IOR/L/PS/10/692/1

This item relates to proposal of the Government of India to publish certain documents bearing on the expenditure of Indian Revenues for the maintenance of the South Persia Rifles which would reveal to the Legislative Council and Assembly its opposition to contributing payments up to 31 December 1920 and latterly beyond 31 March 1921, and would reveal a difference of opinion with HM Government.

The principal correspondents are: the Viceroy (Government of India), Finance Department; the India Office; and the Foreign Office.

The papers cover and include the following:

• Notes by India Office officials on posited past precedents and examples of such publications of documents
• Statement of opinion of Edwin Samuel Montagu, Secretary of State for India, 22 January 1921, that the Government of India should be told they cannot publish any document and ‘that we must accept a common policy together … There is too much tendency, either through the public press or through speeches, to attempt to make the India Office responsible for everything that goes wrong in India’ (f 195)
• Letter from the Foreign Office concurring with ‘Mr Secretary Montagu’s view as to the undesirability of publishing any papers on this subject at present’ (f 189)
• India Office suggestions that if anything is published it should detail, in a memorandum, the full context and history of the policy of the British Government, which would indicate the India Office’s misgivings from the start and its difficulties with the Foreign Office
• Indecision over whether a memorandum should be prepared and if so, whether by the India Office or the Government of India.

The papers comprise a mixture of printed, typescript and manuscript documents and consist of: India Office minute papers with manuscript notes; India Office draft letters and draft telegrams; India Office Political Department registry covering papers including the subject and notes by department officials; original and copy letters; internal departmental notes; and copy telegrams.