The Central Legislature in British India, 192147. Mohammad Rashiduzzaman
discuss very elaborately certain Bills of great importance; for example, the Indian Court Fees Bill, 1910; Indian Factories Bill, 1911; Indian Patent and Design Bill, 1911; the Criminal Tribes Bill, 1912; the Indian Companies Bill, 1912 which were also modified by their amendments. To give one specific example, as many as 30 non-official amendments were moved to the Indian Factories Bill, 1911, and 7 of them were accepted by the Government.40 Private Members’ Bills had been rather scanty; only 5 private Bills were passed by the Council up to 1917.41 Nevertheless it shows that even within a very narrow sphere, the non-official Indians could initiate legislative policy. As a result, a legislative tradition had grown side by side with the bureaucratic tradition.42 Public interest about the role of the Indian Members was also increasing; if any repressive measure was supported by the elected members, the nationalist press habitually came out with strong criticism.43 The more elaborate discussion of the budget and other financial measures helped the Indian members to learn more about the administrative intricacies; a lot of information about bureaucratic policies was also elicited by way of questions.
In spite of the general step-forward in the country’s constitutional evolution, the Morley-Minto Councils soon failed to satisfy the escalating “political hunger” of the country. It was because the fundamental purpose of the Reforms was not to train Indians in self-government but only to enable the government to realize better the wants and sentiments of the governed.44 In a sense, the Morley-Minto reforms refused to face the basic question posed by the Indian nationalism: What is the goal of the British Rule in India?45 Morley’s insistence on retaining the official majority further circumscribed the ambit of the Indian Legislative Council. The control of the Whitehall over the Indian Government was not even slightly relaxed under those changes, and, as a result, even the provincial governments could not respond to the pressure of the Indian representatives where they constituted a majority.
For some time after the introduction of the Reforms, the Councils gained the utmost prominence in the country as the moderate leaders believed they could be used as effective instruments to make the Government amenable to non-official demands. But the failure of the Government to make greater concessions to nonofficial opinion caused their frustration. Writing of his experience in the provincial as well as the Indian Legislative Councils, one ← 9 | 10 → member said in 1917 that resolutions and questions were on many occasions arbitrarily disallowed by the President.46 He also complained that the rules and regulations were too inelastic to allow the Indian members to exert their position and, as a result, there was a growing frustration and a sense of helplessness among Indian representatives.47 And certain repressive measures were passed in defiance of the Indian opposition. The worst of them was the notorious Rowlatt Bill passed in 1919: as many as 150 amendments were moved to modify the Bill’s spirit but the government refused to alter the measure in any substantial mode. Gradually the role of the Indian members came to be one of criticism only, which was often futile. World War I accelerated the political impulse of the country; India’s political horizon was widened. There was no more enthusiasm left for the Morley-Minto Councils; in October, 1916, nineteen members of the Indian Legislative Council submitted a memorandum to the Government outlining the need for post-war reforms. The memorandum could be called the country’s mandate supported by the Congress leaders.48 It was in these circumstances that the proposals of the 1919 Reforms were being shaped. The famous declaration of August 20, 1917 outlined the general goal of British Rule in India; in elaborating the announcement, Lord Chelmsford declared that any advance in India would also make further advance in the legislatures.49
Up to 1920, the Indian Legislative Council played, for all practical purposes, the role of an advisory body; it could not press any proposal against the official majority. Nor could it be successful in censuring the Executive. Furthermore; the financial powers were virtually restricted to the discussion of budgets. With a non-official majority and all the paraphernalia of a modem legislature, the new Central Legislature created under the 1919 Reform came to use greater power. It marked a new milestone in the growth of Indian Legislatures, which was the avowed purpose of the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. The autocratic power of the Government of India and the local governments was veiled, not impaired by the legislative councils of the Morley-Minto period. But the changes wrought by the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms was, as Sir Frederick Whyte, the Central Assembly President once wrote, so substantial as to amount to a political revolution.50 The new legislatures, both at the Centre and the provinces, were no longer mere consultative committees with a modicum of powers; they were legislatures with larger political opportunities.51 ← 10 | 11 →
Notes
1. In 1860, Sir Bartle Frere, a member of the Executive Council, made the following comment: “The addition of the native element has, I think, become necessary owing to our diminished opportunities of learning through indirect channels what natives think of our measures and how the native community will be affected by them….It is a great evil of the present system that the Government can rarely learn how its measures will be received or how they are likely to affect even its European subjects till criticism takes the form of settled and often bitter opposition.” Quoted in para 60, M/C Report.
2. Proceedings of the I.L.C. Oct. 16, 1878.
3. Ibid. (A fairly elaborate account of the protests raised against the Vernacular Press Bill is found in Surendra Nath Banerjea’s A Nation in Making. pp. 58–63).
4. Sir H. Maine’s Minutes (1862–69). (Minute No. 69, Feb. 1868. p. 167).
5. Ibid.
6. Quoted in Punnaiah, K. V. Constitutional History of India, p. 95.
7. Cowell, H. History of the Constitution of the Courts and Legislative Authority in India, p. 95.
8. Para 65, M/C Report.
9. Quoted in Gopal, S. The Viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, 1880–1884, p. 85.
10. Hartington’s letter to Ripon written almost a year later. Quoted in Gopal, S. Ibid.
11. Banerjee, A. C. Indian Constitutional Documents, Vol. II, p. 99.
12. S. N. Banerjee appreciated the right of asking questions in his address to the Congress session at Poona in 1895. Congress Presidential Speeches (1885–1917), edited by Natesan—p. 195.
13. Para. 69, M/C Report.
14. The proceedings of the Council show that the financial statement was given in a greater detail than before the 1892 Reforms.
15. Proceedings of the I.L.C. 10th March, 1905.
16. Proceedings of the I.L.C. 10th Feb., 1905.
17. Para. 27, M/C Report.
18. Chintamani, C. Y. Indian Politics since Mutiny, p. 46.
19. Text of the letter is reproduced in Lord Cross’s Political History which was privately printed.
20. Even in the letter mentioned above Lord Curzon commented that the “natives clamored for more.”
21. India Office Tract, 1037 (All about partition) pp. 56–86 quoted in History of Freedom Movement by Pakistan Historical Society, Vol. III, Pt. I, p. 18.
22. Banerjee, A. C. op. cit. p. 285.
23. Countess of Minto. India: Minto and Morley, 1905–1910. p. 414.
24. MacDonald, R. The Government of India, p. 69.
25. Mukherjee, P. Indian Constitutional Documents, p. 330.
26. Proceedings of the Imperial Legislative Council, 25th January, 1910. Also Rothermund, D.—Constitutional Reform and National Agitation in India, 1900–1950 in the Journal of Asian Studies, August 1962.
27. Para. 73, M/C Report.
28. Chirol, V. India, Old and New, p. 127. ← 11 | 12 →
29. Banerjee, A. C. Op. cit. p. 269.
30. Quoted in B. P. Singh Roy, Parliamentary Government in India, p. 56.
31.