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Curzon and Indian Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Robin J. Moore
Robin J. Moore
Affiliation:
The Flinders University of South Australia
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Extract

Lord Curzon was the imperial gatekeeper who opened the way to parliamentary government in India by composing Edwin Montagu's declaration of 20 August 1917. He defined British policy as ‘the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire’. Curzon himself acknowledged his authorship in an endorsement on his own printed copy of the declaration. On the eve of the War Cabinet's agreement to the declaration he included his proposed key words in a letter to Montagu, a document strangely overlooked in all of the many accounts of the matter. The only Cabinet departure from Curzon's key words was the substitution of ‘progressive’ for ‘fuller’. Montagu questioned the latter term and Curzon proposed the former. There was nothing impromptu about the drafting. For months variations on it had been floated in correspondence between the authorities in India and London. The use and meaning of ‘self-government’ had been widely canvassed. It is generally understood that ‘responsible government’ went beyond ‘self-government’, for in constitutional parlance it must mean a parliamentary system (with a responsible executive), whereas ‘self-government’ might be achievable in non-Westminster forms. The justification for dyarchy, the essence of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, lay in its apparent satisfaction of the declaration's espousal of the principle of responsiblity.

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1993, pp. 719 - 740
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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