The debate on the Muddiman report

THE more we think of the debate on the Muddiman Committee’s report in the Legislative Assembly, the more we wonder why the Government should have provoked this debate at all. Undoubtedly, it was the clear duty of the Government to give an opportunity to the House to consider the report, and in the present case, they were also pledged to give the House this opportunity. Equally undoubtedly, one of the accepted ways in which they could give this opportunity was by bringing forward an official proposal. But it was a matter of ordinary common sense, not to say elementary statesmanship, for the Government, in bringing forward this proposal, to devise a formula which had some reasonable chance of being accepted by the House. The formula actually devised by it had no chance whatever of being so accepted. To ask the Assembly to recommend to the Governor-General in Council that he accept the principle underlying the majority report of the Reforms Enquiry and give early consideration to the detailed recommendations therein contained for improvements in the machinery of the Government, was to ask the House to do a thing which it was within the knowledge of every man connected with the Government of India, whether in India or England, that the overwhelming majority of the House would not do if they could. Their own personal and deep-rooted convictions, no less than the mandate of the country, given in the clearest possible language, made it impossible for them to give their support to such a proposition. And what is the precious principle which the House was asked to recommend to the Governor-General to accept?