wounded, sulked until his wife intervened and restored communication
between father and son.
The Indian National Congress split in 1907 at an acrimonious session
in Surat, one of whose highlights was a slipper, thrown in anger, that
struck the Moderate, Sir Pherozshah Mehta. The Congress was now in the
hands of the Moderates, who, Motilal included, placed their hopes for
a better share in government in the promised reforms piloted in Britain
by the Liberal Secretary of State for India, ‘Honest John’ Morley. Lord
Morley’s reforms, as expressed in the 1909 Indian Councils Act, were a
bitter disappointment to the Moderates. The majority of the Council that
discussed legislation in British India was to be constituted by officials
of the government and Indian notables, handpicked for their support for
the government. The elected component was to be elected on the basis
of a very narrow property franchise of about 9% of the adult population,
and constituencies and electorates were to be separated in terms of
religious affiliation: in some constituencies, Hindus would vote for Hindu
candidates, Muslims for Muslim candidates. This measure, ostensibly to
protect minorities from the domination of the majority, effectively
ensured that politics was forced into sectarian boxes. How was a candidate
to appeal to Muslims as a Muslim candidate in a separate Muslim
constituency on the basis of a programme that argued that being Muslim
wasn’t the central point of political representation? And conversely, a
‘general’ constituency might end up as being considered a ‘Hindu’ one by
default. The sectarian conflicts – or ‘communalisation’ of politics – that
would be the inevitable result of such a division were noted by secular
nationalists. But this was to have less of an impact at this point in time,
with a very narrow property franchise in operation, than it had later under
the widened franchise of the 1930s.
Then, in 1911, the government announced the annulment of the
Partition of Bengal; but the capital of British India was moved from
Calcutta to Delhi, where the new King, George V, was to hold a large
Durbar to meet and to be paid homage by his Indian subjects. Meanwhile,
the Indian National Congress had met to try and work out what was to be
done, electing as President Sir William Wedderburn, a British former ICS
officer who had been among the first organisers and sympathisers of the
Congress in its early years. This Congress set up a Hindu–Mohammedan
Conference to re-emphasise Hindu–Muslim unity. The delegates ‘called
each other “brothers”, “cousins” and so on,’ Motilal wrote to his son. ‘It is22 THE MAKING OF A COLONIAL INTELLECTUAL