01A constitution in one statute
B. R. Ambedkar, lecturing in 1923, gave his students a plain answer to where the constitution of British India was to be found: in the Government of India Act, 1919. Unlike the English student, who has to search for a constitution, the Indian student was placed much as an American one is, with a statute to understand and interpret.
Indian constitutional law became a popular notion, and a subject of its own in law faculties, from the 1920s, and consolidation gets part of the credit. In 1915 a Government of India Act repealed what remained in force of more than forty-seven earlier Acts, the oldest of 1772, and consolidated it into a single enactment. That is where the notion of a single constitutional Act took shape.
With reference to the Government of India Act of 1915, consider the following statements:
- It consolidated the surviving provisions of more than forty-seven earlier Acts into a single statute.
- The Acts it consolidated went back as far as 1772.
- It introduced dyarchy in the provinces.
How many of the statements given above are correct?
B, only two. Consolidation of more than forty-seven Acts, reaching back to 1772, is what happened in 1915. Dyarchy belongs to the Act of 1919.
Marking "All three" tempts if 1915 and 1919 blur into one reform. They are separate: consolidation in 1915, dyarchy under the Act of 1919.
Marking "Only one" tempts if 1772 seems too early for a Government of India Act to reach. The consolidated series of Acts starts in that year.
Marking "None" tempts if the 1915 Act is unfamiliar. It is the reason the idea of a single constitutional statute took hold.
02The stated aim
The Act of 1919 put the Montague-Chelmsford proposals into statute. It departed in "two important ways" from the reforms before it, and the first was the aim announced for it. The contrast is with the Morley-Minto reforms: this time there was a categorical statement from Edwin Montague, and it tied the concession to the "progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British empire".
That could only happen in phases, and the recognition of it is what brought in the scheme known as "dyarchy", applied inside the provincial governments.
Which one of the following best describes the aim that Edwin Montague stated for the reforms enacted in 1919?
A is right. The declared aim was responsible government, realised progressively, within the empire.
B tempts if "responsible government" is read as an immediate grant. It could arrive only by stages, which is why dyarchy was the device.
C tempts if dyarchy is remembered as a central arrangement. It belonged to the provincial governments.
D tempts if the declaration is remembered as a promise of independence. The quoted declaration keeps India within the empire.
03Dyarchy in the provinces
Dyarchy divided the field of a provincial government in two. Subjects that were "transferred" went to ministers answerable to an assembly the people had elected. Subjects that were "reserved", the more crucial ones, were held by executives.
For transferred subjects the Governor was to be guided by his ministers, with one qualification: where he saw "good reason", he could set that advice aside.
Assertion (A): Under dyarchy the Governor was to act on his ministers' advice in respect of transferred subjects.
Reason (R): The Governor could set that advice aside where he saw "good reason" to.
B is right. Both statements are accurate. The power to set advice aside qualifies the rule in A; it does not explain why the rule existed.
A tempts if any true R looks like an explanation. R here states an exception to A, which is a different relation.
C tempts if ministers' responsibility to the assembly is taken to mean the Governor was bound by them. The exception still stood.
D tempts if the exception is remembered and the rule forgotten. For transferred subjects, the rule was advice.
04The areas left out
Popular rule was narrowed further by exclusion. The report on which the Act rested had itself conceded that in every province there were areas, in its words, "where material to build political institutions was lacking", or which were regarded as "civilisationally backward". Provincial governors applied to have a range of territories kept outside the Act, among them "almost the entire States of Assam, Orissa, and the Chota Nagpur plateau". Almost every application succeeded.
Regimes of exception had a history in India reaching back to the eighteenth century. What was new was the exceptions being, for the first time, "codified and made permanent".
With reference to the areas excluded from the operation of the Government of India Act 1919, consider the following statements:
- Regimes of exception appeared in colonial India for the first time under this Act.
- Provincial governors opposed the exclusion of territories from the Act.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
D, neither. Regimes of exception had a history in India reaching back to the eighteenth century; what was new in 1919 was their codification and permanence. And the applications for exclusion came from the governors themselves.
Marking "1 only" tempts if the first codification of the exceptions is taken for their first appearance. The two are separate.
Marking "2 only" tempts if the exclusions are imagined as imposed on unwilling provinces. The governors asked for them.
Marking "Both" tempts if both pictures are held at once: exceptions new in 1919, and forced on the provinces. Both are wrong.
05The Rowlatt Act and the boycott
The new constitution, for all the celebration around it, angered officials of the colonial state and the Indian public alike. The Rowlatt Act followed almost immediately after the reforms. It had three parts. Rights and remedies that the penal and criminal codes had given were cut back. The jurisdiction of the courts was limited. And the executive sought wider power over political prisoners, to detain them and to try them.
Every non-official member of the legislature opposed the Bill. It became law on the strength of the official majority. Popular unrest and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre followed, and the reforms were discredited further; the Indian National Congress officially boycotted the first elections the Act brought.
06Why dyarchy failed
The new legislatures became important places for debate and criticism, and dyarchy itself failed in practice. The reason concerns the departments themselves: they were "by nature independent", and together they made up an indivisible unit, hard to separate.
Two contemporaries are quoted. K. V. Reddi, a minister in Madras, described his own portfolio as development with the forests taken out, industries with the factories, power and labour taken out, and agriculture with the irrigation taken out. William Morris, the Reforms Secretary, conceded a "cumbrous, complex, confused system" with no logical basis, the product of compromise, defensible in his view only as a stopgap, and past curing by any amendment of Acts or rules.
07The ten-year review
One clause of the Montague-Chelmsford report provided for a review of the Act's working after ten years. This was a signal that the text was never meant to be permanent. The review body, the commission under Viscount Simon, had no member who was not British. The commission outraged political opinion in India of every shade, and the major parties boycotted it systematically.
The Simon Commission reported in 1929. Three Round Table Conferences followed, to which leaders from British India and, alongside them, from the princely states were invited for discussions of constitutional reform with British political leaders of different parties. The Congress boycotted two of the three, sending only Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu to the second, and with the civil disobedience movement under way the London discussions have been dismissed as unimportant.
That dismissal does not hold up. Several arguments were made for the first time at the conferences: the women's representatives rejected reserved constituencies for women as an idea, and the delegations speaking for women, for minorities and for labour insisted, repeatedly, on a Bill of Rights. Many of those who took part were to sit, twenty years on, in the Constituent Assembly.
Arrange the following in chronological order:
- The Simon Commission's report.
- The consolidation of the earlier Acts into a single statute.
- The Round Table Conferences.
- The Act codifying the Montague-Chelmsford proposals.
B is right. Consolidation in 1915; the Act of 1919; the Simon report in 1929, ten years on; the three conferences after the report.
A tempts if the 1919 Act is thought to have done the consolidating. That belongs to 1915.
C tempts if the conferences are thought to have prompted the Commission. The Commission's report came first; the conferences followed it.
D tempts if both slips are made together. The correct order is consolidation, Act, report, conferences.
With reference to the Round Table Conferences, which one of the following statements is correct?
C is right. The Bill of Rights demand, pressed repeatedly by those three delegations, is one of the arguments first articulated at the conferences.
B tempts because reserved constituencies for women were an idea in circulation at the conferences. The women's representatives rejected it.
A tempts if Gandhi's presence at the second conference is generalised. The Congress boycotted the first and the third.
D tempts if the conferences are thought of as British India's alone. Leaders from the princely states were among those invited.
| Transferred subjects | Reserved subjects | |
|---|---|---|
| In whose hands | Ministers answerable to the elected assembly | Executives |
| Weight | Not characterised | The more crucial subjects |
| The Governor | Guided by ministers' advice, which he may set aside for "good reason" | Not described |
| In practice | Departments independent by nature and together an indivisible unit; the split did not hold | |
08What to carry into Lesson 5
- 1915 consolidated the surviving provisions of the earlier Acts into one; by the 1920s the constitution of British India could be described as one Act.
- 1919 declared an aim, responsible government by stages, and installed dyarchy in the provinces: transferred subjects to responsible ministers, reserved ones to executives, with the Governor's "good reason" exception.
- Governors applied to keep territories outside the Act and nearly all succeeded; for the first time such exceptions were codified and permanent.
- The Rowlatt Act, which followed almost immediately after the reforms: passed by the official majority over every non-official vote; unrest, Jallianwala Bagh, and a Congress boycott of the first elections.
- Dyarchy failed because government departments, independent by nature, formed an indivisible unit.
- The ten-year review: an all-British Simon Commission, boycotted; its 1929 report; three Round Table Conferences, where the Bill of Rights demand and the women's delegates' rejection of reserved constituencies were first heard.
Recall · Close the page and answer
- What did the Government of India Act of 1915 do?
Check
Repealed the surviving provisions of more than forty-seven Acts, the oldest of them from 1772; what survived was brought together in a single enactment.
- What were the two categories of provincial subjects under dyarchy, and who held each?
Check
Transferred subjects, under ministers answerable to an elected assembly; reserved subjects, the more crucial ones, held by executives.
- Which territories are named among those governors applied to exclude?
Check
Among them, "almost the entire States of Assam, Orissa, and the Chota Nagpur plateau".
- How was the Rowlatt Bill carried, and what followed?
Check
By the official majority, against every non-official member; unrest, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the Congress boycott of the first elections under the Act.
- Name two arguments first articulated at the Round Table Conferences.
Check
The women's representatives' rejection of reserved constituencies for women; the delegations for women, minorities and labour returning again and again to the demand for a Bill of Rights.
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 wordsExamine how the Government of India Act of 1919 combined a declared aim of responsible government with limits on popular rule.
The declared aim: Montague's statement; responsible government within the empire, realised progressively; the first of two breaks with earlier reform.
The first limit, by design: dyarchy; reserved subjects, the crucial ones, kept from ministers; the Governor's "good reason" exception on transferred subjects.
The second limit, by exclusion: the report's own admission about areas lacking "material"; governors' applications almost all successful; exceptions codified and made permanent for the first time.
The limit that followed: the Rowlatt Act, carried by the official majority; the boycott of the first elections.
The review clause: review after ten years, read as a sign the text was not meant to be permanent.
Resolve: hold both together: the declared aim, and the exclusions from popular rule that the reforms carried. Give each its place, and include the excluded areas among the limits.
10 marks · 150 wordsWhy did dyarchy fail in practice in the provinces?
What dyarchy assumed: that a provincial government's work could be divided into two categories and run by two kinds of authority.
The reason: government departments were independent by nature and made up an indivisible unit, hard to separate; dyarchy failed in practice.
Contemporary evidence: Reddi's ministries without their working parts; Morris's admission of a system without logical basis, "defensible only as a transitional expedient" and beyond cure by amendment.
What worked: the new legislatures as important places for debate and criticism.
Resolve: the explanation is about the departments and their unity, and the two quotations are the evidence for it. An answer built on the personalities of ministers or governors has no support in the record.
10 marks · 150 wordsThe Round Table Conferences have been dismissed as being of little importance. Assess this view.
Why the view exists: the Congress boycott of two of the three conferences; the civil disobedience movement, whose politics were "heady".
The counter: arguments first articulated there; women's delegates against reserved constituencies; the Bill of Rights demand from women, minorities and labour.
Later careers: many participants later sat in the Constituent Assembly.
Context: the conferences followed the Simon Commission's 1929 report; the Commission had been boycotted by the major parties.
Resolve: state the grounds for dismissing the conferences, then reject the dismissal on the strength of what was first said there. Present the grounds, then the record.
PYQ corner
What UPSC has actually asked
Three questions on the ground this lesson covers, with the wording as published. The keys are the ones carried in published compilations. Where the key's wording goes beyond what is covered here, the explanation says so.
In the context of Indian history, the principle of "Dyarchy (diarchy)" refers to
D, per the published key. This is dyarchy: the provincial field divided into transferred and reserved subjects.
B tempts because double government sounds like centre and province. The two halves here are both inside one provincial government.
A tempts if the prefix is read as meaning two houses. Dyarchy is about subjects and who holds them; two houses play no part in this.
C tempts if London and Delhi are taken as the two authorities. The two authorities were ministers and executives within a province.
The Rowlatt Act aimed at
B, per the published key. The Act had three parts: the codes' rights and remedies cut back; the courts' jurisdiction limited; and an attempt to extend the executive's power to detain political prisoners and to try them. The key's wording, imprisonment without trial and summary procedures, is more specific than this description.
D tempts if the Act is remembered as a press law. Its three targets were the codes' rights and remedies, the courts' jurisdiction, and detention and trial; the press is not among them.
A and C tempt if the Act is filed under other business of its period. It ties to the reforms of 1919 and to the unrest that followed it, with nothing here of war measures or of the Khilafat movement.
The Montague-Chelmsford Proposals were related to
D, per the published key. The Act of 1919 codified the Montague-Chelmsford proposals, and everything covered under that Act, dyarchy above all, is constitutional in kind.
A, B and C tempt if the proposals are remembered for some social content. They were constitutional throughout.