‘Supremacy of the state’

Lahore, Tuesday, August 5, 1924

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WE have already had something to say about Sir Malcolm Hailey’s first public speech as Governor of this Province, the speech he made in reply to the addresses of welcome presented to him at Jullundur. We are constrained to say that the several speeches made by His Excellency at Amritsar, particularly those in reply to the municipal address and the address of the Sikh publicity committee and three other bodies, so far from improving matters, have made them worse. With every new speech made by him, His Excellency seems to be committing himself more and more to a policy with regard to the most important public movement in the Province at present, with the sole exception of the movement for Swaraj, from which nothing but difficulties and complexities can arise. We have seen that in his speech at Jullundur, His Excellency had something to say about “those who for motives which I will not here characterise, but which are certainly not religious, are endeavouring to suborn an uninstructed peasantry from the paths of good citizenship and to lead them on ways which can only end in the discredit, if not in the ruin, of the whole community.” At Amritsar, he went a step further. The opening remarks made by him in his reply to the municipal address were an attack on the Akalis. “There is a general agreement here,” he said, “that the revival of trade which seemed at one time to have commenced, is being seriously hampered by the Akali organisation, whose activities centre in Amritsar. Their presence here disturbs the calm atmosphere in which alone trade and commerce can flourish.”