India in the First World War and after

Abstract

Surendranath Banerjea, the pioneer leader of the Indian National Congress, recorded in his Autobiography A Nation in Making (I925): 'The most stirring event in I9I7 was the announcement made by Mr Montagu in the House of Commons promising the grant of responsible government, to be realized by progressive stages.' Whether the 'August announcement' figured very largely on the world scene or not, it was certainly a landmark in Indian political development. The outbreak of war in I9I4 had witnessed an extraordinary demonstration of loyalty and solidarity from all sections of the peoples of India. It might have been expected that princes and peasants would rally to the Raj in the hour of crisis, but the urban middle classes also competed in efforts to support the British cause, and only a fringe element of revolutionaries tried to exploit the possibility of Britain's difficulties to overthrow the Imperial power. Yet by the middle years of the war a mood of disillusionment had set in. The Viceroy and his Council realized the need to make some gesture to reassure Indian opinion, but their approach was pedestrian. A severe critic of Indian administration attitudes was Edwin Montagu, a rising Liberal politician who had been Under Secretary of State for India, I91o-I4. The Government of India became very much the target for criticism over its inadequate support for the Indian expeditionary force disastrously defeated in Mesopotamia. When the Report of the Mesopotamian Commission was published in July I9I7, Montagu (then out of office) delivered a vehement attack on those responsible: 'The Government of India is too wooden, too iron, too inelastic, too antediluvian to be of any use for the modern purposes we have in view.' After the debate, Austen Chamberlain felt bound to resign from the post of Secretary of