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Updated: June 15, 2025
The political leaders had fallen into line in the Indian National Congress and the All-India Moslem League during the 1916 and 1917 sessions, when they united in demanding Home Rule for India, and they had united since then in rejecting as totally inadequate the scheme of reforms foreshadowed in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report.
The Act, which implemented all the principal recommendations of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, superseded within little more than fifty years the Government of India Act of 1858, under which the Crown first assumed direct responsibility for the government and administration of India. The Royal message certainly did not exaggerate its significance.
But in spite of the foreboding and the grave warnings of friends, at the Amritsar Congress in 1919 I fought for co-operation and working the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, hoping that the Prime Minister would redeem his promise to the Indian Mussalmans, that the Punjab wound would be healed and that the reforms inadequate and unsatisfactory though they were, marked a new era of hope in the life of India.
The Montagu-Chelmsford Report was exhaustively discussed both in India and in England, and from these frank discussions an excellent idea of the Indian problem in all its challenging complexity can be obtained.
From a careful examination of the existing structure of Government and an exhaustive review of present conditions in India, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report deduced two definite conclusions: It is on the Central Government, i.e. the Government of India, that the whole structure rests; and the foundations must not be disturbed pending experience of the changes to be introduced into less vital parts.
I. e., the increase of self-government granted India by Britain as a result of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report. E. Bevan, "The Reforms in India," The New Europe, January 29, 1920. Vambéry, La Turquie d'aujourd'hui et d'avant Quarante Ans, p. 58. The assembly of religious notables. A. H. Lybyer, "The Turkish Parliament," Proceedings of the American Political Science Association, Vol.
VII., pp. 66-67 . The name of the Persian Parliament. Shuster, The Strangling of Persia, pp. 240-246. Ibid., p. 333. I. e., the British Government of India. I. e., the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, previously noted. The spirit of nationality is one of the great dynamics of modern times.
The Montagu-Chelmsford Report will rank with the great State papers which are landmarks of constitutional progress in the history of the British Empire.
And Lord Sydenham, in a detailed criticism of the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals, stated: "There are many defects in our system of government in India. Reforms are needed; but they must be based solely upon considerations of the welfare of the masses of India as a whole.
The publication of these bills threw the country into a fresh ferment of agitation, and even an Indian judge of undeniably moderate views, Sir Narain Chandavarkar, declared that such measures were no longer required, as with the advent of constitutional reforms revolutionary agitation would, he believed, cease, and, as a warm supporter of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, he felt bound to protest against legislation so entirely at variance with the spirit in which the Report had been conceived and with the expectations which it had aroused.
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