Читать книгу The Central Legislature in British India, 192147 - Mohammad Rashiduzzaman - Страница 12
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Dr. Rashiduzzaman has asked me to write a foreword for his book. I have never wholly understood why one author, however new, should need another author to introduce him to the public; this book itself makes the introduction. But I am happy to acknowledge and in slight measure repay a friendship, and have therefore agreed to the request.
The inter-war period of Indian history is one whose importance we are now beginning to appreciate in a new way. So much of what has happened since partition makes full sense only when regarded in the light of the earlier years. The political movements constitute one vital area for re-examination. Another is the working of the quasi-parliaments through which the bureaucracy explored new relations with representative opinion. It is in this latter field that Dr. Rashiduzzaman has worked with success.
How strange a body was this Central Legislature of his study! —in which a government technically and in some measure actually responsible to the Whitehall learnt to “go through the motions” of being responsive to criticisms of the elected members and by “going through the motions” came genuinely in some degree to be really responsive; and in which a movement of hostile protest learnt to act as if it were a “loyal opposition” and through doing so came in part quite close to being one! Both “sides” were thus changed ← xiii | xiv → by the experience; they entered upon the experiment with reservations but they nevertheless came to discover its value. A dialogue that began as something of a pretence perhaps never wholly lost that character, but still some kind of conversation was maintained. In the circumstances that was a notable achievement.
Dr. Rashiduzzaman’s careful study of this fascinating development merits the attention not only of students of Indian political growth but also of all who are interested in the power of institutions to shape human outlook and behaviour.
W. H. Morris-Jones,
Professor of Political Theory
and Institutions in the
University of Durham.
12th May, 1965.
