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PROVINCIAL LEGISLATURE 355
canon. For, it is government without consent. It is contrary to all sense of political justice to approve of a system which permits the members of one community to rule other communities without their having submitted themselves to the suffrage of those communities. And if as the Mohamedans allege that they are a distinct community with an outlook on life widely different from that of the other communities, the danger inherent in the system becomes too terrible to be passed over with indifference.
- Such are the defects in the existing structure of the Council. It was framed by the Southborough Committee in 1919. The nature of the framework prepared by that Committee was clearly brought forth by the Government of India in their Despatch No. 4 of 1919 dated 23rd April, 1919, addressed to the Secretary of State in which they observed :
“2. Before we deal in detail with the report (of the Southborough Committee) one preliminary question of some importance suggests itself. As you will see, the work of the Committee has not to any great extent been directed towards the establishment of principles. In dealing with the various problems that came before them they have usually sought to arrive at agreement rather than to base their solution upon general reasonings.”
My colleagues have not cared to consider the intrinsic value of the framework as it now stands. They have no doubt recommended that the system of nominations should be done away with and in that I agree with them. But excepting that they have kept the whole of the electoral structure intact, as though it was free from any objection. In this connection I differ from them. As I have pointed out, the whole structure is faulty and must be overhauled. I desire to point out that the object of the Reforms are embodied in the pronouncement of August, 1917, declares the goal to be the establishment of self-governing institutions. The electoral structure then brought into being was only a half-way house towards it and was justified only because it was agreed that a period of transition from the rule of the bureaucracy to the rule of the people, was a necessity. This existing electoral structure can be continued only on the supposition that the present system of divided government is to go on. The existing system of representation would be quite incompatible with a full Government and must therefore be over-ruled.
There is also another reason why the present system of representation should be overhauled. Representative government is everywhere a party government. Indeed a party government is such a universal adjunct of representative government that it might well be said that representative government cannot function except through a party government. The best form of party government is that which obtains under a two-party-system both of ensuring stable as well as responsible government. An executive may be made as responsible as it can be made by law to the legislature. But the responsibility will only be nominal if the legislature is so constituted that it could not effectively impose its Will on the executive. A stable government requires absence of uncertainty. An executive must be able to plan