Date: 12 October 1928
Location: London
Speaker: Aga Khan III
Source: Speeches of Aga Khan III – K K Aziz
Full Text
Dominion status for India – criticism of the Nehru Report – dif ficulties in the way of evolving a unitary system – status of Princely States – rights of the minorities, especially Muslims – defence of India.
Now that the [Indian Statutory] Simon Commission is entering upon the most formative stage of its inquiry by a six months’ · tour in India, in association with the Central and Provincial Committees, I feel I should be lacking in a patriotic duty if I did not express opinions on some current proposals and offer suggestions as to the path to be pursued to reach the declared goal of British policy towards India. Though I write primarily for my own countrymen I communicate these views, not to an Indian newspaper, with its necessarily limited appeal, but to The Times as by far the best medium of securing attention to them in India as well as throughout the world.
Meeting at Lucknow the Congress Parties’ Conference (as it may fairly be described) adopted a scheme of Dominion Govern ment within the Empire, claiming that the time has come for India to enter the free association of nations under the King commonly known as the self-governing portion of the British Empire. No patriotic Indian can take exception to Dominion Status as an ideal to be steadfastly pursued. It is an objective to which I whole-heartedly subscribe. Indeed I may claim some measure of paternity for the idea of making this the goal of Indian political development. Many years have passed since I discussed frequently and in detail with those great leaders of political thought, Ranade, Gokhale, and Pherozeshah Mehta, the ways of attaining this ideal. At that time very few educated Indians had any clear idea of the ultimate place of their motherland in co-operation with Britain and her daughter nations.
While, however, the ideal underlying the scheme of the Nehru Report has my hearty sympathy, I find the detailed proposals open to very serious criticism, and I am confident that adoption of the lines laid down would be disastrous to the peace and security of India. The vital defect is a most inadequate recog nition of the essential difficulties in the way of establishing a unitary Government for the country through a Commonwealth of India Parliament and Executive. That such a system would aggravate, instead of solving, some of.the greatest problems of Indian policy is unquestionable, and we have an indication of some consciousness of this effect in the off-hand manner in which those problems are handled when they are not almost completely ignored. This failure to face the difficulties gives rise to the question whether the proposals are serious or are merely put forward to stimulate discussion and argument.
One of the problems touched in light and airy fashion is that of the Indian States. It is inconceivable that some of the signa tories of the Report could have assumed that the Princes and their people would be willing to see the adoption of the unitary form of government in Swarajist India set forth in the Report.
The States would in effect lose their freedom and would become little more than districts of India. The great variations in the size and importance of the principalities make it the more difficult to imagine that they will be prepared, as the Report imagines, to join a federation in which they would be subject to the legislation of the Commonwealth Parliament. The recent statements of the Maharajas of Bikaner and Patiala have made clear the non-con forming attitude of the Princes. We have to ask in the light of these statements, not whether the Nehru Report offers a good or bad solution of the problem of the relations of the States with Swaraj India, but whether it is practicable and will be accepted in the lifetime of the present generation; at least, without actual resistance.
Another major difficulty lightly handled is that of the rights of minority communities, and especially the Muhammadans. It is difficult to conceive how serious-minded people, knowing the facts of the present situation (and leaving aside all questions of whether or not a particular change is desirable), can imagine that the Muhammadans as a body are ever likely to accept the proposals of the Report. They are not prepared to give up existing guarantees for the conservation of their existence as a political force in return for vague promises for reservation of seats for Muslim minorities in proportion to their numerical percentage in the population. Expressions of Muslim opinion which have followed the publication of the Nehru Report show that the failure to find means of meeting our susceptibilities has placed needless difficulty in the way of development towards Dominion government. Other minority communities are fol lowing the lead of the Muhammadans and are asking for guarantees. The report minimises the importance of such minori ties by inadequate recognition of the fact that politically they include large sections of the Hindus themselves, such as the Depressed Classes and (in some provinces) the Non-Brahmins.
By playing round this question the authors have created difficul ties for their scheme.
A third great issue too vaguely handled is that of defence. The unitary Dominion Government postulated in the Report could not maintain its authority without a great army. The Central Government would need enorm’ous forces to discharge the immense responsibilities it would undertake in repelling foreign aggression and seeing its authority accepted internally. Whether or not such a force is in potential existence – as in the case of the Dominions mainly peopled by the British races – is imma terial. The question that matters is – From whence is this new unitary Government in India to find and shape such over whelming force? Can it be imagined that it will ever have such prestige and power as to be able to gather a great army under its authority?
If it will not have that power, do its sponsors rely on the existing British Government to leave in the country a large army – to say nothing of a personnel for the framework of civil administration – in order that succeeding unitary Governments responsible to Indian politicians should be able to carry out their purposes?
Neither party could in honour accept such an arrangement. On the one hand, it would be ruinous to the underlying principle of self-government; on the other, the British people could never honourably agree to leave an armed force, or even civil adminis trators, in a country for the good government of which it was no longer responsible. If the British did this in a fit of madness, of which there has been no parallel in their history, they would go down, not only in the estimation of the whole world, but in history for all time, for supplying armed force to a country wherein their responsibility had come to an end, to be adminis tered at the beck and call of other people.
Those who advocate advance to genuine Home Rule for India, as I do, base the claim on the assumption that British force must disappear completely, and at the latest when autonomy is established. We have the precedent of Ireland, where, on the attainment of independence early in 1922, the British garrison and the British civil officials left the country and handed over undivided charge to the Free State Government. This is the only analogy that could fitly be applied to India.
Yet, if this analogy is insisted on, as the only honourable course, the task of the proposed unitary government in India becomes from the first impossible. Guarantees offered to vested interests arising from British capital and enterprise which are still doing much for the economic advancement of India, are of secondary consequence in this connection. It is not conceivable that the British people will, in the near future contemplated in the Nehru Report, embark on so stupendous an experiment as the handing over of 320,000,000 of people to a so-called Indian Common wealth and thereupon relinquish all responsibility for their welfare.
I hope to show in the next article that the way of approach to “the progressive realization of responsible government in British India as an integral part of the Empire” (to quote the preamble of the 1919 Act) must be on quite different lines.
Source: The Times, London, 12 October 1928.
It contains an authoritative criticism of the Nehru Report’s recommendations regarding the Indian States, the minorities, and a national army.