A History of India, Third Edition

THE PERIOD OF COLONIAL RULE

unrestricted. Queen Victoria had explicitly promised equal treatment to her
Indian subjects in her proclamation of 1858. However, as the age limit for the
admission had been fixed at 19 years of age in 1878 and the competitive
entrance examinations were held only in Great Britain, hardly any Indian had
a chance to enter the ‘heaven born’ service. Furthermore, British
administrators were extremely reluctant to accept Indians as colleagues,
probably fearing that it would cramp their style and also, at a deeper level, that
the legitimation of British rule would be diminished if Indians proved to be as
capable as the British when it came to running this administration.
From this point of view it seemed to be the lesser evil to make some
concessions to the Indian educated elite with regard to their representation
in the provincial legislatures and in the Imperial Legislative Council. As
long as such constitutional reforms did not lead to the control of the
British executive by a legislature dominated by a non-official Indian
majority, the association of Indians with the legislative process could only
enhance the legitimacy of British rule without diminishing the authority of
the British administrators.
In 1892 a limited reform of this kind was introduced so as to meet the
demands of the Indian National Congress, which had passed resolutions at
each of its annual sessions calling for a greater share of elected Indian
representatives in the legislatures of British India. Election was reduced to
the right of suggesting a candidate for nomination to the legislature by the
governor or the governor general. The nominated British officials still out-
numbered the Indian representatives, and these Indians could neither prevent
the passing of an Act nor throw out a budget: they could only make critical
speeches and thus score points in debates which were then reported in the
press. Nevertheless, this limited activity absorbed the attention of the Indian
leaders who joined the legislatures on these terms; the annual sessions of the
National Congress lost much of their earlier zest after 1892.

The Morley-Minto reform and separate electorates

The next constitutional reform came in 1909, after the 1906 Liberal Party
victory in the general election in Great Britain and the subsequent
appointment of liberal philosopher John Morley as Secretary of State for
India. A younger generation of radical nationalists had unleashed a wave
of political terrorism in India and Morley was keen to ‘rally the
Moderates’ in India; they, for their part, were equally keen to rally around
Morley, of whom they expected much more than he was prepared to give.
Furthermore, Morley’s decisions were largely determined by the policy of
Viceroy Lord Minto and Home Secretary H.H.Risley, who was against
territorial representation and parliamentary government for India. Instead,
Risley insisted on a representation of communities and interests in keeping
with the structure of Indian society as he saw it.