Reactionary approach

Lahore, Tuesday, August 19, 1924

IT is impossible to think of a set of more retrograde or more perverse proposals than those contained in the memorandum which the central organisation of the European Association has submitted to the Reforms Enquiry Committee. The Association, indeed, has never been known to be either, a progressive body, a body with liberal views and sympathies of any kind or, indeed, a anything else than a thoroughly reactionary body. The memorandum will take nothing from, but on the contrary, will materially add to its reputation on that score. Every single proposal it puts forward is calculated to destroy the letter and the spirit of the Reforms and to take India back to the days when the country had no franchise in the real sense of the term and when the Councils, whether Central or Province, had no power and no responsibility, but were merely glorified debating societies whose one function, apart from the more or less academic discussion of pious generalities, was to register the decrees of an executive nominally responsible to a distant Parliament but for the most part its own master. A bare recital of some of the proposals will show this beyond the possibility of doubt. It is urged in the first place that direct election should be restricted to village panchayats, district boards and municipalities, and indirect election should be introduced for the Provincial Councils and the Assembly, the only exception to this rule being the European community, which is not only to have direct representation, but whose representation, so far as the Assembly is concerned, is to be actually added to.