Dyarchy in Bengal

Lahore, Thursday, September 11, 1924

THE suspension of the reforms in Bengal has brought a movement of a very peculiar nature into existence in that province. For the first time in many months, parties have joined hands, whose political aims are as the poles asunder. Who could have thought even a month ago that the Bengalee, under the editorship of Babu Bipin Chandra Pal, would make common cause with the Statesman and the Englishman in respect of a matter of vital importance to the province and the country, or that a man like B Chakravarty, who has never in his life been a moderate and who, only a short while ago, was actually denounced by the Anglo-Indian Press as an extremist, would join hands with such a man as Sir Prabhash Chandra Mitter, who has never been anything else than a moderate in respect of a matter connected with the reforms? What is the common object that has brought all these divergent elements on the same political platform? Strange as it may seem, this object is nothing else than the restoration of that dyarchy, which has been condemned with a practical unanimity by most of the important witnesses who have appeared before the Reforms Committee, including all the four ex-ministers who have given evidence so far, and which the country, as represented in the press, has condemned even more strongly and with greater unanimity. It is not meant, of course, that the motives which actuate the different parties to this movement are identical. For the Bengalee, under its present editor, and the party of which Mr Chakravarty is the head dyarchy has no charm in itself. They are as much in favour of the disappearance of dyarchy and of the substitution in its place of early, if not immediate, autonomy in the provinces as the Swarajists or any other body of Indian reformers.