settled and often bitter opposition.” Quoted in para 60, M/C Report.
2. Proceedings of the I.L.C. Oct. 16, 1878.
3. Ibid. (A fairly elaborate account of the protests raised against the Vernacular Press Bill is found in Surendra Nath Banerjea’s A Nation in Making. pp. 58–63).
4. Sir H. Maine’s Minutes (1862–69). (Minute No. 69, Feb. 1868. p. 167).
5. Ibid.
6. Quoted in Punnaiah, K. V. Constitutional History of India, p. 95.
7. Cowell, H. History of the Constitution of the Courts and Legislative Authority in India, p. 95.
8. Para 65, M/C Report.
9. Quoted in Gopal, S. The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, 1880–1884, p. 85.
10. Hartington’s letter to Ripon written almost a year later. Quoted in Gopal, S. Ibid.
11. Banerjee, A. C. Indian Constitutional Documents, Vol. II, p. 99.
12. S. N. Banerjee appreciated the right of asking questions in his address to the Congress session at Poona in 1895. Congress Presidential Speeches (1885–1917), edited by Natesan—p. 195.
13. Para. 69, M/C Report.
14. The proceedings of the Council show that the financial statement was given in a greater detail than before the 1892 Reforms.
15. Proceedings of the I.L.C. 10th March, 1905.
16. Proceedings of the I.L.C. 10th Feb., 1905.
17. Para. 27, M/C Report.
18. Chintamani, C. Y. Indian Politics since Mutiny, p. 46.
19. Text of the letter is reproduced in Lord Cross’s Political History which was privately printed.
20. Even in the letter mentioned above Lord Curzon commented that the “natives clamored for more.”
21. India Office Tract, 1037 (All about partition) pp. 56–86 quoted in History of Freedom Movement by Pakistan Historical Society, Vol. III, Pt. I, p. 18.
22. Banerjee, A. C. op. cit. p. 285.
23. Countess of Minto. India: Minto and Morley, 1905–1910. p. 414.
24. MacDonald, R. The Government of India, p. 69.
25. Mukherjee, P. Indian Constitutional Documents, p. 330.
26. Proceedings of the Imperial Legislative Council, 25th January, 1910. Also Rothermund, D.—Constitutional Reform and National Agitation in India, 1900–1950 in the Journal of Asian Studies, August 1962.
27. Para. 73, M/C Report.
28. Chirol, V. India, Old and New, p. 127. ← 11 | 12 →
29. Banerjee, A. C. Op. cit. p. 269.
30. Quoted in B. P. Singh Roy, Parliamentary Government in India, p. 56.
31. See his Budget speech at the Imperial Legislative Council on the 29th March, 1909.
32. Morris-Jones, W. H., Parliament in India, p. 48. See also Chapter III (Nature of Electoral System and Elections).
33. Para. 79, M/C Report.
34. Para. 79, M/C Report.
35. Pakistan Historical Society. Op. cit. pp. 64–65 also The Memoirs of Aga Khan, pp. 92–93. (“Our experience from the time of the Cross-Lansdowne reform in 1892 onwards had pointed out that there was no hope of a fair deal for us (Muslims) within the fold of the Congress Party or in alliance with it”).
36. These figures have been taken from History of Freedom Movement (Vol. III) Pt. I. pp. 64–65.
37. See also Chapter III (Nature of Electoral System and Elections).
38. Chapter IV. M/C Report.
39. Morris-Jones, W. H. Op. cit. p. 49.
40. Proceedings of the I.L.C. 21st March, 1911.
41. Para. 93, M/C Report.
42. “Kerala-Putra”The Working of Dyarchyp. 6.
43. On March 9, 1913 the daily Bengalee came out with an editorial condemning the elected members who opposed the amendments and supported the Criminal Conspiracy Bill, 1913. Similar comments about various controversial measures supported by the Indian elected Members are available in the files of the daily Bengalee from 1910 to 1917.
44. Despatch of the Secretary of State, Cmd. 4426, 1908.
45. Mehrotra, S. R.—The Politics behind the Montagu Declaration of 1917, an article in Politics and Society in India, edited by Philips, C. H.—p. 73.
46. Pantulu, S. Post War Reforms in Indian Review, March 1917.
47. Ibid.
48. Indian Review, May, 1917 (Memo. of the Nineteen Members.).
49. Proceedings of the I.L.C. 5th September 1917.
50. Sir Frederick Whyte’s article Political evolution in India in Foreign Affairs, January, 1926, p. 224.
51. Ibid.
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THE CENTRAL LEGISLATURE AND INDIAN POLITICS, 1921 TO 1947
Without an iota of reservation, M. K. Gandhi’s (Gandhi) non-co-operation movement was a direct affront to the institutions created by the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms: the boycott campaign was so successfully carried out by the Indian National Congress Party (Congress) and the Khilafatists that only about 25% of the voters dared to cast their votes in the 1920 legislative elections.1 Many competent persons who would have been assets to the deliberative bodies stayed out of the first election that heralded the new-fangled legislative institutions offered by those constitutional reforms. As a result, only the so-called “moderate Indians” who refused to toe the line with the Congress and the Khilafatist non-co-operation protest throughout India entered the Legislatures; for sure, the newly elected law-makers found themselves in an uneasy predicament that could ruin their political future. Outside the legislatures, they were bullied as the “title-hunters and job-hunters.”2 Inside the legislatures, the Government apparently showed a degree of readiness to accommodate the non-official legislators’ demands and, in their turn, the elected representatives were too expected to co-operate with the Government to make the Reforms a perceptible success. Nevertheless, the elected representatives had to be extremely cautious in extending any collaboration with the Colonial Government as there was a vigorous political ← 13 | 14 → push against them in the larger political arena. And yet, the best contribution
