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John Morley and the Communal Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Stephen E. Koss
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Extract

A disproportionate amount of scholarly attention has already been lavished upon the provision for communal electorates in the 1909 Morley-Minto reform scheme, imparting to it a significance which it lacked during both John Morley's secretaryship of state for India and his lifetime. Most recently, M. N. Das has stretched the elastic material in the Morley and Minto collections—his only sources—over a prefabricated ideological structure; he portrays Lord Minto as a Machiavellian schemer, who introduced communal electorates in a deliberate attempt to disrupt the forces of Indian nationalism and thereby perpetuate the British Raj, and he assumes that Morley—who chose the Florentine statesman as the subject of his 1897 Romanes Lectures—was unable to recognize a twentieth-century facsimile. Without attempting to absolve two centuries of British rule in India of its Divide and Rule stigma, one may confidently assert that during the first decade of the twentieth century, neither the Viceroy nor the Secretary of State consciously implemented the pernicious theories which allegedly produced two warring nations within the bosom of Mother India.

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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , May 1967, pp. 381 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1967

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References

1 India Under Morley and Minto (London, 1964).

2 Morley to Lord Spencer, January 21, 1891, Spencer Papers; Morley added that: “From an English point of view, our position appeared to me to be very bad in either.” The Spencer Papers are in the possession of the present Earl Spencer at Althorp.

3 Speech at Newcastle, April 21, 1886. Morley, Mr. Gladstone's Irish Policy (Newcastle, 1886?), 16–17.Google Scholar

4 Morley to Andrew Carnegie, November 28, 1913. Morley-Carnegie Correspondence (microfilm copy, Bodleian Library, Oxford); see also Jenkins, Roy, Asquith (London, 1964), p. 293.Google Scholar

5 Morley to Sir Austen Chamberlain, December 11, 1913. Chamberlain Papers; the Chamberlain Collection is at the University library, Birmingham.

6 Speech at Arbroath, September 5, 1899. The Times, September 6, 1899, p. 8.

7 Morley to Smith, April 28, 1905, Smith Papers (Library, Cornell University).

8 [Morley], “A Political Epilogue,” Fortnightly Review, September, 1878, p. 329.

9 “Don't betray this fatal secret,” Morley added with mock solemnity, “or I shall be ruined.” Morley to Lady Minto, June 29, 1906, Minto Papers; see also Morley to James Bryce, August 27, 1906, Bryce Papers. The Minto Papers are located at the National Library of Scodand, Edinburgh; the Bryce Papers, at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

10 Chirol to Sir Herbert Risley, n.d. [copy], given by Risley to Lady Minto, June 2, 1907, Minto Papers.

11 Morley to Minto, February 18, 1909, Minto Papers.

12 Morley to Minto, January 28, 1909, Minto Papers.

13 Morley to Hardinge, March 31, 1911, Morley Papers; the Morley Papers are located at the India Office Library, Commonwealth Relations Office, London.

14 Morley to Frederic Harrison, November 4, 1909, Harrison Papers; this collection is at the British Library of Economics and Political Science, London.

15 Morley to Minto, January 28, 1909, Minto Papers.

16 Cited in Minto to Morley, October 4, 1906, Morley Papers.

17 See L. Hare, Lieutenant-Governor of Eastern Bengal and Assam, to Minto, October 20, 1906, Minto Papers.

18 Wasti, , Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement (Oxford, 1964), p. 59 ff.Google Scholar; it is as an account of incipient Muslim political forces that this study makes its most valuable contribution.

19 See Minto to Morley, September 10, 1906, Morley Papers; Minto eventually felt duty-bound to carry out the “pledges I had given to the Mahommedans” on this occasion. Minto to Lansdowne, January 21, 1909 [copy], Minto Papers.

20 Morley to Minto, January 21, 1909, Minto Papers.

21 Morley to Minto, December 6, 1909, Minto Papers.

22 Despatch of Secretary of State, November 27, 1908, Morley Papers.

23 Cited in Minto to Morley, January 15, 1909 [telegram], Morley Papers.

24 See Lyall to Morley, February 4, 1909, Morley Papers; also Lyall to Morley, February 15, 1909, Morley Papers.

25 Das chronicles Minto's “pro-Muslim” activities, but fails to establish the sinister motive that he takes for granted. India Under Morley and Minto, p. 31 ff.

26 See particularly Minto to Morley, December 31, 1908, Morley Papers.

27 Minto to Morley, January 8, 1909 [telegram], Morley Papers.

28 Morley received a delegation of Muslim leaders on January 27, 1909; his noncommital remarks are included among his Indian Speeches (London, 1909); amid vehement attacks by Muslim spokesmen, Morley solicited the assistance of Sir William Lee-Warner, an India Office official, to “help me make my peace with the Mahometans, when the time comes.” Morley to Lee-Warner, January 4, 1909, Lee-Warner Papers (India Office Library, Commonwealth Relations Office).

29 Morley to Minto, October 21, 1909 [telegram], Morley Papers.

30 Sir A. H. L. Fraser to Minto, January 29, 1909, Minto Papers.

31 Minto to Sir George Clarke, January 18, 1909, Sydenham Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 50,837.

32 After receiving this deputation, Minto assured Morley that “of all the wonderful things that have happened since I was in India, this to my mind was the most wonderful.” Minto to Morley, March 19, 1907, Morley Papers.

33 Minto to Morley, June 5, 1907, Morley Papers.

34 Minto to Kitchener, June 28, 1909 [copy], Minto Papers.

35 In a letter to the editor of the Spectator (April 25, 1908), p. 666, the Reverend N. Macnicol of Poona argued that concessions designed to prevent the restoration of Congress unity were based “on the cowardly principle of Divide et Impera.” Bipin Chandra Pal, a militant Extremist, issued the identical charge in his Nationality and Empire (Calcutta, 1916), pp. 274–75.

36 Cited in Dunlop Smith to Morley, October 29, 1907, enclosed in Minto to Morley, October 29, 1907, Morley Papers.

37 Gokhale, Speeches (Madras, 1916?), p. 209.

38 Wasti paints a foreshortened picture of nationalist opinion by contending that despite the “many Hindus … [who] expressed nervousness at … the principle of separate representation,” there were “a few enlightened ones amongst them [who] did not much resent it.” Lord Minto, pp. 169–70. By accepting Minto's erroneous distinction between Hindu critics and “all the bona fide people” (Minto to A. H. L. Fraser, March 1, 1909 [copy], Minto Papers), Wasti inflicts upon himself the shortsightedness of his subject.

39 Proceedings of the twenty-fourth Indian National Congress, 47; the Congress found particularly objectionable the excessive and unfair preponderant share of representation given to the followers of one particular religion; the unjust, invidious, and humiliating distinctions made between Muslim and non-Muslim subjects of His Majesty in the matter of the electorates, the franchise, and the qualifications of candidates; the wide, arbitrary, and unreasonable disqualifications and restrictions for candidates seeking elections to the Councils; the general distrust of the educated classes that runs through the whole course of the regulations; and die unsatisfactory composition of nonofficial majorities in Provincial Councils, rendering them ineffective and unreal for all practical purposes.

Wasti, in his cursory account of the 1909 Congress proceedings, omits any mention of this resolution—proposed by Surendranath Banerjea and carried unanimously—condemning communal electorates. Lord Minto, pp. 217–18.

40 Morley to Minto, April 28, 1909, Minto Papers.

41 Morley to Minto, November 18, 1909, Minto Papers.

42 Morley to Minto, April 28, 1909, Minto Papers.