India's services in the war (Volume 1): General (Lucknow, 1922)

CHAP T E R X .

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ERA IN INDIA.

The Dyarchy.
A Message from the Rt. Hon’ble Lord Islington, G.C.M.G., P.C.,
Chairman, Joint Select Committee of Parliament on Indian Affairs,
late Under Secretary of State for India.
[Lord Islington has had a wide constitutional experience.
He was Governor-General of New Zealand for 1910-12 and
then left to immediately take up the appointment of
Chairman of the Indian Public Services Commission, on which
he was engaged for over two years. At the outbreak of war
he was Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, and about
eighteen months later was transferred to the India Office, where
he remained till after the termination of the war. While
Air. Montagu was absent from England on his Indian
Mission, Lord Islington acted as Secretary of State, and later
served on both the Selborne Committees ■which dealt with
the Indian Reform legislation. What Lord Islington has to
say on the new era which has opened in India is of
interest.—Editor.]
The system of administration set up in the major provinces of
India is exceedingly complicated. A liberal system of constitutional
government in regard to a category of selected subjects has been
introduced: while the remaining category of subjects continues to
be controlled by the official executive, responsible, not to the
legislature, but to Parliament.
Such a nicely-balanced arrangement can be easily upset by any
determined group of persons with malign intentions, while, however,