A happy family

IN one of his farewell speeches, Lord Willingdon congratulated himself, the Government and the Province which he was about to leave that he and his colleagues, both in the reserved and transferred departments, had always been and were still a happy family. Lord Willingdon had evidently no idea that in uttering these words, he was passing the severest condemnation upon the whole order of things of which he had been the most eminent representative in the Province for the last three years. The Reforms, whatever might be the letter of the law, did not contemplate the reserved and transferred halves of the administration constituting “a happy family.” One has only to go through the Joint Committee’s report, and particularly that part of it which earnestly exhorted the Governor to compose differences between the two halves of the Government to realise that the idea of a happy family was far from being the dominating idea in the minds of the authors of the Reforms. In reality, it is the most absurd of all things to believe that the ministers can realise their true responsibility to the Legislature and through it to the people and yet be constantly at peace with themselves and their colleagues under a condition of things when the forces of autocracy are still in the ascendant. Everyone who has any idea of the exact position in India today will agree that it is not through peace but through the sword of animated and bitter struggle between the claims of the past and those of the present, between representatives of vested interests and exponents of progress, freedom and equality that the present era of irresponsibility can be terminated. 

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