A unanimous demand
Lahore, Sunday, August 24, 1924
THE most obvious feature of the evidence so far recorded by the Reforms Enquiry Committee is the all but complete unanimity of opinion among the witnesses both as to the need for immediate further advance and the measure of that advance. We have already seen how all the four ex-Ministers who have appeared before the Committee have with one voice demanded the immediate abolition of dyarchy and the substitution in its place of a complete responsible government in the Provinces as well as responsibility in the Central Government as regards all departments, with the exception of Defence, and Political and Foreign Affairs. And the most significant thing about this demand is that it is not based on any general or abstract grounds, but solely on the impossibility of working the present Constitution with any prospect of either securing the efficiency of the administration or giving satisfaction to those whom any Government that wishes to justify its existence must please or even fulfilling the intentions of the authors of the Reforms. Here were men than whom no one was in a better position to speak with authority on this subject, who had, indeed, been chosen by the Government itself to work the Constitution, and yet all of them, speaking solely with reference to their experience of the working of the Act, gave it as their firm and decided opinion that dyarchy is an incurable disease and that the complete irresponsibility of the Government of India is utterly inconsistent with any genuine measure of a responsible government in the Provinces.
