Lord Minto : Gilbert John Murray Kynynmond Elliot (1845-1914), 4th Earl of Minto (1891-1914): Eton & Trinity College, Cambridge: Scots Guards 1857-70: Paris during Communist outbreak 1871: correspondent The Morning Post 1874: with Carlist Army in Biscay & Navarre: with Turkish Army in the Russo-Turkish war 1877: at bombardment of Nikopolis & the crossing of Danube: with Lord Roberts in Afghan war 1878-9: Pvt Secretary to Lord Roberts on his mission to the Cape 1881: volunteered as Captain in Mounted Infantry in Egypt 1882: Military Secretary to Lord Lansdowne when Gov.-Gen of Canada 1883-5: Chief of Staff to General Middleton while quelling the Riel rebellion in N.W. Canada 1885: Gov.-General of Canada 1898-1904: Viceroy & Gov.-Gen of India 1905 to 1910. Though often in conflict with John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, he was all for creating an eternal enmity between Hindus & Muslims & collaborated fully in manufacturing the Indian Councils Act of 1909 which achieved this goal without a glitch. Lady Minto claimed that the introduction of separates electorates for Muslims & Hindus in the elections to central & provincial legislatures was proposed to Minto by the great liberal politician Gokhale, but Dr Majumdar prefers the recorded fact that that proposal emanated from the Muslim delegation that met Minto along with an assurance of being treated on par with the Hindu majority due to the political importance of their community to & the ‘service’ they rendered, but does note that “we know from an entry in Lady Minto’s diary of 1st October 1906” that Lord Minto conceded both these demands, which “was jubilantly hailed by British officialdom as ‘nothing less than the pulling back of 62 millions of people from joining the ranks of seditious opposition’. Even the great Liberal statesman Lord Morley, adds Dr Majumdar, supported this ingenious device of ‘separate electorate’ & ‘weightage’ which was virtually a stab in the back of Indian Nationalism. Ramsay MacDonald, who later became the Prime Minister of Britain, correctly diagnosed the situation when he observed that ‘the Mahomedan leaders are inspired by certain Anglo-Indian officials, & these officials have pulled wires at Shimla & in London, & of malice aforethought sowed discord between Hindu & Mahomedan communities by showing special the Muslims special .’” Back in England Minto was made Justice of Peace for having established ‘permanent peace’ between the two communities. [Based on Buckland & Majumdar et al.’s Advanced History…: 715, 730, 921-22, 979]
... Karmayogin The Viceroy's Speech The Speech of Lord Minto on the occasion of the first meeting of the Viceroy's Council under the new regime is a very important pronouncement; and the most momentous of the passages in the pronouncement are two, the one in which he disposes finally of any lingering hopes in the minds of the Moderates, the other in which... contradiction of the Secretary of State's famous pronouncement that, so far as his vision could pierce into the future, the personal and absolute element in Indian administration must for ever remain. Lord Minto has now stamped his foot on the Moderate legend and crushed it into atoms. We quote the important passages in which he accomplishes this ruthless destruction. "We have distinctly maintained that... are changed, we can with a clear conscience accept and participate in the Reforms. The Act and the Regulations are not different in aim or parentage; they have one origin, one object, one policy. Lord Minto has emphatically stated that the initiative in the Reforms was from beginning to end his own, and the facts bear out the truth of his statement. His inaugural speech has put a seal of finality on ...
... started in Bengal, Lord Minto said at the Commercial Exhibition in Calcutta that he approved of Swadeshi. Our Swadeshi, according to Lord Minto, is the determination to encourage Indian manufacture and the use of Indian goods when they are as good as English manufactures and can be got at a cheaper price. That is the economic principle preached by English economists. Lord Minto says that if Swadeshi ...
... thrown overboard as the sole recompense. The speech of Mr. Gokhale shows the line along which the Bombay Moderate leaders desire to pilot their followers. It is the line chalked out for them by Lord Minto and other Anglo-Indian advisers. A great deal of feeling has been created against Mr. Gokhale throughout the country by his justification of the "stern and relentless" measures employed by the Government... shadowy possibility to which the Moderate leaders still profess to cling, that all this alloy will be changed to pure gold in the next three years. Mr. Gokhale is still the political henchman of Lord Minto and echoes his sentiments with a pathetic fidelity. The manifesto of the Moderate leaders in Calcutta is of more importance. The Bengal veterans have not yet lost caste by publicly turning against ...
... numerical strength but in respect to the political importance of their community and the service it had rendered to the empire. Morley was against such an undemocratic proposal, but he let the Viceroy, Lord Minto, have his way. At the same time, the Muslims began to circulate the Lal Ishtah ã r (Red Pamphlet) all over Bengal in the wake of the first Muslim League meeting at Dacca in December 1906... people to be blotted from the earth than encumber it longer with their disgrace.' 6 Minto-Morley Reforms The next step in the British game was the reforms proposed by the Viceroy Lord Minto. These were known as the Minto-Morley reforms. What exactly were these reforms? First proposed in 1906, they were finally passed by the British Parliament in 1909. In 1906, even as the Boycott struggle ...
... somebody of the Police, and that breed needs searching scrutiny step by step in these matters. Lawyers are not always to be trusted; still less are Police authorities." [Quoted in Syed Razi Wasti 's Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement: 1905 to 1910 (1964), p. 121] Page 334 including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the... people have a share in it, not merely in name, not merely by the right of talk in the Legislative Council, not merely by apparent concessions, * S. Srinivasa lyengar, on 12 March 1929. Cf. Lord Minto: "The Government of India had to play a double part. With one hand to dispense measures calculated to meet novel political conditions; with the other hand sternly to eradicate political crimes ...
... opposition within the law; and this will decide it. Meanwhile, why does the thunderbolt linger? Or is there again a hitch in London? With a Liberal, Lord Morley, at the India Office and a diehard. Lord Minto, as the Viceroy, there was always room for difference of opinion, at least on questions of detail. And even in India, the Government of Bengal and the central Government didn't always see eye to... , and found it difficult to justify their actions to Lord Morley at the India Office. "Although he escaped conviction in the Alipur case," the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Minto, "yet it is beyond doubt that his influence has been pernicious in the extreme." He added that with his "semi-religious fanaticism" Sri Aurobindo had spread seditious doctrines with greater success ...
... that 'Aurobindo Ghose' was the prime mover of the Movement. It should not therefore cause us surprise to learn that that frail young man was giving sleepless nights to government functionaries. "Lord Minto said that he could not rest his head on his pillow until he had crushed Aurobindo Ghose," said Sri Aurobindo with a laugh. The straight of it is that from the Governor-General of India to the... who fear to use the word 'freedom,' but I have always used the word because it has been the mantra of my life to aspire towards the freedom of my nation." Obviously, the man was dangerous! Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, obsessively used that term: "Arabindo was the most dangerous man with whom we had to deal." "He is the most dangerous man ... and he has great influence with the student class ...
... will Page 260 say perhaps that they have secured the "sympathy" of Lord Minto as well as of the Conference, and nothing further is necessary! It does not matter a jot whether the local officials are or are not acting on their own initiative in their singular attitude in East Bengal. The sympathy of Lord Minto has not prevented the repetition of the disturbances, and we have no confidence ...
... Anglo-Indian special pleading, in which there is nothing that is new and very little that is true. But the threat which he held out to the Moderate party is worth noting. For some time Mr. Morley and Lord Minto, with whom the Secretary of State rather superfluously assures us that he has an excellent understanding, have been talking big of some wonderful reform that they have up their sleeves and feverishly... the country's future and risks his influence with the people for its sake. But on this point Mr. Morley preserves as studious a silence as on the charges against Lajpat Rai. Again, Mr. Morley and Lord Minto have hinted that their measure is an instalment of self-government, yet Mr. Morley emphatically declares that he will never strip the bureaucracy of any means of repression they possess, however ...
... Whatever stronger motives were behind Lord Minto's action, this was the ostensible occasion for a resignation which practically amounted to a dismissal. Now we find the same Government and the same Lord Minto outfullering Fuller and threatening in much more troubled times against all Government or aided or affiliated Colleges and Schools the action which Sir Bampfylde contemplated against only two. ... Universities as an instrument for stifling the growth of political life and incidentally to prevent men of ability and influence in the educational line from becoming a political power. This is how Lord Minto, presumably with the approval of Mr. John Morley, proposes to bring about these objects. The objects of Page 385 their benevolent and high-minded attention are divided into four classes ...
... collected strength reincarnated in Mazzini and Garibaldi and Cavour to free their country. When John Morley, as Secretary of State, tried to defend the indefensible in Parliament, when he (and Lord Minto the Viceroy) tried simultaneously to brandish, in one hand the sword of repression and in the other the mini-chocolate of coming reforms, Sri Aurobindo remarked with a touch of acid in the... the veil of British hypocrisy and charged Morley himself with insincerity and lack of principle. Then came the reference to the reform proposals in the air: For some time Mr. Morley and Lord Minto... have been talking big of some wonderful reform that they have up their sleeves and feverishly assuring the world that these fine things are all their very own idea and by no means forced ...
... Bande Mataram under the Editorship of Sri Aurobindo 28.May-22.Dec.1907 Bande Mataram "Legitimate Patriotism" 27-June-1907 Lord Minto has given us the historic expression "honest Swadeshi", and it was reserved for an Anglo-Indian publicist to startle the English-knowing world by an equally significant expression, "legitimate patriotism". Honesty, legitimacy ...
... apparatus can evidently have no object but to terrify the new spirit throughout India into quiescence by a display of the irresistible power of Britain. It is an emphatic warning from Mr. Morley and Lord Minto that they will not suffer the Indian to aspire to freedom or to work by peaceful self-help and passive resistance for national autonomy. In this grave crisis of our destinies let not our people ...
... not question their authority in a matter in which they alone are interested, but we can certainly add that it is the very best thing the bureaucracy could have done in the interests of the country. Lord Minto ought therefore to be a very happy man, for it is not everyone whose actions are so blessed by Fate as to command equal approbation from the Englishman and the Bande Mataram . Our reasons for ...
... "England Page 194 is angry at your contumacy," cries the Statesman , "you, her once timid and obedient slaves; mend your ways then, before you are whipped; run and kiss the feet of Lord Minto." On the contrary, we say, persist without wavering in the course you have adopted. The generosity of John Bull when unprovoked is a passive generosity; it will give you ease if you [......] liberty; ...
... little other fresh news from this quarter. The announcement of Mr. Morley's intended reforms in the Pioneer has created great excitement and it is understood that several petitions have reached Lord Minto protesting against the selection of a Gurkha prince and suggesting the petitioners' superior claims. Nawabzada Nasurullah Khan of Sachin and Nawab Salimullah of Dacca are among the claimants. It ...
... our tenderest feelings or even to keep up appearances? Verily, a nation gets precisely the kind of treatment it deserves; and it appears that in the opinion of Mr. Hare—so far tacitly endorsed by Lord Minto—a nation of weeping and shrieking women as the Bengalis are regarded by their rulers, deserves only to be trampled underfoot. And recent happenings in the district of Mymensingh show that the Government ...
... to the Extremists. It was a shock to the Moderates because of the source from which it came. They had never been able to shake off the idea that in the end Mr. John Morley, if not the sympathetic Lord Minto, would come to their help. To renounce that hope would be to reject the very keystone of the Moderate policy and turn their backs for ever on the illusions of thirty years. Even up to the moment ...
... between Indian opinion and Indian educated opinion. If the Moderates chose to interpret this limited concession as the granting of a constitution and a new Magna Charta, neither Lord Morley nor Lord Minto are to blame for a deliberate and gratuitous self-deception and deception of the people. The complaint that the non-official majority is ineffective and unreal, means simply that it is not a popular ...
... on. Moreover, their Bombay group led by Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Gokhale, could not stomach the resolution on Swaraj. There was talk at this time of political reforms being introduced in India. Lord Minto had replaced Lord Curzon as the Viceroy and in England also there was a new Secretary of State, John Morley, said to be a statesman of liberal views. There were repeated warnings by Sri Aurobindo ...
... in Jail. The Judge, for want of corroboration, acquitted Sri Aurobindo from complicity in the Alipore Bomb Case. In 1908, the Lt. Governor of Bengal, A. Fraser, informed the Governor General, Lord Minto that if Sri Aurobindo were left free he would undo everything and that it would, therefore, be better to remove him to a fortress or some other place beyond human reach (Vide Home Dept. Progs. May ...
... oblivion." Mother smiled, "That made up for the rest." Page 48 To be more explicit. The British Government in India was, frankly speaking, scared stiff of the "most dangerous man," as Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, was apt to say. For, Sri Aurobindo was not only the head of the nationalistic movement which was sweeping the country, he was also the FIRST Indian to send forth a cry for ...
... Carmichael sent somebody to persuade me to return and settle somewhere in Darjeeling and discuss philosophy with him. I refused the offer." — Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran. 17. "Lord Minto said that he could not rest his head on his pillow until he had crushed Aurobindo Ghose. He feared that I would start the Revolutionary Movement again, and assassinations were going on at that ...
... Madras; and two Indians to the Council of the Secretary of State for India. This was part of the Morley-Minto Reforms Act of 1909. John Morley was the Secretary of State for India (1905-1910), and Lord Minto was the Viceroy of India during the same period. Under the same Reform policy, the Anglo-Indian Machiavels reshuffled the constituent elements of Indian politics on the basis of not only creed, but ...
... a sheep bleating under the knife of the butcher, bureaucracy would have triumphed. But determined repression met by determined resistance finally made Sir Bampfylde's position untenable. Neither Lord Minto who from the first supported the Fullerian policy nor Mr. Morley who has done his best to shield and protect the petty tyrant in his worst vagaries, deserves the angry recriminations with which they ...
... successful in India than elsewhere. But here we find panic initiating a policy, bewilderment approving of it and alarm sanctioning it. Not only the Punjab Government, not only the "level-headed" Lord Minto, but even the austere and philosophical Mr. Morley has committed himself to government Page 401 by panic. It is for us to take full advantage of the mistakes of our political adversaries ...
... have not the least feature of novelty in them. The Patrika is very much affected by the severe distress of the alleged rioters now on their trial; and moved by softer feelings, it has appealed to Lord Minto who according to our contemporary is "goodness personified" to come to their rescue. The Patrika is no doubt actuated by the very best of motives but our contemporary should remember that such ...
... on the Budget, we think we have said all that is necessary to paint in its true colours the glorious liberality of this most wonderful and unheard-of reform. We heartily congratulate Lord Morley, Lord Minto and their advisers on the skill with which the whole thing has been framed, the Moderates on the glorious price for which one or two of their leaders have sold the popular cause, the Hindus on their ...
... that is a charge we have never been anxious to avoid. When sedition is found in all we write, then it is no advantage picking and choosing our expressions. But we have one thing to say. Who made Lord Minto ruler of India? Not the hand of any earthly power but the decree of God, and if the Hindu people bow down before Minto, it is only as the Viceroy of God. Is that the logic of the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal ...
... Mr. Ashe himself,’ replied the chief of police, ‘he had him killed.’ So the British colonial authorities had not forgotten Aurobindo Ghose. On the contrary, he still was a thorn in their side. Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, said that he would not rest till he had crushed Aurobindo Ghose. 2 Aurobindo’s house was under surveillance night and day, and the young Bengalis who were living with him ...
... some British authorities as ‘the most dangerous man in India,’ and ‘dangerous’ is an epithet attached to his name again and again in the letters of the highest office bearers, including the Viceroy Lord Minto. On the evening of 15 February 1910 Aurobindo went to his office as usual and, at the request of his young companions, did some automatic writing. ‘The atmosphere was filled with fun and laughter’ ...
... The war also put Sri Aurobindo and the other freedom fighters, or s wadeshis as they were called in Pondicherry, under increased pressure. The British had not forgotten him, far from it. Had not Lord Minto said that ‘he could not rest his head on the pillow till he had crushed Aurobindo Ghose’? ‘The British Government and numbers of people besides could not believe that Sri Aurobindo had ceased from ...
... from here she tried to persuade them that I was rather an innocent person and the Ashram was a nice place. She found that instead of converting them to her view they began to look askance at her. Lord Minto said that he could not rest his head on his pillow until he had crushed Aurobindo Ghose. He feared that I would start the revolutionary movement again, and assassinations were going on at that time ...
... Arnold. Civilisation on Trial (1948) Vama, V P. The Political Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo (1960) Walker, Kenneth. A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching (1957) Wasti, Syed Razi. Lord Minto and the Indian Nationalist Movement: 1905-1910 (1964) Whitehead, A.N. Process and Reality (1929) Younghusband, Sir Francis. Dawn in India: British Purpose and Indian Aspiration ...
... differences developed between him and Lord Kitchener the Commander-in-Chief, and on the secretary of State upholding Kitchner's point of view, Curzon resigned in a huff and was promptly succeeded by Lord Minto - but the partition had already been effected. Curzon had sowed the wind, but Minto had to reap the consequent whirlwind. The day partition became an "accomplished fact" was observed as a ...
... revolutionary article and, at the turn of the century, fourteen years before Gandhi, 100 he was already the uncontested "revolutionary leader," "the most dangerous man we have to contend with," as Lord Minto, the Viceroy of India, wrote while bombs were exploding in Bengal. And Mirra was in contact with India as early as 1904. Then in China, also at the turn of the century, Chinese insurgents laid siege ...
... Lord Minto's Government had disallowed the move and driven the Lieutenant-Governor to resign in a huff and get back to England. But with the Risley Circular, "the same Government and the same Lord Minto" began "out-Fullering Fuller" and flourishing the Damocles' sword of disaffiliation over all schools and colleges, and not only over the two Serajgunge schools. On 28 May, 1907, Sri Aurobindo ...
... suspicion, and the police kept him under strict surveillance. His acquittal had in no way allayed their fear. Sir Andrew Page 518 Fraser, the Lt. Governor of Bengal, went on pestering Lord Minto, the Viceroy to again deport Arabindo Ghose. The information gleaned from British intelligence reports, he claimed, had revealed that Arabindo Ghose had been the 'ring-leader' of a band of anarchists ...
... secure truly national and patriotic control and discipline for the mind of the country in its malleable youth. We desire industrial expansion, but Swadeshi without boycott,—non-political Swadeshi, Lord Minto's "honest" Swadeshi—has no attractions for us, since we know that it can bring no safe and permanent national gain; that can only be secured by the industrial and fiscal independence of the Indian ...
... Page 419 liberalism. It is the sign-manual of the great reformer, Lord Morley, upon his work, the loud-tongued harbinger of the golden Age. No particular motive can be alleged for this sudden proclamation, nor is any alleged. The people are left to speculate in the dark as to the mystic motives of Lords Minto and Morley in this remarkable step forward, or to get what light and comfort... flourishes because the Governments of Europe have not found any way of circumventing it. Terrorism may perish of inanition; coercion is its food and its fuel. The policy now being followed by Lord Minto's Government has neither immediate justification nor ultimate wisdom. It is the old futile round which reluctant authority has always trod when unable to reconcile itself to inevitable concession... Times , secret societies have existed for upwards of forty or fifty years. How is it that they had no success and no one was aware of their existence until the reaction after Lord Ripon's regime culminated in the viceroyalty of Lord Curzon? Dissatisfaction is not created by public criticism, it is created by the adverse facts on which public criticism fastens, and it crystallises either in public criticism ...
... Curzon had divided Bengal, and injured and insulted a great nation; and, by a strange irony of history, his successor Minto was called upon to face the music. As Sir Pratap Singh, a titled dignitary of the time, put it with charming naïveté, "Lord Curzon has strewn Lord Minto's bed with thorns, and he must lie on them." 1 "Sedition" was divined here - there - everywhere, and prosecution after... * The Lt. Governor, Andrew Fraser, also wrote on the same day to the same effect to Minto: "He is the ring leader. He is able, cunning, fanatical.... But he has kept himself, like a careful and valued General, out of sight of 'the enemy'." [Quoted from Min to Paper in M.N. Das's India Under Morley and Minto (1964),p. 114] Page 311 like an animal in a cage. And when I would... outward ease and sophistication. To the poor He reveals Himself in the form of the Compassionate Mother. He who sees the Lord in all men, in all nations, in his own land, in the miserable, the poor, the fallen and the sinner and offers his life in the service of the Lord, the Lord comes to such hearts... 21 Subjected to a thousand indignities, privations, jeers, insults, was it not surprising ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.