Malaviya, Madan Mohan, A criticism of Montagu-Chelmsford proposals of Indian constitutional reform

(Allahabad :  Printed by C.Y. Chintamani,  [1918])

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qualities usually regarded as appropriate to a revising
chamber. The Government should find in this provi¬
sion an assurance that the members of the Council of
State will be even more inclined by training and
temperament to support it ^than the members of the
present Council have been, in matters essential to the
intesests of peace, order and good government. If this
proposal is accepted, it will take away all the ungra¬
ciousness which at present surrounds the proposed Coun¬
cil of State, and will enable the people to become fami-
Har with and to form a fair estimate of the value of a
normal Second Chamber.

Indians in tlie Executive Conncil.

44, There is only one more important change which
I have to suggest, and that is in the number of Indian
Members in the Executive Council of the Government
of India. The Congress Muslim League scheme urged
that half the number of members in every Executive
Council, Imperial and Provincial, should be Indians. Mr.
Montagu and Lord Chelmsford have recommended that
this principle should be adopted in the case of the
Provincial Executive Councils. But they have suggest¬
ed the appointment of only one other Indian Member in
the Executive Council of the Government of India. I
submit that the principle which has been accepted in
the case of the Provincial Executive Councils should be
accepted in the case of the Government of India. Of
course no one can say definitely at present how many
members there will be in the Government of India
when it has been reconstituted. But assuming, as it
is not altogether unlikely, that there will be six such
members, it is nothing but right and proper that three
of them should be Indians. The filling up of half
the appointments in the Council with Indians will
not affect the decisions of the Council so  far  as  mere
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