War and a New Angle of Vision

A few radicals, belonging to the Liberal or the Labour Party in England, sympathized with the Congress ideal of self-government for India on the Dominion model, but the more influential and responsible Englishmen dismissed that ideal as inconceivable, impracticable, or dangerous. The vastness, diversity and backwardness of India, which made the introduction of self-governing institutions in that country so difficult; the lack of racial and sentimental ties between Indians and the British; the strong belief that constitutional principles could not be applied to a conquered dependency; and the fear that a self-governing India would at once ‘cut the painter’—all militated against the idea of an Indian Dominion. We have already noted ¹ how Morley, the Liberal Secretary of State, was as sceptical in this regard as Minto, the Conservative Viceroy. Lord Milner ² remarked in 1908 that ‘the idea of extending what is described as “Colonial Self-Government” to India, which seems to have a fascination for some untutored minds, is a hopeless absurdity’. ³ Curzon called it ‘a fantastic and futile dream’ and objected to it ‘in toto,’ for it was ‘incompatible with the continuance of British rule in India’. ⁴ Valentine Chirol ⁵ wrote: ‘There can never be between Englishmen and Indians the same community of historical traditions, of racial affinity, of social institutions, of customs and beliefs that exists between people of our own stock throughout the British Empire. The absence of these sentimental bonds, which cannot be artificially forged, 57makes it impossible that we should ever concede to India the rights of self-government which we have willingly conceded to the great English communities of our own race.... We must continue to govern India as the greatest of the dependencies of the British Crown. . . .’ ¹ Reginald Craddock ² expressed the opinion of the average British civil servant in India on the subject when, in a note on ‘the origin and spread of Indian discontent’ submitted to Morley, he wrote: ‘Those who . . . prattle about the Utopian dream of Colonial Swaraj are Extremists in a very thin disguise. The attempted distinction sought to be made between Colonial and Absolute Swaraj is all a sham. The party advocating the former must come over to the latter directly that there arose the slightest chance of the former being attained. Colonial Swaraj is a convenient device for rescuing disloyalty from the reach of the criminal law.’ ³