§ LORD SYDENHAM rose to ask the Under-Secretary of State for India whether the dissent of Sir Reginald Craddock to the proposals of the Government of India in 1916, any Minutes recorded by Members of the Councils of the Secretary of State and the Viceroy, and the opinions of the Heads of Provinces and their Councils will be made available to Parliament before the Report of the Viceroy and Secretary of State is complete and ready for examination.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think I am fully justified in asking this Question by what has actually happened. There have been evident attempts to keep back 305 opinions adverse to the Report of the Secretary of State and the Viceroy, and some irregular methods have been resorted to. The Report itself did not even allude to a large mass of adverse opinion contained in memoranda and resolutions by the lower castes of India, who form an enormous majority of the population. The Report ignored the startling revelations of the Rowlatt Committee, although the finding of that Committee had been in the hands of the Secretary of State for some time before his Report was issued. There was some reluctance, which it is very difficult to understand, in making public the important Report of the Rowlatt Committee.
§ I have asked to-day for the production of the opinion of Sir Reginald Craddock for special reasons. Sir Reginald Craddock was an excellent Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, and an excellent Home member of the Viceroy's Council. He is now Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, and is one of the too few men in high places in India who have shown fearlessness and independence of judgment. His opinion, in my view, is far more valuable than that of some other persons who have simply followed the lead of superior authority. Sir Reginald Craddock, probably because of the Minute, which I hope will be produced, was never invited to the conference of the Heads of Provinces which was held to discuss reforms in India. It is no explanation to saw that he was in Burma, or that Burma is to be excluded from the operation of those reforms. He has spent his whole life in India proper, and Burma is probably the most educated of the Provinces under the control of the Government of India. Therefore it is very difficult to know why Burma is excluded from the operation of the reforms.
§ When the Report was published in this country there was the extraordinary spectacle of a member of the Secretary of State's Council, and a member of the Council of the Government of Bengal, both getting up, either encouraged or permitted, to give public support to the Report of the Secretary of State. Why were these Indian officials permitted or encouraged to do what would be absolutely denied to their British colleagues? I ask this question because when Parliament meets and is called upon to approve of measures upon which the fate of India will depend, it would be really monstrous to withhold any 306 information because it is adverse to the opinion of the Secretary of State. The fate of India is far too serious a matter to the Empire as a whole to be made the subject of any wire-pulling, or to be decided without the fullest production of the opinions on both sides freely given.
§
This morning I received a very long telegram from the South Indian Non-Brahmin Confederation. At this hour I will not read it to your Lordships, but it ends in this way—
Solemnly resolving to decline appearing before or co-operating Reform Committees unless non-Brahmin representatives appointed each Committee.
That is very unfortunate. These are important people, representing a very large majority of the people of Southern India, and they feel, as I said some time ago they would feel, that they have been entirely left out of the composition of the Committees now dealing with reforms in India. They feel that those Committees, as is the case, have been packed with men entirely in favour of the Report of the Secretary of State. I hope the noble Lord will agree that the information for which I ask may be made available for the information of Parliament before the Report is submitted for examination.
§ THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (LORD ISLINGTON)My Lords, the noble Lord asks for the publication of a set of Papers which, as I will endeavour to show to your Lordships, come properly within that period of the discussion in regard to these constitutional reforms which must be regarded as confidential. I particularly refer, in this connection, to my noble friend's Question, in which he asks for the publication of a Minute of Dissent by Sir Reginald Craddock to the original Dispatch of the Government of India. I am bound to say that as that was in its fullest sense a document of the most confidential character, I cannot understand how the existence of such a document can have come to my noble friend's attention.
In order to answer satisfactorily my noble friend I must, if the House will allow me for a few monents, explain the various stages in connection with this great consideration of the reform of Indian Government, as we have seen it during the past year. It is surely indisputable that, in the preliminary stages of a discussion of 307 such an important character, the correspondence which must pass between the authorities here in England and the authorities in India, though they may be in a sense formal and official in character, must be regarded as highly confidential, and they cannot be published with advantage to the public interest. Your Lordships will remember that Lord Chelmsford took over the Governor-Generalship from Lord Hardinge at a time when the Government of India was considering, in consultation with the heads of Provincial Governments, the future development of the Indian system of Government. Lord Chelmsford's Government at the end of 1916 sent a confidential Despatch to the Secretary of State. Had Mr. Chamberlain found himself able, with the approval of the Government, to accept the suggestions made in that Despatch, as they stood, and proposed legislation to carry them into effect, there would obviously have been no difficulty in publishing this Despatch, but some of the proposals in that original Despatch were felt to require in a large measure considerable further discussion, and that discussion took place at the time.
The first result of the new proposal was the announcement of policy, which fell to Mr. Montagu, the present Secretary of State, to make on behalf of His Majesty's Government on August 20, 1917. That announcement was made with the full concurrence of the Government of India. It was made after telegraphic correspondence in regard to the actual phrasing to be adopted, and which had to some extent superseded the terms of the original Despatch by the Government of India. The announcement made it clear to the public that personal consultations between the Secretary of State and all Local Governments was considered desirable by His Majesty's Government, and that they should take place before any definite proposals should be framed with a view to the formulation of a Bill for constitutional development. As a result of this personal discussion in India the Reforms Report was drawn up, and has been published for criticism. The noble Lord says that criticism of that Report has been suppressed. I must remind the House that there is now a public document which embraces the deputations and the memorials from all parts of India, showing those in favour of the Report and those opposed to it, and therefore it really cannot be said with any truth that those who are opposed to the 308 proposals of this Report have in any way been suppressed.
With the publication of the Report a new chapter in the history of this question was opened. I quite agree—I have already said so in a previous debate in this House—that the opinions of Local Governments upon the Report, and in regard to all the proposals in that Report, in so far, of course, as they do not contain confidential matter which it would be against the public interest to make public, should be published. We have not yet received in the India Office—I do not know whether the Government of India have, but we certainly have not—the Reports from Local Governments upon the Reforms Report, but, without pledging myself to the publication in their entirety of those Reports, I will repeat what I said on a previous occasion—that all the material which will be of use in the discussion of this matter will in due course be published.
I would remind your Lordships that the course now being followed in regard to these Reforms is essentially the same as that which was adopted in the case of the Morley-Minto reforms. Of course, in introducing this as an analogy—and I hope that your Lordships, after I have described it, will agree that it is a fair analogy—there are obvious differences that must be taken into account, due to the fact that on the present occasion the Secretary of State went to India, and that he and the Viceroy produced a Report as the result of their discussions. The Report embraces conclusions which, had the present Secretary of State, like Lord Morley, who was then Secretary of State, remained in England, would have been presented in the form of an interchange of Despatches. This is, of course, an obvious and necessary difference in the procedure in the two cases; but aside from this difference, I venture to say that the proposed procedure is essentially the same to-day as that adopted on that occasion. The process leading up to the Morley-Minto scheme began with a confidential Despatch from the Government of India early in the year 1907. In that Despatch the whole position was reviewed, and all the various possibilities discussed. That Despatch was considered by the Secretary of State in the India Office, and a comprehensive reply was sent. Neither of those Despatches to which I have just alluded was either at that time or has since been published, but as a result of the secret correspondence a tentative scheme 309 of reforms was published in this country and India in August 1907, and criticism was invited. As a result of the criticism offered in India there was ultimately presented to Parliament two very large volumes dealing with all that took place on that occasion.
The Government of India, eighteen months after the inauguration of the proposal, addressed their definite proposals to the Secretary of State, who, in turn, answered them in the November of 1908. Both these Despatches were presented to Parliament in connection with the Bill that afterwards became the India Council Act of 1909. As I have already said, general criticisms containing preliminary discussions, while proposals of this great importance and magnitude are still in what can be described as the fluid state, was not then, and I contend should not be now, made public in the form of a published document. I think, my Lords, that what I have said in regard to the Morley-Minto scheme is a fair analogy of what has taken place in regard to the reforms that are at present embraced in what is known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, and the discussions that took place in India during the visit are closely allied to the unpublished correspondence that took place at that time between Lord Morley's Government and Lord Minto, who was then the Viceroy.
The necessity—and I would venture to say this in the public interest—for maintaining secrecy in preliminary correspondence should I think be obvious to all, and especially to all those who have been associated with Indian government. Had there been present here this evening noble Lords such as Lord Lansdowne, or Lord Crewe, or Lord Midleton, or Lord Morley, I feel sure that I could claim from them support and agreement upon this general proposition. They, in their turns, have occupied the highest positions in regard to Indian government, and I feel sure that they would be the first to agree and to admit that in their time they had to employ a similar form of secret procedure in regard to matters of high State interest discussed between themselves and their officers.
As to the future, as I have already said on a previous occasion, the object of real interest and upon which criticism will focus—and will focus properly—will be the Bill that in due course will be formulated and 310 considered, and eventually accepted by the Cabinet and presented to Parliament. Both the Reforms Report and all the correspondence, which I venture to say must necessarily remain secret, and the discussion upon it and the criticisms upon the Report, will be superseded by the Bill when it is before the public, and the Reforms Report as such, with all the matters surrounding it, will then fade into the background. I would, therefore, suggest that my noble friend and the House should await the arrival of that Bill, when there will be no lack of opportunity both in this House and in another place and throughout the country of giving it the fullest possible criticism.
§ LORD SYDENHAMMy Lords, I am afraid that my noble friend's speech does not quite satisfy me, because I see no possibility now of getting Sir Reginald Craddock's opinion before the country. I was always under the impression that the right of making dissents in Council was given in order that the dissents might be produced when the time arose. I do not know that that rule has been abrogated, but that was the view I took when I was in India, and that was the view which I think all the members of my Council held. I am afraid that I cannot agree that there is any real analogy between the proceedings in the Morley-Minto reforms and in these, because in the case of the Morley-Minto reforms it was all done here, and in this case the Secretary of State went roaming about India taking opinions from all sorts of persons. I am glad to know that the dissentient opinions given in India are about to appear, but I must remind my noble friend that I pressed for them very strongly in this House, and I did think at first that he was not very anxious to produce them.