Responsible government must be the goal of British rule in India, the report insisted, because it was the ‘best form of government’ that the British themselves ‘knew’.50 Upholding a racial double standard in India was not tenable in the long run. Despite the differences that segmented Indian society, its unity was growing. Illiterate peasants were maturing into responsible citizens. Britain must gamble that the best way to hasten the growth of the capacity for self-government was to transfer responsibility to the Indians themselves, the exercise of which would ‘call forth the capacity for it’.
