Lord Curzon’s rule

THE distance that divides us from Lord Curzon’s Viceroyalty is so great — it is by no means to be measured by the years that have elapsed since his somewhat dramatic departure from this country — that the past to which he belonged is already remote. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that in some respects, the difference between the India of today and the India over which Lord Curzon ruled is scarcely less marked than the difference between the England of Queen Victoria and the England of Queen Anne. In dealing with his Viceroyalty, therefore, the mood and temper which are proper to the historian as distinguished from the contemporary chronicler, the justice and impartiality of historic verdict as distinguished from the passion of the political controversialist, are much easier to attain than one would ordinarily have thought possible in a such a case. To confine ourselves to one sphere, and by no means the one in which the difference between the two periods is the most noticeable, it requires almost an effort to believe that only two decades have passed since the Indian Legislature, in which the victory of the non-official element and the defeat of the Government are almost the order of the day, was described by one of the most brilliant among contemporary observers as a body whose one business was to register the decrees of the Executive. That the picture has its other side we know only too well. The standing bureaucratic majority of those days has not made room for democratic rule but merely for government by certification.