India: The Party System from 1963 to 2000, by Chad E. Bell*
India arguably possesses the most complex political party system in the world. Combining a first-past-the-post, single-member district system (borrowed from its colonial possessor, Great Britain) with a stratified caste system, intense regional differences, and serious religious divides, India finds itself stuck with a plethora of political parties. In the 1996 Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Parliament) elections, no fewer than 209 political parties participated; some parties competed nationally but most of the parties contested only on a regional or local basis. With this variety in political voices, intense poverty, and the world's second largest population, India's achievement of coalition government and continuous, sustainable democracy borders on the miraculous.
The 1962 elections to the Lok Sabha continued the post-independence pattern of Congress controlled rule. Congress continued its impressive 20-year run, winning 74% of the seats in the Lok Sabha with 45% of the popular vote. No other opposition party won more than 6% of the seats in the Lok Sabha that year.
However, the 1967 elections brought effectively to an end Congress's unquestioned rule of the government. The erosion of Congress's support in the 1967 elections can be partially attributed to monsoon damage in the north and east, a currency devaluation in 1966, and the growth of the electorate in sectors that don't traditionally support Congress. Congress lost 78 seats in the Lok Sabha, retaining a scant 23-seat majority. Additionally, Congress lost six state legislatures.
This weakening of electoral power for Congress opened the door for the rise of Indira Gandi. As Prime Minister in 1967, Indira Gandhi pushed the Congress Party into a more populist stance, nationalizing banks and attempting to reach out to poorer classes by attempting to eradicate poverty. These strategies alienated her from the party organization, which expelled her and formed a new party, Congress (Organization) to oppose her, hoping to take control of the Prime Minister's office. However, the plan backfired, when a majority of the Lok Sabha continued to support Indira.
Campaigning on a platform to eliminate poverty, Indira's Congress Party swept to victory in 1971, gaining 44% of the vote, and 68% of the seats in the Lok Sabha. But drought conditions, food price increases, and the escalation of oil prices in the early 1970s conspired against Gandhi and Congress. With civil disturbances increasing, and the announcement of the nullification of Gandhi's election by the Allahabad High Court, Gandhi took matters into her own hands, declaring an emergency state, and suspending civil society. Jailing her enemies and rewriting the constitution so as to nullify the court's decision and entrench herself further in office, Gandhi ruled alone for two years, from 1975-77, before calling surprise elections.
For the first time in Indian politics, however, the opposition was united and prepared to challenge Congress's hegemony. The Janata Party, a coalition party formed by a variety of anti-Congress forces, ran their campaign against the emergency government of Indira Gandhi, and won the support of the Indian people, winning 55% of the seats in the Lok Sabha (compared to Congress's 28%) with 41% of the popular vote.
Janata's coalition style proved to be its inevitable undoing, as infighting and inaction during its term turned off the public and worsened economic conditions. Gandhi's Congress Party (renamed Congress (I) for Indira) won 353 seats in the Lok Sabha, as Janata fell precipitously to 3% of the seats in 1980.
Indira Gandhi's next four years were filled with corruption, as representatives tried to ingratiate themselves upon Gandhi to gain higher positions in the government, while ignoring their constituencies. In 1984, Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards, setting off a wave of anti-Sikh violence in India that killed thousands of Sikhs before order was restored.
As the dust settled, Gandhi's oldest son Ranjiv Gandhi took office as prime minister, and attempted to clean out the corruption of his mother's regime. Congress solidified its control of the legislature in 1985, winning 76% of the seats in the Lok Sabha. With control of the legislature, Ranjiv Gandhi purged the party of some of its corrupt nature, denying nominations to one-third of the party's incumbents in the election and 40% of the state legislative assembly incumbents, all based on corruption.
However, Ranjiv Gandhi's own administration began experiencing its own corruption problems, including an espionage ring and allegations of kickbacks to governmental officials in exchange for contracts. By 1989, Congress had lost its direction and lacked any coherent program to advance. Despite various advantages in the campaign (including access to governmental television and radio advertisements) Congress was only able to win 197 seats in the Lok Sabha. Since it did not win a majority, a government was formed by a coalition of the Janata Dal, the BJP, and the two Communist parties.
Religious conflict and a lack of cohesion in the coalition government returned Congress to power in early elections in 1991. Congress won 46% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, with 37% of the vote, and was able to enter into a ruling coalition. With Rajiv Gandhi's assassination earlier in the year by a Tamil suicide bomber, the mantle of prime minister fell to P.V. Narasimha Rao, a former professor and reformer. Rao reformed the Congress Party, creating party democratic rule for governmental seats and democratizing the workings of the party.
The 1991 elections also saw the rise of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP gained 22% of the seats in the Lok Sabha elections in that year, placing it as the main opposition party to Congress. As Rao suffered corruption charges during his term, public support for the BJP grew.
In 1996, public support turned away from Congress and towards the BJP. BJP won 30% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, compared to Congress's 26%, despite receiving a smaller percentage of the popular vote. However, the BJP was unable to construct a coalition government, and the government was formed by the United Front (communist and leftist parties) and Congress, with H.D. Deve Gowda as prime minister.
In 1998, the collapse of the ruling coalition created a push for new elections. This time, BJP had learned its lesson from 1996, and entered into electoral alliances in advance of the elections. The result was a victory for the BJP, which won 180 seats (short of a majority) but was able to get 264 representatives to support a vote of confidence in their administration. Congress, meanwhile, gained 141 seats, and became the primary opposition party in the government.
In 1999, another set of elections occurred, due to the collapse of the ruling coalition. Voters once again supported the BJP, giving it 34% of the seats in the Lok Sabha and 24% of the popular vote. Congress, while amassing a greater share of the popular vote, was only able to secure 21% of the seats, and saw the BJP once again form the ruling coalition.
While much of the past 40 years in Indian politics has been the story of the Indian National Congress party, the current rise of Hindu nationalism has given power temporarily to the BJP. With the rise of the BJP, India has evoked on a more stable, democratic governmental system, in sharp contrast to the one party dominance of the Congress years.
Continuity and Change in Political Parties, 1963-2000
Original Parties from 1950-1962, still continuing to 2000
081 Congress Party, later Congress Party (Indira). The Indian National Congress remains a major force in Indian politics, but it is no longer the unchallenged hegemon of the early post-independence years. In 1969, a faction known as the Indian National Congress (Organization) broke off from the main Congress Party. Another split occurred in 1979, when forces loyal to Indira Gandhi broke off to form Congress (Indira). Despite being a faction, this party took control and continued the Congress policies and agenda. Since Congress (I) was fundamentally the same as the original Congress party, there was no termination of the party. Since 1996, Congress (I) has been unable to control the Lok Sabha, becoming the main opposition to the BJP. The Congress (I) Party currently controls 21% of the seats in the Lok Sabha.
New Parties formed after 1962 and continuing to 2000
084 Communist Party of India-Moscow. The CPI was created after a split over a Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1964 created two Communist parties in India. The CPI came out on the side of the USSR during the split, while the Communist Party of India ñ Marxist took the Chinese and Maoist position. Since the split, the CPI has seen its strength steadily weaken in comparison to the CPM, although it still polls regularly at 1-3% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, usually thanks to support in Kerala or Tamil Nadu.
085 Communist Party of India-Marxist. The CPM split from the CPI in 1964 to side with the Chinese in a border dispute, but by 1968 had declared its independence from China. Successfully contesting every Lok Sabha election since the split, the CPM is particularly well supported in Kerala, West Bengal, and Tripura. The CPM has grown to be stronger than the CPI, and now regularly obtains around 4-7% of the seats in the Lok Sabha.
088 All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. A splinter party from the DMK formed in 1972, the AIADMK has seen a small amount of success within Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. AIADMK advocates many of the same causes as the DMK, but also calls for total prohibition throughout India, a ceiling on incomes, nationalization of banks, and giving voters a chance to recall elected representatives.
0825 Kerala Congress. Based in the state of Kerala, the Kerala Congress broke away from the State Congress Party in 1964, and began taking part in the Kerala state government. It held 3 seats in the Lok Sabha from 1971-77, and continues to contest elections to this day. Currently, it possesses 1 seat in the Lok Sabha.
0829 Telugu Desam. Telugu Desam is a regional party based in Andhra Pradesh, which was founded in 1982. Telugu Desam declared on its formation it would support whichever party was in control of the national government at any time, but would pursue its own agenda within its state. Since its formation, Telugu Desam has become a rather major minority party within the Lok Sabha, gaining as much as 6% of the seats in the Lok Sabha.
0831 Assam Gana Parishad. The AGP is based in the state of Assam, where it was founded and gained power in 1985. The AGP held 7 seats from 1985 through 1989 in the Lok Sabha, and returned in 1996 with 5 seats in the Lok Sabha. It has not been represented in the Lok Sabha since then, but it is still too early to deem the party terminated.
0832 Janata Dal. Janata Dal was formed in 1988 as the result of a merger between Jan Morcha, Lok Dal, and the Janata Party. In the 1989 elections, it won 141 seats in the Lok Sabha. Parts of this coalition have since broken off into other parties, but Janata Dal still has considerable strength in the Lok Sabha, currently controlling 4% of the seats. Janata Dal advocates the eradication of poverty, the elimination of income disparities, and fight for employment for the lower castes.
0833 Bahujan Samaj Party. The BSP has a program very similar to that of the Republican Party of India, but as far as our data shows, they are two separate parties (they both held seats in the 1998-99 Lok Sabha). The BSP is designed to promote the rights of the "untouchables" (Harijans), and has been reasonably successful in elections, gaining 1-3% of the Lok Sabha seats every year from 1989-2000.
0835 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha formerly Jharkhand Party. This party, formed initially in the 1950s, reformed in 1980 and represents the rights of the tribal citizens of Bihar (Jharkhand is roughly synonymous with "jungle-people"). Due to the similarities in the two parties programs and their support, the name change was ruled a continuance of the same party, not a new party formation. JMM was able to win a small number of Lok Sabha seats in 1989 and 1991, but has seen its electoral strength shrink since then. It last elected a single seat to the Lok Sabha in 1996, so it is still too soon to determine if this party has terminated or not.
0836 Shiva Sena. Based in Maharashtra, Shiva Sena began as a right wing terrorist organization, attempting to defend the economic interests of the native Maharashtrians against immigrants from south India states. An extremist Hindu party, Shiva Sena eventually began to participate in electoral contests around 1989, and has held between 1% and 3% of the seats in the Lok Sabha since then.
0837 Tamil Manila Congress. A breakaway from the Indian National Congress, the TMC was formed around 1996 for elections to the 11th National Lok Sabha. A regional party based in Tamil Nadu, the TMC won 20 seats in the region in 1996, and 3 in 1998. It did not win any seats in the 1999 elections, but it is still too early to determine whether or not the party has terminated.
0838 Samajwadi Party. The Sawajwadi Party (also known as the Samajwadi Janata Party) was formed as a result of a merger of the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Janata Party in April 1991. It has seen its electoral strength increase since its introduction, and currently controls 5% of the seats in the Lok Sabha.
0839 Rashtriya Janata Dal. The RJD broke away from the main Janata Dal before the 1996 elections, forming a regional party in Bihar. The RJD won 16 seats in 1996, 17 seats in 1998, and 7 seats after the 1999 elections.
0840 Samata Party. A regional party based in Bihar, the Samata Party won 5 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1996, its first contested election. In 1998, the party won 13 seats, but currently holds no representation in the Lok Sabha. It is unknown if this party has terminated.
0842 Haryana Vikas Party. The Haryana Vikas Party was founded in 1968 but never has achieved a great deal of electoral strength, even in the state of Haryana. The HVP gained 1 seat in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, and gained 3 seats in the 1996-97 Lok Sabha. The party gained a single seat for the subsequent term, and thus has not shown enough evidence of termination to be ruled terminated.
0843 Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya). Headed by Chandra Shekar (former head of the Samajwadi Party and the Janata Dal (Secular), this offshoot of the Samajwadi Party was able to hold seats from 1996-99 in the Lok Sabha. It is unknown what has happened to this party since its founding, or the platform for the party.
0844 Biju Janata Dal. A breakaway from the original Janata Dal, this Orissa state party won 9 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1998, and currently holds 10 seats in the Lok Sabha. Little is known about this purely regional party. Its purely regional opposition to major national parties places it in a situation historically similar to the other Orissa Party, the Swatantra Party (or Ganatantra Parishad).
0845 West Bengal Trinamool Congress later the All-India Trinamool Congress. The WBTC is a regional party, based in West Bengal. It seems to be an offshoot of the national Congress Party, though this has not been explicitly proven. The WBTC won 7 seats in the 1998 elections, and 9 seats in the 1999 elections, which it contested under the new banner of the AITC.
0846 Pattali Makkal Katchi. The PMK is a state party based in Tamil Nadu. It is unknown what this party stands for or whom supports it. In 1998, it won 4 seats, and currently holds 5 seats in the Lok Sabha.
0847 Haryana Lok Dal (Rashtriya). The HLD® is a state party based in Haryana. In 1998 it won 4 seats in the Lok Sabha. No other information was obtained concerning this party.
0848 Lok Shakti. The Lok Shakti is a minor state party of Karnataka. In the 1998 general elections, Lok Shakti secured 3 seats in the Lok Sabha. It was impossible to determine whether or not the Lok Shakti still exist.
0849 Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The MDMK is a relatively new political party, first obtaining representation in 1998, with 6 seats in the Lok Sabha. Little is known about this party, but from its name and the electoral results, it can be extrapolated that this party broke off from the DMK, and similarly is based in Tamil Nadu.
0850 Nationalist Congress Party. This party first contested the 1999 elections, winning 8 seats in the Lok Sabha. Little is known of their platform or support, but 6 of their representatives were from Maharashtra.
0851 Indian National Lok Dal. This party first contested the 1999 elections, and won 5 seats in the Lok Sabha. All of its representatives are from Haryana.
Parties formed from 1950-62, not included originally, terminating by 2000
089 Ganatantra Parishad, or Swatantra Party. A regional party based in Orissa, the Ganatantra Parishad (it changed its name to Swatantra around 1967) formed as a reaction to Congress's entrance onto the local political scene right after independence. Unwilling to allow a somewhat foreign, national party to retain control of its government, Ganatantra was created, and was highly successful. From 1967-70, Swatantra held 8% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, before merging into the Janata Party shortly after 1974.
0811 Socialist Party. The Socialist Party (SP) was founded in 1949 by a set of radical dissidents within the Congress Party known as the "Nasik group." Advocating a socialist society within India via government ownership of the means of production, the SP eventually merged into the Janata Party in 1977.
0812 Praja Socialist Party. The PSP was established in 1952 as a result of a merger of smaller socialist parties, including the Krisan Maxdoor Praja Party. Enjoying a great deal of electoral success throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the PSP advocated land reform, free education, and an end to corruption in government. The party no longer gained electoral support after 1977, and thus effectively terminated.
0813 Hindu Mahasabha. A minority right-wing party dedicated to the establishment of a democratic Hindu state, the Hindu Mahasabha (also know as the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha) reached its pinnacle of strength in 1952, when it sent 4 members to the Lok Sabha. It diminished election by election after that, and no longer had representation by 1967. Due to the complete lack of any electoral strength for this party since 1967, we judged that the party had terminated.
0814 People's Democratic Front. Based what was then known as Hyderabad, this party won 4 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1952. Little else is known about this party, which has since terminated.
0815 Tamil Nadu Toiler's Party. The TTP was founded in 1950 in what was then Madras. The TTP was supported by lesser landlords and better-off peasants in the region, and advocated greater admission of minorities into all professions. As the DMK rose to power, it drew support from the TTP, and the TTP terminated after 1957.
0816 Ram Rajya Parishad. The Ram Rajya Parishad was a rightist political party located regionally in the state of Rajasthan. The party contested elections up until 1967, holding as many as 3 seats from 1952-57. Ram Rajya Parishad eventually became one of many parties to merge together to form Jan Sangh, the predecessor to the modern day BJP.
0818 Mahagujarat Janata Parishad. A short lived, regional party located in Bombay, the Mahagujarat Janata Parishad held 4 seats in the Lok Sabha from 1957-61 and 1 seat from 1962-66.
Parties formed from 1950-62, not included originally, continuing to 2000
086 Bharatiya Janata Party, or Jan Sangh, or Bharatiya Jan Sangh. The BJP is currently the dominant member of the leading government coalition in the Indian Lok Sabha, containing 34% of the total seats. A national party, BJP (or Jan Sangh as it was then known) existed and contested elections from 1952 until 1977, when it shortly joined the coalition Janata Party. Dissatisfied with the progress of Janata, Jan Sangh separated from Janata, but was unsuccessful in contesting the 1980 elections, gaining no seats. Renamed the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980 after the elections, the BJP has capitalized on the theme of Hindu nationalism, which has created strains with neighboring Pakistan over nuclear weapons and Kashmir.
087 Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The DMK was founded as a regional party in Tamil Nadu in 1949, and first gained representation in the Lok Sabha in 1957. Steadily gaining support within Tamil Nadu, the DMK reached its apex in 1967 when it won 25 seats in the Lok Sabha and was the strongest party in the Tamil Nadu State Legislature. In 1972, the DMK lost some of its support to the splinter group AIDMK, but continues to gain around 3% of the seats in the Lok Sabha to this day. The DMK supports full autonomy for Tamil Nadu and the establishment of regional languages, with English as the official national language.
0817 Republican Party of India, also known as the Scheduled Castes Federation. The RPI has existed since at least 1952, and has gained some minimal representation in the Lok Sabha since its founding up until the present. Supported by the Harijans (untouchables) or Scheduled Castes, it lacks much popular support, and was most successful in 1998, winning 4 seats in the Lok Sabha.
0819 Peasants' and Workers' Party. A regional party based in Maharashtra, the PWP has contested elections since 1952. In 1957, the PWP gained 4 seats, and in 1977 it won 5 seats. Advocating the nationalization of all basic industries and the establishment of a People's Democracy, the PWP continues to exist today, winning a single seat in the most recent Indian elections.
0822 Muslim League. The Muslim League originally existed as the voice of the Muslim people before the partition of India. With the establishment of the Muslim state of Pakistan, the Muslim League lost most of its support within India, with the exception of Kerala, and has only been able to obtain a small number of seats in various elections (3 seats from 1967-70 and again from 1980-84). It has continued to contest elections up through the present, but seems to have changed its name to the Muslim League Kerala State Committee around 1998.
0826 Revolutionary Socialist Party. The RSP has participated in all elections since 1952, succeeding in winning a small number of seats each year since 1952. The RSP advocates the establishment of socialist rule and the rights of the working class to power and fair treatment. Most of its support comes from the West Bengal and Kerala states
0828 Forward Bloc. A socialist party that is supported in West Bengal, the Forward Bloc held three seats in the Lok Sabha after the 1957, 1977, 1989, and 1991 elections. It held 2 seats after the most recent election, leaving it short of 1% representation in the parliament, but demonstrating that the party continues to exist.
0830 Shiromani Akali Dal. The SAD is a religious Sikh party formed in Punjab in the 1920s. The primary goal of the SAD is to advocate Punjabi statehood (which has been granted) and greater autonomy for Punjab, sometimes with violent methods. The Sikhs have experienced their share of persecution, with thousands of Sikhs being killed in violence following the assassination of Indira Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards in November 1984.
0834 Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. The JKNC is a socialist party opposed to Hindu communalism that operates in the states of Jammu and Kashmir. The party came close to termination in 1967 and 1972, but was then revitalized by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1975. In the most recent elections, the JKNC won 4 seats in the Lok Sabha.
New Parties formed after 1962 but terminating before 2000
083 Janata Party. Formed in 1977 as a coalition party to oppose the Congress Party, Janata enjoyed widespread support following Indira Gandhi's de facto two year dictatorship. The party won 55% of the seats in the Lok Sabha. However, from that point on, its support waned, as the variety of intra-party tensions ripped apart the weak coalition. The party effectively terminated in 1988 when a number of the groups within its coalition left to form the Janata Dal, but somehow the party managed to win a few seats in 1992. Due to the loss of most of its support, the Janata Party has terminated.
0820 Samyukta Socialist Party. The SSP was founded in 1964, as the result of a merger of factions from the Praja Socialist Party and the Socialist Party. Some of the programs the SSP advocated included the abolition of all rents on land, irrigation improvements to aid poorer farmers, the replacement of English with Indian languages in schools, and higher local education standards for schools. The SSP disintegrated after 1977.
0821 Bangla Congress. A regional breakaway from the Congress Party, the Bangla Congress, based in West Bengal, contested only one election seperately. In 1967, Bangla Congress was able to gained 4 seats in the Lok Sabha, all from West Bengal. This party rejoined the Congress in 1971, and thus terminated.
0823 Congress Party (Organizational). Congress (O), also known as Congress (Opposition), was formed around 1969, by members of the Congress Party dissatisfied with the rule of Indira Gandhi. In 1971, Congress (O) won 15 seats in the Lok Sabha, but saw its support slip after that. It changed its name around 1985 to Congress (Secular), and won 5 seats in 1985. It last won a single seat in the 1989 election, and due to lack of evidence proving otherwise, was ruled to have terminated shortly after.
0824 Telengana Praja Samiti. The Telengana Praja Samiti (or Telengana People's Conference) was established in the state of Andhra Pradesh in 1971, and successfully contested the elections that year, winning 2% of the seats in the Lok Sabha. The TPS was a protest party, angry at the neglect of the Telengana region by Andhra, and demanding separate statehood for Telengana. Eventually, the TPS merged with the Congress Party.
0827 Janata Party (Secular). Formed by Raj Narain, the Janata (S) was created by former members of the Janata Party who objected to the Janata's dominance by the Hindu nationalist Jan Sangh in 1979. In 1980, it ran and gained 41 seats in the Lok Sabha, all but signaling the end of the Janata Party (which eventually merged with other parties to form Janata Dal). However, Janata (S) was short lived; it received no more seats as a party, and was declared terminated. It is hypothesized that the remaining members of Janata (S) became members of Janata Dal and/or the Samajwadi Party.
0841 All-India Indira Congress (Tiwari). Named after its leader, Shri Narayan Datt Tiwari, the AIIC(T) only has contested one election, in 1996, winning 4 seats in the Lok Sabha. It is hypothesized that this party rejoined the larger Congress Party subsequently to these elections.
http://janda.org/ICPP/ICPP2000/Countries/0...201963-2000.htm
I had posted the following inthe UPA con vote thread.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Can you tell us more about the sociology centers setup by US power brokers/Rockefellers? I am interested in the period before the First world war. We need to take a look again. Maybe in another thread.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Google books has a fascinating collection of book swriten by Americans on India. The remarkbale thing is that the books were edited by an elite group of individuals who included US Senators. Even Mark Tawin wrote in is travels book about India.
Another interesting thing is that a number of freedom fighters found shelter in the US like Lala Har Dayal and those who founded the Gaddar party.
Another fascinating thing is that Swami Vivekananda came to the conf on world relgions in Chicago and took it by storm. There was a keen following of the spiritual side of India. Then in the 1930s the Yoga movement took root and their were fears of Hinduiszation viaYoga.
And the first saintification of Mahtama Gandhi was by an American reproter before he became Mahatama. THen there is the Louis Fisher bio of him which made many Americans aware of him.
Also note the role of Col Wilson, Roosevelt's representative who argued for independence.
A whole lot of American engineers worked with Tatas to create Tata steel.
So who sponsered Swamiji's visit? Who was Col Wilson?
Let us start from the beginning.
Indian political parties started from 1880 with the formation of INC after 27 years since the great revolt of 1857.
This political formation was stem the rising revolt and anarchy by the Indian freedom fighters againt the British occupation.
I read that educated Indians felt cheated that the promises made by the Crown after the Imperial proclamation were not kept by local British authorities. They had similar access to education etc in England but when they came back they were not treated as valued members of the Empire. This led to the protest movements which turned to violence occasionally.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/431914/Carroll-Q...n-Establishment
About This Document
This book gives an inside account of how Anglo-American parliamentary democracy
Read about how India is in the center of the Anglo American relations from 1920.
<b> Chapter 11âIndia, 1911-1945</b>
India was one of the primary concerns of both the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group. The latter probably devoted more time and attention to India than to any other subject. This situation reached its peak in 1919, and the Government of India Act of that year is very largely a Milner Group measure in conception, formation, and execution. The influence of the two groups is not readily apparent from the lists of Governors-general (Viceroys) and Secretaries of State for India in the twentieth century:
Viceroys
Lord Curzon, 1898-1905
Lord Minto, 1905-1910
Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, 1910-1916
Lord Chelmsford, 1916-1921
Lord Reading, 1921-1926
Lord Irwin, 1926-1931
Lord Willingdon, 1931-1936
Lord Linlithgow, 1936-1943
Secretaries of State
Lord George Hamilton, 1895-1903
St. John Brodrick, 1903-1908
John Morley, 1908-1910
Lord Crewe, 1910-1915
Austen Chamberlain, 1915-1917
Edward Montagu, 1917-1922
Lord Peel, 1922-1924
Lord Olivier, 1924
Lord Birkenhead, 1924-1928
Lord Peel, 1928-1929
Wedgwood Benn, 1929-1931
Samuel Hoare, 1931-1935
Lord Zetland, 1935-1940
Leopold Amery, 1940-1945
Of the Viceroys only one (Reading) is clearly of neither the Cecil Bloc nor the Milner Group; two were members of the Milner Group (Irwin and Willingdon); another was a member of both groups (Chelmsford); the rest were of the Cecil Bloc, although in two cases (Minto and Linlithgow) in a rather peripheral fashion. Three of the eight were members of All Souls. According to Lord Esher, the appointment of Lord Hardinge in 1910 was made at his suggestion, by John Morley. At the time, Esher's son, the present Viscount Esher, was acting as unpaid private secretary to Morley, a position he held for five years (1905-1910). From the same source we learn that the Viceroyship was offered to Selborne in 1903 and to Esher himself in 1908. The former failed of appointment because Curzon refused to retire, while the latter rejected the post as of too limited influence.
Of the thirteen Secretaries of State, two were Labour and two Liberals. One of these latter (Morley) was close to the Milner Group. Of the other nine, three were of the Cecil Bloc (St. John Brodrick, Austen Chamberlain, and Lord Zetland), two were of the Milner Group (Hoare and Amery), and four were of neither group.
The political and constitutional history of India in the twentieth century consists largely of a series of investigations by various committees and commissions, and a second, and shorter, series of legislative enactments. The influence of the Milner Group can be discerned in both of these, especially in regard to the former.
Of the important commissions that investigated Indian constitutional questions in the twentieth century, every one has had a member of the inner circle of the Milner Group. The following list gives the name of the commission, the dates of its existence, the number of British members (in distinction from Indian members), the names of representatives from the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group (with the latter italicized), and the command number of its report:
1. The Royal Commission on Decentralization in India, 1907-1909, five members including W. L. Hichens (Cmd. 4360- of 1908).
2. The Royal Commission on Public Services in India, 1912-1915, nine members including Baron Islington, the Earl of Ronaldshay (later Marquess of Zetland), Sir Valentine Chirol, and H. A. L. Fisher. The chairman of this commission, Lord Islington, was later father-in-law to Sir Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham) (Cmd. 8382 of 1916).
3. The Government of India Constitutional Reform Committee on Franchise, 1919, four members, including Malcolm Hailey.
4. The Government of India Constitutional Reform Committee on
Functions, 1919, four members, including Richard Feetham as chairman.
5. The Joint Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, 1919, fourteen members, including Lord Selborne (chairman), Lord Midleton (St. John Brodrick), Lord Islington, Sir Henry Craik (whose son was in Milner's Kindergarten), and W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (now Lord Harlech) (Cmd. 97 of 1919).
6. The Committee on Home Administration of Indian Affairs, 1919, eight members, including W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore (Lord Harlech) (Cmd. 207 of 1919).
7. The Royal Commission on Superior Civil Services in India, 1923-1924, five members, including Lord Lee of Fareham as chairman and Reginald Coupland (Cmd. 2128 of 1924).
8. The Indian Statutory Commission, 1927-1930, seven members, with Sir John Simon as chairman (Cmd. 3568 and 3569 of 1930).
9. The Indian Franchise Committee, 1931-1932, eight members, including Lord Lothian as chairman and Lord Dufferin (whose brother, Lord Basil Blackwood, had been in Milner's Kindergarten) (Cmd. 4086 of 1932).
10. The three Indian Round Table Conferences of 1930-1932 contained a number of members of the Milner Croup. The first session (November 1930-January 1931) had eighty-nine delegates, sixteen from Britain, sixteen from the Indian States, and fifty-seven from British India. Formed as they were by a Labour government, the first two sessions had eight Labour members among the sixteen from Britain. The other eight were Earl Peel, the Marquess of Zetland, Sir Samuel Hoare, Oliver Stanley, the Marquess of Reading, the Marquess of Lothian, Sir Robert Hamilton, and Isaac Foot. Of these eight, two were of the Milner Croup (Hoare and Lothian) and two of the Cecil Bloc (Zetland and Stanley). The chief adviser to the Indian States Delegation was L. F. Rushbrook Williams of the Milner Group, who was named to his position by the Chamber of Princes Special Organization. Among the five officials called in for consultation by the conference, we find the name of Malcolm Hailey (Cmd. 3778).
The membership of delegations at the second session (September-December 1931) was practically the same, except that thirty-one additional members were added and Rushbrook Williams became a delegate as the representative of the Maharaja of Nawanagar (Cmd. 3997).
At the third session (November-December 1932) there were no Labour Party representatives. The British delegation was reduced to twelve. Four of these were of the Milner Group (Hoare, Simon, Lothian, and Irwin, now Halifax). Rushbrook Williams continued as a delegate of the Indian States (Cmd. 4238).
11. The Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform, appointed in April 1933, had sixteen members from the House of Commons and an equal number of Lords. Among these were such members of the Milner Group as Sir Samuel Hoare, Sir John Simon, Lord Lothian, and Lord Irwin (Halifax). The Cecil Bloc was also well represented by Archbishop Lang of Canterbury, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Eustace Percy, Lord Salisbury, Lord Zetland, Lord Lytton, and Lord Hardinge of Penshurst.
12. The Cripps Mission, 1942, four members, including Reginald Coupland, who wrote an unofficial but authoritative book on the mission as soon as it returned to England (Cmd. 6350).
The chief legislative events in this period were five in number: the two Indian Councils Acts of 1892 and 1909, the two Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935, and the achievement of self-government in 1947.
The Indian Councils Act of 1892 was put through the House of Commons by George Curzon, at that time Under Secretary in the India Office as the protege of Lord Salisbury, who had discovered him in All Souls nine years earlier. This act was important for two reasons: (1) it introduced a representative principle into the Indian government by empowering the Governor-General and Provincial Governors to seek nominations to the"unofficial" seats in their councils from particular Indian groups and associations; and (2) it accepted a "communal" basis for this representation by seeking these nominations separately from Hindus, Moslems, and others. From these two sources flowed ultimately self-government and partition, although it is perfectly evident that neither of these was anticipated or desired by the persons who supported the act.
The nominations for "unofficial" members of the councils provided in the Act of 1892 became elections in practice, because the Governor-General always accepted the suggested nominations as his nominees. This practice became law in the Act of 1909.
The Indian Councils Act of 1909 was passed under a Liberal government and was only remotely influenced by the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group. The Prime Minister, Asquith, was practically a member of the Cecil Bloc, being an intimate friend of Balfour and Rosebery. This relationship had been tightened when he married Margot Tennant, a member of "the Souls," in 1894. Margot Tennant's sister, Laura, had previously married Alfred Lyttelton, and both sisters had been intimate friends of Curzon and other members of "the Souls." Asquith had also been, as we have stated, a close associate of Milner's. Asquith, however, was never a member of the Milner Group. After 1890, and especially after 1915, he increasingly became a member of the Cecil Bloc. It was Balfour who persuaded Asquith to write his Memories and Reflections after he (Balfour) had discussed the matter with Margot Asquith over a tête-à -tête dinner. These dinners were a not infrequent occurrence on the evenings when Asquith himself dined at his club, Asquith usually stopping by later in the evening to get his wife and escort her home. Another indication of Asquith's feeling toward the Cecil Bloc can be found in his autobiography under the date 22 December 1919. On that occasion Asquith told Lady Hartington, daughter of Lord Salisbury, that he "had not expected to live to see the day when the best safeguard for true liberalism would be found in an unreformed House of Lords and the Cecil family."
In 1908-1909, however, the situation was somewhat different, and Asquith could hardly be called a member of the Cecil Bloc. In a somewhat similar situation, although much closer to the Milner Group (through H. A. L. Fisher and All Souls), was John Morley, the Secretary of State for India. Lord Minto, the Governor-General in India, was also a member of the Cecil Bloc in a peripheral fashion but held his appointment through a family claim on the Governor-Generalship rather than by favor of the Cecils.
The Act of 1909, however, while not a product of the groups with which we are concerned, was formed in the same social tradition, drawn up from the same intellectual and social outlook, and put into effect in the same fashion. It legalized the principle of election (rather than nomination) to Indian councils, enlarged their membership to provide majorities of non-officials in the provincial councils, and gave them the power to discuss affairs and pass resolutions. The seats were allotted to communal groups, with the minorities (like Moslems and Sikhs) receiving more than their proportionate share and the Moslems having, in addition, a separate electorate for the incumbents of Moslem seats. This served to encourage extremism among the Moslems and, while a logical development of 1892, was a long step on the road to Pakistan. This Act of 1909 was, as we have mentioned, put through the House of Commons by Sir Thomas Buchanan, a Fellow of All Souls and an associate of the Cecil Bloc.
The Government of India Act of 1919 is outstanding in many ways. It is the most drastic and most important reform made in Indian government in the whole period from 1861 to the achievement of self-government. Its provisions for the central government of India remained in force, with only slight changes, from 1919 to 1946. It is the only one of these acts whose "secret" legislative background is no longer a secret. And it is the only one which indicated a desire on the part of the British government to establish in India a responsible government patterned on that in Britain.
The legislative history of the Act of 1919 as generally known is simple enough. It runs as follows. In August 1917 the Secretary of State for India, Edwin S. Montagu, issued a statement which read: "The policy of H.M. Government, with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-government institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire." The critical word here is responsible government, since the prospect of eventual self-government had been held out to India for years. In accordance with this promise, Montagu visited India and, in cooperation with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, issued the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, indicating the direction of future policy. This report became the basis for the bill of 1918, which, after a certain amount of amendment by Lord Selborne's Joint Select Committee, came into force as the Government of India Act of 1919.
The secret history of this Act is somewhat different, and begins in Canada in 1909, when Lionel Curtis accepted from his friend William Marris the idea that responsible government on the British pattern should be extended to India. Two years later, Curtis formed a study group of six or eight persons within the London Round Table Group. We do not know for certain who were the members of the study group, but apparently it included Curtis, Kerr, Fisher, and probably Brand. To these were added three officials of the India Office. These included Malcolm Seton (Sir Malcolm after 1919), who was secretary to the Judicial Department of the India Office and joined Curtis's group about 1913; and Sir William Duke, who was Lieutenant Governor of Bengal in 1911-1912, senior member of the council of the Governor of Bengal in 1912-1914, and a member of the Council of India in London after 1914. At this last date he joined the Curtis group. Both of these men were important figures in the India Office later, Sir William as Permanent Under Secretary from 1920 to his death in 1924, and Sir Malcolm as Assistant Under Secretary (1919-1924) and Deputy Under Secretary (1924-1933). Sir Malcolm wrote the biographical sketch of Sir William in the Dictionary of National Biography, and also wrote the volume on The India Office in the Whitehall Series (1926). The third member from this same source was Sir Lionel Abrahams, Assistant Under Secretary in the India Office.
The Curtis study group was not an official committee, although some persons (both at the time and since) have believed it was. Among these persons would appear to be Lord Chelmsford, for in debate in the House of Lords in November 1927 he said:
âI came home from India in January 1916 for six weeks before I went out again as Viceroy, and, when I got home, I found that there was a Committee in existence at the India Office, which was considering on what lines future constitutional development might take place. That Committee, before my return in the middle of March gave me a pamphlet containing in broad outline the views which were held with regard to future constitutional development. When I reached India I showed this pamphlet to my Council and also to my noble friend, Lord Meston, who was then Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces. It contained, what is now known as the diarchic principle.... Both the Council and Lord Meston, who was then Sir James Meston, reported adversely on the proposals for constitutional development contained in that pamphlet.â
Lord Chelmsford then goes on to say that Austen Chamberlain combated their objections with the argument that the Indians must acquire experience in self-government, so, after the announcement to this effect was made publicly in August 1917, the officials in India accepted dyarchy.
If Lord Chelmsford believed that the pamphlet was an official document from a committee in the India Office, he was in error. The other side of the story was revealed by Lionel Curtis in 1920 in his book
Dyarchy. According to Curtis, the study group was originally formed to help him write the chapter on India in the planned second volume of The Commonwealth of Nations. It set as its task "to enquire how self-government could be introduced and peacefully extended to India." The group met once a fortnight in London and soon decided on the dyarchy principle. This principle, as any reader of Curtis's writings knows, was basic in Curtis's political thought and was the foundation on which he hoped to build a federated Empire. According to Curtis, the study group asked itself: "Could not provincial electorates through legislatures and ministers of their own be made clearly responsible for certain functions of government to begin with, leaving all others in the hands of executives responsible as at present to the Government of India and the Secretary of State? Indian electorates, legislatures, and executives would thus be given a field for the exercise of genuine responsibility. From time to time fresh powers could be transferred from the old governments as the new elective authorities developed and proved their capacity for assuming them." From this point of view, Curtis asked Duke to draw up such "a plan of Devolution" for Bengal. This plan was printed by the group, circulated, and criticized in typical Milner Group fashion. Then the whole group went to Oxford for three days and met to discuss it in the old Bursary of Trinity College. It was then rewritten. "No one was satisfied." It was decided to circulate it for further criticism among the Round Table Groups throughout the world, but Lord Chelmsford wrote from New South Wales and asked for a copy. Apparently realizing that he was to be the next Viceroy of India, the group sent a copy to him and none to the Round Table Groups, "lest the public get hold of it and embarrass him." It is clear that Chelmsford was committed to a program of reform along these or similar lines before he went out as Viceroy. This was revealed in debate in the House of Lords by Lord Crewe on 12 December 1919.
After Chelmsford went to India in March 1916, a new, revised version of the study group's plan was drawn up and sent to him in May 1916. Another copy was sent to Canada to catch up with Curtis, who had already left for India by way of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This itinerary was undoubtedly followed by Curtis in order to consult with members of the Group in various countries, especially with Brand in Canada. On his arrival in India, Curtis wrote back to Kerr in London:
âThe factor which impressed me most in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia was the rooted aversion these peoples have to any scheme which meant their sharing in the Government of India.... To these young democratic communities the principle of self-government is the breath of their nostrils. It is almost a religion. They feel as if there were something inherently wrong in one people ruling another. It is the same feeling as that which makes the Americans dislike governing the Philippines and decline to restore order in Mexico. My first impressions on this subject were strongly confirmed on my recent visit to these Dominions. I scarcely recall one of the numerous meetings I addressed at which I was not asked why India was not given self-government and what steps were being taken in that direction.â
Apparently this experience strengthened Curtis's idea that India must be given responsible government. He probably felt that by giving India what it and the Dominions wanted for India, both would be bound in loyalty more closely to Britain. In this same letter to Kerr, Curtis said, in obvious reference to the Round Table Group:
âOur task then is to bring home to the public in the United Kingdom and the Dominions how India differs from a country like Great Britain on the one hand and from Central Africa on the other, and how that difference is now reflected in the character of its government. We must outline clearly the problems which arise from the contact of East and West and the disaster which awaits a failure to supply their adequate solution by realizing and expressing the principle of Government for which we stand. We must then go on to suggest a treatment of India in the general work of Imperial reconstruction in harmony with the facts adduced in the foregoing chapters. And all this must be done with the closest attention to its effects upon educated opinion here. We must do our best to make Indian Nationalists realize the truth that like South Africa all their hopes and aspirations are dependent on the maintenance of the British Commonwealth and their permanent membership therein.â
This letter, written on 13 November 1916, was addressed to Philip Kerr but was intended for all the members of the Group. Sir Valentine Chirol corrected the draft, and copies were made available for Meston and Marris. Then Curtis had a thousand copies printed and sent to Kerr for distribution. In some way, the extremist Indian nationalists obtained a copy of the letter and published a distorted version of it. They claimed that a powerful and secret group organized about The Round Table had sent Curtis to India to spy out the nationalist plans in order to obstruct them. Certain sentences from the letter were torn from their context to prove this argument. Among these was the reference to Central Africa, which was presented to the Indian people as a statement that they were as uncivilized and as incapable of self-government as Central Africans. As a result of the fears created by this rumor, the Indian National Congress and the Moslem League formed their one and only formal alliance in the shape of the famous Lucknow Compact of 29 December 1916. The Curtis letter was not the only factor behind the Lucknow agreement, but it was certainly very influential. Curtis was present at the Congress meeting and was horrified at the version of his letter which was circulating. Accordingly, he published the correct version with an extensive commentary, under the title Letters to the People of India (1917). In this he said categorically that he believed: "(1) That it is the duty of those who govern the whole British Commonwealth to do anything in their power to enable Indians to govern themselves as soon as possible. (2) That Indians must also come to share in the government of the British Commonwealth as a whole." There can be no doubt that Curtis was sincere in this and that his view reflected, perhaps in an extreme form, the views of a large and influential group in Great Britain. The failure of this group to persuade the Indian nationalists that they were sincere is one of the great disasters of the century, although the fault is not entirely theirs and must be shared by others, including Gandhi.
In the first few months of 1917, Curtis consulted groups of Indians and individual British (chiefly of the Milner Group) regarding the form which the new constitution would take. The first public use of the word "dyarchy" was in an open letter of 6 April 1917, which he wrote to Bhupendra Nath Basu, one of the authors of the Lucknow Compact, to demonstrate how dyarchy would function in the United Provinces. In writing this letter, Curtis consulted with Valentine Chirol and Malcolm Hailey. He then wrote an outline, "The Structure of Indian Government," which was revised by Meston and printed. This was submitted to many persons for comment. He then organized a meeting of Indians and British at Lord Sinha's house in Darjeeling and, after considerable discussion, drew up a twelve-point program, which was signed by sixty-four Europeans and ninety Indians. This was sent to Chelmsford and to Montagu.
In the meantime, in London, preparations were being made to issue the historic declaration of 20 August 1917, which promised "responsible" government to India. There can be no doubt that the Milner Group was the chief factor in issuing that declaration. Curtis, in Dyarchy, says: "For the purpose of the private enquiry above described the principle of that pronouncement was assumed in 1915." It is perfectly clear that Montagu (Secretary of State in succession to Austen Chamberlain from June 1917) did not draw up the declaration. He drew up a statement, but the India Office substituted for it one which had been drawn up much earlier, when Chamberlain was still Secretary of State. Lord Ronaldshay (Lord Zetland), in the third volume of his Life of Curzon, prints both drafts and claims that the one which was finally issued was drawn up by Curzon. Sir Stanley Reed, who was editor of The Times of India from 1907 to 1923, declared at a meeting of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1926 that the declaration was drawn up by Milner and Curzon. It is clear that someone other than Curzon had a hand in it, and the strongest probability would be Milner, who was with Curzon in the War Cabinet at the time. The fact is that Curzon could not have drawn it up alone unless he was unbelievably careless, because, after it was published, he was horrified when the promise of "progressive realization of responsible government in India" was pointed out to him.
Montagu went to India in November 1917, taking Sir William Duke with him. Curtis, who had been moving about India as the guest of Stanley Reed, Chirol, Chelmsford, Meston, Marris, and others, was invited to participate in the Montagu-Chelmsford conferences on several occasions. Others who were frequently consulted were Hailey, Meston, Duke, and Chirol. The Montagu-Chelmsford Report was written by Sir William Marris of Milner's Kindergarten after Curtis had returned to England. Curtis wrote in Dyarchy in 1920: "It was afterwards suggested in the press that I had actually drafted the report. My prompt denial has not prevented a further complaint from many quarters that Lord Chelmsford and Mr. Montagu were unduly influenced by an irresponsible tourist.... With the exception of Lord Chelmsford himself I was possibly the only person in India with firsthand knowledge of responsible government as applied in the Dominions to the institutions of provinces. Whether my knowledge of India entitled me to advance my views is more open to question. Of this the reader can judge for himself. But in any case the interviews were unsought by me." Thus Curtis does not deny the accusation that he was chiefly responsible for dyarchy. It was believed at the time by persons in a position to know that he was, and these persons were both for and against the plan. On the latter side, we might quote Lord Ampthill, who, as a former acting Viceroy, as private secretary to Joseph Chamberlain, as Governor of Madras, and as brother-in-law of Samuel Hoare, was in a position to know what was going on. Lord Ampthill declared in the House of Lords in 1919: "The incredible fact is that, but for the chance visit to India of a globe-trotting doctrinaire, with a positive mania for constitution-mongering, nobody in the world would ever have thought of so peculiar a notion as Dyarchy. And yet the Joint Committee tells us in an airy manner that no better plan can be conceived."
The Joint Committee's favorable report on the Dyarchy Bill was probably not unconnected with the fact that five out of fourteen members were from the Cecil Bloc or Milner Group, that the chairman had in his day presided over meetings of the Round Table Groups and was regarded by them as their second leader, and that the Joint Committee spent most of its time hearing witnesses who were close to the Milner Group. The committee heard Lord Meston longer than any other witness (almost four days), spent a day with Curtis on the stand, and questioned, among others, Feetham, Duke, Thomas Holland (Fellow of All Souls from 1875 to his death in 1926), Michael Sadler (a close friend of Milner's and practically a member of the Group), and Stanley Reed. In the House of Commons the burden of debate on the bill was supported by Montagu, Sir Henry Craik, H. A. L. Fisher, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, and Thomas J. Bennett (an old journalist colleague of Lord Salisbury and principal owner of The Times of India from 1892). Montagu and Craik both referred to Lionel Curtis. The former said: "It is suggested in some quarters that this bill arose spontaneously in the minds of the Viceroy and myself without previous inquiry or consideration, under the influence of Mr. Lionel Curtis. I have never yet been able to understand that you approach the merits of any discussion by vain efforts to approximate to its authorship. I do not even now understand that India or the Empire owes anything more or less than a great debt of gratitude to the patriotic and devoted services Mr. Curtis has given to the consideration of this problem."
Sir Henry Craik later said: "I am glad to join in the compliment paid to our mutual friend, Mr. Lionel Curtis, who belongs to a very active, and a very important body of young men, whom I should be the last to criticize. I am proud to know him, and to pay that respect to him due from age to youth. He and others of the company of the Round Table have been doing good work, and part of that good work has been done in India.â
Mr. Fisher had nothing to say about Lionel Curtis but had considerable to say about the bill and the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. He said: "There is nothing in this Bill which is not contained in that Report. That Report is not only a very able and eloquent State Paper, but it is also one of the greatest State Papers which have been produced in Anglo-Indian history, and it is an open-minded candid State Paper, a State Paper which does not ignore or gloss over the points of criticism which have since been elaborated in the voluminous documents which have been submitted to us." He added, a moment later: "This is a great Bill." (2) The Round Table, which also approved of the bill, as might be imagined, referred to Fisher's speech in its issue of September 1919 and called him "so high an authority." The editor of that issue was Lionel Curtis.
In the House of Lords there was less enthusiasm. Chief criticism centered on two basic points, both of which originated with Curtis: (1) the principle of dyarchyâthat is, that government could be separated into two classes of activities under different regimes; and (2) the effort to give India "responsible" government rather than merely "self-government"âthat is, the effort to extend to India a form of government patterned on Britain's. Both of these principles were criticized vigorously, especially by members of the Cecil Bloc, including Lord Midleton, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Selborne, Lord Salisbury, and others. Support for the bill came chiefly from Lord Curzon (Leader in the Upper House) and Lord Islington (Under Secretary in the India Office).
As a result of this extensive criticism, the bill was revised considerably in the Joint Committee but emerged with its main outlines unchanged and became law in December 1919. These main outlines, especially the two principles of "dyarchy" and "responsibility," were, as we have said, highly charged with Curtis's own connotations. These became fainter as time passed, both because of developments in India and because Curtis from 1919 on became increasingly remote from Indian affairs. The refusal of the Indian National Congress under Gandhi's leadership to cooperate in carrying on the government under the Act of 1919 persuaded the other members of the Group (and perhaps Curtis himself) that it was not possible to apply responsible government on the British model to India. This point of view, which had been stated so emphatically by members of the Cecil Bloc even before 1900, and which formed the chief argument against the Act of 1919 in the debates in the House of Lords, was accepted by the Milner Group as their own after 1919. Halifax, Grigg, Amery, Coupland, Fisher, and others stated this most emphatically from the early 1920s to the middle 1940s. In 1943 Grigg stated this as a principle in his book The British Commonwealth and quoted with approval Amery's statement of 30 March 1943 to the House of Commons, rejecting the British parliamentary system as suitable for India. Amery, at that time Secretary of State for India, had said: "Like wasps buzzing angrily up and down against a window pane when an adjoining window may be wide open, we are all held up, frustrated and irritated by the unrealized and unsuperable barrier of our constitutional prepossessions." Grigg went even further, indeed, so far that we might suspect that he was deprecating the use of parliamentary government in general rather than merely in India. He said:
âIt is entirely devoid of flexibility and quite incapable of engendering the essential spirit of compromise in countries where racial and communal divisions present the principal political difficulty. The idea that freedom to be genuine must be accommodated to this pattern is deeply rooted in us, and we must not allow our statesmanship to be imprisoned behind the bars of our own experience. Our insistence in particular on the principle of a common roll of electors voting as one homogeneous electorate has caused reaction in South Africa, rebellion or something much too like it in Kenya, and deadlock in India, because in the different conditions of those countries it must involve the complete and perpetual dominance of a single race or creed.â
Unfortunately, as Reginald Coupland has pointed out in his book, India, a Re-statement (1945), all agreed that the British system of government was unsuited to India, but none made any effort to find an indigenous system that would be suitable. The result was that the Milner Group and their associates relaxed in their efforts to prepare Indians to live under a parliamentary system and finally cut India loose without an indigenous system and only partially prepared to manage a parliamentary system.
This decline in enthusiasm for a parliamentary system in India was well under way by 1921. In the two year-interval from 1919 to 1921, the Group continued as the most important British factor in Indian affairs. Curtis was editor of The Round Table in this period and continued to agitate the cause of the Act of 1919. Lord Chelmsford remained a Viceroy in this period. Meston and Hailey were raised to the Viceroy's Executive Council. Sir William Duke became Permanent Under Secretary, and Sir Malcolm Seton became Assistant Under Secretary in the India Office. Sir William Marris was made Home Secretary of the Government of India and Special Reforms Commissioner in charge of setting up the new system. L. F. Rushbrook Williams was given special duty at the Home Department, Government of India, in connection with the reforms. Thus the Milner Group was well placed to put the new law into effect. The effort was largely frustrated by Gandhi's boycott of the elections under the new system. By 1921 the Milner Group had left Indian affairs and shifted its chief interest to other fields. Curtis became one of the chief factors in Irish affairs in 1921; Lord Chelmsford returned home and was raised to a Viscounty in the same year; Meston retired in 1919; Marris became Governor of Assam in 1921; Hailey became Governor of the Punjab in 1924; Duke died in 1924; and Rushbrook Williams became director of the Central Bureau of Information, Government of India, in 1920.
This does not indicate that the Milner Group abandoned all interest in India by 1924 or earlier, but the Group never showed such concentrated interest in the problem of India again. Indeed, the Group never displayed such concentrated interest in any problem either earlier or later, with the single exception of the effort to form the Union of South Africa in 1908-1909.
The decade 1919-1929 was chiefly occupied with efforts to get Gandhi to permit the Indian National Congress to cooperate in the affairs of government, so that its members and other Indians could acquire the necessary experience to allow the progressive realization of self-government. The Congress Party, as we have said, boycotted the elections of 1920 and cooperated in those of 1924 only for the purpose of wrecking them. Nonetheless, the system worked, with the support of moderate groups, and the British extended one right after another in steady succession. Fiscal autonomy was granted to India in 1921, and that country at once adopted a protective tariff, to the considerable injury of British textile manufacturing. The superior Civil Services were opened to Indians in 1924. Indians were admitted to Woolwich and Sandhurst in the same year, and commissions in the Indian Army were made available to them.
The appointment of Baron Irwin of the Milner Group to be Viceroy in 1926âan appointment in which, according to A. C. Johnson's biography Viscount Halifax (1941), "the influence of Geoffrey Dawson and other members of The Times' editorial staff" may have played a decisive roleâwas the chief step in the effort to achieve some real progress under the Act of 1919 before that Act came under the critical examination of another Royal Commission, scheduled for 1929. The new Viceroy's statement of policy, made in India, 17 July 1926, was, according to the same source, embraced by The Times in an editorial "which showed in no uncertain terms that Irwin's policy was appreciated and underwritten by Printing House Square."
Unfortunately, in the period 1924-1931 the India Office was not in control of either the Milner Group or Cecil Bloc. For various reasons, of which this would seem to be the most important, coordination between the Secretary of State and the Viceroy and between Britain and the Indian nationalists broke down at the most crucial moments. The Milner Group, chiefly through The Times, participated in this situation in the period 1926-1929 by praising their man, Lord Irwin, and adversely criticizing the Secretary of State, Lord Birkenhead. Relationships between Birkenhead and the Milner (and Cecil) Group had not been cordial for a long time, and there are various indications of feuding from at least 1925. We may recall that in April 1925 a secret, or at least unofficial, "committee" of Milner Group and Cecil Bloc members had nominated Lord Milner for the post of Chancellor of Oxford University. Lord Birkenhead had objected both to the candidate and to the procedure. In regard to the candidate, he would have preferred Asquith. In regard to the procedure, he demanded to know by what authority this "committee" took upon itself the task of naming a chancellor to a university of which he (Lord Birkenhead) had been High Steward since 1922. This protest, as usual when Englishmen of this social level are deeply moved, took the form of a letter to The Times. It received a tart answer in a letter, written in the third person, in which he was informed that this committee had existed before the World War, and that, when it was reconstituted at the end of the war, Mr. F. E. Smith had been invited to be a member of it but had not seen fit even to acknowledge the invitation.
The bad relationship between the Milner Group and Lord Birkenhead was not the result of such episodes as this but rather, it would seem, based on a personal antipathy engendered by the character of Lord Birkenhead and especially by his indiscreet and undiplomatic social life and political activity. Nonetheless, Lord Birkenhead was a man of unquestioned vigor and ability and a man of considerable political influence from the day in 1906 when he had won a parliamentary seat for the Conservatives in the face of a great Liberal tidal wave. As a result, he had obtained the post of Secretary of State for India in November 1924 at the same time that Leopold Amery went to the Colonial Office. The episode regarding the Milner candidacy to the Oxford Chancellorship occurred six months later and was practically a direct challenge from Birkenhead to Amery, since at that time the latter was Milner's active political lieutenant and one of the chief movers in the effort to make him Chancellor.
Thus, in the period 1926-1929, the Milner Group held the Viceroy's post but did not hold the post of Secretary of State. The relationship between these two posts was such that good government could not be obtained without close cooperation between them. Such cooperation did not exist in this period. As far as the constitutional development was concerned, this lack of cooperation appeared in a tendency on the part of the Secretary of State to continue to seek a solution of the problem along the road marked by the use of a unilateral British investigatory commission, and a tendency on the part of Irwin (and the Milner Group) to seek a solution along the newer road of cooperative discussion with the Indians. These tendencies did not appear as divergent routes until after the Simon Commission had begun its labors, with the result that accumulating evidence that the latter road would be used left that unilateral commission in an unenviable position.
The Government of India Act of 1919 had provided that an investigation should be made of the functioning of the Act after it had been in effect for ten years. The growing unrest of the Indians and their failure to utilize the opportunities of the Act of 1919 persuaded many Englishmen (including most of the Milner Group) that the promised Statutory Commission should begin its work earlier than anticipated and should direct its efforts rather at finding the basis for a new constitutional system than at examining the obvious failure of the system provided in 1919.
The first official hint that the date of the Statutory Commission would be moved up was given by Birkenhead on 30 March 1927, in combination with some rather "arrogant and patronizing" remarks about Indian politics. The Times, while criticizing Birkenhead for his additional remarks, took up the suggestion regarding the commission and suggested in its turn "that the ideal body would consist of judicially minded men who were able to agree." This is, of course, exactly what was obtained. The authorized biography Viscount Halifax, whence these quotations have been taken, adds at this point: "It is interesting to speculate how far Geoffrey Dawson, the Editor, was again expressing Irwin's thoughts and whether a deliberate ballon d'essai was being put up in favor of Sir John Simon."
The Simon Commission was exactly what The Times had wanted, a body of "judicially minded men who were able to agree." Its chairman was the most expensive lawyer in England, a member of the Cecil Bloc since he was elected to All Souls in 1897, and in addition a member of the two extraordinary clubs already mentioned, Grillion's and The Club. Although he was technically a Liberal, his associations and inclinations were rather on the Conservative side, and it was no surprise in 1931 when he became a National Liberal and occupied one of the most important seats in the Cabinet, the Foreign Office. From this time on, he was closely associated with the policies of the Milner Group and, in view of his personal association with the leaders of the Group in All Souls, may well be regarded as a member of the Group. As chairman of the Statutory Commission, he used his legal talents to the full to draw up a report on which all members of the commission could agree, and it is no small example of his abilities that he was able to get an unanimous agreement on a program which in outline, if not in all its details, was just what the Milner Group wanted.
Of the six other members of the Commission, two were Labourite (Clement Attlee and Vernon Hartshorn). The others were Unionist or Conservative. Viscount Burnham of Eton and Balliol (1884) had been a Unionist supporter of the Cecil Bloc in Commons from 1885 to 1906, and his father had been made baronet and baron by Lord Salisbury. His own title of Viscount came from Lloyd George in 1919.
The fifth member of the Commission, Donald Palmer Howard, Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, of Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, had no special claim to fame except that he had been a Unionist M.P. in 1922-1926.
The sixth member, Edward Cecil Cadogan of Eton and Balliol (1904), was the sixth son of Earl Cadogan and thus the older brother of Sir Alexander Cadogan, British delegate to the United Nations. Their father, Earl Cadogan, grandnephew of the first Duke of Wellington, had been Lord Privy Seal in Lord Salisbury's second government and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Salisbury's third government. Edward, who was knighted in 1939, had no special claim to fame except that he was a Unionist M.P. from 1922 to 1935 and was Chairman of the House of Commons under the National Government of 1931-1935.
The seventh member, George R. Lane-Fox (Baron Bingley since 1933) of Eton and New College, was a Unionist M.P. from 1906 to 1931 and Secretary of Mines from 1922 to 1928. He is a brother-in-law and lifelong friend of Lord Halifax, having married the Honourable Mary Wood in 1903.
The most extraordinary fact about the Simon Commission was the lack of qualification possessed by its members. Except for the undoubted advantages of education at Eton and Oxford, the members had no obvious claims to membership on any committee considering Indian affairs. Indeed, not one of the eight members had had any previous contact with this subject. Nevertheless, the commission produced an enormous two-volume report which stands as a monumental source book for the study of Indian problems in this period. When, to the lack of qualifications of its members, we add the fact that the commission was almost completely boycotted by Indians and obtained its chief contact with the natives by listening to their monotonous chants of "Simon, go back," it seems more than a miracle that such a valuable report could have emerged from their investigations. The explanation is to be found in the fact that they received full cooperation from the staff of the Government of India, including members of the Milner Group.
It is clear that by the end of 1928 the Milner Group, as a result of the strong Indian opposition to the Simon Commission, the internal struggle within that commission between Simon and Burnham (because of the latter's refusal to go as far as the former desired in the direction of concessions to the Indians), and their inability to obtain cooperation from the Secretary of State (as revealed in the steady criticism of Birkenhead in The Times), had decided to abandon the commission method of procedure in favor of a round-table method of procedure. It is not surprising that the Round Table Groups should prefer a roundtable method of procedure even in regard to Indian affairs, where many of the participants would have relatively little experience in the typical British procedure of agreement through conference. To the Milner Group, the round-table method was not only preferable in itself but was made absolutely necessary by the widespread Indian criticism of the Simon Commission for its exclusively British personnel. This restriction had been adopted originally on the grounds that only a purely British and purely parliamentary commission could commit Parliament in some degree to acceptance of the recommendations of the commissionâat least, this was the defense of the restricted membership made to the Indians by the Viceroy on 8 November 1927. In place of this argument, the Milner Group now advanced a somewhat more typical idea, namely, that only Indian participation on a direct and equal basis could commit Indians to any plans for the future of India. By customary Milner Group reasoning, they decided that the responsibility placed on Indians by making them participate in the formulation of plans would moderate the extremism of their demands and bind them to participate in the execution of these plans after they were enacted into law. This basic ideaâthat if you have faith in people, they will prove worthy of that faith, or, expressed in somewhat more concrete terms, that if you give dissatisfied people voluntarily more than they expect and, above all, before they really expect to get it, they will not abuse the gift but will be sobered simultaneously by the weight of responsibility and the sweetness of gratitudeâwas an underlying assumption of the Milner Group's activities from 1901 to the present. Its validity was defended (when proof was demanded) by a historical exampleâthat is, by contrasting the lack of generosity in Britain's treatment of the American Colonies in 1774 with the generosity in her treatment of the Canadian Colonies in 1839. The contrast between the "Intolerable Acts" and the Durham Report was one of the basic ideas at the back of the minds of all the important members of the Milner Group. In many of those minds, however, this assumption was not based on political history at all but had a more profound and largely unconscious basis in the teachings of Christ and the Sermon on the Mount. This was especially true of Lionel Curtis, John Dove, Lord Lothian, and Lord Halifax. Unless this idea is recognized, it is not possible to see the underlying unity behind the actions of the Group toward the Boers in 1901-1910, toward India in 1919 and 1935, and toward Hitler in 1934-1939.
These ideas as a justification of concessions to India are to be found in Milner Group discussions of the Indian problem at all periods, especially just before the Act of 1919. A decade later they were still exerting their influence. They will be found, for example, in The Round Table articles on India in September 1930 and March 1931. The earlier advocated the use of the round-table method but warned that it must be based on complete equality for the Indian members. It continued: "Indians should share equally with Great Britain the responsibility for reaching or failing to reach an agreement as to what the next step in Indian constitutional development should be. It is no longer a question, as we see it, of Great Britain listening to Indian representatives and then deciding for herself what the next Indian constitution should be.... The core of the round table idea is that representative Britons and representative Indians should endeavour to reach an agreement, on the understanding that if they can reach an agreement, each will loyally carry it through to completion, as was the case with Ireland in 1922." As seen by the Milner Group, Britain's responsibility was
âher obligation to help Indians to take maximum responsibility for India's government on their own shoulders, and to insist on their doing so, not only because it is the right thing in itself, but because it is the most certain antidote to the real danger of anarchy which threatens India unless Indians do learn to carry responsibility for government at a very early date There is less risk in going too fast in agreement and cooperation with political India than in going at a more moderate pace without its agreement and cooperation. Indeed, in our view, the most successful foundation for the Round Table Conference would be that Great Britain should ask the Indian delegates to table agreed proposals and then do her utmost to accept them and place on Indian shoulders the responsibility for carrying them into effect.â
It is very doubtful if the Milner Group could have substituted the round-table method for the commission method in quite so abrupt a fashion as it did, had not a Labour government come to office early in 1929. As a result, the difficult Lord Birkenhead was replaced as Secretary of State by the much more cooperative Mr. Wedgewood Benn (Viscount Stansgate since 1941). The greater degree of cooperation which the Milner Group received from Benn than from Birkenhead may be explained by the fact that their hopes for India were not far distant from those held in certain circles of the Labour Party. It may also be explained by the fact that Wedgewood Benn was considerably closer, in a social sense, to the Milner Group than was Birkenhead. Benn had been a Liberal M.P. from 1906 to 1927; his brother Sir Ernest Benn, the publisher, had been close to the Milner Group in the Ministry of Munitions in 1916-1917 and in the Ministry of Reconstruction in 1917-1918; and his nephew John, oldest son of Sir Ernest, married the oldest daughter of Maurice Hankey in 1929. Whatever the cause, or combination of causes, Lord Irwin's suggestion that the round-table method be adopted was accepted by the Labour government. The suggestion was made when the Viceroy returned to London in June 1929, months before the Simon Report was drafted and a year before it was published. With this suggestion Lord Irwin combined another, that the government formally announce that its goal for India was "Dominion status." The plan leaked out, probably because the Labour government had to consult with the Liberal Party, on which its majority depended. The Liberals (Lord Reading and Lloyd George) advised against the announcement, but Irwin was instructed to make it on his return to India in October. Lord Birkenhead heard of the plan and wrote a vigorous letter of protest to The Times. When Geoffrey Dawson refused to publish it, it appeared in the Daily Telegraph, thus repeating the experience of Lord Lansdowne's even more famous letter of 1917.
Lord Irwin's announcement of the Round Table Conference and of the goal of Dominion status, made in India on 31 October 1929, brought a storm of protest in England. It was rejected by Lord Reading
and Lloyd George for the Liberals and by Lord Birkenhead and Stanley Baldwin for the Conservatives. It is highly unlikely that the Milner Group were much disturbed by this storm. The reason is that the members of the Croup had already decided that "Dominion status" had two meaningsâone meaning for Englishmen, and a second, rather different, meaning for Indians. As Lord Irwin wrote in a private memorandum in November 1929:
âTo the English conception, Dominion Status now connotes, as indeed the word itself implies, an achieved constitutional position of complete freedom and immunity from interference by His Majesty's Government in London.... The Indian seems generally to mean something different. . . . The underlying element in much of Indian political thought seems to have been the desire that, by free conference between Great Britain and India, a constitution should be fashioned which may contain within itself the seed of full Dominion Status, growing naturally to its full development in accordance with the particular circumstances of India, without the necessityâthe implications of which the Indian mind resentsâof further periodic enquiries by way of Commission. What is to the Englishman an accomplished process is to the Indian rather a declaration of right, from which future and complete enjoyment of Dominion privilege will spring.â (3)
This distinction, without any reference to Lord Irwin (whose memorandum was not published until 1941), was also made in the September 1930 issue of The Round Table. On this basis, for the sake of appeasement of India, the Milner Group was willing to promise India "Dominion status" in the Indian meaning of the expression and allow the English who misunderstood to cool off gradually as they saw that the development was not the one they had feared. Indeed, to the Milner Group, it probably appeared that the greater the rage in Britain, the greater the appeasement in India.
Accordingly, the first session of the Round Table Conference was called for November 1930. It marked an innovation not only because of the status of equality and responsibility which it placed on the Indians, but also because, for the first time, it tried to settle the problem of the Indian States within the same framework as it settled the constitutional problem of British India. This was a revolutionary effort, and its degree of success was very largely due to the preparatory work of Lord Irwin, acting on the advice of Malcolm Hailey.
The Indian States had remained as backward, feudalistic, and absolutist enclaves, within the territorial extent of British India and bound to the British Raj by individual treaties and agreements. As might be expected from the Milner Group, the solution which they proposed was federation. They hoped that devolution in British India would secure a degree of provincial autonomy that would make it possible to bind the provinces and the Indian States within the same federal structure and with similar local autonomy. However, the Group knew that the Indian States could not easily be federated with British India until their systems of government were raised to some approximation of the same level. For this reason, and to win the Princes over to federation, Lord Irwin had a large number of personal consultations with the Princes in 1927 and 1928. At some of these he lectured the Princes on the principles of good government in a fashion which came straight from the basic ideology of the Milner Group. The memorandum which he presented to them, dated 14 June 1927 and published in Johnson's biography, Viscount Halifax, could have been written by the Kindergarten. This can be seen in its definitions of the function of government, its emphasis on the reign of law, its advocacy of devolution, its homily on the duty of princes, its separation of responsibility in government from democracy in government, and its treatment of democracy as an accidental rather than an essential characteristic of good government.
The value of this preparatory work appeared at the first Round Table Conference, where, contrary to all expectations, the Indian Princes accepted federation. The optimism resulting from this agreement was, to a considerable degree, dissipated, however, by the refusal of Gandhi's party to participate in the conference unless India were granted full and immediate Dominion status. Refusal of these terms resulted in an outburst of political activity which made it necessary for Irwin to find jails capable of holding sixty thousand Indian agitators at one time.
The view that the Round Table Conference represented a complete repudiation of the Simon Commission's approach to the Indian problem was assiduously propagated by the Milner Group in order to prevent Indian animosity against the latter from being carried over against the former. But the differences were in detail, since in main outline both reflected the Group's faith in federation, devolution, responsibility, and minority rights. The chief recommendations of the Simon Commission were three in number: (1) to create a federation of British India and the Indian States by using the provinces of the former as federative units with the latter; (2) to modify the central government by making the Legislative Assembly a federal organization but otherwise leave the center unchanged; (3) to end dyarchy in the provinces by making Indians responsible for all provincial activities. It also advocated separation of Burma from India.
These were also the chief conclusions of the various Round Table Conferences and of the government's White Papers of December 1931 (Cmd. 3972) and of March 1933 (Cmd. 4268). The former was presented to Parliament and resulted in a debate and vote of confidence on the government's policy in India as stated in it. The attack was led by Winston Churchill in the Commons and by Lords Lloyd, Salisbury, Midleton, and Sumner in the House of Lords. None of these except Churchill openly attacked the government's policy, the others contenting themselves with advising delay in its execution. The government was defended by Samuel Hoare, John Simon, and Stanley Baldwin in the Commons and by Lords Lothian, Irwin, Zetland, Dufferin, and Hailsham, as well as Archbishop Lang, in the Lords. Lord Lothian, in opening the debate, said that while visiting in India in 1912 he had written an article for an English review saying that the Indian Nationalist movement "was essentially healthy, for it was a movement for political virtue and self-respect," although the Indian Civil Servant with whom he was staying said that Indian Nationalism was sedition. Lord Lothian implied that he had not changed his opinion twenty years later. In the Lower House the question came to a vote, which the government easily carried by 369 to 43. In the majority were Leopold Amery, John J. Astor, John Buchan, Austen Chamberlain, Viscount Cranborne, Samuel Hoare, W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, Lord Eustace Percy, John Simon, and D. B. Somervell. In the minority were Churchill, George Balfour, and Viscount Wolmer.
Practically the same persons appeared on the same sides in the discussion regarding the White Paper of 1933. This document, which embodied the government's suggestions for a bill on Indian constitutional reform, was defended by various members of the Milner Group outside of Parliament, and anonymously in The Round Table. John Buchan wrote a preface to John Thompson's India: The White Paper (1933), in which he defended the extension of responsible government to India, saying, "We cannot exclude her from sharing in what we ourselves regard as the best." Samuel Hoare defended it in a letter to his constituents at Chelsea. Malcolm Hailey defended it before the Royal Empire Society Summer School at Oxford, in a speech afterwards published in The Asiatic Review. Hailey had resigned as Governor of the United Provinces in India in order to return to England to help the government put through its bill. During the long period required to accomplish this, Samuel Hoare, who as Secretary of State for India was the official government spokesman on the subject, had Hailey constantly with him as his chief adviser and support. It was this support that permitted Hoare, whose knowledge of India was definitely limited, to conduct his astounding campaign for the Act of 1935.
The White Paper of 1933 was presented to a Joint Select Committee of both Houses. It was publicly stated as a natural action on the part of the government that this committee be packed with supporters of the bill. For this reason Churchill, George Balfour, and Lord Wolmer refused to serve on it, although Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour Member who opposed the bill, asked to be put on the committee because it was packed.
The Joint Select Committee, as we have seen, had thirty-two members, of whom at least twelve were from the Cecil Bloc and Milner Group and supported the bill. Four were from the inner circles of the Milner Group. The chief witnesses were Sir Samuel Hoare; who gave testimony for twenty days; Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who gave testimony for four days; and Winston Churchill, who gave testimony for three days. The chief witness was thus Hoare, who answered 5594 questions from the committee. At all times Hoare had Malcolm Hailey at his side for advice.
The fashion in which the government conducted the Joint Select Committee aroused a good deal of unfavorable comment. Lord Rankeillour in the House of Lords critici
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The fashion in which the government conducted the Joint Select Committee aroused a good deal of unfavorable comment. Lord Rankeillour in the House of Lords criticized this, especially the fashion in which Hoare used his position to push his point of view and to influence the evidence which the committee received from other witnesses. He concluded: "This Committee was not a judicial body, and its conclusions are vitiated thereby. You may say that on their merits they have produced a good or a bad Report, but what you cannot say is that the Report is the judicial finding of unbiased or impartial minds." As a result of such complaints, the House of Commons Committee on Privilege investigated the conduct of the Joint Select Committee. It found that Hoare's actions toward witnesses and in regard to documentary evidence could be brought within the scope of the Standing Orders of the House if a distinction were made between judicial committees and non-judicial committees and between witnesses giving facts and giving opinions. These distinctions made it possible to acquit Sir Samuel of any violation of privilege, but aroused such criticism that a Select Committee on Witnesses was formed to examine the rules for dealing with witnesses. In its report, on 4 June 1935, this Select Committee rejected the validity of the distinctions between judicial and non-judicial and between fact and opinion made by the Committee on Privilege, and recommended that the Standing Rules be amended to forbid any tampering with documents that had been received by a committee. The final result was a formal acquittal, but a moral condemnation, of Hoare's actions in regard to the Joint Select Committee on the Government of India.
The report of the Joint Select Committee was accepted by nineteen out of its thirty-two members. Nine voted against it (five Conservative and four Labour Members). A motion to accept the report and ask the government to proceed to draw up a bill based on it was introduced in the House of Lords by the President of the Board of Education, Lord Halifax (Lord Irwin), on 12 December 1934, in a typical Milner Group speech. He said: "As I read it, the whole of our British and Imperial experience shouts at us the warning that representative government without responsibility, once political consciousness has been aroused, is apt to be a source of great weakness and, not impossibly, great danger. We had not learned that lesson, let me remind the House, in the eighteenth century, and we paid very dearly for it. We learned it some sixty years later and, by having learned it, we transformed the face and history of Canada." Lord Salisbury once again advised delay, and attacked the idea that parliamentary government could work in India or indeed had worked anywhere outside the British Commonwealth. Lord Snell, speaking for the Labour opposition, objected to the lack of protection against economic exploitation for the Indian masses, the omission of any promise of Dominion status for India, the weighing of the franchise too heavily on the side of the landlords and too lightly on the side of women or of laborers, the provisions for a second chamber, and the use of indirect election for the first chamber. Lord Lothian answered both speakers, supporting only one criticism, that against indirect election to the central assembly. He made the significant statement that he did not fear to turn India over to the Congress Party of Gandhi because (1) "though I disagree with almost everything that they say in public and most of their political programme, I have a sneaking sympathy with the emotion which lies underneath them . . . the aspiration of young impetuous India anxious to take responsibility on its own shoulders"; and (2) "because I believe that the one political lesson, which has more often been realized in the British Commonwealth of Nations than anywhere else in the world, is that the one corrective of political extremism is to put responsibility upon the extremists, and, by these proposals, that is exactly what we are doing." These are typical Milner Group reasons.
In the debate, Halifax was supported by Archbishop Lang and Lords Zetland, Linlithgow, Midleton, Hardinge of Penshurst, Lytton, and Reading. Lord Salisbury was supported by Lords Phillimore, Rankeillour, Ampthill, and Lloyd. In the division, Salisbury's motion for delay was beaten by 239 to 62. In addition to the lords mentioned, the majority included Lords Dufferin, Linlithgow, Cranbrook, Cobham, Cecil of Chelwood, Goschen, Hampden, Elton, Lugard, Meston, and Wemyss, while the minority included Lords Birkenhead, Westminster, Carnock, Islington, and Leconfield. It is clear that the Milner Group voted completely with the majority, while the Cecil Bloc was split.
The bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 6 February 1935 by Sir Samuel Hoare. As was to be expected, his argument was based on the lessons to be derived from the error of 1774 and the success of 1839 in North America. The government's actions, he declared, were based on "plain, good intentions." He was mildly criticized from the left by Attlee and Sir Herbert Samuel; supported by Sir Arthur Steel-Maitland, Sir Edward Grigg, and others; and then subjected to a long-sustained barrage from Winston Churchill. Churchill had already revealed his opinion of the bill over the BBC when he said, on 29 January 1935, that it was "a monstrous monument of sham built by the pygmies." He continued his attack in a similar vein, with the result that almost every government speaker felt the need to caution him that his intemperance was hurting his own cause. From our point of view, his most interesting statement, and one which was not contradicted, said: "I have watched this story from its very unfolding, and what has struck me more than anything else about it has been the amazingly small number of people who have managed to carry matters to their present lamentable pitch. You could almost count them on the fingers of one hand. I have also been struck by the prodigious power which this group of individuals have been able to exert and relay, to use a mechanical term, through the vast machinery of party, of Parliament, and of patronage, both here and in the East. It is tragical that they should have been able to mislead the loyalties and use the assets of the Empire to its own undoing. I compliment them on their skill, and I compliment them also on their disciples. Their chorus is exceedingly well drilled." This statement was answered by Lord Eustace Percy, who quoted Lord Hugh Cecil on "profitable mendacity." This led to an argument, in which both sides appealed to the Speaker. Order was restored when Lord Eustace said of Churchill, "I would never impute to him . . . any intention of making a charge which he did not believe himself."
It is quite clear that Churchill believed his charge and was referring to what we have called the Milner Group, although he would not have known it under that name, nor would he have realized its extreme ramifications. He was merely referring to the extensive influence of that close group of associates which included Hoare, Hailey, Curtis, Lothian, Dawson, Amery, Grigg, and Halifax.
After four days of debate on the second reading, the opposition amendment was rejected by 404-133, and the bill passed to the committee stage. In the majority were Amery, Buchan, Grigg, Hoare, Ormsby-Gore, Simon, Sir Donald Somervell, and Steel-Maitland. The minority consisted of three ill-assorted groups: the followers of Churchill, the leaders of the Labour Party, and a fragment of the Cecil Bloc with a few others.
<b>
The Government of India Act of 1935 was the longest bill ever submitted to Parliament, and it underwent the longest debate in history (over forty days in Commons). In general, the government let the opposition talk itself out and then crushed it on each division. In the third reading, Churchill made his final speech in a tone of baneful warning regarding the future of India. He criticized the methods of pressure used by Hoare and said that in ten years' time the Secretary of State would be haunted by what had been done, and it could be said of him,
"âGod save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus.
Why look'st thou so?â With my cross-bow,
I shot the Albatross.â</b>
These somber warnings were answered by Leopold Amery, who opened his rejoinder with the words, "<b>Here endeth the last chapter of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah."</b>
In the House of Lords the bill was taken through its various stages by Lord Zetland (who replaced Hoare as Secretary of State for India in June 1935), and the final speech for the government was from Halifax (recently made Secretary of State for War). The Act received the Royal Assent on 1 August 1935.
The Act never went into effect completely, and by 1939 the Milner Group was considering abandoning it in favor of complete self-government for India. The portions of the Act of 1935 dealing with the central government fell to the ground when the refusal of the Princes of the Indian States to accept the Act made a federal solution impossible. The provincial portion began to function in 1937, but with great difficulty because of the extremist agitation from the Congress Party. This party obtained almost half of the seats in the eleven provinces and had a clear majority in six provinces. The provincial governments, started in 1937, worked fairly well, and the emergency powers of the central governments, which continued on the 1919 model, were used only twice in over two years. When the war began, the Congress Party ordered its ministries to resign. Since the Congress Party members in the legislatures would not support non-Congress ministries, the decree powers of the Provincial Governors had to be used in those provinces with a Congress majority. In 1945 six out of the eleven provinces had responsible government.
From 1939 on, constitutional progress in India was blocked by a double stalemate: (1) the refusal of the Congress Party to cooperate in government unless the British abandoned India completely, something which could not be done while the Japanese were invading Burma; and (2) the growing refusal of the Moslem League to cooperate with the Congress Party on any basis except partition of India and complete autonomy for the areas with Moslem majorities. The Milner Group, and the British government generally, by 1940 had given up all hope of any successful settlement except complete self-government for India, but it could not give up to untried hands complete control of defense policy during the war. At the same time, the Milner Group generally supported Moslem demands because of its usual emphasis on minority rights.
During this period the Milner Group remained predominant in Indian affairs, although the Viceroy (Lord Linlithgow) was not a member of the Group. The Secretary of State for India, however, was Leopold Amery for the whole period 1940-1945. A number of efforts were made to reach agreement with the Congress Party, but the completely unrealistic attitude of the party's leaders, especially Gandhi, made this impossible. In 1941, H. V. Hodson, by that time one of the most important members of the Milner Group, was made Reforms Commissioner for India. The following year the most important effort to break the Indian stalemate was made. This was the Cripps Mission, whose chief adviser was Sir Reginald Coupland, another member of the inner circle of the Milner Group. As a result of the failure of this mission and of the refusal of the Indians to believe in the sincerity of the British (a skepticism that was completely without basis), the situation dragged on until after the War. The election of 1945, which drove the Conservative Party from office, also removed the Milner Group from its positions of influence. The subsequent events, including complete freedom for India and the division of the country into two Dominions within the British Commonwealth, were controlled by new hands, but the previous actions of the Milner Group had so committed the situation that these new hands had no possibility (nor, indeed, desire) to turn the Indian problem into new paths. There can be little doubt that with the Milner Group still in control the events of 1945-1948 in respect to India would have differed only in details.
The history of British relations with India in the twentieth century was disastrous. In this history the Milner Group played a major role. To be sure, the materials with which they had to work were intractable and they had inconvenient obstacles at home (like the diehards within the Conservative Party), but these problems were made worse by the misconceptions about India and about human beings held by the Milner Group. The bases on which they built their policy were fineâindeed, too fine. These bases were idealistic, almost utopian, to a degree which made it impossible for them to grow and function and made it highly likely that forces of ignorance and barbarism would be released, with results exactly contrary to the desires of the Milner Group. On the basis of love of liberty, human rights, minority guarantees, and self-responsibility, the Milner Group took actions that broke down the lines of external authority in Indian society faster than any lines of internal self-discipline were being created. It is said that the road to perdition is paved with good intentions. The road to the Indian tragedy of 1947-1948 was also paved with good intentions, and
those paving blocks were manufactured and laid down by the Milner Group. The same good intentions contributed largely to the dissolution of the British Empire, the race wars of South Africa, and the unleashing of the horrors of 1939-1945 on the world.
To be sure, in India as elsewhere, the Milner Group ran into bad luck for which they were not responsible. The chief case of this in India was the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, which was probably the chief reason for Gandhi's refusal to cooperate in carrying out the constitutional reforms of that same year. But the Milner Group's policies were self-inconsistent and were unrealistic. For example, they continually insisted that the parliamentary system was not fitted to Indian conditions, yet they made no real effort to find a more adaptive political system, and every time they gave India a further dose of self-government, it was always another dose of the parliamentary system. But, clinging to their beliefs, they loaded down this system with special devices which hampered it from functioning as a parliamentary system should. The irony of this whole procedure rests in the fact that the minority of agitators in India who wanted self-government wanted it on the parliamentary pattern and regarded every special device and every statement from Britain that it was not adapted to Indian conditions as an indication of the insincerity in the British desire to grant self-government to India.
A second error arises from the Milner Group's lack of enthusiasm for democracy. Democracy, as a form of government, involves two parts: (1) majority rule and (2) minority rights. Because of the Group's lack of faith in democracy, they held no brief for the first of these but devoted all their efforts toward achieving the second. The result was to make the minority uncompromising, at the same time that they diminished the majority's faith in their own sincerity. In India the result was to make the Moslem League almost completely obstructionist and make the Congress Party almost completely suspicious. The whole policy encouraged extremists and discouraged moderates. This appears at its worst in the systems of communal representation and communal electorates established in India by Britain. The Milner Group knew these were bad, but felt that they were a practical necessity in order to preserve minority rights. In this they were not only wrong, as proved by history, but were sacrificing principle to expediency in a way that can never be permitted by a group whose actions claim to be so largely dictated by principle. To do this weakens the faith of others in the group's principles.
The Group made another error in their constant tendency to accept the outcry of a small minority of Europeanized agitators as the voice of India. The masses of the Indian people were probably in favor of British rule, for very practical reasons. The British gave these masses good government through the Indian Civil Service and other services, but they made little effort to reach them on any human, intellectual, or ideological level. The "color line" was drawnânot between British and Indians but between British and the masses, for the educated upperclass Indians were treated as equals in the majority of cases. The existence of the color line did not bother the masses of the people, but when it hit one of the educated minority, he forgot the more numerous group of cases where it had not been applied to him, became anti-British and began to flood the uneducated masses with a deluge of anti-British propaganda. This could have been avoided to a great extent by training the British Civil Servants to practice racial toleration toward all classes, by increasing the proportion of financial expenditure on elementary education while reducing that on higher education, by using the increased literacy of the masses of the people to impress on them the good they derived from British rule and to remove those grosser superstitions and social customs which justified the color line to so many English. All of these except the last were in accordance with Milner Group ideas. The members of the Group objected to the personal intolerance of the British in India, and regretted the disproportionate share of educational expenditure which went to higher education (see the speech in Parliament of Ormsby-Gore, 11 December 1934), but they continued to educate a small minority, most of whom became anti-British agitators, and left the masses of the people exposed to the agitations of that minority. On principle, the Group would not interfere with the superstitions and grosser social customs of the masses of the people, on the grounds that to do so would be to interfere with religious freedom. Yet Britain had abolished suttee, child marriage, and thuggery, which were also religious in foundation. If the British could have reduced cow-worship, and especially the number of cows, to moderate proportions, they would have conferred on India a blessing greater than the abolition of suttee, child marriage, and thuggery together, would have removed the chief source of animosity between Hindu and Moslem, and would have raised the standard of living of the Indian people to a degree that would have more than paid for a system of elementary education.
If all of these things had been done, the agitation for independence could have been delayed long enough to build up an electorate capable of working a parliamentary system. Then the parliamentary system, which educated Indians wanted, could have been extended to them without the undemocratic devices and animadversions against it which usually accompanied any effort to introduce it on the part of the British.
<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Jul 22 2008, 01:35 PM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Jul 22 2008, 01:35 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I read that educated Indians felt cheated that the promises made by the Crown after the Imperial proclamation were not kept by local British authorities. They had similar access to education etc in England but when they came back they were not treated as valued members of the Empire. This led to the protest movements which turned to violence occasionally.
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Indians were patsies and really believed that the British would give them honor and status if they got educated in the English way. The British would have been laughing behind the back of the Indians when they see Indian trying to copy the goras.
True they had acronyms like WOG and Black Knight. WOG is Westernised Oriental Gentleman and Black Knights are the local notables who are knighted for their services to the English Crown.
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