A Nation in Making/Chapter 34

​

34

Municipal Legislation

The most important measure of municipal legislation during my ministry was the Calcutta Municipal Act. Elsewhere I have given its history, and have shown that it was long overdue. What I claim is that I thoroughly revised the constitutional part of the old Act, and placed the new law in conformity with the spirit of the Reforms. In truth it vests the control of the municipal affairs of the city in the hands of the representatives of the rate-payers, elected for the most part upon a broad franchise. What is worthy of notice is that these constitutional changes were in entire accord with the public demand. There are some striking features of the new Act which, in happier times and in an atmosphere free from passion and prejudice, would have evoked public recognition. We hear a great deal about Swaraj in these days. I may say that I have been a Swarajist when many of those now most clamant about it were in their cradles. I was the first amongst Indian public men to urge the demand for dominion status. But here, in the control of the municipal affairs of Calcutta, as constituted under the new Act, we have a veritable Swaraj in the government of the second city in the Empire. Be it remembered that the revenues of municipal Calcutta are nearly one-fifth of the revenues of Bengal, and will under the new law be controlled by the representatives of the people. The Corporation, with four-fifths of the members elected by the rate-payers, will have supreme authority. Their Chief Executive Officer will be elected by them, subject to confirmation by the Government. The Mayor, who will be the Speaker of the House, will also owe his office to popular election. The constitution of the Corporation has been democratized by the broadening of the franchise, the abolition of plural voting and the admission of women into the electorate.

All these represent a notable advance. But not one word of recognition did they elicit from the Extremist Press, which fastened its criticism upon the introduction of the communal system. With a superb disregard of facts, it ignored the fact that the communal ​system had no place in the original Bill as introduced by me (though it was recognized in Lord Sinha's Bill of 1917, which I had deli- berately omitted), that I fought tooth and nail against it, and that I agreed to admit it as temporary provision in order to avoid giving it a permanent place in the municipal law. Strangely enough, as Nemesis would have it, the Swarajist party in their Hindu-Moslem Pact proposed to extend this very system to all the municipalities in Bengal, which are one hundred and sixteen in number. They want Hindu-Mosiem unity, and they propose to accomplish it by dividing the municipalities into water-tight compartments, thus effectually preventing them from acting together in the exercise of their electoral rights. They have started by making appointments in the Corporation based on the communal principle, which all Indian nationalists condemn as fatal to the development of Indian nationhood.

However that may be, the Calcutta Municipal Act represents the realization of one of the dreams of my life. When I introduced it in November, 1921, I said:

And let me in this place quote the concluding words of my speech when I moved that the Bill be passed:

One important feature of the Bill was the further expansion of Calcutta by the inclusion of a large suburban area, a part of which lay in my own constituency. I obtained for it an important concession, which, again, was a departure from the precedent established in a similar case. The rate-payers of the added area were not likely for some time to enjoy the conveniences and amenities of Calcutta; and it was therefore only right and proper that they should not bear the same incidence of municipal taxation. The Government recognized the soundness of the proposal and accepted it; and the Legislative Council acquiesced in it. In the first year the rate-payers of the suburban area were to pay no enhanced rates, and in the next four years there was to be a differentiating rate in their favour, to be fixed by the Corporation at its discretion.

I followed a definite principle in including a suburban area within the limits of Calcutta. In the original Bill, with the exception of a small tract, there was no such proposal; for I adopted the democratic principle that there was to be no extension of boundaries, if it went wholly and decisively against the wishes of the people concerned. They were not to be treated as so many dumb, driven cattle in the vital matter of their local administration. I further knew from my experience in connexion with the Partition of Bengal the passions which a change of boundaries is apt to evoke when carried out in the teeth of popular opposition. But the demand for the inclusion of some of these areas was insistent, and it was based on considerations of the public health of Calcutta as well as of the areas concerned. I at last decided to appoint a Boundary Commission, with the Advocate-General as its President, and two other members, one a European, whose independence and impartiality ​could not be questioned. The personnel of the Commission and their Report commanded public approval. I accepted it and so did the Legislative Council, which added an area that the Commission did not recommend. Public opinion and local feeling on the whole supported the inclusion of the added area. In regard to this question of the expansion of boundaries, I explained my policy to the Legis- lative Council, and I hoped that in the years to come it would be followed by my successors in office and the Government of the dav. I said:

Before I leave the Calcutta Municipal Bill, it is perhaps necessary to point out that it is now the law of the land and governs the municipal affairs of Calcutta. It is useless to disguise the fact that the operation of the Act has been received with mixed feelings. It has created a sense of anxiety and even alarm among a section of the community who have a considerable stake in the city and have largely contributed to its prosperity. Calcutta is one of the great centres of trade in Asia, in which representatives of many races and countries have a large interest. Calcutta is also the home of a great Hindu population, whose fears have been roused by the acceptance for the first time of the communal principle in the disposal of appointments in the Corporation. Municipal affairs should not form the battle-ground of political warfare. When the civic affairs of a great city are used for political or party purposes, they are exposed to grave menace. Party aggrandizement and not the public good becomes the objective of civic efforts. The public feeling is that the spirit of the new Act is being sacrificed, and its beneficent provisions abused to serve the ends of party interests.

The Swarajist party have captured the majority of the seats in ​the Corporation, and it is felt that they are utilizing their predomi- nance for party purposes. Such a policy is natural, there are illus- trations of it all over the world, but it is not equitable, and it is right and justice that prevail in the government of human affairs; and any departure therefrom is fatal to the public interests, and in the end recoils upon the party itself. Power is given to the righteous; and is held by the righteous so long as they do not deviate from the golden track of right dealing. That is the lesson of all history. It is the writing on the wall, which those in authority may not in the intoxication of power care to read. But it is there, as inexorable in its operation as the great and fundamental physical laws.

The first crowning blunder of the new regime has been the appointment of Mr. C. R. Das as Mayor. For Mr. Das's ability, tact and judgment I have great respect; and therefore it seems to me all the more inexplicable that he should have been led to com- mit this mistake. To the unbiassed spectator it would point to the deleterious effects of the intoxication of power. The Mayor is an officer of some responsibility and of great dignity. The office is usually held by venerable citizens who have grown grey in the service of the Corporation. It was never bestowed on a Gladstone, on a Paimerston or a Disraeli, but is the tribute to fame and dis- tinction for civic service. Mr. C. R. Das has not during the whole of his public career been within miles of a municipal office. But all at once, because his party is in power and he is their leader, he is installed in the position of Mayor without a trace of municipal experience. Could any selection have been more unsuitable, more unfair to the numerous citizens of Calcutta far worthier of this office than Mr. Das? Is justice or partisan spirit to be the deter- mining factor for high appointments in an institution from which, as Mr. Das has declared, politics should be divorced?

There is no principle to which the general public and the framers of the Bill attached greater importance than the total separation of what I may call the legislative and executive functions in the ad- ministration of the Corporation. But it was left to Mr. Das and the Swarajist majority to revert to a system that had been deliberately abandoned. Under the Municipal Act the office of the President of the Corporation had been separated from that of the Chief Execu- tive Officer, but Mr. Das in actual practice combines both. By his office, he is the Speaker of the House, but he is also, to all intents and purposes, the real head of the executive. And the practice that he inaugurated was during his absence followed by the Deputy ​Mayor, who directed the burial of a fakir within the precincts of the great municipal market of Calcutta, a proceeding that gave a shock to public sentiment. Who has ever heard of the Speaker of the House of Commons usurping the functions of the Prime Minister? One more illustration and I take leave of these considerations, which have been forced upon me by recent and somewhat unexpected developments.

The Municipal Act provides for the appointment of five aldermen, to be elected by the appointed and elected commissioners at their first meeting. The object of the new institution, which follows English precedent, was to provide seats in the Corporation for a few elderly men who would not care to face the risks of an election, but whose advice would be useful and whose presence would add to the dignity of the Corporation. The Corporation had recommended in their Report on the Bill, that the selection of aldermen should be confined to those who have been municipal commissioners. It was at my instance that the scope of the selection was broadened and the Corporation was allowed to clect anyone as an alderman. In the course of the discussion I pointed out that the restricted scope proposed by the Corporation would keep out such men as Sir Jagadish Eose, Dr. Rabindranath Tagore and others like them. The view was accepted by my colleagues. In introducing the Bill, I said:

I am well aware that discussions in the Legislative Council cannot be used for the interpretation of any provision of the law. But at least they are a guide to the intentions of the framers of the law. At any rate, the practice in all countries is to follow the principle to which I have referred. It was, however, set at nought by the Swarajist party. Young men who might easily have contested seats were elected aldermen for no other reason apparently than that ​they were Swarajists. Better men might have been found, and the interests of the rate-payers and the intentions of the Legislature would have been more faithfully served. I do not, however, despair. One swallow does not make a summer. Democratized Calcutta is a novel institution; and the environments which conduce to the success of democracies have to be gradually created. They are in the making. They will grow, and the abuses of a temporary auto- cracy, equipped, it may be, with the most modern devices, and masquerading as democracy, are bound to be swept away before the irresistible forces, generated by the popular consciousness, which no shams or shows or shibboleths can check or destroy. Democracy has been firmly established in the government of Cal- cutta. It will weather many a storm. It will survive them all. The struggles of its infantile days, beset with the lingering spirit of an expiring autocracy, will strengthen its fibre, and qualify it for its future achievement, which will be the establishment of a civic government in Calcutta, not for the enthronement of a party or a clique, but for the benefit of the people, and worked through the people.

The Calcutta Municipal Bill was passed by the Legislative Council on March 7, 1923. But before its final stages had been reached I had prepared a Bill to amend the Bengal Municipal Act. I introduced it in the Legislative Council on August 16, 1923. In its constitutional features, it was very much in advance of the exis- ting law; and its administrative provisions conferred large powers on the municipalities, subject to the control of the local Govern- ment. Indeed, so far as the controlling sections are concerned, they are less drastic than the powers vested in the Local Government Board under the English Act. The Bill, as I stated in the Legislative Council, is a progressive but not a revolutionary measure. We build upon the old foundations, but we broaden and still further liberalize them. The percentage of clected members is raised from two-thirds, which is the present law, to three-fourths, and in some cases to four-fifths, of the entire body of municipal commissioners. The system of nominated chairmen or of wholly nominated com- missioners is done away with, except in the case of municipalities in the industrial centres, and, even as regards them, where there is a population, in any fringe area, unconnected with the industries, they would have a constituency of their own to elect their own representatives.

The whole policy of the Bill is to invest the municipal commis​sioners with real power and responsibility, to relax all internal control and to exercise it from without. That was the underlying principle of Lord Ripon's Resolution of May, 1882, and of Lord Morley's Despatch of 1908. But, progressive as the measure is, I have seen it described as reactionary, because the Government keeps for itself a reserve of control, to be enforced when required in the public interests. There are often difficult and even delicate. questions between local factions in municipal areas, which need the intervention of superior authority, capable of looking at them from a detached point of view. These critics seem to forget that in England, where the population is more homogeneous, and local controversies are less complicated, even greater power is reserved to the Local Government Board.

Again, there is criticism of another kind with which the Bill has been assailed. A Mohamedan member of the Legislative Council objected to it, and opposed its introduction, on the ground, as he said, that the principle of communal representation has not been accepted in the Bill'. I plead guilty to the charge. It was reserved for the Swarajist party to support and extend this principle by the adoption of a Hindu-Moslem Pact, which proposes to apply the communal system to all the municipalities in Bengal. In the mean- time I remain unconvinced and prefer to tread the old path of obstinate opposition to the communal system in the constitution of our local bodies.

In taking leave of these Municipal Bills I feel that I must refer to the good service rendered in this connexion by my Secretary, Mr. Goode. Of municipal affairs he had wide and varied experience. He was for several years Deputy Chairman of the Calcutta Corpo- ration, and for some time its Chairman. As Magistrate of the 24-Parganas and Deputy Commissioner of Darjecling, he had an intimate knowledge of the working of mofussil municipalities, and his mastery of legal technicalities and municipal details was of great assistance in the preparation of our Municipal Bills.