The Cabinet and India

Lahore, Wednesday, October 1, 1924

IN a recent issue, we published the somewhat laconic statement of the Daily Express that “Mr Ramsay MacDonald’s troubles over India are such that Lord Olivier may leave the India Office.” We were not able to make anything out of this statement because it could clearly mean more than one thing. Since then, more than one Anglo-Indian journal have published special telegrams on the subject from their London correspondents, which convey the distinct impression that the statement of the Daily Express did mean only one thing, that the Cabinet was about to embark on one of those measures of policy which, if it knew its business and the true interests of its own country, it would avoid at any cost. One of these correspondents tell us, for instance, that “the views of the Viceroy and Lord Lytton were laid before the Cabinet by Lord Olivier, whose decision was to back the Government in any firm action deemed expedient to cope with unconstitutional practices,” and that “in the view of Mr MacDonald and his colleagues, the seditionists are on false ground if they assume that brow-beating methods, particularly of the Bengal brand, are likely to drive the Government or Whitehall into conceding the demand of the extremists.” What are the unconstitutional practices to which reference is made in the first part of the statement? And who are the seditionists referred to in the second? If the seditionists are the members of the Bengal revolutionary gang, and the unconstitutional practices are the assassinations and other acts of violence perpetrated by them, there is no point in this ponderous announcement of policy, for no one in India ever expected the Government not to take firm action against them.