The Central Legislature in British India, 192147. Mohammad Rashiduzzaman
Raj. Definitely, the Central Legislature was the only acknowledged all-India forum where the Indian legislators and the Imperial Executive, time and again, met each other. Yet, even at the worst moments of the Indian members’ political disenchantment, the two flanks showed a modicum of mutual respect, indirect access to power and a share in policy-making typically over a strip of non-controversial subjects.
A matter of record: the Indian members boldly fought for their own turfs when the circumstances demanded for doing so, they did not hesitate to cross the verbal swords with their official counterparts. Not surprisingly, the square-shooter lawyer-politicians inside the legislative rostrum did not offer unruffled logistics for the official members who represented the government and defended their ramparts in that arena. Inside the meandering corridors of ← xv | xvi → power, the Governor General and his Executive Council were not accountable to the Central Legislature; it was patently less than a sovereign parliament. It never rose above its ceiling set by the Colonial juggernaut. Even when they decided to work with it since 1921, the Indian politicians apparently did not have any illusion about the legislative body’s ultimate weakness before the overriding executive. Indeed, the Indian politicians, both inside the legislatures and outside endured a sense of betrayal by the British Imperial Rulers. Conceivably, the British Government promised to offer India an installment of self-government matching the Dominion Status enjoyed by Canada and Australia, as recognition of its sacrifices and support during the WWI. But the Government of India Act 1919 that came into force in 1921 only offered indirect “association” and “influence” through elected non-official members in the Central Legislative Assembly accompanied by a “strange dyarchy” that tendered limited autonomy over a few provincial subjects.
Nevertheless, it was a “center of resistance” against the Central Executive and the stage for constitutional struggle against the Colonial hegemony. Noticeably, it was the beginning of a dent on the old Vice-regal regime, credibly, a majestically impregnable system now facing the parliamentary slings and arrows, in the country’s uppermost legislative podium. Over the stretch of history, neither the Indian legislators nor the Governor General-led regime absolutely ditched that legislative dais even at the peak of the unprecedented anti-British non-cooperation and nationalist campaigns, Hindu-Muslim tumults, periodic terrorist outbursts, World War II, devastating famine in Bengal and the outright “Quit-India” movement to end the foreign control. The Central Legislature had its ups and downs in its aggravation. Different Governor Generals too had different rhythms of their treatment of the legislature during their respective tenures. The reality was a paradoxical interface between the eloquent Indian legislators and the Governor General’s Executive Council, which did not easily nudge. Nevertheless, both sides jolted each other depending on time, circumstances and personalities on the fore.
Amazingly, the Indian lawmakers survived the seismic tides of history of their time; it also demonstrated the quasi-parliament’s institutional resilience. As an institution, the Central Legislature did not collapse under the stupendous Vice-regal authority or during the stunning pro-Home Rule struggle in the streets. Those demonstrators cared little for the predetermined outlets of grievances in the legislative platform. Though the Governor General was above the legislative compulsion with his endowed special powers, he did not readily and dramatically silence the lawmakers from saying what they wanted ← xvi | xvii → to speak. Remarkably, the Indian politicians’ buoyancy was their forte against the British Raj and their account needs to be told in more than one forum. Once a leader of the Swarajist group, the virtual legislative wing of the Indian National Congress Party in the 1920s publicly warned that they came to the Central Assembly only to “break the system from within.” But they stayed on and nonetheless played a constructive role inside the legislative chambers. Only a few are possibly aware now what the Indian members could or couldn’t accomplish in the legislature at the cusp of the most trying times in the sub-continent’s political history.
Sadly, the recount of Colonial India, brilliantly recorded by numerous outstanding historians from all over the world, stated very little about the legislative encounters during the British rule. Their consistent narratives are more about the nationalist movements and host of other socio-economic issues spread across the panorama. Few of them explored how the Indian lawmakers, both at the central and provincial legislatures, delineated their restraints and hauled the independence struggle inside the legislative platform and adroitly battled with the keepers of the Raj and even with their local promoters. Ordinary readers or historians are less familiar with a bunch of outstanding Indian representatives who rocked the legislative chambers with high oratory and statesman-like speeches while the anti-British roil and communal blood-letting continued in the Indian cities and towns.
Why did the Central Legislature, the modern Indian Parliament’s earlier predecessor, by and large, escape the deserving intellectual as well as popular concentration in independent India and Pakistan? Within the limits of this preface, I can only outline the answer to such a seminal query and that’s what makes this volume meaningful. Habitually, the post-colonial narratives are dominated by the outstanding leaders who become larger than history. Ordinarily they bypass the less flamboyant constitutional experiences and institutional development of the pre-independence days. Under charismatic Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (Nehru) and his luminous cohorts who took up the independent Indian leadership, the Indian Parliament paled into the background and it was apparently less than the “grand inquest” and the “mother of all national policy making.” In Pakistan, during M. A. Jinnah’s brief stint as the Governor General, the new National Assembly was overshadowed. In post-independent India, there is a tsunami of books on Gandhi, Nehru and most other nationalist personalities as well as the Indian National Congress. But only a few volumes came out on the Indian Parliament and its political inheritance excluding, perhaps, the solitary scholars who authored them: one ← xvii | xviii → such innovative academic was late Professor Morris-Jones; he was my Ph.D. supervisor.
The British Indian Central government, virtually a unitary political system, never had the equivalent of an elected/nominated Indian prime minister or such Indian ministers who were answerable to the Central Assembly. However, most provinces had popularly chosen premiers and ministers accountable to their respective legislatures since 1937. A few provinces had prominent leaders in charge of the new provincial autonomy under the Reforms of the Government of India Act, 1935. Bengal, for example, had A. K. Fazlul Huq, a populist leader, as its first premier in 1937. He attracted national attention in the wake of catastrophic events in India. As a result, the provincial legislatures and their parliamentary experiences attracted relatively more interest from the scholars, historians and even novelists. Another likely explanation: the Western social scientists, historians and their South Asian adherents, who otherwise enriched the Indian political genre, had been more tuned to research on the perceived dichotomy over tradition versus modernity in the post-colonial subcontinent. Political modernity in South Asia, as short steps of representative institutions, is both a colonial and post-colonial phenomenon. With representative institutions like the old central and provincial legislatures, the British imperialist experiences were not monolithic. However the intellectual and popular attention has been more focused on South Asia’s post-independent political modernization: India’s Colonial era’s representative institution-building experiences, with a few exceptions, were over and over sidestepped.
The extent of influence that the Indian legislators could exercise against an enigmatic, not-easily-responsive executive, was only as good as the Central Legislature’s demarcated terrain. They tried several devices to pressurize the executive to respond to them. Broadly, they staged their struggle in a peaceful manner—they were not the populist boycotts or violent street stir up: they used legitimate parliamentary questions and adjournment motions to drive their demands. And the walkout from the floor as a group was the ultimate form of nonviolently demonstrated rage against the imperial government. But it was not a daily event. Moving amendments, sometimes too many of them, to rein in the executive-steered legislative proposals were the Indian legislators’ preferred contrivance. On an annual average, the Central Legislature passed 27 bills during its tenure from 1921 to 1947. It was a substantial output in Colonial India even compared to the provincial legislatures that apparently had more powers over the so-called “transferred subjects” since 1937. Except ← xviii | xix → the non-controversial and consolidating bills, each legislative measure, affecting the life, liberty and the daily grind