INDIAN CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM.

HL Deb 12 December 1934 vol 95 cc248-308

THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (VISCOUNT HALIFAX) rose to move to resolve, That this House accepts the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform as the basis for the revision of the Indian Constitution and considers it expedient that a Bill should be introduced on the general lines of the Report. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion that appeals in my name on the Paper, and in doing so I should hope not to make any undue draft upon your Lordships' patience, having regard to the fact that I know that a great many of your Lordships desire to participate in the debate, and also having regard to the fact that the subject matter of the debate is by this time, I suppose, tolerably familiar to all your Lordships. The last general debate that we had in this House was, I think, in April, 1933, somewhat more than eighteen months ago, on the Motion to set up the Joint Select Committee, and since that time, up to rather less than a month ago, that Committee has been at work.

Inasmuch as it falls to me to be the first speaker in this debate, and inasmuch as I was also a member of that Committee, I am quits sure that the Lord Chairman of that Committee, the noble Marquess behind me, Lord Linlithgow, would allow me to express a feeling that was prominent in the Committee of the great loss that they suffered by the untimely death of two of the members—namely, Lord Burnham, who was a member of this House, and Miss Pickford, a member of another place. Each of them was possessed of first-hand knowledge of India, and in the time that we sat together we all, I think, realised that each of them had a particular contribution to make to our work. Although I was, as I have said, a member of the Committee, your Lordships will perhaps allow me to pay an impersonal tribute to the manner in which the Committee discharged the task that Parliament had laid upon it. I do not suppose that any Committee has ever conducted an examination. more exhaustive, or conducted it with a greater sense of the unique responsibility that both the subject matter and the circumstances imposed upon every member of the body. In particular, I think that we all left the Committee with a great sense of the debt that the Committee owed to its Chairman, to his untiring industry, wise counsel and apparently quite inexhaustible patience.

I think, if I may also be permitted to say this, that we also owed a great debt to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for India, who in the course of answering, as stated in the Report, some six thousand questions, addressed to him by enquirers, both English and Indian, was able to reveal profound and detailed knowledge of his subject. I think all members of the Committee, including both the noble Lord opposite, Lord Snell, who will, I understand, speak in this debate, and the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who will, I believe, follow me, would agree that there was in all quarters of the Committee the fullest desire to hear all that could contribute, and to be informed of all points of view. Last, but by no means least, I think my fellow members would wish me to bear testimony to the debt that we owed to our Indian friends, who, while actually unable to share the constitutional responsibility laid upon us of reporting to Parliament, did share with us fully in our examination of witnesses and in our deliberations, and whose assistance was of the greatest possible value to us all.

The result of that long process has been conclusions that have been reached with large, and perhaps some would say an astonishing, degree of unanimity. All members of the Committee were agreed upon the principal purpose of all our endeavour—namely, the retention of a strong, prosperous and contented India within the British Empire. All members came to agree, whether or not they agreed at the outset, that there was a real problem to be solved if we were, in fact, to achieve that principal aim. Except for one matter of importance there was general agreement as to the treatment of the provincial side of the case, and as regards the Central Government it is not, I think, unfair to say that the differences upon the Committee were that the majority was held by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, and those associated with him, to be moving too far and too fast, and by the noble Lord opposite, Lord Snell, and those associated with him, to be moving not far and not fast enough. It was between those two extremes that what I may term the middle opinion of the Committee gradually came to crystallise.

May I remind your Lordships in a few sentences of what the Committee in the broadest outline have recommended? They have recommended the establishment of full responsible government in the Provinces, subject to the endowment of the Governors with, and if necessary the exercise by the Governors of, certain emergency powers for what I may term broad Parliamentary purposes. They have further recommended the establishment by the same Bill, as soon as certain conditions have been fulfilled, of a Federation for All-India, based upon the principle of responsibility, and subject again to emergency powers and to certain reservations of power to the Governor-General, of which the most important are defence and what we should roughly understand by foreign affairs. Those are the main lines of the Report which my Motion invites this House to accept and to regard as expedient as a basis for a Bill.

I notice that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has an Amendment on the Paper of which the gist is to invite your Lordships to profess your inability to give any such general approval until you have before you precise recommendations in the shape of a Bill. Well, he will not, I fancy, greatly object if I say that I think his Amendment falls within the category of what are generally understood as dilatory Amendments, in the sense that it postpones the necessity of recording definite judgment on the general lines on which I invite judgment to be recorded. And, in passing, I may be permitted perhaps to observe that it is to me a somewhat curious request emanating from the noble Marquess, inasmuch as for the last few months, if not more, the most common complaint of those persons with whom he is in this matter politically associated has been the very complaint that they have been constantly denied the opportunity of recording a definite vote, yes or no, for the proposals that from time to time have been placed before them; and while, of course, I should agree with the noble Marquess, in feeling, as every one of your Lordships would, that it was no doubt necessary to scrutinise particular provisions of any Bill that might be introduced into Parliament, I none the less think that His Majesty's Government are entitled to know the clear view of Parliament at this stage, and I do not think that your Lordships will find any difficulty in saying aye or no to the general lines proposed in the Report. Because, indeed, the noble Marquess has made it plain enough that his objection is to the general proposals that are made, and on those general proposals the points of difference by this time have become very clear.

Now since the proposals similar to those made in the Report were made in the White Paper, anxiety has been expressed on certain quite definite, but quite vital, points. In the provincial field that anxiety has concerned the question of what is known as the transfer of law and order; in the central field that anxiety has concerned the establishment now of an All-India Federation on a responsible basis; and lastly, that anxiety has been concerned generally with the question of whether the emergency powers, to use a colloquial phrase, would in fact work. As to the first, the transfer of law and order, the Committee followed the recommendations of the Statutory Commission, and I think substantially for the same reasons. They said that it was impossible to "conceive a Government to which the quality of responsibility could be attributed if it had no responsibility for public order." And I think they also felt, as was felt by the Statutory Commission, that it was great folly, if you were transferring all other provincial activities to Ministerial control, by reserving the administration of law and order to concentrate upon that which must always be the most delicate cog in all your administrative machine the whole of popular criticism and attack. I think this also was very present to their minds, and I think it is an argument that your Lordships will allow me to put to you, that nothing could be more unwise or more hostile to the growth of any real sense of responsibility than for Ministers to be placed in the position of laying down lines of policy, and promoting legislation, well knowing all the time that they were constitutionally absolved in advance from all consequent obligation of dealing with any violent reaction or disturbance that their policy or their legislation might arouse. For these reasons the Committee reached the conclusion that they did.

But convinced as they were of the necessity of transferring law and order, the Committee were in no sense blind to the risks of transfer and, as I shall hope to be able to show, set themselves to meet them. They recognised clearly enough that law and order depend ultimately upon three things—the discipline, the efficiency, and the impartiality of the Police. Accordingly they recommended that the Governor should be assured of receiving adequate knowledge of the state of the Police Force within his Province; and further, to protect the internal discipline and efficiency of the Police, they also recommended that the Police Acts and the rules made under them, which really govern the organisation and the administration of the Police, should not be alterable without the Governor's consent. In regard to terrorism and other subversive activities to which, as your Lordships will agree, the Committee felt it their duty to devote a great deal of anxious thought, there again they were very conscious of the paramount need of ensuring that the machinery for resisting such movements as those should be carefully protected from deterioration. Therefore they made a recommendation that is. I think, of great importance, by which they intended to reproduce in India what is the practice in this country in regard to respecting the secrecy of confidential reports; and they also recommended that the Governor should be endowed with a special right, if necessary, to take over any of the activities of Government in order to deal with such grave threats as terrorism and the like to the good order of his Province. Those, in a few sentences, are the recommendations on that subject.

I do not know whether your Lordships have had the opportunity of informing yourselves of the precise position taken in this regard by the noble Marquess and those with whom he is associated. Some time ago the Government published a White Paper. We were not the only parties to publish a White Paper. The noble Marquess published one about a month ago in which his proposals are set out in some detail. In that white paper he sets out the proposals that he made to the Committee on this subject of law and order, and I invite your Lordships' attention to them. He there proposes that the administration of the Police should be reserved, and here I quote his words: … but that wherever after a reasonable time the Governor may consider that the interests of the public peace no longer require these precautions it shall he lawful for the Secretary of State, by Order in Council, approved by both Houses of Parliament, to transfer the Department to a responsible Minister. I would ask your Lordships to note the words "wherever after a reasonable time the Governor may consider" that it can safely be done, and so on. The noble Marquess can, I am sure, be under no illusion at all as to the effect that that reservation of responsibility for the Police would have through every Province of India, Hindu and Moslem alike. He probably knows or, if he does not know, I can confidently tell him, that every single Governor of an Indian Province to-day is in favour of the recommendations of the Committee on this question of transfer. But that unanimous opinion of the Governors to-day he would now disregard until he has alienated and embittered all Indian opinion by a delay for "a reasonable time," which the very men on whose judgment after "a reasonable time" he evidently expects the Secretary of State and Parliament to rely, tell him is neither necessary nor desirable. I cannot recognise either the logic or the wisdom of such a course.

Having said that, perhaps I may pass to what is not disconnected with it—namely, the next point on which great anxiety has been felt, the point of an All-India Federation on the basis of responsibility. The dominant consideration with the Committee, as on this matter with their critics, was the necessity of erecting a strong Centre of Indian government, and nothing, I think, was more remarkable in the mental evolution of the corporate mind of the Committee than the way in which as the examination proceeded they became impressed, looking at the present Centre, not with its strength but with its weakness, for reasons on which I need not dilate but which are familiar enough, for indeed they are of the essence of our constitutional history. 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 learnt it, we transformed the face and history of Canada.

Though they are very well known, I would ask your Lordships' leave to remind you of words that ought to be better known that find place in the Report that Lord Durham presented to Parliament in February, 1839. He said: I know not how it is possible to secure harmony in any other way than by administering the Government on those principles which have been found perfectly efficacious in Great Britain. I would not impair a single Prerogative of the Crown; on the contrary I believe that the interests of the people of these Provinces require the protection of Prerogatives which have not hitherto been exercised. But the Crown must, on the other hand, submit to the necessary consequences of representative institutions; and if it has to carry on the Government in unison with a representative body, it must consent to carry it on by means of those in whom that representative body has confidence. It is indeed true that if anything like our system is to work—and nobody wishes to reproduce a slavish imitation of it in India—some harmony between the Executive and the Legislature is a pre-requisite. There are only two ways of getting it. One way is to abolish your representative but irresponsible Legislature, and the other is to invest it with some responsibility. I venture to think that the noble Marquess can only reject the latter if he were prepared to accept the first. But to do neither is to forego, in my judgment, all the advantages and incur all the disadvantages of both.

The Committee were influenced in that general sense by several other converging considerations. They were, as is very plain from their Report, acutely sensible of the difficulty of meeting all that problem with reference to British India alone. They were acutely sensible that the unity of India was perhaps the biggest achievement of our association with India, and they were under some anxiety, unless something were done, that centrifugal and separatist tendencies might develop in autonomous Provinces under, from the Indian point of view, an irresponsible Centre. They were profoundly conscious of the degree to which the interests of British India and the States were inextricably and increasingly interlocked. They naturally were impressed by the fact that the States, and those who had spoken for the States, had always made it abundantly plain that they could enter no Federation of All-India except on a basis of responsibility, and they could not but recognise the fact that if this opportunity were lost for Federation, which they along with the Statutory Commission saw to be the only real solution for All-India difficulties, it might never recur. It was with these considerations in their mind that they reached the conclusions and made the recommendations that stand in the Report, in which they state: We believe that the Central Government which we recommend will be stronger than the existing Government, and we see no other way in which it can be strengthened.

All that argument with which I have ventured to weary your Lordships on the question of the States is admittedly based upon the accession of the States in the proportions as required by the White Paper, which in this respect has been endorsed by the Joint Committee's Report. I have no reason to suppose that a sufficient number of States to fulfil the conditions requisite for Federation will not, in fact, accede. As I see it, all the main considerations on which they made their historic pronouncement at the first Round-Table Conference are just as valid to-day as they were on the day they were made, and I have no doubt at all, taking the long view, that federation on the lines proposed is as much in the interests of the States as it is in the interests of India as a whole. But we must all recognise—I have always recognised—that it is an immense decision for the States to take, and I always told them when I was in India that although I had no doubt in my mind that from their own point of view accession to federation would be right, they were bound to think most carefully before deciding, and that they had every right to see in precise terms the conditions on which their accession would be invited. And that remains the position to-day. I have no doubt, either, that the Princes will inevitably wish to discuss many matters with the Viceroy, and that they will wish to see the general picture substantially complete before taking final decisions. But I can assure your Lordships that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is confident that the Report of the Committee does, in fact, substantially meet the reasonable apprehensions of the Princes as they were explained to the Joint Select Committee.

My noble friend, in the paper to which I have alluded, has a great deal to say of great force, if I may respectfully say so, about the anomalies of federation, and so greatly is he impressed with those anomalies that he would go no further than the establishment of an Advisory Council only for Greater India. I am quite free to admit that many of the anomalies to which he draws your Lordships' attention and to which he drew our attention are quite incontestible. They are there, and so large and so diverse a place is India that to me it would be a cause for overwhelming astonishment if they were not there. I have always taken the view that many of them can only, and will only, be solved in actual working, and that by Indians themselves. But the point I vent are to state to your Lordships is not whether or not there are anomalies. About that I suppose we need hardly differ. The point is, are those anomalies to be allowed decisive force, and are they to be allowed decisive force in the sense of saying that so long as those anomalies exist you cannot have federation? Because, if so, let us be under no illusions as to what that means. It means goodbye to federation to-day or to-morrow and, as far as we can foresee, for ever.

I venture humbly to suggest to the House that one of the secrets of British genius has been that we never have been unduly afraid of anomalies. It is perhaps the peculiar British genius not to rate logical symmetry higher than realities that are the legacy of history or the creation of hard fact and circumstance. I have heard many people say that your Lordships' House is an anomaly in a democratic State, but that fact has never succeeded in preventing your Lordships' House from doing its work any more than it has ever succeeded in making those who feel it to be an anomaly agree upon an effective substitute for it. The most reverend Primate will perhaps forgive me if I say that the Church and State are full of anomalies to-day, and the British Empire itself might be prayed in aid in a similar argument. But none of those things, I would suppose, are conclusive, or indeed have ever been held to be conclusive in our history as I have been able to read it.

I have referred to what seems to me to be the position of the noble Marquess on these several points because I was anxious if I could to leave in your Lordships' mind what is the general picture of the new India as he would constitutionally create it. May I put it together and, I hope, not overdraw the picture in doing so. Leaving entirely aside the effect on Indian opinion of his proposals, he would be prepared to launch on an autonomous career eleven Provinces in which for some time to come Indian Ministers would be free to shape policy and pass laws undeterred by any administrative responsibility for consequences in the field of law and order—eleven Provinces in which the centrifugal tendencies that may develop will be resisted only by a weak Central Government differing in kind from the Provincial Governments, because still irresponsible, and having no effective contact with those Provincial Governments; a Central Government continuing all the weakness of the existing Central Government, and the Federal Constitution surviving only in the Advisory Council by which would be offered to the States the right of discussion only where they are demanding the right of participating in decisions and an Advisory Council which would have no effective power to regulate in the interests of All-India those matters in which All-India is concerned.

I do not think that is a picture that is at all overdrawn. But I must freely admit it is not a picture that is at all attractive to me, and I do not know whether to many of your Lordships, as to me, it has ever seemed strange that there should be so great a measure of anxiety about this question of central responsibility for a Federal India, on the part of persons who are quite ready to accept provincial autonomy. Nearly every argument that is used against federation is equally valid, and even more valid, in the case of provincial autonomy. I am at a complete loss to understand how those who criticise so strongly the proposals for central responsibility can bring themselves to accept the proposals for provincial autonomy. This anxiety is constantly said to be based upon regard for the interests of the Indian masses; yet nine-tenths at least of the matters affecting their daily life fall within the provincial sphere, and to the transfer of all that range of subjects which I do not particularise no objection at all is raised.

It is in the Provinces and not in the Centre where the great danger lies of majorities that might be expected to make difficulties for stable government. But the Centre by the numerical composition of the Lower House is reasonably secure, some people would say far too secure. I think that anyone who knows anything of the mind of the States would agree with me in saying that, although the States would very often judge many matters differently from us, yet on three vital matters they can securely be relied upon—namely, their interest in order, their interest in defence, and their determination to maintain the Imperial connection. Therefore, my Lords, I cannot but feel that for those reasons the anxiety as between the Provincial and the Central side has constantly been in great danger of losing its perspective.

I will say a word if I may upon safeguards, which was the other point to which I suppose principal anxiety has attached. I do not much like—and the Committee record that they had also the same feeling—the word "safeguards," which I think is open to misinterpretation both in India and in England. I would have preferred, though it is of course too late to change language, the phrase "Emergency Powers." On that subject His Majesty's Government have always taken the view that there were certain broad Parliamentary purposes, such as the preservation of order, the protection of minorities, the credit of India, fair treatment for British commerce, and the just rights of the Services for which primarily, or, on any long view, definitely in the interests of India herself, provision must be made in any transfer of power. I have constantly been in some doubt as to the view on this point that is actually held by those who have criticised this proposal. We are sometimes told that the safeguards are so real, so all-pervasive, that any responsible government that survives them must be a hollow sham. At other times, we are told that the safeguards are only paper, and of paper worth, and are quite incapable of effective operation, and that therefore responsible government is only too likely to be a dangerous reality.

Well, I am not so much concerned with the arguments of the critics as with answering to myself and to your Lordships the fundamental question whether or not these emergency powers can reasonably be expected to work. After all, it is not a new system. It is one that is quite familiar to the existing constitutional practice of India. What do you mean when you ask, Will they work? The Committee felt that in most cases there was very good ground for believing that their existence would render it unnecessary to invoke them, and they also thought that, in the special circumstances of India, the measure of responsibility which, for certain purposes, must continue to rest upon this country was complementary to, and not inconsistent with, the responsibility that it was designed to place upon Indian shoulders, but that, even if circumstances arose in which these special powers had to be invoked, they had by their definition of these special powers and by ensuring that Governors and Governors-General would get adequate and timely information, and by their recommendations as to the Services, in fact secured conditions by which these powers could be made effective. That is my own view, and it is a view that I think your Lordships also may reasonably accept.

We shall be told that the Report has been unanimously condemned in India, and proof of that will be found in the recent Central Elections that have been held. I do not think that anyone who knows India expected anything very different. I certainly did not, and I would have supposed that the result of elections held under the present system, in which the Government case has, and can have, no champion and tends always to go by default, might indeed be held by many to be an additional reason for changing the present system. And, my Lords, it is not an unfamiliar phenomenon, after all, in our own political life for the Opposition to expend violent criticism upon measures and proposals in which, under different circumstances, they find quite unexpected virtues. I have known it in my short political life to occur again and again, and I believe that it will not be otherwise in India. Indians will appreciate only in working whatever Constitution is based on these lines, how great an opportunity that Constitution in fact affords them, and I venture to hazard a very confident opinion that, if and when a Constitution on the lines of the Joint Select Committee's Report is placed upon the Statute Book, Indians will not wish to refrain from working it, and that if they did wish to refrain from working it, history would repeat itself, and the magnetic force of the Constitution would be great enougn to make it impossible for them to stand aside. The noble Marquess opposite has personal knowledge of what passed in recent years in that connection, and I should be greatly surprised if he did not feel able to place himself at one with me in that anticipation.

My Lords, if my voice could reach as far as India, I would venture to say to my friends in India this: I suppose that I have been the object of as much criticism as most people for the part that I felt it my duty to play while I was there, and Indians, to whatever political camp they belong, will not, I think, suspect me of being unfaithful to principles and purposes which I have kept constantly before me during recent years which have not been too easy. I find no difficulty at all in understanding that there is much in our Report which must be distasteful to many high-minded men in India, whose love or their country is as deep and as true as that of any of your Lordships for your own country, men who confidently long to see the realisation of their patriotic dreams, and whose very longing makes them perhaps realise too little the dangers by which, from snore sides than one, the cause of Indian progress may be threatened. I know, too, very well how hard it is to convince Indians that the language of Statutes or of Reports is not over-cautious or over-restrained, and to make them believe that the single purpose of all our work is to try to lend such help to India as India seems to need. But it is my firm conviction that the spirit inspiring any Constitution is of an importance far greater than the dry bones of Reports or Statutes in which it may be embodied; that any Constitution based upon the principles of this Report does in fact, by its own inherent capacity for natural growth, secure for India a full opportunity for the political self-expression and development that those who love India best desire to see.

No one who has had any responsibility in evolving these proposals could, or would wish to claim perfection for them. Perfection in this matter is not attainable, and all of those who have been immersed in this subject know the difficulties far too well. I do not think that any noble Lord who may speak in this debate can possibly bring forward any difficulty that has not been in the minds of the members of the Joint Select Committee for days and weeks and months. It is not that we ignore the difficulties, but it is that we have not felt able, as I said earlier in my speech, to give them a force that should rightly be decisive. Therefore, recognising all these difficulties, admitting many anomalies, we can, I think, claim the support of those who are in the best position to advise us in the belief that the scheme is workable, that it does face the realities of the problem, and that when, as I hope, it is brought into operation, it may reasonably be relied upon to disappoint at once British misgivings and Indian suspicions which together seem to me to block the path at present to much of that better understanding between Great Britain and India which is the greatest need of both. I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That this House accepts the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform as the basis for the revision of the Indian Constitution and considers it expedient that a Bill should be introduced on the general lines of the Report.—(Viscount Halifax.)

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY had given Notice that he would move, as an Amendment, to leave out all the words after "That" and insert "this House is unwilling to pronounce in advance an acceptance of far-reaching recommendations on Indian Constitutional Reform until it has had the opportunity of considering and approving the particular recommendations of the Joint Select Committee to be adopted by the Government and proposed in the concrete form of the provisions of a Bill."

The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I have to claim, if I may, the indulgence of your Lordships' House because I am going to do a thing which I have never done before and which I hope I shall never do again. I am going to move the Amendment which stands in my name, and yet I am not able, I am sorry to say, to follow out that Motion by attending the full four days' debate which is to take place in your Lordships' House. I have been strongly advised that I must not delay my holiday any longer; I dare not ignore that advice, and I can only throw myself upon your Lordships' kind consideration if I am not able to remain for the full term of the debate. I confess that I profoundly regret that I am so placed, because it may to some extent militate against the force of what I have to say, but I did think that as it was your Lordships' good pleasure to make me a member of the Joint Select Committee, it was only respectful to your Lordships that I should come to the House to-day and say what I have to say—as it were, to give an account of my stewardship as one of your Lordships' representatives; and I hope your Lordships will allow me to do so forthwith.

I agree entirely with my noble friend who has just sat down in the phrases which he used in praise of the work of the Committee to which we belonged, and especially of the patience and cordial assistance which we all received from the Chairman of the Committee. I join to the full in all that my noble friend has said on that point. But I am afraid that I cannot agree with everything that my noble friend has said in his speech. I have always tried, in dealing with this Indian question, to approach it with every care, every precaution, every effort to be considerate and deliberate. When I was asked to serve on the Joint Committee I did not decline, and my noble friends who sit upon the Government Bench and elsewhere in your Lordships' House who were members of the Committee will bear me out if I say that I attended at least as well as most other members. I want to carry out that attitude of mind to the end. If my words have any weight with your Lordships, I desire that we should approach this subject again on this occasion with the same profound sense of responsibility as that with which I had myself hoped to have studied it in the past. Therefore I deprecate the Motion which my noble friend who has just sat down has made.

I deprecate a Motion which seeks to obtain from your Lordships a sort of sanction in advance without really giving yourselves the time fully to appreciate what you are sanctioning. I suggest on the other hand that the proper course for your Lordships to pursue is not to pronounce an opinion either on my noble friend's side or on mine until you see in concrete form, in the provisions of the clauses of a Bill, what it is really sought to do. That is not an excessive demand. Consider the scope of what we are discussing. Keep in mind, if I may say so, this vast revolution which it is proposed to carry out in India—nay, two revolutions, because you are proposing at once to reorganise completely the Constitution of the Provinces and at the same time, before you have the slightest notion how that will work, to reform the Constitution of the Centre as well. Whatever opinion you have upon the merits of the question, even if you agree with almost every word that my noble friend has said, surely that is a tremendous thing to do, and one to be approached with the greatest care and caution.

My noble friend said that he thinks that everybody must by now have become familiar with the elements of this question. I have a great opinion of the intelligence (if I may use such a phrase) and of the ability of your Lordships, but it took us about eighteen or nineteen months to understand it all, and I think that it is asking a good deal of your Lordships, even with the high intelligence which you possess, to assume that you have realised in the brief space of something under a, month even the outline of a great many of the proposals which the Government are making to us. My noble friend said that this is a dilatory Motion. Is it so dilatory? Does he really think that to suggest to your Lordships that before pronouncing an opinion on these proposals you should see them in the form of the clauses of a Bill, is a dilatory Motion? Why, my Lords, it is the ordinary procedure of your Lordships' House. So far from being dilatory, it is what we always do.

I noticed that my noble friend quoted no precedent for what the Government are doing. I do not pretend to be a master of precedent, but I know of no precedent except that I believe there was a Motion in another place about the Irish Church Bill more than half a century ago. That is the nearest that I can get to it. It is a wholly unprecedented thing to come to your Lords-ships' House and say: "Accept the general recommendations" (for I do not, of course, go into very small detail) "of this Report; do not leave it over until you see it in the cold and difficult form of a Bill, when you cannot get out of the point. Agree at once in general terms." General terms are so much easier than precise terms. I say that to oppose such an unprecedented procedure is not too dilatory.

My noble friend said that the only difference between himself and those who were responsible for the Minority recommendation is that we think that the Government and their friends are going too far and too fast. He seems to think that it is necessary that we should hereafter proceed finally in the direction which he indicates. I repudiate that phrase. No doubt the Government are going too fast, but I deny that it follows as a matter of course that if the country were well advised enough to delay dealing with the central responsibility, necessarily in the long run they would follow the provisions which are set forth in the Majority Report. I deny that, and I can see many reasons why it should not be so. One of the reasons is that almost every country in Europe is repudiating this system at this moment. My noble friend, possessed of a sort of nineteenth century view of these things, seems to think that it is necessary that you should always have a Central Government and, if you like, a Central Federal Government, conceived upon a Parliamentary basis. Why does he think that? That is an assumption to which a logical mind like my noble friend's ought to have been superior at once. It does not follow in the least. If it be true that this Parliamentary system does not succeed in Italy, does not succeed in Germany, or in France or Spain, and so far as I know does not succeed in the United States of America, it does not follow as a matter of course that that is the end of federal central government, if we are wise enough not to have it too fast at the present moment.

What I want to come back to, if I may, is this. I am not suggesting to your Lordships that upon my Amendment you should pronounce a verdict upon the proposals of the Joint Select Committee. I am not making any such proposal as that. On the contrary, what I am proposing is that you should wait until you are quite sure what the proposals are, which is quite a different thing. I know that a great deal is made in public controversy on this question of the circumstance that so many gentlemen of high authority in Indian affairs are against us—against the Minority recommendation. I know that that is so. Those gentlemen are, many of them, very learned in Indian affairs. Of course there are many others who take precisely the contrary view. A very large number of members of the Services in India have been in communication with myself and others, and they totally disapprove of the White Paper, and no doubt will disapprove of the Majority Report as soon as they have had time to appreciate what it is.

But, even if it were true that the weight of Indian expert opinion was against us, I should not be unduly disturbed. They may understand India, but they do not understand constitutional government. That is where we come in. The experts on constitutional government are not to be found in India, but in the two Houses of Parliament, and in this body of public opinion which has grown up under constitutional conditions, into the very fibre of whose being have entered these constitutional instincts and knowledge, are the experts. I speak with due humility. I do not profess to be a high authority amongst your Lordships, but I do say that we are not to be crushed by any citation of Indian opinion by itself. Of course it is very important, but when you apply to the Indian problem these modern constitutional notions then you must come back to us and ask how have we found it in our experience of Constitutions here and all over the world—have we found these things to succeed or not to succeed? Therefore I take courage to approach the subject without any feeling of dismay.

As I have said, I share with my noble friend the admiration of the conduct of the Committee, but if he will allow me to make a very respectful criticism of the majority of the Committee it would be this: they did not devote their attention to the question whether these proposals were possible, but to the question: How can these proposals he made possible? They assumed the conclusions before they began to discuss the methods for carrying them out, and therefore when they were presented with any difficulty, with any of those anomalies to which my noble friend referred, they did not say that those anomalies ought to make them reconsider their position; what they said was: "We must find a way to evade these anomalies; a good way if we can find it, but a bad way if we cannot find a good one." They did not face the anomaly. The infinite difficulties which the Indian problem presents were not faced by the Committee in the sense that they set themselves to answer the difficulties. My noble friend admitted it. If you produce profound difficulties, and those who are responsible for Indian policy are not able to answer those difficulties, what would any reasonable man do? He would begin to ask: Am I quite sure I am right in these proposals at all? Is not that the obvious conclusion? I do not ask your Lordships to-night to say that. All I ask you to do is to say that these things being so, these questions having arisen, these difficulties having been presented to us in this form, we would rather see the Bill itself before we commit ourselves. I say that that is the only reasonable course to pursue.

I do not want to detain your Lordships at too great length to-night, but allow me to mention one or two of the fundamental difficulties to which the Government give no reply. There is finance in India. That was described by one of my colleagues on the Committee as a quicksand in India. I do not suppose the Government agree to that description, but for my part the idea of building a Constitution on a quicksand seems repellant to common sense. Of course in finance the members of the Central Legislature will have unequal powers. Some representatives there will have greater authority than others. Can you conceive a system in this country where the representatives of Hertfordshire in the House of Commons had greater authority in matters of finance than the representatives of Buckinghamshire? That is what is proposed by the Government and in the Report. No answer is given to that, and no answer is possible. I say, had you not better see the actual proposals in print before you commit yourselves to such a doctrine as that?

Take another point. Take the communal question. The communal question is profound. It cuts down right to the very heart of the problem, and the Committee were not agreed upon the communal question. I know my noble friend Lord Zetland is going to speak in this debate. I hope he will tell you whether he agrees with the recommendation of the Joint Select Committee on the communal question, and whether he suggests that your Lordships should approve of it. I know that he is a most honest man, and he will say nothing of the kind. You are giving the supreme control at the Centre to a community split from top to bottom in the region of the most profound convictions of mankind, cutting, that is to say, at the heart of religion, which moves men, and has moved men, more deeply than anything else. So much so that you have had to establish a creed register. Let me explain that in a way which I had no opportunity of explaining when I was speaking in public a short time ago because of shortness of time. What does a creed register mean? It means this, that Moslems and practically Hindus will each be registered in different registers. They will not vote together when they elect representatives to Parliament. The Moslems will be allowed to vote only for a Moslem candidate, and the Hindus will in practice only vote for a Hindu candidate. There is no central body between the two, as there is in this country. Here you can go down into the country and persuade the electors that, though they have voted Conservative hitherto, they ought, on the present occasion, to vote—shall we say Labour? We cannot do that in India. The Moslem can only vote Moslem. The Hindu will only vote Hindu, and the Moslem representative returned to the Legislature will have no inducement whatever to consider the interests of any of his constituents except those who belong to the religion which he professes.

To an Englishman or a Scotsman such an arrangement is, of course, the grossest absurdity. It is not self-government at all. There is no means of working self-government on those lines. How can you, if, when you think you have got a stronger case than your opponent, you cannot go and persuade the electors to vote your way rather than his? I am only saying what is common ground between the two sections of the Committee. You will find in the Majority Report a long passage in which it is explained that all the middle elements of English public life, the floating body which really decides our General Elections, do not exist in India at all. That, I may say, is what my noble friend calls one of those rather insignificant anomalies which he thinks might be safely trusted to chance in the future. I shall be very much surprised if your Lordships take that view.

And there is another point with reference to this communal question. The compromise to which the White Paper, following the Prime Minister, and the Majority Report have come, the Communal Award, is hated in India by all the Hindus. That is an important circumstance for you to consider. Remember that we can ask you to approve of this policy in order to give India what India wants, but if it can be shown that in a vital particular she does not want it, what becomes of the argument? One or two of my friends and myself were responsible in the Committee for putting forward a proposal for an All-India Council, which was of a federal tendency and intended to be of a federal tendency, but not of a wrong federal tendency, which I suggest the Report of the Majority has really pursued. What we were told was, "Oh, it is no good you making that proposal. India does not want it." That was supposed to be conclusive. But India does not want the Communal Award; at least, the Hindus do not want it—the Moslems do. And the real honest truth of the matter is, of course—let us speak out—that the Government were anxious to conciliate Moslem opinion. That is the truth. I do not say that was their only reason, but it was an important reason.

I hold no brief either for the Hindus or the Moslems. It is no business of mine to criticise them; that has no connection with the subject which I am upon. But, even if I preferred the Moslems to the Hindus, I say there is no future for a gerrymandering policy. It is ipso facto condemned. A scheme drawn up upon the ground that it will please the Moslems rather than the Hindus is founded on a complete constitutional fallacy. You cannot make a policy on those grounds at all—nothing which will stand, even if you were not ashamed to do it. No, this is another reason, and a very strong reason, why we should see these proposals in black and white before we pronounce an acceptance of them. I am not quite sure how far the Government are going to accept the Report of the Majority. I do not know how far Lord Zetland and his friends will let them go about the Communal Award and the Poona Pact; and unless he and his friends let them go, they will not be able to go anywhere; they depend entirely upon their support. Therefore, let us see where the Government stands in black and white upon that sort of question.

Let me just touch on one more big point. A good many gentlemen who said at the time the Committee was appointed that they had serious doubts have since said publicly that their doubts have been set at rest, and one of the reasons why their doubts have been set at rest is that the system of direct election, which was proposed in the White Paper, has been eliminated, and a system of indirect election has been put in its place. Well, I think that was right so far, because direct election was impossible. It was shown to be almost ludicrous in its operation. But it does not follow because the Committee thought direct election was impossible that they did not see any difficulties in indirect election. On the contrary, if your Lordships would look at the Proceedings of the Committee as they have been published in the Bluebooks laid before you, you will see that the representatives of the Liberal Party in the Committee were resolutely opposed to indirect election. Very able representatives they were too; two of them are sitting before me now, and they were resolutely opposed to it. The arguments they used appeared to be extremely good and I said so at the time.

Let us consider one or two of the arguments about indirect election. In the first place I ought to explain to your Lordships that what is meant by indirect election is that the members of the Lower House, of the Assembly, at the Centre, if the Report is followed, are to be elected by members of the Lower House in each of the Provinces. It is indirect; it does not come from the electors themselves, but indirectly through the members of the Assemblies in the Provinces. The first thing that has to be said is that in these circumstances a dissolution of the Central Legislature will be a very futile operation in almost every case. Just consider. The Central Legislature consists of representatives of the States and representatives of these Provincial Assemblies. The representatives of the States are nominated by the Rulers. Therefore, a dissolution of the Assembly so far as they are concerned will make no difference at all. It is not likely that the Ruler will change his opinion because Parliament is dissolved. If he did change his opinion it would not be necessary, so far as his representative is concerned, for there to be a dissolution, because you may take it from me that the representative will always do what the Prince tells him. Therefore, as far as the States' representatives are concerned there will be no power of dissolution at all. What will happen in the case of the Provincial representatives? There will not be any change in the electorate. In all probability the local Assemblies, the Provincial Assemblies, will consist of precisely the same men as before and with precisely the same opinions. There will be no change at all. They will all be pledged, and they will all send men of the same point of view again.

But even supposing there had been in the meantime a local provincial election, even so it would be quite certain what the views of the new representatives would be, and instead of the Governor-General being able to go to the electors and convince them that he was right and his Ministers were wrong, that is the sort of issue that would take place. He would come across these pledge-bound representatives in the Assembly whom it would be almost impossible to convince. I do not want to overstate my case. I shall not go so far as to say that the effective power of dissolution would disappear altogether, but I say it would be very gravely hampered. That is a point which is not answered, of course, in the Report of the Majority of the Committee. One of the reasons is that all this happened very late in the Committee. In the early stages of the Committee we were wandering in the desert of direct election. The Government defended direct election. When that was proved to be absurd, after the Committee had been sitting for a year or so, the Government found they had to go in for indirect election; but please do not imagine the matter was fought out. All these difficulties of indirect election were not really weighed.

I must not delay your Lordships, but I have not nearly finished with the difficulties of indirect election. My noble friend the Marquess of Lothian, who is going to take part in this debate, is a great authority on this point. He will be able to tell your Lordships how much easier it is to corrupt indirect electors than it is to corrupt direct electors, because they are far fewer in number. Another difficulty is that as representatives of the Provinces in the Central Assembly they will all be pledge-bound, of course, and therefore a decision of the Central Assembly, so far as it depends upon British Indian representatives at all, will always be a provincial decision. It will not take into account the wishes or the interests of the Centre but of the Provinces. That is a very formidable matter if it is thought out, because it affects finance directly. How are you going to adjust a financial arrangement when the Centre and the Provinces are both called upon to put their hands into the same pocket and the whole influence of the gentlemen who put their hands in is Provincial not Central? None of these things was thought out. All these things were extemporised very late in the Committee.

I cannot go on because it would take too long, but one of the consequences was that in order to find some method of producing an Upper Chamber in the Centre the Committee had to revolutionise the scheme of the White Paper. The scheme of the White Paper had been that the Lower Chambers of the Provinces should elect the Upper Chamber of the Centre, but when the Lower Chambers of the Provinces were pinched—if I may use the word—in order to return the Lower Chamber of the Centre, then the Committee had to find some new method to elect the Council. It was to anybody with any sense of humour almost ludicrous, and I need not say that the result of these efforts was a most absurd form of Central Upper Chamber, because it appeared upon investigation that the proposal was that the Central Upper Chamber should be elected by the combined body of the Upper Chambers of the Provinces just as the combined body of the Lower Chambers elected the Central Lower Chamber.

Unfortunately it turned out that all the Provinces had not Upper Chambers. That was positively the difficulty. If I remember aright, if the proposals of the Committee are adopted, out of eleven Provinces only five are to have Upper Chambers. I concede to my noble friend they are the most important five, or at any rate among the most important; but it was found that six Provinces had no Upper Chambers, and the Committee had to create ad hoc electors, intermediate electors, whose only function would be to elect members of the Central Upper Chamber. What a, paradise for the wire-puller! And the wire-puller in India, as indeed the wire-puller in some other places, is not above certain methods which the purist would call corrupt.

Have I not said enough to show your Lordships that you had better see all this in black and white before you vote for it? I have only one more word to say about these indirect electors. You would have thought at any rate that the members of the Provincial Assemblies were trustworthy persons who might be relied upon to act constitutionally. You would have thought that they at any rate would not have to be bound by these religious fetters which I have described in respect to the generality of India. Not at all. The members of these Provincial Assemblies are all to be divided by group registers. Even a Member of Parliament for Bombay, as he would be called, is not to be allowed if he is a Moslem to vote for a Hindu, or if he is a Hindu to vote for a Moslem in practice. Not at all. He is to be fenced within the narrowest limits of religious intolerance. And this is a matter which your Lordships' House is to accept without seeing it in black and white!Forgive me if I speak too hotly.

I must say one word about the Princes. I do not know which way the Princes are going to decide. I do not believe the Government know. I do not believe they have a glimmer of an idea. I can only judge from what I see in the public Press, and it seems to me that the enthusiasm which we were all told that the Princes possessed in order to rush into federation has cooled down a good deal. I do not know whether it is so. I do not pretend to have that knowledge of the Oriental mind which my noble friend and those who have borne rule in India possess. All I can say is, it seems extremely doubtful. But the real point in connection with the Princes which I would suggest to your Lordships is this—I only put it hypothetically—supposing a sufficient number of the Princes do not come in, what is the policy of the Government? I gathered horn my noble friend that they intended to go through with their Bill with its full Central Constitution and leave the question of whether the Princes are to come in or not in the air. That is to say, the Bill will be suspended, or the operation of it will be suspended, until it is known what the Princes are going to do. That appears to me an extremely hazardous measure of legislation. Are you really going to do that? Are you going to pass the Bill in all its details, in every respect, and then say to the Princes: "As soon as you come in then it will become operative"?

Two things of course will happen. First of all, the Princes will evidently have it in their power to make terms. Have you thought of that? There is another consideration. I hope noble Lords opposite will forgive me far what I am about to say; I am not going to say it with any want of respect for them. One of the reasons which has been urged upon Conservatives—if they will permit me these domestic details—to pass the Bill in its full form, with its central responsibility, is that if we do not do it why then these dreadful Labour people will come into office and they will do something very much worse. Let us conceive the situation which will be presented if the Bill is passed in its full form and is hung up until the Princes have made up their minds. Let us suppose—not at all an impossible supposition—that in the meantime there was a, General Election in Great Britain and that the Labour Party succeeded at the polls and became the Government. They will have before them the India Constitution Act in full detail and it will only want the very smallest action of theirs to put it into force, whether the Princes have come in or whether they have not. The whole material will be there. In other words, it would be quite possible in those circumstances, in a short one-clause Bill, for a Labour Government to produce an Indian Federation which has no Princes in it at all, or none to speak of. I believe that is what the Labour Party think ought to be done; I only judge from their public utterances. But how shall we Conservatives be placed in those circumstances? We have given them the whole material for doing this thing, and it is left for them to do it in a moment.

If there is one thing more emphatically said in the Majority Report than another it is that a federation of British India alone is absolutely out of the question. The greatest emphasis is laid upon, that. The Majority say that that would be absolutely fatal, and yet, if their policy is pursued, they will make it as easy as possible for these gentlemen opposite, if they were in power, to do the very thing which they themselves say would be fatal. I say that on their own showing there can be nothing more reckless than a policy of that kind, and, once more, before your Lordships are asked to accept the recommendation of the Majority, will you not wait until you see these clauses, until you see exactly how far they go, until you see whether the Government have been able to find mitigations of the difficulties which I have put forward, ways out of them? Will you not wait? Are we to be driven headlong into a decision? I cannot believe that that is a policy that anybody will really in his heart approve of.

I do not want to say anything disrespectful of my noble friends who sit upon that Bench representing the present Government, but would it be too much to say that there has been a tendency all through to try and anticipate the decision of Parliament? There was the Prime Minister's statement and the White Paper put forward and submitted to your Lordships' House about two years ago, which dealt with many of these very difficult questions on which you were called upon to give a decision. Then there is the Viceroy who went out of his way to say that he had been a Liberal all his life—that is no recommendation to any of us—and that he hoped before the next time he came to address the audience he would come as a constitutional sovereign, anticipating, of course, in the most barefaced way, the decision which Parliament was called upon to give. Was he reproved by the Secretary of State? I am sure the Secretary of State will not tell me. I hope he was, but I am a little doubtful, because I saw a repetition of something of the same kind by one of the other Governors.

There has been this tendency all through to ignore the immense complexity and deep difficulties of the problem, which was to establish a Constitution to embrace 350,000,000 of human beings, which was to establish Constitutions in every Province and a Constitution at the Centre at the same time, which was to try and overcome the chasm which separates Hindus and Moslems. All these things it was attempted to do. If the Majority of the Joint Select Committee have, as I believe they have, failed really to bridge these difficulties, that is no blame to their intelligence or their ingenuity or their resource. All these were very much in evidence. But however clever you are you cannot do that which is impossible, you cannot do that which is impracticable. It is no good saying that there must be central responsibility in India, and if there are difficulties, well then we must ignore the difficulties. It is no good saying that. As practical men you have to face each difficulty and see how it can be overcome. It is because, very respectfully, I do not want your Lordships to be put in a position of having approved recommendations which you have never really seen, that I ask your support.

I have been engaged in the whole of a long political life in representing principles in the form of provisions of a Bill. It is very difficult, and it is a science of its own. It often turns out that you cannot do it, that the principles are such that they cannot be represented in the form of a Bill. Then you have to change the foundations upon which you are working. To ignore that common experience in the case of this problem, a problem of the most vast importance which concerns the welfare of millions of fellow creatures who have no knowledge of politics whatever, and who look to you and you alone to protect them, I say is recklessness. And I ask you to remember, last of all, that once you have done it there is no retreat, no possibility of saying hereafter "We made a mistake, let us go back." The thing is gone. I ask you to pause, and I ask you to let the Government put in the concrete form of the provisions of a Bill what they propose. Let them bring it before the House of Commons and your Lordships in that form, pursuing the ordinary rule. Let it be submitted for its Second Reading, for its Committee stage. Then we must all abide by the result. Until then, I would ask you—I would appeal to the Government themselves—not to put the House of Lords, whose reputation and credit is their responsibility, in the position of having expressed an opinion upon something which, with all the ability in this House, they cannot understand. I ask them not to do that, but to accept this Amendment that I put forward. I am not asking you to follow every word that I have said in my speech. I am asking you to agree to the Amendment. I am asking you at any rate to pause and see exactly what the conditions are before you are asked to pass them into law. I beg to move.

Amendment moved—

Leave out all the words after ("That") and insert ("this House is unwilling to pronounce in advance an acceptance of far-reaching recommendations on Indian Constitutional Reform until it has had the opportunity of considering and approving the particular recommendations of the Joint Select Committee to be adopted by the Government and proposed in the concrete form of the provisions of a Bill.")—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)

LORD SNELL

My Lords, I have never attempted to address your Lordships under a sense of greater anxiety and responsibility than on the present occasion. The problem of the future government of India by its complexity, by its magnitude, and by the effect which our words and decisions may have upon the lives of 350,000,000 of our fellow subjects, transcends altogether every question of Party advantage or of individual preconceptions or prejudices. I shall assume in what I have to say to-day that every section of your Lordships' House is as anxious for the progress and peace of India as I am myself, and I venture to hope also that in what I say your Lordships will give me credit for a similar desire. I do not propose to enter into the very interesting family dispute which has been going on between separate sections of the Conservative Party. I can only say that we have some experience of these family political differences. If the Conservative Party want any help in order that these differences may be conducted with amiability and good temper, I shall be able to introduce them to the proper quarters.

I must attempt, in what I have to say, to speak not for myself alone, but as representing one of the great political Parties in the State, and to explain if I can the attitude which we adopt. Like the noble Marquess who has just spoken, I, too, was honoured by being appointed to this Committee, and I owe some kind of explanation of my stewardship to your Lordships. I desire to say, however, at the beginning that whether the Committee have done ill or well the responsibility now passes to Parliament. No one is entitled to assume that in regard to this legislation for India he is engaged in a piece of ordinary legislative routine. He must remember that it is his duty not to be led by prejudice or to act without adequate information. Whether the Committee have done right or wrong, they at least put themselves to the inconvenience of trying to master the subject. We have to remember today, now that this matter comes before Parliament, that the decision that Parliament will take will decide in all probability the peace and the orderly development of India, or continued distrust, political disturbance, economic and social misery, religious strife, perhaps revolutionary activity, and almost certainly some demand for clear-cut separation. In these circumstances each must act as he can justify his action to his own conscience.

I admit at the beginning that this proposed legislation does represent a risk. It is a risk either way, whether you give or whether you withhold, but the greatest risk of all is to do nothing. To do nothing in this matter is really to do the most revolutionary thing that the British Government have been asked to do. My own decision, for what it is worth, is to take the risk of generous concession, and to try to win India to the position of a proud and contented partner in the Commonwealth of Nations. My willingness to take that risk arises, as I believe, out of my own political experience and memories. Looking back on the major political events of my time, I think that the sanest, the bravest, the best rewarded of all the acts that I can remember was the spontaneous and un-delayed gift of self-government to South Africa. And in passing I pay a salute to the Liberal Benches and to the memory of the great and far-seeing statesman who made that possible. On the other hand, the saddest, the most lamentable thing that I can remember was the introduction of political partisanship into the Irish question, a partisanship which hid the virtues and exaggerated the faults of the Irish people, with the result that there has been produced in Ireland an unappeasable complex of hatred against our own country; and if any appropriate words could he written over the Dail in Dublin those words would probably be: "Too late!"

What is it that we want to produce in India? Do we wish to produce another South Africa or another Ireland? We can have either, as I believe. By generous trust all the difficulties of South Africa were healed, and we can heal such differences as there are in India in that way, and in no other. The noble Marquess who has recently spoken revealed the fact that India is split upon many questions. We have not always had complete unity in our own country on political questions, but the way to heal a split, in India or elsewhere, is to get the separate Parties to work on things that affect them both, and by so doing to build up a reservoir of good will (if I am not mixing the metaphor) which will enable them to overcome these other difficulties.

As I understand our business here today, it is not to go into the details of the Report. That will rightly come when the Bill is introduced. I quite understand that the noble Marquess, because he has to go away, had to take this opportunity of doing that or not do it at all. And may I say in passing how much his colleagues on the Committee, and indeed the whole House, hope that he will come back completely restored to health? What we are concerned with to-day is to get a generous atmosphere in which the details of this Bill may be considered. If we can we have got to get the soul of India on our side. We want to assure the people of India that we are mindful of their aspirations and that we will endeavour, according as the light is given to us, to produce results which will give both spiritual and practical blessings to the whole of the people of India.

Your Lordships may be good enough to allow me to associate myself, before I start upon my differences, with those who have spoken appreciatively of the work of the Chairman of the Committee. I am afraid that my three colleagues and myself gave him endless trouble, which he bore with calmness and patience and unfailing courtesy. I would like also to say that in my own judgment, if I, too, may speak impersonally, the weight of knowledge and the experience of the personnel of the Committee were in every way impressive. Every member of it was gravely conscious of his responsibility, and the constancy with which the Committee's work was attended to was, I believe, unprecedented in our legislative experience. I myself believe that the Committee, with all its faults as revealed by the noble Marquess, was not unworthy of the great task entrusted to it.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

Hear, hear!

LORD SNELL

I think also that to have served upon it, to have taken part in its work, to have been defeated by it on many occasions, to have joined in all that it did, was a privilege that none of its members would willingly have missed. I feel, too, that the Indian delegates by their patience, by their courtesy, by their dignity, helped immensely the work of the Joint Select Committee, and if the Report does not give satisfaction in India, it will not be the fault of the distinguished men and women who came over to put India's case before us.

Now the Central Group on the Committee had the best of both worlds. With quite respectable adroitness, disagreeing with both the Left (myself and my friends) and the Right led by the noble Marquess, whom we affectionately called "Diehards," the Central Group accepted the help of each against the other with quite engaging constancy. On odd occasions my little group was permitted to share fleeting moments of respectability by siding with the Government against the Right; but the Right needed no appeal to support the Government against the Left. They leaped in with an impetuous rapture as though each one of them said in his heart, "For this purpose was I sent upon the earth"; and the Central Group therefore stood to win every time, and did. Whilst my colleagues and myself will always suspect the quality of their insight, we shall never for a moment question their unfailing courtesy or the great attention they gave to what we said.

The members of the Labour section on the Committee were concerned with certain definite principles, and those principles included social and economic as well as political principles. In our judgment there can be no solution of the Indian problem that merely erects a political structure and ignores altogether the economic exploitation which the masses of India undergo, and it gives Indians who are poor very little comfort if they are economically oppressed by persons of their own nation, rather than by persons from overseas. When I have spoken, as I have for many years, about self-government for India, I have meant self-government for all Indians and not for a small professional or possessing class. Now we were also bound by certain principles in regard to the nature of the self-government that was to be given. When this matter came before your Lordships' House I read out a declaration to you on behalf of the Labour Party, one or two principles of which I will repeat: The Labour Party believe that, as stated by the Statutory Commission, the new Constitution should contain within itself provision for its own development. We think that the new Constitution should contain the principle laid down in the Irwin-Gandhi Pact that such safeguards as are necessary should be in the interests of India and agreed on in co-operation with the leaders of Indian opinion. The new Constitution should adopt the principle laid down by the Labour Government at the First Round-Table Conference, and repeated as their policy by the National Government at the Second Round-Table Conference, that the reserved powers should not be such as to prejudice the advance of India through the new Constitution to full responsibility for her own government. The policy of the Labour Party reinforced by these declarations, is therefore clear and unequivocal, and the Party will, in an endeavour to further that policy, nominate its representatives to serve on the Committee. But, my Lords, that did not mean that we were not free to examine each detail impartially upon its own merits, or that we were asked to ignore difficulties such as might appear in our work. Indeed, in the alternative draft which we submitted for the Committee's acceptance, we said that any Constitution must satisfy Indian public opinion. This is not to say that in every detail Indian views of what is desirable must be accepted, for we have to consider not merely the political crux but also those who as yet have little more than a dim conception of democratic government and electoral systems. Nor would it be right for us to subordinate entirely our greater and longer experience of the working of Parliamentary institutions to the views of Indian politicians. If we approach the Report itself, I say at once that there is much in it that I and my Labour friends accept, and if Parliament sees fit to embody in a new Constitution Act the recommendations that are made, they will constitute a greater gift of self-government to India than anything she has previously had.

The proposals include the establishment in eleven British Indian Provinces of responsible Ministries, all having control over all provincial subjects, including law and order. It contains proposals for an All-Indian Federation, to which the Provinces would be attached, it defines the respective responsibility of the Central and Provincial Legislatures, and it provides for the protection of minorities, and for decisive responsibility at the Centre. It also contains very decisive provisions for special representation of women and labour, and increases the electorate to some 14 per cent. of the Indian population. However you regard that, it is a considerable step forward, but always let us remember that these concessions may be modified by the wide powers conceded to the Governors, who may ignore the advice of their Ministers, and may pass Ordinances without their consent, and so on. Now, whatever else that is, it quite clearly is not full self-government.

If, however, we approved of a good deal in the Report, your Lordships will ask why we felt compelled to vote against its acceptance. It is very difficult to indicate in a few short words the cumulative effect of twenty months of anxious labour, of give-and-take, of argument and so on, and also the routine rejection of our appeals and arguments and proposals. But too often, as it seemed to us, the concessions were given grudgingly and in all cases were surrounded by over-elaborated precautions. The Committee's Report seemed to ignore the fundamental rights of the Indian people, and to regard India as an estate to be run for the benefit of England, rather than for the good of the Indian people. And almost wholly the political and financial safeguards and the commercial discrimination were for the protection of the position of possessing classes, and so on. There is no attempt made to protect the living standards of the vast masses of the Indian people, the millions of peasants, and the urban wage-earners.

Then we felt that the Committee regarded India as static, as something which went on year after year without change, whereas India is changing quickly, and so quickly that by the time some of these proposals are made operative they may be already out of date. With regard to women franchise, we regard the proposals as thoroughly unsatisfactory. The future of India, as we look at it, involves the emancipation of women to a larger extent than is proposed. If the customs, habits and so on of India are to be modified and reshaped, that will to a great extent have to be done by Indian women. We appealed in vain that application for the franchise should not be required, that a literary qualification should be substituted for the qualification of educational standards, that the wives of officers and soldiers should be enfranchised, and also that the wives of men entitled to vote should possess the vote.

When we come to special representation of labour we think that what is proposed is grotesquely, and perhaps also designedly, inadequate. It seemed to us of supreme importance that the masses of India should be placed in a position to defend themselves, and what is given to them is not sufficient to enable them to protect themselves against the economic encroachments upon their standards of life that are almost certain to be made. The landlords, for whom there was no sort of justification for special representation, are given special representation, and in regard to that in our draft alternative we said: If special representation were needed it should be given, not to those who, by reason of their wealth and status, command influence and power, but to those who, by reason of their poverty and low status, are likely to find their claims overlooked. … We have to ensure that self-government shall be given to India in such a way as to ensure that the new Constitution shall place in the hands of the mass of rural cultivators and urban wage-earners the possibility of attaining to political power. … In handing over power to other hands we must ensure that the interests of the weaker sections of the community are safeguarded. In regard to Second Chambers, in spite of what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Halifax, to-day, our consciousness of the blessings of Second Chambers in our own country is not sufficient to justify us in trying to impose them upon the Indian people. The modifications that have been made from the White Paper seemed to us constantly and almost entirely in the direction of further restriction, and never in the way of advance. Thus, as it appeared to us, the good will of the Indian people was sacrificed to the mummified prejudices of a section of the British Conservative Party. We were disappointed also, to use the words of the Simon Commission, that the proposed Constitution did not "contain within itself provision for its own development," the result of which will be that there will be continued diversion from social and economic issues, which are the real problem of India, to purely political issues.

Then there is the last phase of our objection to this Report. It is the fact that neither in the Report, in the speech of the Secretary of State in the other House, nor in the speech of the noble Viscount who introduced this Motion today, did the words "Dominion status" occur. It seems as though they were designedly ignored, and, as we saw it—perhaps we were wrong—we believed that the honour of England was engaged in this matter. Solemn pledges were given which I need not repeat, unless I am challenged to do so, indicating, at least according to the understanding of the Indian people, that they were to receive equal status with the rest of His Majesty's Dominions. Those pledges were specific; they were repeated; they were, as I believe, undeniable. Now why were those promises ever made if it was not intended to honour them? And, if it is still intended to honour them, what harm would there be if they were again made on behalf of His Majesty's Government? If it is said that no time was allotted for Dominion status, well and good. No time has ever been asked for. The Indian people have never fixed a date to this; but the pledges, as I think, were specifically given in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State in August, 1917—and the date is ominous, though I cannot believe that it was a piece of mere war propaganda, to be forgotten when the need was past. There was the statement also made by Mr. Churchill in a speech which has been quoted, a speech made before the Prime Ministers of the Dominions and representatives from India, so that the occasion when that speech was made was not an irresponsible one—and the right honourable gentleman possesses a capacity for an almost immodest lucidity and for a power of presentation which is the envy of all his friends, and that is everybody who has the privilege of his acquaintance. He falls back now upon such facile casuistry as that "due place" is not the same as "equal place."

I looked up what the word "due" means, and I found it may mean a debt that is owing or payable, a debt to be met according to contract, and I believe that that interpretation would be a right one to apply to this occasion. Then there is the question of status. Status, it is said, is not the same as function. All that is the prevarication of horse-dealing rather than statesmanship. If Mr. Churchill had offered some in-experienced and needy person, let us say a Christmas present, and that person was expecting it, what would he think if the right honourable gentleman came and told him, as he told the Joint Select Committee on October 23, 1933, that it meant (I am paraphrasing for the moment) a distant, remote Christmas "which it is not practicable to take into consideration in any period which human beings need take account of." Well, everybody knows that it would be impossible for him to do such a thing. He would stick to his word, or, if he did not, I would risk everything I have by saying that if his word was varied at all, it would be in the direction of greater, and not less generosity. I do not wish to detain your Lordships longer. I only desire in this matter of Dominion status to add this. If the promises were sincerely given, why cannot they now be repeated? Say, if you must, that what you are now able to offer is as far as you can see your way to accept responsibility for, but that the end remains the same. If you did that, the Indian people are a generous people, they understand the difficulty, and they would take you at your word. Their distrust would disappear, and they would give you with both hands all the safeguards that you desire.

Before I close, I should like to say this on another note. What we are doing mast, to some extent, be an act of faith. If we hand over government to the Indian people we want to hand over a machine that will work, not one that will not work. On that point which of us can be dogmatic? There was an American engineer who, highly specialised in his profession, built engines that were complicated, and to the building of them he and his staff devoted all the technical knowledge and experience at their disposal and took infinite precautions to see that the thing was one hundred per cent. perfect, and at the end he used to say to his staff, "Boys, start her up and let us see why she does not go." We always have to have the possibility in our mind that particular proposals "will not go," but if we have the good will of the Indian people behind the proposals then the technical difficulties will be overcome and "she will go."

Just one final word. It may be that because of the attitude that my friends and myself felt it right to take on this question we have earned some right to offer a word of advice to political leaders in India. If I am not trespassing by doing so, I would urge them to have patience and faith in their own future. No British Parliament can prevent the growth of the Indian people in wisdom and insight and administrative power. Therefore I make such appeal as I can that above all things there should be no disorder in India; that is precisely what the critics of India want to see. I ask them also to ignore the wounding accusations of incompetence and worse which have been thrown at them, and I am entitled to do that because we too have been honoured by these accusations of incompetence and worse from the same sources. We have suffered under the combined misrepresentation of Press and platform and pulpit, been isolated as social lepers because we took a particular attitude. We smiled in defeat and we listened to what was said, and so far as we know we are not a vote the worse off for it. We have gone on from strength to strength, and the Indian people can do the same thing.

But if they insist on our reproducing in India British Parliamentary institutions—and I have always defended their right to do so—let them take care also to reproduce the political temper and method, the ordered discussion, the patient faith, and the spirit by which these institutions have been developed and preserved. It has taken us 700 years in England to develop our representative government, and the politicians in India are not so superior to ourselves in experience that they can ignore our lessons. Suppose they have to wait for Dominion status for a period, what then? What are ten or fifty years in the history of India? She was a great civilisation before our nation began to be. Therefore I conclude with an act of courage in appealing to the political leaders of India, whatever their disappointments may be in regard to the Act which Parliament may pass, to co-operate to the best of their power until they can get more in the future, to win freedom, as we have had to win it, by using every acquired step as a preparation for further development. If that is done the Constitution will work, and the United States of India will prove as great a blessing to the Eastern world as the United States of America have been to the Western world.

TEE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

My Lords, I have read the Resolution which the Government have put down to-day in a somewhat different way to that in which the noble Marquess who has moved the Amendment to it has done. I feel it is but one more stage in that process of infinite inquiry, of mutual consultation, of argument, whereby the new Bill has been prepared before it is submitted to Parliament. So far from asking this House to come to a final judgment about it, the Resolution only asks its authority to accept the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee, which in effect is almost the First Reading of the Bill, as the basis for the revision of the Indian Constitution. It is important, I think, after all these long years that the Government should feel, especially in the light of the discussions that have taken place in the country, that it has the general support of both Houses of Parliament for the main principles that underlie, the Joint Select Committee's Report.

I confess that after years of deliberation it is difficult to maintain that attitude of enthusiam or expectation with which many of us entered into consideration of the new Indian Constitution. There have been years of search for agreement: agreement between Parties in this country, agreement between officials in England and officials in India, agreement between Parties and communities in India, agreement between Indians and British on Committee after Committee, at Round-Table Conference after Round-Table Conference, and finally in the Joint Select Committee itself. If ever there was a Bill which has had the great weight of experience and wisdom brought to bear upon it it will be this Bill. I venture to say that no Constitution in human history has ever had so much talent, so much good will, so much anxious thought bestowed upon it as the recommendations contained in the Joint Select Committee's Report. If it is not symmetrical, if it contains the anomalies—and I admit them all—which were laid before your Lordships by the mover of the Amendment, it is simply because of the complexities of the Indian problem itself.

I only want to make two preliminary comments. In the first place I should like to associate myself with all that other speakers have said about the suavity, wisdom, tolerance, and good sense of the Chairman of the Joint Committee; and I should like also to associate myself with what has been said about the immense ability, fortitude, and practical common sense of the Secretary of State in piloting his proposals through this Committee, and pay tribute to the fidelity with which he has stood by those general understandings to which he came early on with the Indian representatives. I should like also to say that I am sure the noble Lord who has just spoken will agree with me that the rather unpleasant treatment which he said at certain times he and his colleagues had received was not received in the Joint Select Committee. We could not have had a body conducted with better temper and more harmonious relations both between the Indian delegates and among the British Party delegates themselves.

I would also like to say that I agree entirely with the condemnation made by the noble Marquess of the proposals for indirect election. I do not propose to argue that case to-day, but I hope to be able to move Amendments on that point when the Bill is before us. I will only say this. I think the fundamental objections are twofold; I think they weaken the Government of India by making it far too subordinate to the Provinces. And it will put an intolerable burden of responsibility on the Viceroy in person to resist these fissiparous tendencies in the Provinces. I do not propose to say more now. But I want to make it quite clear that as between the two alternative systems, both of which have very great difficulties, I am an unrepentant believer in the system of direct election rather than the system of indirect election.

I do not propose to go over the merits of the Joint Select Committee's proposals in any detail to-day. I do not think they could have been presented to the House in a more wise and convincing way than they were presented by the noble Viscount who introduced this Resolution today. I would rather direct your Lordships' attention to another question, the two broad alternatives which are before us to-day. On the one hand, the proposals are criticised on the ground that the safeguards are too numerous and that they nullify the principle of responsible government. That is a view which is broadly held by noble Lords who sit on the Benches on my left; and it is of course a view strong]y held by great sections of opinion in India itself. On the other hand, there is the view which has been expressed by the noble Marquess this afternoon, that we are going too far and too fast, and that we ought to be far more cautious. I want to examine if I may, both those alternatives, for if we find we have to exclude these alternatives this House will be driven back upon the Joint Select Committee's proposals by the same irresistible compulsion of facts as everybody else who has ever studied this question for any length of time has been driven.

Why is it that the members on these three Benches support safeguards, having regard to the view they have long held that the only solution, where you have the political aspiration for self-government as strong and vigorous as it certainly is in India to-day, is to place full responsibility on the shoulders of Legislatures as we did in the case of South Africa and the Dominions? The answer is the size and complexity of India itself. There really no comparison between the conditions with which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman dealt in 1906 or the conditions of any other Dominions and the conditions of India. In every Dominion you had either a homogeneous community in no case larger than five millions in number, or at most two races, Dutch and English in one case and French and English in another. There is no comparison whatever with an area as large as India, containing 350,000,000 people, which even yet has no common language except English, with the communal divisions which have been referred to to-day, with a great degree of illiteracy and with still a very rudimentary experience in the art of self-government. There can be no comparison, it seems to me, between the two cases and the more I have studied this question the more convinced am I that safeguards are in the interests, and absolutely essential in the interests of India itself.

I confess, however, that I was surprised at one phrase which the noble Lord, Lord Snell, used where, in referring to safeguards, he said that the safeguarding powers conferred on the Indian Governors enabled them to lessen responsibility almost at their own will. I venture to think the noble Lord has not yet grasped the basic principle embodied in the term "special responsibility," and I think also that a great body of opinion in India has not yet grasped the vital principle on which this Bill rests, a principle, I venture to say, which, while not wholly novel, has never before received anything like the full expression which it receives in this Report. What is the principle on which the Bill rests? It is contained in the words "responsibility with safe-guards." Under the proposals of the Report the Indian Legislatures and the Ministries responsible for them will be fully responsible for every aspect of Indian Government except defence and foreign affairs, subject to the special responsibilities of the Governor and Governor-General. These special responsibilities are probably familiar to all noble Lords, and I will repeat only very briefly their essence.

Both the Governor and the Governor-General are empowered and bound to intervene in the event in their opinion of a grave menace to the peace and tranquility of India. The Viceroy, but not the Governors, is bound to intervene if any policy pursued by the Ministry seems to him to endanger the financial stability and credit of India. Both the Governors and the Viceroy are bound to intervene in the event of there being any interference with the statutory rights of the Public Services or menace to the legitimate interests of the Public Services or the legitimate interests of minorities. They will also have to intervene if there is unfair discrimination against British trade, and if there is any attempt to impair the rights of Indian States. If the Legislature and Ministries of India do not create a grave menace to the peace and tranquility of India, do not impair the financial stability and credit of India, do not interfere with the legitimate interests of the Civil Service or minorities, do not indulge in unfair discrimination against British trade and do not interfere with the rights of Indian States, the whole responsibility for Indian Government other than defence and foreign affairs will rest on Indian shoulders.

To say that the Governor may interfere more or less at his discretion is entirely to misread the basic principle of this Bill. I hope Indian public opinion will realise the immense advance which the principle of special responsibility involves. It does give them full responsibility—provided they do not do things which involve these five or six special responsibilities. I venture to think that if peace and tranquillity is gravely menaced or the financial stability of credit in India is imperilled and so on, the Governor and the Viceroy ought to intervene. It is vital to India that they should intervene. It is vital above all to the working people, the villagers about whom the noble Lord, Lord Snell, so eloquently spoke, that they should intervene, because if there is one section of the community which is going to suffer more than any other from the breakdown of government it will be the poorest classes.

I should have thought that the Labour Party, if it accepts, as it does, the principle of full responsibility subject to safeguards, would have been the first to insist that the safeguards should be effective, so that if events happened in India which did gravely imperil the prosperity and peace and tranquillity of the masses of the people, they and any other British Government could intervene before it was too late to prevent India going into the chaos of China. Therefore I am in every sense a believer in the principle of safeguards, though I much prefer the words used by the noble Viscount who introduced this Motion, "Emergency powers," because I think they are essential to the working of a Constitution of a complexity and containing, inevitably, anomalies absolutely unknown in constitutional practice hitherto. That is the first alternative proposal, that we should enact a Constitution either without any real safeguards, or with safeguards so whittled down that if it becomes necessary to use them they will be ineffective for their purpose. I entirely support the principle of the Report—that of full responsibility on Indian shoulders subject to the right of Governors and the Governor-General to intervene if the calamities the possibility of which is envisaged in the Special Responsibility Clauses actually arise.

Now may I turn to the other alternative, the alternative put forward in the Minority Report of the noble Marquess who has moved an Amendment to the Motion before the House? I will not repeat his criticisms—they were very brilliantly and clearly enunciated—of the inevitable anomalies in a Constitution in which hereditary Rulers elect to Legislatures alongside democratic Provinces, the in-and-out clause affecting certain elements of British India, the Communal Award as it affects the normal working of responsible government, the inevitable inexperience of great elements in India in working a Constitution so vast and so elaborate as this Constitution will necessarily be. In the name of these complex anomalies he has pleaded for caution, for responsibility in the Provinces in the first stage. The noble Viscount who introduced the Motion pointed out the inevitable effect of the first of his proposals, that the Governor should be in effect responsible for the Police during a preliminary period. I can imagine no more terrible task for any Governor than to be sent out to India bound by the Constitution to enforce any legislation which may be passed by a Ministry over which he has no control. It seems to me an essential principle of responsibility that the consequences of legislation and administration should rest entirely on the shoulders of those who enact it, and that the Governor should only intervene if he thinks that policy is leading to one of the results mentioned in the Special Responsibility Clauses. That seems to me a fatal element in the first of the proposals made by the noble Marquess.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

May I ask, if that argument is sound, why the noble Marquess and his friends made an exception in the case of Bengal?

THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

I do not think there is any exception. All that was done in the case of Bengal was that in the event of terrorism reaching a certain point, the Governor should have the right to take over any of the powers of Government which he thought necessary.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I think, if the noble Marquess will refresh his memory, he will find that what the Majority Report suggested was that unless things altered between now and then these powers of taking responsibility from the Ministers to the Governor are to be exercised at once.

THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN

The essential difference is this. The proposal for Bengal is not that the responsible Ministry should go on legislating and administering and that the Governor should control the Police. The proposal is that, in the event of his feeling that the situation in regard to terrorism is serious, he may take over any powers of Government which he feels necessary to enable him to deal with it. Then there is the second proposal of an irresponsible Centre and an Executive responsible only to the Government here at home. I venture to think that the recent Elections have proved that that system would break down at once. You would have a totally irresponsible Legislature, manned by irresponsible members. Further, the proposal that the Viceroy should be able to take his Ministers from the Legislature is to introduce in its most effective form the very principle of responsible government which has led to complete transfer of powers in every Dominion. I think Close proposals are not only unworkable, but extremely dangerous.

Now I come to what, to my mind, are by far the most formidable objections to the policy of provincial automony first and going slow. Is it as safe and as cautious as at first sight it may seem to be? First of all, Parliament took the responsibility of launching India on self-government, wisely or unwisely, in the Act of 1920. That was the responsibility of Parliament. She pledged herself to develop it, and she cannot go back on it. In 1931 the Prime Minister of the day made a speech which admittedly does not bind Parliament but which has had a profound effect on India, and which no Parliament can possibly afford to ignore. These are the words which lie uttered, and they were re-affirmed at the outset of the present Parliament by the National Government: The view of His Majesty's Government is that responsibility for the Government of India should be placed on Legislatures, Central and Provincial, with such provisions as may be necessary to guarantee, during a period of transition the observance of certain obligations and to meet other special circumstances, and also with such guarantees as are required by minorities to protect their liberties and rights. That was the statement made before this House at the beginning of the National Government, which was made on the authority of the National Government, and while it does not bind Parliament, Parliament cannot afford to ignore the inevitable consequences of that statement on political opinion in India.

Then consider the events that have happened in India since 1920, since Parliament took the responsibility of launching India on the principle of responsible government. There are, I think, ten Legislatures in the Provinces and one in the Centre which contain nearly one thousand legislators, one thousand politicians, though there is, of course, a minority who constitute the official bloc. There is this great body of men in India who have served in Legislatures for thirteen or fourteen years. Out of forty-three Ministers and Executive Councillors, thirty-two are Indians derived from the Legislatures. The Viceroy has three Indian members of his Council, though they are not responsible in any way to the Legislature. At the Round-Table Conference Indians sat on terms of absolute equality with the representatives of the Parties in this country in drawing up proposals for self-government in India. India has been granted status by being given a seat at the Imperial Conference and at the League of Nations.

Seven million Indians have exercised the franchise at four elections, and large numbers of them have exercised the franchise in municipal and local government elections. In the Universities and colleges of India to-day there are one hundred thousand students, more than twice as many as there are in all the Universities of Great Britain. They are being indoctrinated, as were their predecessors, by the ideas of liberty and self-government. They are all saturated with Western knowledge and Western idealism. They are being turned out at this rate from the Indian Universities. There are one hundred newspapers in India which are Indian owned, against two or three which are in British hands. Practically the whole of the Bar is manned by Indians, and very ably and competently manned. If the policy of going slow, if the policy of withdrawing powers from the Central Legislature, as the noble Marquess proposed in certain matters, is adopted, if the pledges made, not by Parliament but by the Government, are ignored, do you think you would have any co-operation from anybody in India? Do you think you would find one representative person to stand for election in one Legislature, after all the political experience and education they have gained?

Why has there been this improvement which has taken place in India in the last three years? Because of the dual policy of, on the one hand, repressing firmly and rightly civil disobedience and attempts to promote constitutional reform by unconstitutional methods, and on the other hand, of standing by the constitutional proposals outlined at the Round-Table Conference and in other discussions with Indian delegates based on the four vital principles: federation, provincial autonomy, central responsibility and safeguards. Those are the four basic principles which were laid down at the first Round-Table Conference, upon which the first civil disobedience campaign was discontinued, and upon which every Indian from one end of India to the other who is politically minded expects and believes that the new Constitution is going to rest. The proposal of the noble Marquess is that these principles should be torn up. If they are, you will have no co-operation from anybody in India.

Things will not stop there. It is a perfect illusion to think that the issue before us is between the present proposals and taking a nice little gentle step forward with provincial autonomy and then waiting ten, fifteen or twenty years, and enacting the rest in our own good time. That is not the issue. The issue is going to be between the present proposal and naked repression. If these proposals are rejected the civil disobedience movement will certainly restart, and all those who have been co-operating with us will refuse to co-operate with us. We shall have no support in India. We shall be driven inexorably to exactly the same methods of repression as we have had to adopt in other countries when we have denied national aspirations, and all the more so because we shall have failed to fulfil the expectations which have been encouraged and the promises which have been made. If we are confronted with that situation, what shall we have to do? We cannot possibly leave the vernacular Press day by day preaching sedition, revolution, and the breaking down of laws. We shall have to suppress the Press, inevitably. We cannot allow all these professors and teachers in the schools and colleges to go on talking of the basic principles of British liberty; we shall have to suppress them inevitably. Further, we shall have to create a force similar to that which exists in many countries for dealing with ordinary political opposition. The ordinary Police will not be sufficient; we shall have to reinforce our Police, we shall have to increase our Army, we shall have to make a sort of political Army in order to prevent youths organising political demonstrations in the way we are now familiar with all over the world. We shall inevitably be driven to repression from top to bottom in India.

Supposing we adopt that policy, how long shall we have to carry it on? Is there any experience in the world to show that repression of one nation by another ends in creating in the repressed nation a willingness to be governed by the other nation? All that it does is to produce a sullenness and bitterness which reappear at every opportunity. It is often said that a period of strong government in Ireland for twenty years would have solved the Irish problem, but after all Ireland was in its most peaceful condition in 1905 after ten years of resolute government. Yet every single constituency in Southern Ireland returned a member demanding self-government. We had not converted Ireland to the Union in the slightest degree. Nor will this policy succeed in converting India to being governed by England against its will. Further, how long will British opinion tolerate a policy of repression? I should have thought that if there were one lesson taught by the last few years it is that the people of Great Britain will not shoot people down merely because they ask for the right to govern them-selves. They will not see it through. And even if they did see it through, how are you going to prevent, after five or ten years, the advent of a Liberal or Labour Government which will reverse that policy? You can only prevent it by introducing a Fascist constitution in this country.

Now that is the policy which the noble Marquess who moved this Amendment is really recommending to this House. It is not "going slow"; it is revolution. It is a policy leading inevitably to repression, revolution, and to Fascism in India and in this country. I do not deny that there is something to be said for the policy. It is not a policy which I or my friends could support. But there might be something to be said for it if you think that the preservation of law and order and of unity in India, is so important that everything else should be sacrificed. But do not let anybody think that it is a mild proposal which is being put forward by the noble Marquess—that it is a policy of caution and peace. It is exactly the opposite, and I venture to think that when it comes to the Second Reading debate he ought to come before this House and say that that is what he is asking this House to approve. That is his policy; and certainly the right honourable gentleman who represents Epping ought to say in another place that this is his policy, because that is really what it is. Therefore I venture to submit to this House that the alternatives are not the nice gentle ones which they seem to be. The alternatives are far more dangerous and far more formidable than the well-weighed and well-balanced proposals, the fruit of seven years' sympathetic deliberation by all sections of opinion, which are embodied in the Report of the Joint Select. Committee.

It is sometimes said that all our proposals are stultified because of the obvious recovery of Congress in India. I am not so afraid of Congress as some of those at any rate who express their opinions on public platforms. In fact, 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. Congress represents the aspiration of young impetuous India anxious to take responsibility on its own shoulders. I once had a conversation with the Congress Leader, Mr. Gandhi—a very intelligent person, though a most terrible difficulty to all people in authority and all politicians. This is what he said: "I agree that Great Britain has done great things for India. It has given us order, it has given us justice, it has given us unity. But you do not realise that you have also done irreparable injury to India. You have taken away our backbone. For fifty years you have done everything for India and you have not put the responsibility for government upon the Indian people. If we have vices to-day, if we have weaknesses to-day, it is because ever since the Mutiny you have done everything for us and you have not evoked any capacity for self-government, or political courage, or sagacity in the Indian people, and that is why I oppose you."

That is not an unworthy motive. It is a motive with which every member of this House will sympathise. But the policy to which it led, which I think is the futile policy of civil disobedience, a policy which is bad for those who practise it, bad for government and bad for society, has, I am glad to think, now been ended by Congress as a result of the dual policy of which this Constitution is part. Congress has repudiated civil disobedience, and the Leader of Congress, as I understand, has repudiated it. That is an immense advance, and as I see it the first fruits of the Liberal policy which we are now pursuing towards India.

There is a second reason why I am not afraid of Congress. Because I believe that the one political lesson, which has more often been realised 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. We are not saying to Congress or to any other Party—and Congress is by no means so numerically strong as some people think—"We are going to give you a small instalment of self-government." We are saying to Congress, the Moslems and the other elements in India—and they are many—" You shall take the responsibility for the whole of the Provincial Government; you shall take the responsibility for a large field of Central Government. If things go wrong you will no longer be able to blame Great Britain for it. You will be responsible. If the milk does not arrive in the morning it will be your fault and not the fault of Downing Street." It is that kind of situation which more rapidly than anything else will convert the irresponsibility and extremism of Congress and other Parties in India to political responsibility, and there is no other way of doing it. The policy of repression, the policy of denying responsibility, has never succeeded, and never will succeed. The only way forward is to place responsibility firmly on their shoulders, still retaining clearly in our hands those safeguarding powers which will enable us to prevent the disasters which might occur through the immensity of the responsibilities which are being thrust on India under this Constitution.

I do not know whether my voice can possibly reach India. Perhaps it may. The last thing I said to Mr. Gandhi before he left this country, before the second period of civil disobedience was launched, was to ask him whether, if we were faithful in this country to the four basic principles contained in the agreement between the noble Viscount, Lord Halifax, and himself—namely, provincial autonomy, federation, central responsibility, and reservations and safeguards in the interests of India—he would go back to his own young men and women and make them see that the way to acquire political capacity and true self-government was by entering through the Legislatures and abandoning the negative damaging policy of civil disobedience. I hope when he has had time to consider the immense opportunity which this Constitution affords he will give that advice to his people, and advise them to return to constitutional methods and to Jackie the social problems of their own country in that way.

Therefore, I say that I am going to support the broad proposals of the Joint Select Committee. Many of them I would like to see altered, but they do represent a compromise between people of good will, and in substance they represent an agreement between the better mind of England and the better mind of India. They represent an agreement come to under calm conditions, and not under political pressure, and I believe they will not leave behind them any serious bitterness. I therefore earnestly hope that your Lordships will give a unanimous vote in favour of this Resolution. In conclusion I will read a few wise words said by one of the Indian delegates to our Conferences, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru: Give India a Constitution which will enable her to turn aside from the long struggle between India and England for political reform and to settle down to constructive work. I believe that is good advice. I believe, too, that this Bill will be accepted, that it will make for reconciliation, and that it will afford Indians immense opportunities for constructive work in India. And I believe finally that if we do not seize this opportunity it is one which will never recur.

LORD PHILLIMORE

My Lords, I rise with great trepidation to address you on such an important subject as this. I realise that I have no special qualifications in regard with India. I have not—unlike, no doubt, many of your Lordships—got that mastery of any of the Indian tongues which will be the key to any nation's heart and win the understanding of that nation, but I call claim this, that I have behaved with model propriety in this matter, and followed the advice of my leaders in making no decisions, still less giving utterance to any, until this Report was in my hands. While I am on this subject I may say that I think the last speaker was a little hard upon those of us who, after all, are only ordinary members of a Party, when he urged that for seven years this subject had been under our consideration; he forgot that we had been told very specifically that it would be best for us to wait, and not make up our minds until the Report was in our hands.

For my part, not having any special knowledge of India, I have to accept the Report itself and the Report of the Statutory Commission, and the Reports of the Round-Table Conferences, as setting out the facts of the position in India as they are to-day, and I do accept them. In particular, also, I accept an assurance which my noble friend Lord Halifax gave on a previous occasion, I think a year and a-half ago, when he told us very specifically that the Indian people had acquired such a measure of political consciousness as to justify their being given a great measure of self-government. I accept that, and with that acceptance I accept also the general proposition of provincial self-government. Granted that political capacity and that political consciousness, it seems to me that there is no way out—not that I want to find a way—of granting provincial self-government, and it strikes me in reading the Report, and many of you will have noticed it, that the part of the argument which deals with provincial government hangs well together and the conclusions follow closely the premises.

I find no difficulty in accepting the main recommendations of the Committee on this head. My difficulties are not of the kind that have been dealt with so far in the debate. I was afraid that one of the Parties would urge a more generous gesture and leave it at that. I was afraid someone would get up and threaten us with civil disobedience and rebellion. I thought myself that possibly it was a little regrettable that such a consequence to a refusal to grant all that the Indians might ask should be so clearly set out before them. None of these are my difficulties. My difficulty is this, that having accepted these facts, and above all things the political development of the Indian people, I want to see them given a workable series of institutions, within the framework of which they can successfully progress along the paths of self-government. That is what I do not find. To judge from the Report it would appear that Lord Macaulay invented India and the Indian mind. I find nothing but a passing reference to the institution known as the Elders or Village Council. But for that I find no native ground on which to stand until we come to the feudal States, and I do not understand that the Committee intend that the model to be followed in India is the feudal model of the feudal States.

Where is the Indian tradition finding its opportunity for expansion in the framework of the proposals of this Report? Some of your Lordships will remember that there was a Joint Select Committee three years ago on Closer Union in East Africa. On that Committee I had the good fortune to sit, and I well remember that all three Parties were united on one point, and that was that in this problem of the development of an indigenous population—and of course there is no comparison between the degree of civilisation of the Indians and of the Africans, but still the problem was the same—the one aim we must set before us was to follow methods and forms of organisation which have a traditional appeal to these peoples. Now this Report, so far from finding, any ground of tradition, specifically states that we should base our scheme on the Indian Government as it exists to-day, that is to say, on a system of government which, after all, as has been abundantly pointed out, we have ourselves imposed upon the Indian people. I cannot find that the Report anywhere gives sufficient attention to this cardinal factor.

It may be that there exist at the present time in India no traditions which are worth using. Lord Macaulay and the examination paper may have been too potent for the autochthonous growth. But there is one thing which is quite certain. Though you may expel nature with a fork or an examination paper, she will always come back, and that seems to me a cardinal factor in the situation. You are quite deliberately giving Indian nature its head in the Provinces, and it is there, where India is given her head, that she will grow and develop most luxuriantly. Is it likely that if the Indian nature is given its head, she will always develop within the framework of British Parliamentary institutions? I am sure that none of your Lordships could contend that that is the least likely. It is far more likely that she will develop some conceptions alien to us, but native possibly to the Indian mind, and that, being free to go ahead in the Provinces, she will produce a provincial polity which is something quite different from the framework which we have prepared for her.

After all, as the Report so well points out, two-thirds of India is based on the phenomenon of caste, one-third we will say roughly is based on the doctrine of the equality of man. Some of those Provinces will probably be influenced more by one conception of that kind, and some by another. Now, suppose something which is so alien to us as a polity based on the phenomenon of caste gradually develops in the Provinces, what is going to happen when it meets the Central Government? The Central Government is cast by the Report in rigid written form, in the same mould which possibly the Provincial Governments have just broken through. What sort of a clash will there be to concurrent lists of legislative objects when a Provincial Government such as I have suggested, based on the phenomenon of caste, meets the Central Executive? Surely if you want self-government for the Indian people—and I suppose it is from the point of view of the Indian people that we ought chiefly to look at this Report—to develop happily, you must have elasticity at the Centre. If I am asked how I am going to obtain elasticity at the Centre, I can only say that it is quite clear that one man can move faster and adapt his methods more quickly than two hundred, that you will always have the Governor-General in Council, and that possibly there is no need to look any further.

To my mind this question of flexibility is absolutely fundamental. You are asking us to build a bridge of steel girders, and you are allowing no room in the joints for expansion or contraction. Read again those admirable paragraphs 13 and 20 in the Report, and you will find set out there under the headings British "Constitutional theory and practice" and "British Conception of Parliamentary government" the most admirable reasons why you should not follow the course which you propose to follow. To my judgment, based on the evidence of the Report itself, whenever the Report is dealing with the responsibility of the Centre, the conclusions fail to harmonise with the premises. And it is hardly to be wondered at, because, after all, having first of all considered that you wanted to obtain certain things, you have set to work to set out various safeguards which you consider necessary as practical statesmen, and in the course of setting out the necessity for those safeguards you argue most potently against the institutions which you are going to recommend. If the gods do like to see a brave man struggling with difficulty, they must indeed have rejoiced at the sight of this Committee trying to reconcile their premises and their conclusions. They have my great sympathy.

The truth of the matter is that the introduction of responsibility at the Centre at this juncture is an unworkable impossibility. I am not alone, after all, in making that suggestion. Neither is the Report the only document which we have before us. The Statutory Commission, which sat, I think, for three years, is more emphatic on the subject of dyarchy than I could possibly find words to be, and dyarehy is, of course, the principle which you are going to adopt at the Centre. Under the heading of "Impossibility of Dyarchy at the Centre" the Commission say: First we lay down without hesitation the proposition that dyarchy at the Centre, or any system of divided responsibility resembling dyarchy, is quite impossible. Unity in the Central Executive must be preserved at all costs. Then, if I may quote once more: The ultimate creation"— the ultimate creation, for we are looking at the development of native government— The ultimate creation of responsible government at the Centre cannot be reached by constructing a Central Executive one part of which is not responsible for the other. Could words be more emphatic on the question of dyarchy? I can only beg your Lordships to re-read these passages and also the passage in this Report which deals with dyarchy in the Provinces. There you will find the same arguments set out against making use of dyarchy, and these arguments apply with equal force at the Centre. There is no new factor in the situation which snakes these arguments invalid in the case of the Centre.

There is one new factor, of course, in the situation since the Statutory Commission sat, and that is the offer of the Princes. But that offer of the Princes does not bear on this question of dyarchy, neither does it invalidate the conclusions of the Simon Commission on that subject. We are asked to believe, and it has been freely stated, that the offer of the Princes was conditional, amongst other conditions, upon setting up responsible government at the Centre. I dare say I am wrong, but that is not my reading of the offer. I read the offer as containing the condition that there should not be a British India responsible government at the Centre—in other words, if no responsible government were set up at the Centre the condition would no longer apply. I will not keep your Lordships by dwelling on the financial difficulty. I have said enough to show you that in my opinion it is impossible to convince us that responsibility at the Centre is to-day workable, and I have said that on the strength of the internal evidence of the Report which we have been asked to await and which is the main evidence that we have in front of us.

A general appeal has been made again and again to your Lordships to enact a generous measure of confidence in the people of India. What we are being asked to enact is a rigid Constitution at the Centre within which the self-development of the Indian people will rapidly become impossible. At all events the generosity of the Report is not much appreciated in the country for which it is designed. I venture to say that in this particular the House could not do better than take the advice of the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, and await the introduction of the Bill.

LORD HARDINGE OF PENSHURST

My Lords, the criticisms of the Report of the Joint Select Committee both outside and inside this House have in no sense shaken the confidence that I feel that our Report, if embodied into law, will promote the welfare of the people of India and the closer future co-operation of this country with all that is best in that vast Continent. I have no intention of taking up much of your Lordships' time, but I happen to he one of those who regarded the White Paper with considerable misgivings, and when invited by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House to join the Committee I told him frankly that I disagreed with a good deal of the contents of the White Paper, but on his pressing me I readily joined the Committee. In doing so I determined to regard the whole question afresh and with an open mind.

I do not propose to deal with many of the controversial points raised by my noble friend the Marquess of Salisbury, but I wish to say a few words on the two questions of the transfer of law and order in the Provinces and of responsibility at the Centre, which appear to be the principal line of attack by those Conservatives who are hostile to the Committee's Report. It seems difficult to believe that the opponents of the Report could actually describe as provincial self-government a system in which the control of the Police would be taken out of the hands of the Provincial Government and placed in those of a Minister not responsible to the Legislature. Surely this could not be called self-government? It would be a contradiction in terms and would, I maintain, be quite unworkable. The offer of self-government to the Provinces of India without responsibility for law and order would be wholly unacceptable to all sections of Indian political thought. To deprive the Government of control over its own Police would concentrate the hostility of all Indian politicians against the Provincial Government, while, on the other hand, to make the Government responsible for law and order would give encouragement to the Indians and fill them with a sense of their own duty and responsibility which would have a sobering effect upon their political activities. It would also compel a complete change in the relations of the Government and the Indian public towards the Indian Police, for it cannot be denied that the Police in India are regarded as an alien force and have suffered a good deal of persecution in consequence.

After all, law and order have been successfully administered by Indian Ministers in at least two Provinces, and there is absolutely no reason why this should not be so again. Even the critics of the Report admit that the safeguards have been greatly strengthened by the proposals contained in the Report, and my own feeling is that the Governors will be in a much stronger position than they were before and will be able to cope successfully with any emergency that may arise, even without the intervention of the Viceroy. It was only a few days ago that I read a manifesto published in the Press by some of the opponents of the Report, in which it was stated that the "blunder of dyarchy should not be repeated." Still what blunder could be worse than the dyarchy they propose to create in connection with law and order in a self-governing Province? I can hardly imagine any more disastrous mistake, which would imply a complete failure to understand and accept political realities in the India of to-day.

As regards responsibility at the Centre, it is well to remember that ever since the introduction of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms that affected Legislatures in the Provinces, the Provinces have been growing steadily stronger, and the Centre gradually weaker, owing to an irresponsible Executive at the Centre being confronted by an elected Legislative Assembly, which encourages irresponsible criticisms, since under no circumstances can that Executive be displaced. Eleven completely self - governing Provinces would make the Central Government even weaker than before, and the Executive would in the end be unable to exercise any control over the Provinces. This would present the grave danger of centrifugal tendencies in powerful and progressive Provinces such as Madras, while the same danger would exist in the Mahomedan Provinces of the North-West Frontier, Baluchistan and Sind, the two former being coterminous with Afghanistan and liable to the waves of fanaticism that spread continually from the borders of that turbulent country. The tendency might then be for India to become gradually disintegrated by centrifugal forces.

The one and only remedy for this situation is federation with the Princes. Federation and responsibility at the Centre are dependent upon each other. Responsibility at the Centre is not feasible without federation, and the Princes refuse to enter federation without responsibility at the Centre. The inclusion of the Princes in a constitutional scheme of federation would be a most valuable asset. They are a very loyal and powerful body and devoted in their allegiance to the Crown. It is much to their advantage to be included in an All-India Federation provided that their rights and privileges and independence are respected, since there are many questions of great importance to them in which they sometimes feel that their interests have not been quite fairly treated by the Government of India.

In the two Chambers of the Federal Legislature based on indirect election they will enjoy a powerful representation which should greatly strengthen the Central Government. This should enable the Government to exercise a binding and controlling influence over the Provinces and thus unite all India in a compact and solid entity. This responsibility at the Centre with federation appears to be the only practical solution, and I firmly believe that no Constitution for India would at this stage be workable for any length of time without it. The critics of the Report of the Select Committee advocate delay in order to see with what success self-government in the Provinces meets. It is quite clear, however, that there must be delay between the inauguration of provincial autonomy and responsibility at the Centre, since there are several conditions to be fulfilled which have been accepted by Indians and which must take time. These are the accession of the Princes to federation—that is a matter of negotiation between the Princes and the Government of India—the establishment of a reserve bank free from political influence and in full operation, the budgetary position of India to be assured, the Provinces to be financially solvent, and, lastly, as already provided in the White Paper, federation is only to be brought into being by Royal Proclamation after both Houses of Parliament have presented an Address to the Crown with a prayer for its promulgation.

Before all these conditions can be fulfilled there must be some reasonable delay between the inauguration of provincial self-government and responsibility at the Centre, though it is very much to be hoped that the delay may not be unduly prolonged. One can only hope that such delay may appear to be all that can be reasonably desired by the critics of the Report, and that they will be satisfied with the condition of its final reference to Parliament before responsibility can be introduced at the Centre. There are risks to be faced in every new Constitution. That fact cannot be denied, but I fell confident that the scheme outlined in the Committee's Report is sound and well adapted to meet the present situation in India, that it is in accord with the historic tradition of this country in promoting principles of self-government amongst the people of its Dependencies, and that it will meet with the general approval of moderate opinion both in this country and in India.

THE EARL OF LUCAN

My Lords, on behalf of the most reverend Primate, I beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.

Moved accordingly and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House adjourned at thirteen minutes before seven o'clock.