Lord Lytton’s blunder

IT was an inauspicious moment when Lord Lytton landed in this country. On no other hypothesis can one explain the fact that while, on the one hand, there can be no two opinions regarding his cleverness and, on the other, those who know him best have always credited him with good intentions, the history of his administration has from first to last been a history of blunders. In every single matter of importance, he has signally and conspicuously failed. The crowning failure of His Excellency has been in the matter of the ministry. It must be admitted that he began well. The offering of the ministry to CR Das and his party was not only an eminently just, but an eminently tactful and statesman-like proceeding. But since Das expressed his inability to accept the offer for reasons which he clearly and forcibly explained, Lord Lytton has proceeded from one blunder to another, until at the present moment the nadir both of injustice and tactlessness has been reached. His first mistake was to virtually pass over the Independents, who, as is well-known, were ready to form a ministry on terms the justice and fairness of which none could deny. His second mistake was to appoint a purely Muslim ministry, and to confer the ministerships on two individuals neither of whom was persona grata even with the majority of his own community. His third mistake was to put an interpretation on the refusal by the Council of the salaries of these ministers which it could not possibly bear. Among those who voted for the rejection of the salaries were men who were as far from being believers in a policy of obstruction as any human could be.