Edwin Samuel Montagu is not a name that will resonate with Indians today. Born in 1879 and dying in 1924, he belongs to a bygone era — the Jewish MP who opposed the Balfour Declaration.
The name Edwin Samuel Montagu means little if anything to contemporary India. And yet, a hundred years ago, in 1917, the 38-year-old Montagu was perhaps the most discussed, the most important Englishman for our country.
Montagu had been appointed secretary of state for India that year. The position made him virtually in charge of “the brightest gem on the British Crown”, India’s remote controller. A liberal in every sense of the term, Montagu was a radical if not quite a “free-thinking” politician who could not be stereotypical. Responding to the growing demand for self-government in India, for Swaraj, Montagu proposed to his Cabinet “the gradual development of free institutions in India with a view to ultimate self-government”.
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Montagu’s independent spirit showed itself in another theatre as well. On August 23, 1917, the House of Commons discussed Palestine in what has become famous as the Balfour Declaration. As the only Jew in the Cabinet at the time, Montagu could have been expected to support the idea of Palestine for the Jews. But Montagu being Montagu, he did the opposite. He passionately opposed the motion and submitted a memorandum to the Cabinet in which he said : “Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen…I assert that there is not a Jewish nation…When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country…
It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mohammedan history…I would say… that the Government will be prepared to do everything in their power to obtain for Jews in Palestine complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs. I would ask that the Government should go no further.”
— source hindustantimes.com | Gopalkrishna Gandhi | Mar 10, 2017