Lord Zetland on India
Steps Towards Indian Home Rule. By the Marquis of
LORD ZETLAND needs no introduction to the British Public. His authority on Eastern questions, and especially on India, rests upon long experience which reached its high-water mark in his five years as Goverrior of Bengal. Summoned to govern that most difficult of Indian Provinces at a moment when firmness and imagination were -equally needed, lie carried Bengal through the anxious days of'Norveo-Ciperation with a political skill which • won admiration even from implacable opponents. And his pen has proved that, if he can govern, he can also write. His India : A Bird's Eye View was good,' but his Heart of Aryavarta was better • and now he comes to add to both of them a volume of high value and immediate relevance.
This little book is composed of five chapters consisting of contributions to the development of the Indian controversy since 1930. It suffers somewhat in form- froth the fact that the present tense is used not of things as they arc in 1935, but as they were when Lord Zetland wrote, or spoke; of them at various stages in the long debate which began -with the Simon Commission and is not -yet over. - But, if Lord Zetland is thus open to the charge of having mixed his tenses to the occasional confusion of the reader, that is only a criti- cism of form, which leaves the value of his substance unim- paired. And there is perhaps an actual advantage in Lord Zetland's method ; for, by leaving the spoken word of 1939 (for instance) to stand exactly as it was delivered, he shows the reader both the fundamental -consistency of his central convictions on the nature and problem of Indian government, as. well as the manner in. which those convictions ripened into practical decisions at eackstage of the process of enquiry in which he himself took a prominent part. Take, for instance, his confession, that on the vital question of combining " responsibility at the centre " with provincial autonomy—
an issue which has been seized by Mr. Churchill and Lord Lloyd as the capital error of the present Government of India Bill—Lord Zetland's conviction " that sound statesmanship demands this step is of no very recent date." We may justly infer that five years ago he came to the first Round Table Conference believing that the next stage in Indian reform should be responsible government in the Provinces, leaving the Government of India and the central legislation much as it was under the Act of 1919. But, in the course of prolonged discussion with the Princes, with the delegates from British India, and with his own British colleagues, his mind " gradually became clear " and the conviction took root that reform at the Centre must accompany pro- vincial autonomy. The central part of this book is therefore Lord Zetland's authoritative reply to the admittedly powerful plea voiced by Lord Lloyd at the microphone a month ago. And if I have any quarrel with Lord Zetland, it is that he might have drawn more largely upon his own Bengal experi-
ence to give us proof from knowledge that he is right and Lord Lloyd is wrong. That he is right, I have no doubt ; and the second half of this book, all too brief as it is, should go far to bring the reader to the same conclusion.
Now, while the Bill is in Committee at Westminster, public attention (in so far as the public reads the debates) will be concentrated mainly on the constitutional and administrative
problems of India. There will be discussion on safeguards, on which Lord Zetland has several pertinent passages : there will be anxious moments devoted to the future of the public services ; and throughout them all the thread of gn apparent contradiction will run. England is still the sovereign Power,
but is transferring its sovereignty in an ever-increasing measure of responsible government." We remain " respon- sible," while expecting India to behave " responsibly." Since we are responsible " and are not within sight of the final transfer of authority, the Governor-General, as Lord Zetland says, " will be there with the wide powers of which I have spoken, in reserve, and those who talk of the policy as one of abdication are surely guilty of using language of the wildest exaggeration." And Lord Zetland continues, with pertinent emphasis :
" These reserve powers are very real, but I would lay stress upon the fact that they are in reserve. I do not picture them as being ordinarily exercised at all. ' It is in exact proportion,' to quote the Joint Committee Report, as Indians show themselves to be capable of taking and exercising responsibility . . that both the need for safeguards and their use will disappear."
No one knows better than Lord Zetland himself what this means. " My own experience in India itself," he says, " has provided me with striking illustrations of the universally established truth ". that " man nets in a responsible manner when the responsibility is his, and, conversely that he acts in an irresponsible and even in a reckless manner when responsi- bility is denied him." Here is the moral foundation of our policy today. To emphasize it, I would have the Government
print in heavy type lilies 9, 10 and 11 of par. VIII and lines 14, 15, 10 and 17, of par..IX of the " Instrument of Instruc- tions to the GovernoriGeneral and Governors " (Command Paper No. 4805) which .the.India Office published last week.
: A. F. WHITE.
Previous page
