“What I do say is that there should be a frank and full statement of the policy of Government as regards the future of India, so that hope may come where despair holds sway and faith where doubt spreads its darkening shadow, and that steps should be taken towards self-government by the gradual development of popular control over all departments of Government and by removal of disabilities and restrictions under which we labour both in our own country and in other parts of the British Empire.”
Among the definite reforms and remedial and progressive measures which he demands are:
“Firstly--The grant of commissions in the army and military training for the people.
“Secondly--The extension of local self-government.
“Thirdly--The development of our commerce, industries and agriculture.”
Regarding the first he goes into details as follows:
“1st. We ask for the right to enlist in the regular army, irrespective of race or province or origin, but subject only to prescribed tests of physical fitness.
“2nd. We ask that the commissioned ranks of the Indian army should be thrown open to all classes of His Majesty’s subjects, subject to fair, reasonable and adequate physical and educational tests, and that a military college or colleges should be established in India where proper military training can be received by those of our countrymen who may have the good fortune to receive His Majesty’s commission.
“3rd. We ask that all classes of His Majesty’s subjects should be allowed to join as volunteers, subject of course to such rules and regulations as will ensure proper control and discipline, and
“4th. That the invidious distinctions under the Arms Act should be removed. This has no real connection with the three claims, but I deal with it together with the others as all these disabilities are justified on the same ground of political expediency.”
As to the reasons why we should have self-government, he said:
“A British Premier early in this century very truly observed, ‘Good government can not be a substitute for self-government.’ Says a recent writer in a well-known British periodical, ‘Every Englishman is aware that on no account, not if he were to be governed by an angel from heaven, would he surrender that most sacred of all his rights, the right of making his own laws.... He would not be an Englishman, he would not be able to look English fields and trees in the face, if he had parted with that right. Laws in themselves, have never counted for much. _There have been beneficent despots and wise law-givers in all ages who have increased the prosperity and probably the contentment and happiness of their subjects but yet their government has not stimulated the moral and intellectual capacity latent in citizenship or fortified its character or enlarged its understanding. There is more hope for the future of mankind in the least and faintest impulse towards self-help, self-realisation, self-redemption, than in any of the laws that Aristotle ever dreamt of._[13] The ideal, therefore, of self-government is one that is not based merely on emotion and sentiment, but on the lessons of history.”