On February 9, 1921, three hundred and twenty-one years after Queen
Elizabeth granted to her trusty "Merchant-venturers" of London the
charter out of which the East India Company and the British Empire of
India were to grow up, His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught
inaugurated at Delhi, in the King-Emperor's name, the new representative
institutions that are to lead India onward towards complete
self-government as an equal partner in the British Commonwealth of
Nations. To bring home to every Indian the full significance of the
occasion, the King-Emperor did not shrink from using in his Royal
Message an Indian word which not long ago was held to bear no other than
a seditious construction. His Majesty gave it a new and finer meaning.
"For years--it may be for generations--patriotic and loyal Indians have
dreamed of _Swaraj_ for their motherland. To-day you have the beginnings
of _Swaraj_ within my Empire, and the widest scope and ample opportunity
for progress to the liberty which my other Dominions enjoy."

It was a bold pronouncement inaugurating another, some say the boldest,
of all the many bold adventures which make up the marvellous history of
British rule in India. The simplicity, rare in the East, of the ceremony
itself enhanced its significance. It was not held, like the opening of
the Chamber of Princes, in the splendid Hall of Public Audience in the
old Fort where the Moghul Emperors once sat on the Peacock Throne, nor
were there the flash of jewels and blaze of colour that faced the Duke
when he addressed the feudatory chiefs who still rule their states on
ancient lines beyond the limits of direct British administration. The
members of the new Indian Legislatures, most of them in sober European
attire, though many of them retained their own distinctive head-dress,
were assembled within the white and unadorned walls of the temporary