Date: 25 October 1928
Location: London (?)
Speaker: Aga Khan III
Source: Speeches of Aga Khan III – K K Aziz
Full Text
Lionel Curtis’s Dyarchy – redistribution of provinces – what the Joint Address proposed.
I have been away in Ireland and do not carry with me a copy of Mr. Lionel Curtis’s “Dyarchy,” published eight years ago, and hence the delay in replying to his letter published on October 20.
The course of his studies of Indian reform from the beginning of 1916 to September, 1920, the period covered by this work of 660 pages, is of interest no doubt to students of Indian consti tutional history; but it cannot be expected that your correspondence columns should bear the weight of the criticism of this volume to which I am invited. Both in my article and my last letter I gave no more than illustrative reflection of the public opinion of the time in India that Mr. Curtis favoured the creation of “a considerable number of small provinces.”
The Joint Address from which he quoted in his first letter proposed by way of example, that the United Provinces should be divided into four provincial states, with primitive communities, like those of the hill districts of Kumaon and Bundelkhand and of Mirzapur, reserved to the present Government of the United Provinces. Under such a scheme, apart from any federal authority, there would be five Governments in the United Prov inces, which excepting Oudh, may be considered a typical Indian ethic [sic, ethnic], linguistic, and historical unit. Mr. Curtis, I hope, may be satisfied with the welcome I gave to his support of the principle of provincial redistribution on an ethnic and linguistic basis, instead of asking for research of his voluminous writings on a point raised quite incidentally in my article.
Source: The Times, London, 29 October 1928.
The place from where the letter was written is not mentioned by the Aga Khan.
The letter from Lionel Curtis was written from All Souls College, Oxford, on 19 October, and published in The Times of 20 October. It ran as follows: “Sir, – In your issue of October 13 your readers were told on the high authority of the Aga Khan that I had advised the redistribution of British India, regardless of national divisions, into areas comparable in status, though not in size, to French departments. On the 17th you allowed me to refer by page to published documents in which I had made proposals that have nothing in common with such ideas. His Highness now informs your readers that he had in mind some of my earlier writings. I respectfully invite him to give the references for their information.”