THE LIBERALS IN INDIAN POLITICS

IT is easy to understand the disappointment of Anglo-Indian publicists, who have now got into the habit of looking upon Indian liberals as a sort of adjunct to them, at the failure of the U.P. Liberal Association to make itself the exponent of extreme reactionary views in its recent address to the Viceroy. One shining light of this school is actually unable to conceal his chagrin and says that he “cannot congratulate the deputation of the United Provinces Liberal Association on the performance which it put up at Viceregal Lodge. Looking through the principal points of the address which it presented we cannot but come to the conclusion that its power of originality was so feeble as to reduce it to the expedient of drawing on the programme of the non-co-operators for its inspiration.” It is, indeed, undeniable that there was a likeness between the demands in the address and the demands which have now for months been urged with emphasis from the platform of the Congress. The writer points out, “we hear of the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs, we hear of a demand for radical revision of the military policy of the Government, and we hear also a tirade against the suggestion” that the Government of India should go on enhancing the salary and the allowance of its European officers of the Imperial Services. There is a lot more than this in the address which, in the words of the writer, shows the deputation’s lack of originality. There is in it the same reference to the inadequacy of the Reforms and to the unjust and humiliating treatment meted out to Indians in the Colonies, the same emphasis laid on the necessity for a clear policy tending towards the Indian action of the army, the navy and air forces, and the insistence on India’s equality with the Dominions, of which the deputation says that “it is the essential condition of India’s willing membership of the British Empire.”

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