The Commonwealth of India Bill
IT is characteristic of Dr Annie Besant that once she has undertaken to do a thing, she may be trusted to apply herself to it with an energy, vigour and thoroughness which few even among younger workers could equal and none surpass. All these qualities are conspicuously in evidence in the great work in which she has now for some time been engaged, the drawing up of a Constitution for India and the framing of a Bill for presentation to the British Parliament. In an interesting address recently delivered by her to a Calcutta audience, she once again unfolded the essential features of her scheme. The first of these features was that the Constitution must be framed by India herself. Besant was asked in England whether India would ever be satisfied with any scheme that England made over there. Her reply was: “No, India must make her own Constitution. She has a long history behind her extending over thousands of years and she will never be satisfied with a scheme drawn up by a Western nation and passed without consultation with her in a Western Parliament.” Here was a repudiation of the preamble to the Government of India Act, as strong, as emphatic and as complete as any ever made by a leader of the advanced wing of the Nationalist Party, CR Das for instance. It is worthy of note in this connection that in this matter, the Liberals were at one time of the same opinion as the Congress. Who does not remember the famous passage in his speech at the Calcutta Congress of 1917 in which Sir Surendranath Banerjea described the part of the August announcement, which made the British Government and the Government of India the sole authority in this matter, as a rift in the lute?
