This was the system of partial but progressive devolution that had already come to be known as “Dyarchy,” having been propounded in a somewhat different form by an independent inquirer, Mr. Lionel Curtis, whose “Letters to the People of India” on responsible Government, though they at first caused almost as much displeasure in official as in Extremist circles, did a great deal to educate the mind of the “politically-minded” classes, and to prepare the ground for the Montagu-Chelmsford Report.  The authors of the Report were themselves fully alive to the demerits as well as to the merits of dyarchy, and they were careful to state it as their intention that “the Government thus composed and with this distribution of functions shall discharge them as one Government, and that as a general rule it shall deliberate as a whole.”  The Governor-in-Council was to have, on the other hand, within his narrower sphere, powers similar to those retained by the Viceroy for overriding the Provincial Legislature in extreme cases of conflict.

General principles were alone laid down in the Report, and its authors confined themselves to a rough preliminary indication of their views, as to the distribution of “reserved” and “transferred” subjects in the Provinces and as to the constitution of electorates.  The latter problem they stated in brief terms:  “We must measure the number of persons who can in the different parts of the country be reasonably entrusted with the duties of citizenship.  We must ascertain what sort of franchise will be suited to local conditions, and how interests that may be unable to find adequate representation in such constituencies are to be represented.”  But it was perhaps Mr. Montagu’s doctrinaire Radicalism that betrayed itself in the treatment of the question of “communal” representation, i.e. the creation of separate constituencies for various communities, which, however important or however much entitled to make their voices heard, might be submerged in constituencies based solely on territorial representation.  “Communal representation” had been conceded to so powerful a minority as the Mahomedans under the Indian Councils Act of 1909; and the Report admitted that it could not be withdrawn from them, and that it might have to be conceded to other communities, such as the Sikhs.  At the same time it developed at great length all the theoretical arguments against the principle, viz. that it is opposed to history, that it perpetuates class division, that it stereotypes existing relations based on traditions and prejudices which we should do everything to discourage.