DS 448 .C49 1917 Foreword This booklet consists of reprints of some papers and paragraphs published from time to time in The Modern Review. They have been revised, but not recast or re-written. Additions, alterations and omissions have been made, where necessary. February 8, 1917. R.C. That India should one day become self-ruling, cher within or outside the British Empire, is a polical ideal which was not absent from the minds of Il British statesmen. Some of them have left it on ecord that that was in their opinion India's destiny. or instance, the Marquess of Hastings wrote in his Private Journal (May 17th, 1818) : "A time not very remote will arrive when England will, on ound principles of policy, wish to relinquish the domination which she has gradually and unintentionally assumed over this country, and from which she cannot at present recede. In that hour it would be the proudest boast and most delightful reflection that she had used her sovereignty towards enlightening her temporary subjects, so as to enable the native communities to walk alone in the paths of justice, and to maintain with probity towards their benefactors that commercial intercourse in which we should then find a solid interest." (P. 361-362, Panini Office Edition). That self-government is our goal is admitted by all. Even British officials in India have in some recent utterances admitted that self-rule is the ideal towards which India should move. Among the atest is that of His Excellency Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India, who, in the course of his reply to he address of the Indian Association of Calcutta, aid (December, 1916): "I hope some day to see ndia hold a position of equality among the sister ations of which the British Empire is composed." elf-government has found place among the subjects scussed approvingly by members of the Indian tional Congress and the Muslim League parties. h these representative bodies have in their latest sessions demanded self-government. It is the declared object of the Home Rule League. While all agree that self-rule is our goal and ideal, there are widely divergent opinions as to the time needed for the realization of this ideal. Lord Morley, the radical statesman, could not imagine a time when India would cease to be under personal rule. Others, gifted with a little more political imagination, place the time of the fulfilment of our hopes in the very remote future. Others, again, say that though the time is distant, it is not very distant. Some are of opinion that Indians ought at once to have some powers of control over the administration given them; while some others think that a complete scheme of self-rule should be immediately prepared, and power should at once begin to be given to the representatives of the people in accordance with that scheme, full control over the administration, civil and military, being vested in them in the course of the next 10, or at the most, 20 years, thus taking an effective step towards the perfect nationalisation of the government within a decade or so following. Under the circumstances it may be of some use to try to understand what is implied in fitness for self-rule. WHAT SELF-RULE IMPLIES. What is the work that a self-ruling nation does or is expected to do? Or, in other words, what is meant by managing the affairs of a country? The principal duties of a government are to defend the country from foreign aggression, to maintain peace and order within its borders by preventing or suppressing rebellion, revolution and robberies, to raise à sufficient revenue by means of taxation of various kinds, to spend this revenue in the most economical and beneficial way, to make and enforce laws, to administer justice, and to make arrangements for education and sanitation, to maintain communications throughout the country by means of waterways, roads and railways for facilitating travelling and commerce, to make the country rich by helping |