Suspension of the reforms

Lahore, Wednesday, September 3, 1924

NOW that in Bengal, as in the Central Provinces, the working of the reforms has been suspended by the fiat of official authority, it will not be out of place to make a few general observations on the situation which has thus been created. There are those, both among high officials and in the Anglo-Indian Press in India and the die-hard Press in England, who have been telling the Swarajists, ever since it became clear that in two provinces, they were in a position to successfully carry out a policy of obstruction, that they were mistaken if they imagined that by their tactics they would succeed in paralysing the administration. The reminder was as unnecessary as it was impertinent. The supposed mistake of the Swarajists lay nowhere outside the imagination of their critics, not all of whom could even plead honest ignorance as their excuse for this grave misconstruction of the Swarajist position. It was not the administration as such but only the reformed administration which the Swarajists had set out to paralyse; and who can deny that they have paralysed it in both the provinces in which they are in a majority either by themselves or with the aid of their natural allies, the Independents? “The King’s Government must be carried on,” say the critics.” “Yes,” say the Swarajists in their reply, “but not in the manner laid down in the Reforms Act, or in the King’s own gracious Proclamation or in the Instrument of Instructions.” Now that it can no longer be denied that the Swarajists have achieved all that they wanted to achieve immediately, the disconcerted critics are resorting to the device usual in such cases. They are descending to abuse.