A forgotten page of Indian history

Lahore, Thursday, October 2, 1924

POLITICAL India is so deeply occupied with the question of making England fulfil her solemn pledge of conceding to India her birthright of a full responsible government that she is apt to forget that there was a time when that pledge itself was not there. And yet it is not only good but essential for her now and then to bear this fact in mind, because knowledge of the circumstances under which she obtained the pledge is clearly bound to be of some help to her in obtaining its fulfilment. It is good in another and an equally important sense. It is being constantly dinned into her ear by some of those who are anxious to perpetuate her political subjection that things must necessarily move slowly in India. It is obviously both necessary and desirable for those among us to whom this plea for a policy of procrastination may appear plausible to reflect on how rapidly authority in India has been forced by the logic of events and the pressure of public opinion to move during the last few years. From this point of view, no less than from the point of view of the general reader, there is enough in the “Essays and Adventures of a Labour MP” which most of us have read or have been reading during the last month and a half that is of fascinating interest. Of the several chapters of this eminently readable volume that are devoted to India, the most important and revealing is the one headed ‘Indian Home Rule’. Indian Home rule, indeed, is yet to be achieved, but what has happened during the last eight years, as our author tells us, is the writing of history on a large scale.