Government. If ever the times demanded a bold, courageous, statesmanlike and sympathetic handling of the situation, it is now. I sincerely hope that the Government of India will revise its recommendations on the Reports and authorise its emissary, Sir James Meston, who is proceeding to England in connection with the Reform Scheme, to so counsel, assist and co-operate with Mr. Montagu as to enable him to place on the Statute Book a Reform Scheme, worthy of the great traditions of the Indian people and worthy of Great Britain which has poured forth all that she values most in the cause of freedom. I cannot but express also the hope that even if the Government of India persists in maintaining its present attitude Mr. Montagu will fight for a just and fair treatment to India, and Parliament will prove itself worthy of its great heritage. CHANDAVARKAR

for our political future. The Moderates for years past and during the last few months in particular, have been the recipients of a good deal of homily not only from high authorities but also from Anglo-Indians as to their responsibilities towards the Government and the people. When the Moderates speak out their minds and warn the Government against particular measures and actions, their advice is seldom heeded. When discontent becomes grave and the situation sometimes gets out of hand, the authorities turn to the Moderates and ask them to use II. BY SIR NARAYAN

N responding to the invitation of the Editor of the Indian Review to express my opinion on the Reports of the Southborough Committees, a summary of which has been just published in the daily newspapers, I can only go by the summaries, which may not give a full idea of the nature of the detailed recommendations of the Committees without a careful study of the whole report. But, Judging from summaries, I am led to think that the Committees have upon the whole dealt fairly by the problem of Indian reform, and brought intelligible order out of the complexities into which the controversies of vested interests and racial and caste

conflicts have involved it. The Franchise Committee have decided the exclusion of women from the franchise on the ground of "the social conditions of India." One would have thought that just on that very ground with a view to help in improving those social conditions, the Committee would have admitted women into the franchise and conditions under some well considered qualifications. But the Committee, I am afraid, could not be expected to take that liberal view, composed as it was of Englishmen not familiar with the social conditions of India and of Indians with distinctly more of political than social sympathies and antecedents. The recommendations of the

Committee on the heads of franchise qualifications, the number of electors, and the size of the council in each Province, are, I think, reasonable. On the head of special electorates, the special representation proposed for (a) landholders and (b) commerce and industry, creates electorates of certain vocations and forms them into special castes for electoral purposes. That is unsound in principle, but in the present conditions of India and to make the scheme of reform acceptable to all at its initial stage, when it has to encounter and make necessary compromises with powerful interests, the recommendation must be accepted as justified by the expediency of the day. Communal electorates are recommended for Indian Christians in Madras, Anglo-Indians in Madras and Bengal, Europeans, and Sikhs. In the case of Mahomedans, the existing system of communal election is retained. This too may be defended on the ground of expediency, and the principle of the protection of minorities worth counting. The claim of certain Non-Brahmins for communal representation to communities who are NonBrahmins has been rejected by the Committee and, I think, most wisely. In his minute of dissent from the despatch of the Government of India on the Southborough Reports, Sir Sankaran Nair-though he approves of communal representation for Non-Brahmins with an inconsistency which I cannot for the moment at least explain to myself-has shown how Non-Brahmin interests not only do not stand apart from Brahmin interests in this matter of political reform but stand distinctly to gain by their association with the latter as one entity. Non-Brahmins form the majority of the Indian population and of the general body of electors and it is sheer absurdity to talk of special representation in favour of majorities. The Committee have done the right thing to recognise communal representation in the case of appreciable bodies of people who are minorities with the exception of Mahomedans, as

299

to whom they were bound by an established rule recognised by Hindus and the National Congress. True, the favour shown to Mahomedans makes the franchise scheme illogical. But life is not all logic, political life in particular. As to the Functions Committee, the transferred subjects are no doubt more or less of a minor character and the ministers' powers are subjected (according to the recommendations) to restrictions, which may considerably hamper their independence, mar their usefulness and create conflicts constantly. But that is inevitable in a diarchical scheme, which aims at the attainment of full responsible government by measured stages. In my own opinion, the diarchical system is sure to prove unsatisfactory in the course of a few years and necessitate its disappearance er modification by the light of experience sooner or later. There lies our best hope, and therefore, as practical politicians we should be wise in accepting the Southborough recommendations as sufficient unto the day with the difficulties thereof and as making a beginning (on the whole most tolerable, if not best under the circumstances) in the direction of the fulfilment of India's aspiration for full responsible government in course of time. That time can be speeded only by a policy of sober determination to do the best of actualities but it is sure to be delayed by methods of haste and irritating controversy.

SECURITY FROM THE HINDU.

The Hindu is the oldest Indian newspaper in South India. It has had a long record of public service and usefulness. And its late Editor, Mr.

G. Subramania Iyer did not a little to build up the public life of this Province. Under the editorship of its present proprietor and owner, Mr. S. Kasturiranga Iyengar, it has stood valiantly for the public cause. And though we have often deplored its hard and sometimes unjust attacks on the Moderates with whose school of politics the Hindu has disagreed we cannot but regret that the Government have thought it necessary to call upon its printer to furnish security. We regret this for another reason. It is likely, in our opinion, to add to the volume of discontent which is unfortunately growing not only in this Province but in other parts of the country as well against the attitude of the Government of India in regard to the present situation and the question of reform in general.

HAT Germany should protest violently against the terms of the Peace Treaty was only to be expected. Anything that could make the sting of defeat less bitter, anything that could enable her to evade the consequences of her hour of madness, she cannot afford to leave undone or unsaid. That is why the Treaty is an insult to Germany, her death sentence, the issue of rapacious greed and a mad lust of hate. With these verbal salves to wounded national pride we need not concern ourselves. In estimating the nature of the peace imposed on Germany we must only consider how far the higher conscience has prevailed. The mag. nitude of the problems which the Peace Conference set itself to solve, the plane on which, on the whole, the discussions have been conducted and the lofty guiding principles which have found common acceptance amongst all the belligerent nations preclude any off-hand judgments based on isolated clauses of the Peace Treaty. It is easy enough to be cynical and to declare that Germany has been treated precisely as she would have treated her enemies if she had won, the only difference being in the present case a sanctimonious hypocrisy whose professions and actions are on different planes.

Some understanding of what the Peace Conference has attempted and the difficulties it has had to overcome is necessary before we can attempt to decide how far it has accomplished its task.

There is no question that the great war has stirred the conscience of the world to its profoundest depths and has caused everywhere much anxious searching of heart. The world suddenly found itself facing an international conflagration. Its little castles of cards were tumbling about its ears and there was a reversion to savagery pure and simple to an extent that grievously shocked people who believed the world was rapidly whirling on to the millennium. That cruelty to human beings, and civilised human

beings, should still be possible in this age of courtesy and camouflage outraged its moral conscience.

War may be cruel but it behoved a civilised nation to do its killing in a clean and gentlemanly manner. Germany did her killing by methods which the world had fondly believed belonged to generations now decently buried in the past. The slaughter of non-combatants and all those horrible refinements of cruelty in which Germany's genius for organised savagery enabled her to excel the most ingenious of her forerunners in the gentle art of "frightfulness," have made the world realise that civilisation is a very thin veneer indeed and that it is possible for nations to go mad as for men. It is essential to remember that Germany's "frightfulness" has left an indeli ble impression upon the minds of men and it would be strange if it did not find a reflection in the peace terms. Germany in other words forfeited any claim to the courtesy and deference to wounded national amour propre that is generally extended by the victor to the vanquished. We may regret that feelings of hatred should survive but it is hatred of the crime far more than of the criminal and reacts on the latter only to the extent of denying him any measure of generous treatment, After all a nation that insists on warring like savages cannot expect its opponent to shake hands, and be friends immediately after the fight. It may have learnt wisdom from defeat. It may have experienced a real change of heart. Its opponent may however, be excused if he suggests a period of lustration, before taking it to his heart. It would be well to take some account of this feeling when we are inclined to be surprised at the sternness of some of the clauses regarding reparation and punishment. It is the assertion of the moral conscience of humanity. It is the voice of civilisation scouting the theory that the crimes of patriotism are less reprehensible than the crimes of a narrow individualism. International morality is always higher than