BY B. PATTABHI SITARAMAYYA

So much has been said in the past few months since the White Paper and its corollary, the J. P. C. Report, have been published that it seems almost a superfluous task to attempt a detailed presentation of the case for rejection, at this late hour in the day, to your readers. Yet the task set to the writer must be done. English people, traders and statesmen alike, have not failed to perceive our difficulty in India. They do not waste time in arguing that white is black or black is white, but they baldly and boldly point out that ‘all white and no black’ makes the reforms a dangerous innovation. But dangerous to whom? is the question that we ask. Dangerous certainly to the interests of the Englishmen in India. But they join issue with us and they say, repeating the age-long cant to which we are accustomed, that India is not a country but a continent and that there are numerous races and religions always at war with one another in this woe-begone land of ours. Here it is really that they and we differ, and differ fundamentally too. Here also is the key to the situation in which the dual meaning of the phrase ‘safeguards in Indian interests’ was accepted as part of the Gandhi-Irwin pact in 1931 by the high contracting parties. It is a wise saying of Oliver Wendell Holmes that, where two opponents differ on fundamentals, it is fruitless to argue a point further. For, the more they argue the farther away they travel from each other. Our contention is that India, even if she were a minor and a ward, has attained man’s estate and must assume charge of affairs exclusively. But the English people argue that such transfer is dangerous alike to their interests as well as ours. Accordingly, in every change they propose to make at this moment, they have made a plan for continuing their guardianship for at least another century. If we can establish by a reference to the details of the Report that this is so, then we need not feel any doubt about rejecting the Report or the Bill altogether. What exactly rejection means has also become a contentious point. But we need not lose time in debating it, for political situations change from day to day and the uncertainties of the future so often talked of in every branch of life are particularly noticeable in the domain of politics.

At Lahore in 1929 we had demanded complete Independence, and when at Karachi we interpreted complete Independence as the ‘substance of Independence,’ we showed to the world that we were not merely academic in our view, but that we had a lively sense of the real and the practical. What, however, does the ‘substance of Independence’ mean? Every ryot knows that he enjoys independence on his own farm. That does not mean that he does not depend upon water that flows from a public channel, or that he need not buy seeds and manures from outside, or that he should not engage labour other than that of the members of his family, or that he could be compelled not to borrow short term or long term money for agricultural purposes. All these conditions are equally applicable to the Indian people, when they claim Independence and deserve to enjoy the substance thereof. For a long time to come commodities may have to be imported from abroad and the services of experts engaged wherever they must be. Yea, money itself may have to be borrowed from those that can spare it, here or elsewhere, for national purposes. But to say that we cannot ask for an account of the moneys borrowed in our name and at our credit by those who claim to be trustees to our estate, to demand that all our officers and public servants should be answerable to the trustee for a good long time, to claim that England shall have (preferential) rights in respect of trade and commerce in India, is really not to admit us to a position of equality,–let alone Independence–but to write us down once and for ever as subjects if not as serfs. How else can

be explained the safeguards and reservations that occur in such abundance throughout the pages of these reports? The great war, it was claimed, was fought for establishing the principle of self-determination for small and weak nationalities. But today we have the spectacle of a great country–not merely a great nationality–which had assisted in winning the war and was called upon as a measure of reward to sign the treaty of Versailles, and was made an original member of the League of Nations as well as an integral member of the Commonwealth of the British Empire, being called upon to accept a constitution which is imposed upon it from outside, and is coupled with trade agreements in the formation of which she really has not had a responsible part at any time. Self-determination is really determination of one’s own constitution by oneself. Australia did so determine hers and Ireland has done likewise. Joint determination comes next, which was ostensibly the method sought to be adopted by the members of the Round Table Conferences. That too has gone by the board, for the joint memorandum of the Indian delegation has been quietly consigned to the waste paper basket. There remains the third method, which is neither ‘self-determination’ nor ‘joint determination’ but ‘other determination,’ by which the constitution of a country is settled by people other than its own. India has a right to complain not merely that she has been denied self-determination, but that even joint deliberation, which Lord Irwin and Ramsay MacDonald have visualised in the matter of the Indian constitution, has been deliberately ignored.

Moreover when Gandhi was persuaded to join the second Round Table Conference and the Congress agreed to send him to London, the purpose that was held in view at the time was that he should negotiate the fundamentals of a treaty between England and India and not the details of a constitution to be granted by England to India. Even today the position remains unchanged, for the need of the hour is not a constitution hammered out in England for India, but a clear understanding of the fundamentals and the conditions on which the constitution is erected. If there is unanimity on the former, there will be no difficulty in shaping the latter. So long as the one is not considered, there can be no success relating to the other. It is a different matter whether India has developed the power to demand such a treaty; a treaty must be made in any case, and if she has not the power to demand, she must wait. In either case the time is not opportune for the formulation of a constitution, and a constitution forced on the country would be–could only be–rejected, as it is either too late or too early.

Another attribute of a satisfactory constitution has been aptly described by no less a personality than Lord Irwin, who said that the constitution of a country should be like the bark of a tree capable of expanding with the growth of the trunk, and not like the habiliments of a person which must be changed by the tailor every time he gains or loses in bulk. This is a virtual translation of the statement that Indians must have the power of altering their constitution from time to time. Two instances of such power occur in the Montford Reforms. It was given to the legislative councils of the provinces to admit women to the rights of the franchise and of candidature, with the result that the women of India were admitted to the rights of franchise and of election in one bound, and they scored a victory in this country with such infinite ease as could not be dreamt of by their sisters in England, who had to organise a whole suffragette movement with all its well known stunts of women throwing themselves across the path of race horses in the Derby and suspending themselves by chains from the balconies of the Houses of Parliament in the midst of their sittings. Another automatic facility that was provided in the Montford Reforms was that the President of the Assembly and of the councils should be nominated for a period of four years and that thereafter the posts thrown open to election. That has been done, and even the President of the Council of State has become an elected President recently. When we speak of an elastic constitution, we mean that either a provision should be contained in the legislation which might be implemented at a later period, or the constituent powers should be so arranged that the Indian legislature itself should be competent to add to its rights from time to time, at its own risk and peril. The J. P. C. Report does not make provision for either kind of self-adjustment, and this is another reason–and really the supreme reason–for the rejection of any reform based upon such a report.

Now let us traverse the harder ground of positive recommendations from step to step, in the descending or the ascending order, instead of making vague generalisations of an academic character. The Gandhi-Irwin agreement laid down that the future constitution of India should be built upon the three beams of Federation, Central Responsibility and Safe- guards in the interests of India, and that the financial commitments of the Government of India should be subject to an investigation by an impartial tribunal representing the British Government and the Indian Congress. Now this solemn agreement had been signed virtually by both parties and therefore is binding equally upon both. Whatever may be said about the renewal of civil disobedience and the lapses on the part of Government in renewing the ordinances, whatever may be said about salt-concessions and their alternate refusal and renewal of them by Government from time to time, there can be no question that this portion of the agreement relating to the beams of the Indian constitution should be considered inviolable. We are, however, told that federation is a remote contingency based upon the accession of the Princes at their own pleasure, to the extent of 50% in the strength or 50% in representation to the Assembly. But in fact it was the Princes themselves that had to bargain for federation on condition that it should be based upon the grant of central responsibility. Leave this for a moment and consider whether there is a certainty of federation being introduced at any time, for we are told that there should be a formal petition asking for it and that the two Houses of Parliament should pass resolutions supporting it. We know exactly the position of Parliament and the internecine fights that are going on between the parties that compose it. Whether these fights between the Baldwins and the Churchills ate real fights or mock-fights, the fact remains that the introduction of the federation is itself a contingency not only of a remote but also of a doubtful character.

Nor is the hope of federation of any avail unless central responsibility is a fact. The question then is whether we are having any central responsibility. What sort of central responsibility is this with which we are dealing here? Again, we are dealing really with a reproduction of the comic side of the constitution drama. Here again we have our old friend—Diarchy. First the Army, External Affairs, and the Ecclesiastical Department are to be wholly reserved subjects. The rest are supposed to be transferred. If federation is conditioned by central responsibility, central responsibility itself is conditioned by safeguards which, it was admitted, must be in the interests of India. Therefore one should have only expected to have a barbed wire fencing placed behind the hedges that limit your compound from that of your neighbour. Instead we have the whole floor covered with it all over the house. If it were so, you would have no dwelling accommodation whatever. While the transferred subjects constitute our dwelling rooms in the edifice of Swaraj, the safeguards constitute the British thicket and hawthorn scattered allover.

Take any transferred subject,–of course the words ‘reserved’ and ‘transferred’ are scrupulously avoided in the J. P. C. Report lest it should be said that Diarchy is being re-enacted. In the domain of finance, the Finance Minister is to be assisted, which is a euphemism for ‘dominated,’ by a financial adviser who is the intermediary between the Minister and the Governor-General, and whose advice would really be in the nature of a mandate. The Minister selected would therefore necessarily be of the type of farman bardars that we are meeting with today in the provincial governments. Then again there is the Minister of Transport, who is to be controlled by a statutory board which is appointed by the Governor-General in his discretion and created by Parliament and not by the authority of the Indian legislature. It is all well and good to speak of the benefits of British rule being visualised in posts and telegraphs and railways. But railways would not carry, posts would not convey, and telegraphs will not communicate men or messages which are not acceptable to the statutory board. During the civil disobedience movement we had experienced these three contingencies. The statutory board would really mountguard not only over the finance but also over the politics of the transferred departments. There remains the Commerce Minister jammed in between a cannon to the right and a cannon to the left and a cannon to the front, volleying and thundering. He cannot accept a tariff measure lest it should injure the interests of the United Kingdom. He should hear any representation from England upon any preferential duty, and should not levy a tax upon imported goods which might lower the price of indigenous goods below those of the United Kingdom. No measure such as the coastal shipping measure of Haji can be permitted to be introduced into the central legislature unless the Governor-General has given his prior consent. It is open to any citizen to challenge the validity of any legislative measure before the highest Courts of India, and it is laid down that no restrictive regulations relating to capital or directorate on foreign companies in India should be applicable to the British companies in India, past, present, or future. The more we examine the chapter dealing with the commercial safeguards, the more we feel that our future is absolutely at the mercy of British traders. The commercial magnates of the United Kingdom have a free hand in exploring and exploiting the wealth of India, and they are entitled to subsidies and bounties, despite their abundant wealth and experience, in equal measure with the struggling Indian companies, and finally reciprocity is talked of. What kind of reciprocity is it? It seems that if any disabilities are imposed upon Indian traders in the United Kingdom from which British traders, whether companies or individuals, are exempt in India, the exemption enjoyed by the latter would, pro tanto, cease to have effect. It is unnecessary to labour the point further. These are not safeguards but deductions from powers that are supposed to be transferred. In fact they are not transferred but reserved, and it would be more honest to say that commerce also is to rank as a reserved subject along with the three already described. We do not have under the new Reforms even the fiscal autonomy which we have been enjoying hitherto. While upto now Government have been undoing some of the fiscal measures passed by the legislature, chiefly those relating to textiles, by counter-moves on the part of the executive, here-after they will be under no such restraints.

On the top of these we have the Governor-General with the Reserve Bank on one side and the Services on the other, absolutely immune from all popular influences, let alone control by popular power. The Governor-General is first a dual personality, and with the words ‘in his discretion’ following his title he becomes the mouthpiece of His Master’s Voice in England. The Report throughout is dotted with this expression which indicates the spikeheads with which the constitution is studded. This is not all. The Bill now before Parliament has introduced a new phrase–’ the Governor-General in his judgment.’ How the ‘discretion’ differs from the ‘judgment’ we know not, nor are the two differently controlled by the Secretary of State, for it is distinctly laid down that both in regard to the exercise of his ‘discretion’ or his ‘judgment’ he is subject to the general control as well as the particular instructions of the Secretary of State. But even more surprising and stunning is the provision that the Governor-General need not act within the four corners of the Statute or the Instrument of Instructions. Says Section 13-(2): ‘The validity of anything done by the Governor-General shall not be called in question on the ground that it was done otherwise than in accordance with the Instrument ‘of Instructions.’ Then again, the Governor-General’s ordinances remain as ever before. He can of course veto bills passed by the legislature and can vote supplies rejected by it. The Services owe their allegiance to his authority, as they owe their position and preferment to his patronage. It is all very well to speak of Crown conventions and parliamentary precedents, but they become a mockery in India and an insult to the Indian nation when all the attributes of real self-government, of which they are the natural traits, are nowhere. In England His Majesty the King may have these and a thousand other prerogatives, but they are there in name and not in reality. We have seen how the vetoing powers of provincial Governors have been in the past pressed into service in the very first year of the Montford Reforms, when in Madras the Russelkonda Saw Mills were saved by the bureaucracy from the wrath of the legislature. Crown conventions are only conventions when the Crown itself is the social head of a democracy as in England. But they become inescapable invasions of popular rights when the Crown exercises a personal and absolute rule as in India.

We have spoken of the Governor-General being buttressed by the Services on the one side and the Reserve Bank on the other. It is laid down that the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Police Service must continue to be recruited in England as heretofore and their privileges and prerogatives should be continued unimpaired. What are these privileges and prerogatives? The Ministers have no hand in transferring or posting any member of the Imperial Services, and instead the Governor-General and the Governors are the sole authorities in this behalf. The emoluments of the All India Services cannot be interfered with in any way, and for as long as they serve they must continue to enjoy privileges of pay and pension and promotion as if no change had taken place in the Indian Constitution. An examination of the existing privileges, the continuance of which is guaranteed to the All India and Provincial Services (as set forth in the appendix to the White Paper which is practically applicable to the J. P. C. Report), would reveal how the All India Services have been made the real masters in the country and how the Ministers are utterly powerless to deal with them in any manner whatever. Indeed their salaries, pensions, and payments on appeal are made wholly non-votable, and it is not possible even to keep vacant any All India post for more than three months. Nor can we add to the cadre any post which may adversely affect any officer, nor can we even appoint a specialist if it is thought that such an appointment will affect the interests of the All India Services prejudicially.

We have dealt with the safeguards at length because they abridge the so-called central responsibility upon which the wheel of federation revolves. We may wind up the story with a recital of what Sir John Simon and his Committee had recommended regarding the Army. The Army in India, they said, should be divided into an Imperial section maintained by England and an Indian section which is a charge on India. But all this has gone; not that it is large in itself, but that even the little contemplated by Sir John has vanished. Such is the central responsibility that has been constituted in the J.P.C. Report, and upon these boggy foundations of clay and slush and mud, is to be built at a future date the edifice of federation, with the brick and stone of the Princes and the mortar cement of the People of India. One wonders how these can be cemented. Let us study the aspects of the constitutional architecture for a moment.

The Governor-General is in the first place supported by the authority created by the phrase, ‘In his own discretion.’ Then a Reserve Bank is carved out for him which is to be at his beck and call; and whereas hitherto the legislature has had something to do with the discussions relating to currency and exchange problems, now both these are taken away from the purview of the popular Assembly, and made the exclusive concern of the Reserve Bank manned by the Government’s men. The Reserve Bank’s directorate is to be composed of sixteen Directors of whom only eight are to be elected, while out of the remaining eight, four are to be officials and four nominated non-officials. Thus a half of the directorate is to be nominated. Here again it will be argued that the procedure adopted is only in conformity with the procedure in vogue in all civilised countries. It may be so. But is not the constitution and are not the powers of the Reserve Bank unlike those obtaining in such self-governing countries.? Here the Reserve Bank will virtually be influenced and managed by the European exchange banks in India, and the Governor-General himself has the sole power to appoint four of its Directors. The shareholders with five shares have the right of voting. The White Paper at least had laid down that the constituent powers would authorise the Indian legislature to alter the structure of the Reserve Bank. But the J.P.C. Report has laid it down that neither the structure nor the functions of the Bank can be altered by the Indian legislature. In the aggregate then you have an Army that is at the bidding of the Governor-General, and a Reserve Bank that answers the call of the European financial interests, as the rural credit section has all but vanished except in name. We need not spend much time upon discussing the position and the powers of the central legislature when central responsibility itself has really been resolved into Diarchy answerable to the Secretary of State. The question of the voting strength of the popular power of the legislature need not bother us at all. It may be presumed that they are so designed as to subserve the interests of the reserved departments; and when the Army, consuming nearly a third of the central revenue, is reserved the Governor-General must necessarily have an official bloc, maybe under a different name, to answer his purposes. The old nominated bloc is replaced by the Princes bloc today, and the old dodge of playing one group against another is made possible by the device of indirect election which is introduced into the central legislature,–the several groups of representatives always acting one against another and all acting upto the behests of the Governor-General. We shall not weary the readers with the detailed discussion of the numbers with which the legislatures are constituted. The extension of franchise has thus been neutralised by the method of indirect election and the Princes’ bloc. Thus is India saved for the British bureaucracy and for British commerce for at least a century to corne. And when we find that the Reforms will cost India a huge sum of between ten and twenty crores of rupees, we can only exclaim: ‘The game is not worth the candle!’

There is a complaint regarding the absence of reference to ‘Dominion Status.’ No sensible draftsman would associate such arbitrary powers of the Governor-General with Dominion Status, in being or in action. What should be really regretted in this behalf is not that there is no reference in the Bill to Dominion Status, but that those powers which India virtually enjoyed as a ‘Dominion’ have been expressly taken away by specific provisions in the Bill. Let us refer to some in passing. Hitherto, it was a moot question whether the legislature can summon a member like Sarat Chandra Bose before the bar of the House; now the power is specifically taken away. Hitherto, a Sarat Chandra Bose could contest a seat from behind the bars of the prison; hereafter anyone undergoing a sentence cannot even be a candidate. Take the shipping rights. When Haji’s Bill was introduced, the matter was referred to the Law officers of the Crown by Government as to whether such a measure could be introduced, and they opined in favour of Haji, following the analogy of the Dominions. Now the power is altogether taken away. Thirdly, let us take currency. It is the undoubted and undisputed right of every country to fix the monetary value of its own currency. But in India the legislature is deprived of such powers. Fourthly, the right of imposing restrictions on the formation of foreign companies is another such indefeasible right which has been taken away by the Bill, and which is referred to at length elsewhere. Then there is the question of railway rates; railways are a transferred subject under a Minister, but railway rates cannot be altered or determined by the legislature. Fifthly, the disqualifications arising from election offences of a candidate for the legislature, as hitherto in existence, may be abated by order of the Governor-General, but this existing power is taken away in the new Bill. In effect then, these safeguards are really deprivations of powers,–not kept in reserve to be exercised by the Governor-General as against Ministers, but powers of which the Governor-General is himself deprived. In the domain of the judicial administration, the existing powers of the High Courts are altogether retrenched. Section 107 of the Government of India Act invests the High Courts with general powers of supervision over all the subordinate tribunals, including the Special Tribunals and Criminal Law Amendment Act Courts. The words ‘powers of supervision’ are altered into ‘powers of administrative supervision,’ so that the judicial powers are converted into merely administrative powers. Again the High Courts have now an effective voice in the appointment of District Judges, though in reality it is the Government that makes them. This is taken away from the High Courts. The Chief Justiceship is thrown open to Civilian Judges. Finally, there is a clause which says that no reserved subject can be transferred in relation to the Federal States unless the State concerned gives its consent.

An impartial study of the Statutory Report would not be complete without a word being said regarding the provinces. Here the Governors are leveled up to the position of the Governor-General for purposes of ordinance-making, side by side with the transfer of all provincial subjects to popular Ministers. Of course there are deductions at the bottom—deductions from the transfer; and there are concessions at the top–concessions to autocracy. Hereafter the Governors will have equal authority with the Governor-General, directly enacting ordinances; and the Governors’ powers of appointing Ministers are to be regulated, not by those uplifting traditions associated with parliamentary government and cabinet formations, but in accordance with the policy of forming groups in place of parties and recognising communities in place of policies. A subtle suggestion is made in the J. P. C. Report that the Governors do select the Ministers not from the majority party, but from groups; and it will not be possible when Ministers are so selected to table a motion of censure on them, for each group would be anxious to keep its own man in office, and will be told that by the motion that particular group is sought to be penalised. This means the end of all corporate responsibility among the Ministers. In addition to this, the Governor is supported by a super-secretary who plays the part of a mentor or monitor to the class of Ministers, having free access to their deliberations, conveying them all faithfully to his master, the Governor. The Ministers are thus paralysed, for, on the slightest hint of the Ministers leaning towards the popular will, the Governor can bring his steam hammer of veto and crush the legislature in one thud. This however is a potential power, but it is directly put down that Police rules are to be excluded from the purview of the Minister concerned, and so is the C. I. D. The Inspector- General of Police is made the super-minister for Law and Order actually, and if we may lift the veil from the mystery of this arrangement, we shall see in all its nakedness the Diarchy of old, so far as Law and Order is concerned. Mr. Montagu started the idea of framing an Instrument of Instructions, but it was to be a departmental affair with no statutory authority behind it. The J. P. C. Report has made an improvement upon the Montford Report and made the Instrument of Instructions statutory. It will require the action of Parliament to abate the authority of this Instrument by a jot or title, and this constitution has been declared by Sir Samuel Hoare as intended to serve India for a generation. We may take it that it is meant to serve India for a century. The more we study the Report, the more we are compelled to admire the ingenuity of the British statesmen. It is said that the Orientals are a subtle people, but none can beat these English merchants in the science and art of bargaining. It is difficult to write with patience upon a report such as this. It is a direct affront to a whole nation which has its birthrights. There are those who say that half a loaf is better than no bread, but what are we to say to those who place in your hands a stone in place of a slice of bread! No amount of mastication and insalivation can sweeten this petrified stuff, and everyone in India knows that it has to be rejected without reservations of any character. It is our right to get the sixteen annas in the rupee or our hundred per cent. But as the debtor in the Urdu proverb quoted at the beginning says, the Englishman also says that, out of the hundred, only sixty is payable, and of this, half is gone by rebate. ‘Out of the balance of thirty, I pay you ten and shall cause another ten to be paid; and as for the remaining ten–what of it, give it up, master!’

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