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be a constitutional head. But the Joint Report made it quite clear that he was not to be reduced to that position. They expressly stated, “We do not contemplate that from the outset the Governor should occupy the position of a purely constitutional Governor who is bound to accept the decision of his ministers. We reserved to him the power of control because we regard him as generally responsible for his administration”. Nor did the Joint Parliamentary Committee recommend that he should work as a constitutional Governor. The Committee distinctly stated in paragraph 5 of their Report that the Ministers will be assisted and guided by the Governor who will accept their advice and promote their policy whenever possible. This is far from saying that the Committee intended him to function as a constitutional head. Indeed such an intention would be inconsistent with the provisions of the Act under which the Governor’s dictatorial powers were expressly reserved and nothing that is said in the Joint Report or in the Report of the Parliamentary Committee nullifies their use ; so that if the Governor has himself governed and has not allowed the ministers to govern through him it is no fault of his. But granting that the Governor should have acted as a constitutional head, the question again is, would it have made dyarchy workable as responsible form of government ? My answer to this question is also in the negative. For, as I see the situation, if you take away the power of the Governor and make him a constitutional head, you thereby expose the existence of the reserved side of the Government to an attack from a popularly elected chamber. From this peril the reserved side deprived of the protection of the Governor has only one escape and that is to consent to be ruled by the wishes of the Council. In other words, if you remove them from the leap of the Governor, you have no other alternative except to place them on the same footing as the transferred side. But this is only another way of stating that if the desire is to reduce the position of the Governor to that of a constitutional head you must first put an end to dyarchy.
- So far I have argued against the view that dyarchy is not a system which is made unworkable by certain other factors and in support of the view that owing to its inherent defects, it is not only unworkable but it is incapable of being worked as a responsible form of a government. Of course dyarchy with complete dualism involving the functioning of two separate governments and two separate legislatures, in one the legislature is subordinate to the executive and in the other the executive is subordinate to the legislature, is free from the criticism which has been urged above against the system of dyarchy-with-dualism such as is in operation. But the alternative of dyarchy-with-dualism was rejected by the Government of India in 1919 and is open to the same objections which apply to the system of government that was established by the Morley-Minto Reforms and which have never been so forcibly voiced as in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report A return to such a system at this stage in the evolution of political life in India is unthinkable and I therefore refrain from saying anything on