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Updated: June 12, 2025
The scheme was hazy, bore evident marks of haste, and aggravated immensely the dangers with which experience had already shown the Morley-Minto reforms to be fraught.
Unfortunately the artificial basis upon which the Morley-Minto reforms had been built revealed itself very soon under the searching test of practical experience. The Councils Act of 1909 had made no attempt to organise on an effective and genuine basis "the living forces of the elective principle."
Whilst the Morley-Minto reforms had disappointed the political expectations of the Western-educated classes, the measures adopted in several of the self-governing Dominions to exclude Indian immigration, and, especially in South Africa, to place severe social and municipal disabilities on Indians already settled in some of the provinces of the Union, had caused still more widespread resentment, and nothing did more to strengthen Lord Hardinge's hold upon Indian affection than his frank espousal of these Indian grievances, even at the risk of placing himself in apparent opposition to the Imperial Government, who had to reckon with the sentiment of the Dominions as well as with that of India.
If we look at the Morley-Minto régime from another point of view, it is passing strange that the tendency to concentrate the direction of affairs in India in the hands of the Viceroy and to subject the Viceroy in turn to the closer and more immediate control of the Secretary of State, whilst simultaneously diminishing pro tanto the influence of their respective Councils, should have manifested itself just at this time, when it is Lord Morley who presides over the India Office.
Yet as far back as 1910, from his place of retirement in Pondicherry, he issued after the Morley-Minto reforms had been promulgated a significant message to his fellow-countrymen advising them to accept partial Swaraj as a means to ensure complete Swaraj, and amongst the literature that helped to defeat "Non-co-operation" in Bengal, one of the most striking pamphlets was one entitled "Gandhi or Arabindo?" in which a very fervent disciple and collaborator of the latter in the most fiery days of the Yugantar argued with great force the case for co-operation with Government against "Non-co-operation" as now preached by Mr.
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