Government of India Act 1935
The Government of India Act 1935 was an Act passed by the British Parliament that originally received royal assent in August 1935. It was the longest Act that the British Parliament ever enacted until the Greater London Authority Act 1999 surpassed it. Because of its length, the Act was retroactively split by the Government of India Act, 1935 into two separate Acts:
Government of India Act 1935
An Act to make further provision for the government of India.
25 & 26 Geo. 5. c. 42
2 August 1935
An Act to divide the Government of India Act, 1935, into two portions and to make in the wording thereof certain changes which either are consequential on the division or remove minor errors; to provide for the certification, the deposit with the Rolls of Parliament, and the printing, of the said portions as if they were separate Acts of Parliament; to secure that the said portions have effect in lieu of the said Government of India Act, 1935, as from the date of the passing of that Act; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.
26 Geo. 5. & 1 Edw. 8. c. 1
20 December 1935
An Act to make further provision for the government of India.
26 Geo. 5. & 1 Edw. 8. c. 2
2 August 1935
1 April 1937
26 January 1950 (India)
23 March 1956 (Pakistan and Bangladesh)
19 November 1998 (United Kingdom)
Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1998 (United Kingdom)
An Act to make further provision for the government of Burma.
26 Geo. 5. & 1 Edw. 8. c. 3
2 August 1935
An Act to explain and amend sections two hundred and ninety-two and two hundred and ninety-three of the Government of India Act, 1935, and sections one hundred and forty-eight and one hundred and forty-nine of the Government of Burma Act, 1935.
1 Edw. 8. & 1 Geo. 6. c. 9
18 February 1937
The Act led to:
The most significant aspects of the Act were:
However, the degree of autonomy introduced at the provincial level was subject to important limitations: the provincial governors retained important reserve powers, and the British authorities also retained a right to suspend responsible government.
The parts of the Act intended to establish the Federation of India never came into operation, due to opposition from rulers of the princely states. The remaining parts of the Act came into force in 1937, when the first elections under the act were also held.
The features of this act were as follows; 1-it provided for the establishment of an all-Indian Federation consisting of provinces and princely states as units. The act divided the powers between centre and units in terms of three lists: federal list, the provincial list and the concurrent list.
Background[edit]
Indians had increasingly been demanding a greater role in the government of their country since the late 19th century. The Indian contribution to the British war effort during the First World War meant that even the more conservative elements in the British political establishment felt the necessity of constitutional change, resulting in the Government of India Act 1919. That Act introduced a novel system of government known as provincial "diarchy", i.e., certain areas of government (such as education) were placed in the hands of ministers responsible to the provincial legislature, while others (such as public order and finance) were retained in the hands of officials responsible to the British-appointed provincial governor. While the Act was a reflection of the demand for a greater role in government by Indians, it was also very much a reflection of British fears about what that role might mean in practice for India (and of course for British interests there).
The experiment with dyarchy proved unsatisfactory. A particular frustration for Indian politicians was that even for those areas over which they had gained nominal control, the "purse strings" were still in the hands of British officialdom.
The intention had been that a review of India's constitutional arrangements would be held ten years on from the 1919 Act. In the event, the review was conducted ahead of time by the Simon Commission, whose report proposed the scrapping of diarchy, and the introduction of a much larger degree of responsible government in the provinces. This proposal was controversial in Britain, demonstrating the rapidly widening gulf between British and Indian opinions as to the desirability, extent, and speed of progress towards, the promised system of self-government contained in the 1919 Act's preamble.
Although the Simon Commission had taken evidence in India, it had met with opposition there, and its conclusions weren't accepted by Congress (the largest political party). In an attempt to involve Indians more fully in working out a new constitutional framework, a series of Round Table Conferences were then held in the early 1930s, attended at times by representatives from India's main political parties, as well as from the princely states. The agreement was reached in principle that a federal system of government should be introduced, comprising the provinces of British India and those princely states that were willing to accede to it. However, the division between Congress and Muslim representatives proved to be a major factor in preventing agreement on much of the important detail of how federation would work in practice.
The new Conservative-dominated National Government in London decided to go ahead with drafting its own proposals (white paper, March 1933).[1] A joint parliamentary select committee, chaired by Lord Linlithgow, reviewed the white paper proposals for a year and a half between April 1933 and November 1934, amidst much opposition from Winston Churchill and other backbench Conservatives. The House of Commons approved the Joint Select Committee report in December after an emollient speech by Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, who stated that he respected the principled position of the bill's opponents and that he did not wish feelings in his own party to become permanently embittered.[2]
Based on the white paper, the Government of India Bill was framed. It was immensely long, containing 473 clauses and 16 schedules, and the reports of the debates took up 4,000 pages of Hansard.[3] At the committee stage and later, to appease the diehards, the "safeguards" were strengthened, and indirect elections were reinstated for the Central Legislative Assembly (the central legislature's lower house). The opposition Labour Party opposed the Third Reading of the bill because it contained no specific promise of dominion status for India. It received Royal Assent and was passed into law on 2 August 1935.[4]
As a result of this process, although the Government of India Act 1935 was intended to go some way towards meeting Indian demands, both the detail of the bill and the lack of Indian involvement in drafting its contents meant that the Act met with a lukewarm response at best in India, while still proving too radical for a significant element in Britain.
Provincial part[edit]
The provincial part of the Act, which went into effect automatically, basically followed the Simon Commission recommendations. Provincial dyarchy was abolished; that is, all provincial portfolios were to be placed in charge of ministers enjoying the support of the provincial legislatures. The British-appointed provincial governors, who were responsible to the British Government via the Viceroy and Secretary of State for India, were to accept the recommendations of the ministers unless, in their view, they negatively affected his areas of statutory "special responsibilities" such as the prevention of any grave menace to the peace or tranquillity of a province and the safeguarding of the legitimate interests of minorities. In the event of a political breakdown, the governor, under the supervision of the Viceroy, could take over total control of the provincial government. This, in fact, allowed the governors a more untrammelled control than any British official had enjoyed in the history of the Raj. After the resignation of the Congress provincial ministries in 1939, the governors did directly rule the ex-Congress provinces throughout the war.
It was generally recognized that the provincial part of the Act conferred a great deal of power and patronage on provincial politicians as long as both British officials and Indian politicians played by the rules. However, the paternalistic threat of the intervention by the British governor rankled Indian nationalists.
Receptions[edit]
Nehru called it "a machine with strong brakes but no engine". He also called it a "Charter of Slavery".[17] Jinnah called it, "thoroughly rotten, fundamentally bad and totally unacceptable."[17]
Winston Churchill conducted a campaign against Indian self-government from 1929 onwards. When the bill passed, he denounced it in the House of Commons as "a gigantic quilt of jumbled crochet work, a monstrous monument of shame built by pygmies". Leo Amery, who spoke next, opened his speech with the words "Here endeth the last chapter of the Book of Jeremiah" and commented that Churchill's speech had been "not only a speech without a ray of hope; it was a speech from beginning to end, like all his speeches on the subject, utterly and entirely negative and devoid of constructive thought."[18]
Rab Butler, who as Under-Secretary for India helped pilot the Act through the House of Commons, later wrote that it helped to set India on the path of parliamentary democracy. Butler blamed Jinnah for the subsequent secession of Pakistan, likening his strength of character to that of the Ulster Unionist leader Edward Carson, and wrote that "men like Jinnah are not born every day", although he also blamed Congress for not having done enough to court the Muslims. In 1954 Butler stayed in Delhi, where Nehru, who Butler believed had mellowed somewhat from his extreme views of the 1930s, told him that the Act, based on the English constitutional principles of Dicey and Anson, had been the foundation of the Indian Independence Bill.[19]
Act implementation[edit]
The British government sent out Lord Linlithgow as the new viceroy with the remit of bringing the Act into effect. Linlithgow was intelligent, extremely hard-working, honest, serious and determined to make a success out of the Act. However, he was also unimaginative, stolid, and legalistic, and found it very difficult to "get on terms" with people outside his immediate circle.
After the 1937 provincial elections, provincial autonomy commenced. From that point until the declaration of war in 1939, Linlithgow tirelessly tried to get enough of the princes to accede to launch the Federation. In this, he received only the weakest backing from the Home Government, and in the end, the princes rejected the Federation en masse. In September 1939, Linlithgow simply declared that India was at war with Germany. Though Linlithgow's action was constitutionally correct, it was also offensive to much of Indian opinion that the Viceroy had not consulted the elected representatives of the Indian people before taking such a momentous decision. This led directly to the resignation of the Congress provincial ministries.
From 1939, Linlithgow concentrated on supporting the war effort.