A Constitutional History of India, 1600-1935. AcIlinc

The New Reforms in India

Berriedale Keith. (Methuen. 15t4.)

Tins book, as its title shows, is not a history of India, but a history of the institutions of government which Great Britain has fashioned for India from the time when Queen' Elizabeth gave the East India Company its charter down to the latest Government of India Act. It falls into two parts, the first which surveys the three hundred and nine years that separate the Elizabethan Charter from the Morley- Minto Reforms, and the second which analyses the Montagn- Chelmsford Report, the Act of 1919 and the Act of 11131. The first part thus covers, but more comprehensively, the same ground as Sir ('ourtenay Ilbert's Historical Intro- duction, and is a necessary contribution to that continuity of history which Professor Keith endeavours to observe. Coming from the indefatigable pen of the most active of contemporary constitutional writers, it bears the well- known hall-mark of his industry and critical acumen. Hut it is to the second part of his book that lye may well devote the space of a short review, for in it he describes and ap- praises the constitution which it will be Lord Linlithgow's

duty to administer during the next five yearsa constitution. moreover, which will take more than the present Viceroy's tenure of office to bring into full operation. This Professor Keith recognises ; and when he says that " it is the essential merit of the Act of 1935 that it recognises the failure of the Act of 1919 and presents, so far as Indian social con- ditions permit, the possibility in the provinces of true respon-

sible government,";he does not mean that the new Act is

either free from blemishes or that it can-be easily or early brought into full operation, but that in respect of its purpose

to develop both the institutions of self-government and the

capacity of Indians to operate them, the abolition of diarchy shows the way to something like real provincial responsibility. Now, it is Professor Keith's main purpose to write history and not to offer a critical commentary upon the constitutional wisdom of the Imperial Parliament or of the Governor- General in Council. But no one who has ever read any of his many previous works will suppose that the Edinburgh Professor of Sanskrit is content to ply the pen of the mere recorder ; and, while the merits of the present volume (which, by the way, is excellently indexed) will make it a valuable work of reference, there is in it enough constructive criticism to raise it above the level of a mere constitutional text-book. To some readers, Professor Keith's criticism may appear

destructive. It cannot be said, for instance, that he views

the future of the present federation with any loptimism ; and, in his own words, " it is difficult to feel any satisfaction . . . with a federation built on incoherent lines . . . out

of units too disparate." " If it operates successfully, it will probably be due to the virtual disappearance of responsibility and the assertion of the controlling power of the Governor-

General backed by the conservative elements of the Indian States and of British India." Possibly, but also possibly not l May it not be a necessary phase in the development of India that the stability of the centre should be guaranteed beyond risk of disturbance, even at the cost of a slower pace towards Responsible Government in Delhi, while the same

ideal in government proceeds more rapidly to realisation in each of the eleven provinces ? And when Professor Keith

goes on to denounce " the alleged concession of responsibility

as all but meaningless " because defence and foreign affairs: are still withheld from federal control, he seems to lose sight' of the very essentials of the problem he is endeavouring to illumine. On the lips of Subhas Bose or Jawaharlal Nehru those strictures would lie fittingly ; in the pages of a Con- stitutional History of India they sound a little strange. Moreover, when, in the same paragraph of his closing chapter, Professor Keith finds it " difficult to deny . . . that feder- ation was largely evoked by the desire to evade the issue of extending responsible government to the central government of British India," I take leave to omit the word evade in order to insert the words prepare for.

But I cannot allow the readers of The Spectator to suppose that if I thus break a lance with a fellow Scot over the new Indian Constitution, I do not recommend this book ; for