01From Plassey to the Regulating Act, 1773
Plassey, the English victory of 1757, was the first serious blow to the charter order described in Lesson 1. When the Company then received the Diwani over Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, its power came to rest on two sources at once: the charter from the British Crown, and its own standing as the Mughal emperor's vassal.
The victories that followed turned a handful of cities and trading factories into a large landed power. They happened to coincide with money troubles in London. That combination handed the British Parliament in London its chance to remake the Company's government in India, in the name of curbing abuses in administration. The instrument was the Regulating Act of 1773.
02The Regulating Act, 1773
The Act made three changes. Indian administration has followed the same structure ever since. Each change is still visible in the machinery you are studying.
- One centre. The Act placed Bombay and Madras under Bengal. India thereby acquired a longer history of centralised authority on the ground than Britain's colonies in Australia, Africa or North America.
- Government by council. Authority went to the Governor-General sitting with four councillors. The Act itself named the first four, and most of them were the Governor-General's known political enemies. Their term, and his, was fixed at five years, which took a convention of British parliamentary life and wrote it into statute.
- A Supreme Court. The Act created a Supreme Court at Fort William, in Calcutta. Its jurisdiction ran across civil, criminal, ecclesiastical and admiralty matters, and it could take complaints of crime, misdemeanour or oppression against any of the King's subjects, and any suit brought against them.
With reference to the Regulating Act of 1773, consider the following statements:
- It placed the presidencies of Bombay and Madras in subordination to Bengal.
- It gave the Governor-General and the councillors a fixed five-year term.
- It created a Supreme Court at Fort William.
How many of the statements given above are correct?
C, all three. Subordination of the two presidencies, five-year terms, and the Supreme Court at Fort William are the three changes the Act made.
Marking "Only two" tempts if the five-year term reads like a detail from a later Act. It marks the point where a parliamentary convention became statute, in 1773.
Marking "Only one" tempts if you remember the Act mainly for the Supreme Court. The other two changes are the ones less often remembered.
Marking "None" tempts if you assign the whole restructuring to the Act of 1784, the one more often remembered. These three are 1773.
03The Supreme Court's jurisdiction
The Supreme Court's jurisdiction was wide, and it produced conflict with the Company. Its mandate covered all British subjects and all Company employees, and the second class included Indians. Nobody was sure who counted as a Company employee. That uncertainty opened the Court to Indians outside the class of British subjects, who used it to sue the Company.
Many Indians tried to get past local Company officials by appealing to a more distant authority, the Supreme Court in Calcutta. Each appeal was, in effect, a challenge to the Company's authority, since it asked a court to check the Company. But repeated appeals also built up the Supreme Court's own standing as a legal authority separate from both London and local Company politics.
With reference to the Supreme Court set up under the Regulating Act, consider the following statements:
- Its jurisdiction over Company employees brought Indians within its reach.
- Indians outside the class of British subjects were barred from suing the Company before it.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
A, 1 only. Company employees included Indians, and the uncertainty over who was an employee let Indians outside the class of British subjects sue the Company. Statement 2 says the opposite.
Marking "Both" tempts if you assume "British subjects" was the whole of the Court's reach. The employees clause is what widened it.
Marking "2 only" tempts if you think the Court was a court for the English. The record of Indian litigants corrects that view.
Marking "Neither" tempts if you doubt that Indians came within the Court's reach at all. They did, as employees and as litigants.
04Hastings, Francis and Burke on Mughal rule
From 1781 to 1833, Parliament kept passing laws to bring the Company and its territories under control. A private trading company was exercising the powers of a state. The argument was not only about what the Company had done. It was also about what kind of authority the Company had inherited from the Mughals.
Hastings's position: Warren Hastings defended the Company by saying that it had inherited the Mughal emperor's powers. Mughal rule, in his account, was absolute. The emperor was the ultimate owner of land, and the Company, as his successor, could make the same claim. This supported wide Company control over land and revenue.
Francis's position: Philip Francis first fought Hastings on the council and later in Parliament. He agreed that Mughal rule had been despotic, but he said it had not been arbitrary. In his account, private property existed under Mughal protection. The Company could not therefore treat all land as its own merely because it claimed to be the emperor's successor.
Burke's position: Edmund Burke used this argument to attack Hastings. He said Mughal government had been stable and governed by law, not simply despotic. Hastings, he argued, was using Mughal language to hide arbitrary Company power. Francis and Burke were defending Indian nobles and landowners in the political language of their own time. Their picture of Mughal government and Islamic law was poorly informed.
Assertion (A): Warren Hastings claimed absolute powers for the Company's government.
Reason (R): Hastings argued that the Company's government had succeeded to the Mughal emperor's absolutism.
A is right. Hastings rested the Company government's absolute powers on his idea of Mughal absolutism. R is the ground A stood on. He made a second, separate argument too: that every right in land belonged in the end to the Company as the emperor's successor.
B tempts if you expect the absolutism claim to have rested on English law or on the charters. Both sides argued from the Mughal past.
C tempts if succession to Mughal absolutism sounds too bold a claim for a Company servant. It is the claim he made.
D tempts if you think Hastings claimed only a trading company's ordinary powers. He claimed absolute powers.
051781 to 1833
Between 1781 and 1833, Parliament passed four important measures: the Acts of 1781 and 1784, followed by the Charter Acts of 1813 and 1833. Together, they reduced the Company's independence and placed its administration under closer parliamentary control. During the same period, the executive in India also changed. The council system set up in 1773 was weakened in 1793. An amendment allowed the Governor-General and provincial governors to act without the council's agreement in extraordinary cases. The stated reason was that the British possessions needed strength and security, and that the executive needed energy and despatch. Cornwallis and Wellesley used this freedom to expand territory and act on local administration.
The same body of legislation gave Indian personal law a statutory footing. The Supreme Court could exercise jurisdiction over Indians only on a condition: questions of inheritance and succession, and disputes over contracts and dealings between parties, were to be settled by Muslim law where the parties were Muslim and by Hindu law where they were Hindu. This provision belongs to the Act of 1781.
As Parliament tightened its control from London, it also limited the powers of the courts in India. The Act of 1781 took the Governor-General and the council out of the Supreme Court's reach for anything done in their official capacity. The Court's power to intervene in revenue matters was tightly limited, and that limit lasted until 1947. Parliament gave the Company's own tribunals formal recognition, and 1813 saw an effort to fold the Company's courts and the Crown's into one.
The conflict repeated itself at Bombay after a Supreme Court was set up there in 1823. Governor Elphinstone went so far as to call the Chief Justice out to a duel. When the government would not honour the Court's habeas corpus writs, the whole Court went on strike. Macaulay's verdict was that the Supreme Court had brought "a reign of terror" made worse by mystery, its judges strangers to the customs of the millions they claimed to rule.
Consider the following statements:
- The Act of 1781 placed the official acts of the Governor-General and the council beyond the Supreme Court's reach.
- The Act of 1781 gave the Supreme Court unrestricted power over questions of revenue.
- The amendment of 1793 allowed the Governor-General to act on his own in extraordinary cases, without his council's agreement.
How many of the statements given above are correct?
B, only two. Statements 1 and 3 are correct. Statement 2 inverts the 1781 Act: the Court's power over revenue was tightly limited, and the limit lasted until 1947.
Marking "All three" tempts if you assume every Act after 1773 extended the Court's reach. 1781 narrowed it.
Marking "Only one" tempts if you doubt that 1793 strengthened the Governor-General. It gave him enormous power to act independently.
Marking "None" tempts only if you have 1781 and 1793 confused with 1784. The Act of 1784 was a step, without these provisions.
06The Law Member and the codes
The executive answered the courts by adding a lawyer to the Council. A Law Member joined the Governor-General's Council: a person versed in the common law, whose job was to see that new laws were drafted without flaws. The office was a constitutional authority placed within the executive itself.
The attempt to put civil and criminal procedure into written codes belongs to the same story. The executive and the courts had repeatedly clashed over who could decide what. Clear codes would tell courts which procedure they had to follow and reduce the room for judges to act on their own view. Order was one aim. Keeping judicial power within limits set by the government was another.
07Indian litigants, and Ghulam Hussain Tabatabai's account
It was Indian litigants, suing and appealing, who made the system run, and it was petitions from India that stirred Burke and others to act. In terms of recorded ideas, the evidence is much thinner: only limited evidence survives of a rival Indian constitutionalism, and it comes in fragments, from one contemporary account. Ghulam Hussain Tabatabai, who chronicled the fall of Muslim power in Bengal and the British ascent there, argued that India had its own long-standing constitution of custom: each new conqueror had taken over the existing structure of government rather than replacing it, and even a strict, religiously driven ruler like Aurangzeb had left it alone. The English, in his view, either did not know these rules or chose to ignore them, and the people lost the benefits of good government as a result. For Ghulam Hussain, what made a ruler legitimate was simple: whether the ruler took care of the people. Where that authority formally came from did not matter to his argument. That basic duty of care, in his view, was exactly what the English had neglected.
Arrange the following in the correct chronological order:
- The Governor-General and the council shielded from the Supreme Court for official acts
- The Supreme Court of Judicature established at Fort William
- The Governor-General empowered to act on his own in extraordinary cases
- The Supreme Court of Bombay established
Select the correct answer using the codes given below:
D is right. Fort William Supreme Court, 1773; the shield of 1781; the override clause of 1793; the Supreme Court of Bombay, 1823.
A tempts if you place the override before the shield. Parliament first shielded the executive from the Court (1781), then freed the Governor-General from his council (1793).
C tempts if you put Bombay's court before 1793. It came in 1823, and the conflicts there repeated Calcutta's.
B tempts only if you have the shield before the Court it shielded from. The Court came first.
08What to carry into Lesson 3
- After Plassey and the Diwani the Company held two commissions, Crown and Mughal, and had become a landed power. London's money troubles gave Parliament its opening.
- 1773: Bombay and Madras under Bengal; Governor-General and a council of four with five-year terms; a Supreme Court at Fort William with wide jurisdiction.
- The Court's reach over Company employees brought Indians in, as employees and as litigants.
- Both Hastings and his opponents argued from Mughal constitutionalism, on thin knowledge of it.
- 1781 shielded the executive from the Court and tightly limited the Court's revenue jurisdiction, a limit that lasted until 1947; the same Act put Muslim and Hindu personal law on a statutory footing.
- 1793 freed the Governor-General from his council in extraordinary cases.
- 1813 and 1833 pushed the Company to the margins; 1833 revoked the presidencies' independent legislative powers.
- The Law Member and the codes were, in part, the executive's answer to the courts.
Recall · Close the page and answer
- Name the three changes the Regulating Act made.
Check
Bombay and Madras subordinated to Bengal; government by the Governor-General and a council of four, with five-year terms; a Supreme Court at Fort William.
- Whom could the Supreme Court hear complaints against, and why did that reach Indians?
Check
The King's subjects and Company employees; the employees included Indians, and the uncertainty over who was an employee let other Indians sue.
- What did the Act of 1781 do to the Court's jurisdiction?
Check
Took the Governor-General and council out of its reach for official acts, and tightly limited its power over revenue.
- What did the amendment of 1793 allow?
Check
The Governor-General and the provincial governors to act on their own in extraordinary cases, without the council's agreement.
- What was the Law Member for?
Check
A common-law expert inside the Governor-General's Council to see that laws were drafted without flaws; a constitutional authority placed within the executive.
Mains practice · GS Paper II
Three questions, with answer frames
Write the answer first. Then open the frame and check what you left out.
15 marks · 250 wordsThe Regulating Act of 1773 laid the track that Indian administration has followed since. Examine.
Context in two lines: Plassey and the Diwani; two sources of authority; a landed power; London's fiscal trouble as Parliament's opening.
Change one, and its path: Bombay and Madras under Bengal; a longer history of centralised local authority than Britain's colonies in Australia, Africa and North America.
Change two, and its path: council government; named councillors, mostly opponents; five-year terms turning convention into statute.
Change three, and its path: the Supreme Court at Fort William; wide jurisdiction; reach over Company employees including Indians; Indian litigants strengthening a legal authority detached from London and from local politics.
The limit of the claim: the path was corrected almost at once. 1781 exempted the executive and cut revenue jurisdiction; 1793 undid council government in extraordinary cases.
Resolve: the three structures were laid down in 1773; the balance among them shifted within a decade. One 1781 limit survived to 1947: the Court's restricted revenue jurisdiction.
10 marks · 150 words"Between 1781 and 1833 Parliament gained control over the Company as much by weakening the courts in India as by strengthening itself." Discuss.
Strengthening itself: the 1781 and 1784 Acts, the 1813 and 1833 renewals, close parliamentary watch.
Weakening the courts: 1781 takes the Governor-General and council out of the Court's reach for official acts; the Court's revenue jurisdiction tightly limited until 1947; Company tribunals recognised; the 1813 effort to fold Company and Crown courts together.
The executive's own tools: the 1793 override; and, at an unspecified date, the Law Member and codification partly to discipline judges.
What the courts still did: Bombay 1823, the habeas corpus strike; Macaulay's charge shows how much the courts still bit.
Resolve: the operative word is "balanced": increased control from London was offset by reduced judicial opposition in India. The question's "as much by" overstates that sense; say so.
10 marks · 150 wordsHow did both sides of the Hastings controversy use "Mughal constitutionalism"?
Why they needed it: a private firm wielding sovereign power was an oddity; both sides wanted a principle.
Hastings: absolute powers descended from Mughal absolutism; every right in land coming home to the Company as heir.
Francis: conceded Mughal despotism, denied arbitrariness; private property under Mughal benevolence.
Burke: Mughal rule stable, grounded in law, and in his view never despotic, which separates him from Francis; Hastings' Mughal language a disguise for arbitrary power; a republican strain in Indo-Islamic rule as a fresh source of legitimacy.
Close: Francis and Burke's Whig defence rested on a poorly informed picture of Mughal government and Islamic law; and the one Indian voice on record, Ghulam Hussain, judged rulers by whether they cared for their people.
PYQ corner
What UPSC has actually asked
Three questions on the Acts this lesson covers. Where the answer rests on a provision not covered here, the lesson says so.
Match List I (Acts of Colonial Government of India) with List II (Provisions) and select the correct answer using the codes given below the lists:
| List I | List II |
|---|---|
| A. Charter Act, 1813 | 1. Set up a Board of Control in Britain to fully regulate the East India Company's affairs in India |
| B. Regulating Act, 1773 | 2. Company's trade monopoly in India was ended |
| C. Act of 1858 | 3. The power to govern was transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown |
| D. Pitt's India Act | 4. The Company's Directors were asked to present to the British Government all correspondence and documents pertaining to the administration of the Company |
A, per the published key. What this lesson supports: 1858 as the year London's government took direct charge of the territories (Lesson 3), and 1813 and 1784 as steps by which Parliament took the Company in hand. The Board of Control, the correspondence requirement and the end of the monopoly are provisions not covered here.
C tempts if you file every transfer of power under 1858. 1773 is about presidencies, council and court; the move to direct Crown control is 1858.
By which one of the following Acts was the Governor General of Bengal designated as the Governor General of India?
D, per UPSC's key. 1833 was the year the presidencies' independent legislative powers were revoked and one of the measures that pushed the Company to the margins of government. The designation itself is not covered here.
A tempts because 1773 placed Bombay and Madras under Bengal. Subordination and the all-India designation are different steps.
C tempts because 1793 did enlarge the Governor-General's power, by letting him act without his council. That is a different change, and the measure is an amendment of 1793 rather than a Charter Act.
Which one of the following provisions was not made in the Charter Act of 1833?
D, per the published key. The Law Member was a common-law expert placed inside the executive so that laws would be drafted without flaws; nothing here says the member was to be Indian. On C, the presidencies' loss of their independent legislative powers in 1833 points the same way as the key. Options A and B describe provisions not covered here.