Secretary Of State For India Research Articles

‘England Failed to do her Duty towards Them’: The India Office and Pauper Indians in the Metropole, 1857–1914

ABSTRACTThis article examines how the India Office handled cases of destitute Indians, such as sailors and servants, who were stranded in Britain. The empire provided opportunities for work and travel, yet there were no securities for those who were taken advantage of by the system. This article highlights how the India Office was the institution expected to help distressed Indians and yet the secretary of state for India consistently refused to accept official responsibility for them. Nor did the British government try to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. Instead, the official position taken by the secretary of state for India was to let social institutions intervene, arguing that, as British subjects, Indians could receive relief through the Poor Laws. Workhouses, however, were ill suited to Indians striving to return to their homes. This article addresses these issues through examining three key periods: the early to mid-nineteenth century; a shift in the 1880s when the India Office acknowledged a better policy was needed for the treatment of destitute Indians; and, the turn of the century when a Committee on Distressed Colonial and Indian Subjects was established in 1909. Through a focused study of India Office discourses, this article addresses the ambiguity of imperial policy and assesses how it contributed to competing understandings of British responsibility over imperial subjects.

Rama or ahimsa? Terror or Passive Resistance? Revolutionary Methods of Hindu Students from London University and the Christian Response, 1909–17

The assassination in London on the evening of 1 July 1909 of Sir Curzon Wyllie, aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, by a twenty-six-year-old Indian student named Madar Lai Dhingra stunned the nation. The background to the shooting and its consequences shed light on the attitudes of British Christians to Indian Hindus. In turn light is shed on the response of Hindus, most crucially that of the eventual leader of the successful campaign for Indian independence, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, in the crucial decade before the First World War.

Cannabis in the Commons: Colonial Networks, Missionary Politics and the origins of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893-4

Cannabis in the Commons: Colonial Networks, Missionary Politics and the Origins of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893–4 James H. Mills In 1893 the Secretary of State for India revealed in the House of Commons that he had ordered the Government of India to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the issue of cannabis use in south Asian society.[1] In doing so he anticipated the establishment of the Royal Commission on Opium by three months, although the latter was to over-shadow the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (IHDC) both in the 1890s and to this day.[2] He did this despite the fact that cannabis was of little concern in Parliament or indeed in wider British society. It had enjoyed sporadic popularity as a medicine in British medical circles throughout the nineteenth century but had failed to establish itself either in the Victorian doctor’s bag or in the pharmacist’s range of patent medicines. Its popularity as an intoxicant had been noted by bohemians of the period but there is little evidence that it was used in any but the most limited of literary circles. In other words, cannabis entered the House of Commons in the last decade of the nineteenth century despite a lack of interest in Britain in the plant and its products.[3] This article will consider the question of the origins of the IHDC and explain why individual MPs forced the issue of cannabis into the House of Commons in the early 1890s in the face of an ignorance of the subject among their fellow members. After a brief outline of the key characters and events in the campaign that resulted in the Secretary of State’s announcement, this article will consider where those characters found the information that drove their efforts. It has already been noted elsewhere that the small number of MPs that pursued the issue were part of the campaign against opium of the period and as such their agitation against cannabis can be understood as part of their wider attack on imperial government and drugs trading in India.[4] However, quite how they stumbled upon cannabis as an issue, and quite why they took a negative stance when they did, remains to be explained. Cannabis in the Commons in the 1890s On 2 March 1893 the Secretary of State for India declared in the House of Commons that the Government of India would establish a Commission to examine the issue of cannabis use among the communities of south Asia. Although preparations of the cannabis sativa plant were largely unknown in Britain in the 1890s they became the subject of a sustained campaign by individual MPs in the Commons after 1891 when Mark Stewart MP stood up in the House of Commons on 16 July “to ask the Under-Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the statement in the Allahabad Pioneer of the 10th May last that ganja ‘which is grown, sold and excised under much the same conditions as opium’, is far more harmful than opium, and that ‘the lunatic asylums of India are filled with ganja smokers’”.[5] He pressed his point, asking further of the Under-Secretary “whether he is aware that the possession and sale of ganja has been prohibited for many years past in Lower Burma and that the exclusion of the drug was stated in the Excise Report of that province for 1881–82 to have been ‘of immense benefit to the people’”. The reason for his curiosity was that he wanted to know “whether he [the Under-Secretary of State] will call the attention of the Government of India to the desirability of extending the same prohibition to the other Provinces of India?” Mark Stewart was an experienced temperance campaigner by the 1890s and a member of the vociferous anti-opium campaign that finally cornered the government on the issue in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He had been badgering the authorities about opium for almost twenty years and had urged the House of Commons to pass the motion that “the Imperial policy regulating the opium traffic between India and China should be carefully considered...

Sexually transmitted diseases and the Raj.

India was the centrepiece of the British Empire, “the chief jewel in the imperial crown”. After the mutiny of 1857–8 it came under direct British rule, and was a major...

Civil Disobedience 1930-31

British imperialism's position, after its triumph in 1918 over its main challenger, Germany, and largely successful containment of Soviet Russia, was now reinforced in India by embarrassingly abrupt withdrawal of Non Cooperation movement in February 1922. The Union Jack seemed unassailably ascendant over Indian Empire, with nationalists forced into a demoralised and disorderly retreat. A division in nationalist camp erupted between Gandhian No Changers sticking individual non cooperation and proponents of electoral participation as a means of carrying on political opposition government. When in 1926 Swarajists experienced severe reverses in elections, compared with their 1923 performance, Responsivists, seeking become ministers under Dyarchy, began split Swarajist camp as well. Simultaneously, HinduMuslim chasm grew as Hindu critics of nationalism's espousal of Khilafat, on one hand, and Muslim leaders' outcry against its alleged betrayal of same Khilafat, on other, undermined platform of communal unity that Non Cooperation in 1920-22 had so splendidly built up. Gandhi's fast in 1924 in protest against growth of communalism had only limited effect; 1925 saw establishment of RSS, and Swami Shraddhanand's murder. Well could Lord Birkenhead, secretary of state for India, claim in 1925, that the unsubstantial ghost of nationalism was being laid rest. The British government accordingly felt that this was best time for it institute a constitutional review that would place nationalists further in their place. The Government of India Act, 1919, had provided for appointment, after ten years, of a statutory commission recommend, after scrutiny, whether to extend, modify or restrict

Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism 1902–1908

Writing to John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, a few days after the first terrorist bomb was thrown by a Bengali, the Viceroy Lord Minto declared that the conspirators aimed ‘at the furtherance of murderous methods hitherto unknown in India which have been imported from the West, and which the imitative Bengali has childishly accepted’.This notion later was taken up and developed byTimescorrespondent Valentine Chirol, who wrote that Bengalis had ‘of all Indians been the most slavish imitators of the West, as represented, at any rate, by the Irish Fenian and the Russian anarchist’. Chirol went on to say that ‘European works on various periods of revolutionary history figure almost invariably amongst seizures of a far more compromising character whenever the Indian police raids some centre of Nationalist activity.’ This indicated that Bengali revolutionary terrorism was simply a takeoff on the European variety. The only indigenous element in it was the dangerous infusion of Hindu religious fanaticism.

Approach to the Second Afghan War: Central Asia during the Great Eastern Crisis, 1875–1878

into Central Asia had been dramatic throughout the 1 860s. l The Khanate of Khiva had been brought under Russian control as late as 1873 and, despite repeated assurances from the Imperial Chancellory at St Petersburg of Russia's pacific intentions, it was by no means clear when, or if, the process of assimilation would stop. The British government was in a weak position to oppose the advance. Representations were made to St Petersburg at each new annexation or troop movement, but with little expectation of success. The Marquess of Salisbury, as Secretary of State for India, was only too aware of the situation when he wrote to the Viceroy in June 1877 that, in the past, diplomatic remonstrance had proved to be 'almost worthless.'

Urban Government under the Raj A Case Study of Municipal Administration in Nineteenth–Century South India

Until very recently, scholars of nineteenth-century India have tended to dismiss the role of urban government and politics as trivial or inconsequential. Most have reached their conclusions by studying the formation of policy in London or Delhi, using the private papers of high officials or reports prepared by the Government of India. A standard authority on British policy of this period states that local self-government ‘proved to be a tree which never took firm root. Local self-government never gained major significance in the political history of modern India.’ Local self-government failed, according to another scholar, because ‘… a rigid system of supervision was created, which ran from the smallest municipality up to the Secretary of State for India.’ In his opinion, this control and shortage of funds can be held responsible for the lack of development in ‘… the scope of public services, which were confined to the bare essentials.’ A dreary picture of petty quarreling in municipal government and stagnation in urban services prevails, alleviated only by the appearance of Lord Curzon as Viceroy in 1899 and his efforts to instill some ‘dynamic influence’ into local government. Although the policy of local self-government satisfied neither official aims nor nationalist aspirations, its importance for local politics and administration is now undergoing a major reassessment.

The Cripps Mission to India, March-April 1942

At the outbreak of the second world war the provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935, relating to the provinces of British India had taken effect, elections had been held, and as a result there were Congress ministries in several provinces. But the conditions prescribed by the Act for parallel advance at the centre had not been fulfilled, with the result that the Viceroy remained at the head of government, responsible indeed through the Secretary of State for India to the British parliament, but not responsible to any Indian assembly. In September 1939 the Viceroy acted, therefore, in accord with the existing constitutional system in declaring, on instructions from London and without consulting with Indian political leaders, that India was at war though whether his action, even taking into account dominant British views at the time, was also in accord with the dictates of political wisdom is altogether more debatable. Certainly the commitment of India to war without reference to Indian leaders, not least by underlining the disparities in status between India and the dominions, so evidently free to decide whether or not to go to war, caused the deepest resentment, especially in Congress India. India unfree, rejoined the Congress, could not fight for freedom. In December 1939 the Congress provincial ministries resigned on the issue of nonco-operation in the war, while the Muslim League, rejoicing in their departure, moved on towards the so-called Pakistan resolution at Lahore in March

The Problem of Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service During the Late Nineteenth Century

Historians have continued to view the Indian Civil Service (i.e., the British Indian bureaucracy or the “Covenanted Civil Service”) of the late nineteenth century as a highly popular and exclusive career for university-trained men in England. This is one specific aspect of the I.C.S. mydiology which views the nineteenth century British administrators in India as a superior body of highly efficient administrators. The sources, however, do not support the notions of exdusiveness and popularity. Even in the early years of the competition system, inaugurated in 1855, the caliber and educational background of the candidates failed to reach the high expectations of the Civil Service Commissioners. In the years between 1855 and 1874, both the number of nonuniversity candidates and nonuniversity recruits increased steadily. By 1874, nonuniversity men constituted over 74 percent of the competition candidates and approximately 55 percent of the selected recruits. In the same period, the representation of the Great English universities (Oxford and Cambridge) in the competition fell dramatically. Oxbridge students took 60 percent of the available positions in 1858, but only 18 percent of those offered in 1871. A disappointed British aristocracy (i.e., ruling class) became increasingly critical and apprehensive as to the future of the service. The secretary of state for India instituted a new system of recruitment in 1876, lowering the age limit for examination to 19 in hopes that the best students from the public schools would seek admittance. According to eminent spokesmen, such as Benjamin Jowett and Lord Ripon, the Viceroy Salisbury's reforms proved unsuccessful. The better students did not enter die competition, and a majority of the candidates came from unpretentious social and educational backgrounds. Authorities introduced other devices diroughout the remainder of the century to improve recruitment, but none achieved any improvement.The reasons for the relative unpopularity of the I.C.S. careers were legion and included a complex mixture of the following factors: arrogant criticism voiced by the aristocracy concerning alleged low social origins of the civilian recruits; the general stigma attached to any close connection with India among the British aristocracy; the several and increasing grievances of the civilians, which the aristocratic ruling class did little to ameliorate; the pressures of Indian educated elements for employment in the I.C.S.; the declining value of the rupee; the widening spheres of professional employment in England; and what may be called the “natural” disadvantages of an Indian career.

The Problem of Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service During the Late Nineteenth Century

Historians have continued to view the Indian Civil Service (i.e., the British Indian bureaucracy or the “Covenanted Civil Service”) of the late nineteenth century as a highly popular and exclusive career for university-trained men in England. This is one specific aspect of the I.C.S. mydiology which views the nineteenth century British administrators in India as a superior body of highly efficient administrators. The sources, however, do not support the notions of exdusiveness and popularity. Even in the early years of the competition system, inaugurated in 1855, the caliber and educational background of the candidates failed to reach the high expectations of the Civil Service Commissioners. In the years between 1855 and 1874, both the number of nonuniversity candidates and nonuniversity recruits increased steadily. By 1874, nonuniversity men constituted over 74 percent of the competition candidates and approximately 55 percent of the selected recruits. In the same period, the representation of the Great English universities (Oxford and Cambridge) in the competition fell dramatically. Oxbridge students took 60 percent of the available positions in 1858, but only 18 percent of those offered in 1871. A disappointed British aristocracy (i.e., ruling class) became increasingly critical and apprehensive as to the future of the service. The secretary of state for India instituted a new system of recruitment in 1876, lowering the age limit for examination to 19 in hopes that the best students from the public schools would seek admittance. According to eminent spokesmen, such as Benjamin Jowett and Lord Ripon, the Viceroy Salisbury's reforms proved unsuccessful. The better students did not enter die competition, and a majority of the candidates came from unpretentious social and educational backgrounds. Authorities introduced other devices diroughout the remainder of the century to improve recruitment, but none achieved any improvement.The reasons for the relative unpopularity of the I.C.S. careers were legion and included a complex mixture of the following factors: arrogant criticism voiced by the aristocracy concerning alleged low social origins of the civilian recruits; the general stigma attached to any close connection with India among the British aristocracy; the several and increasing grievances of the civilians, which the aristocratic ruling class did little to ameliorate; the pressures of Indian educated elements for employment in the I.C.S.; the declining value of the rupee; the widening spheres of professional employment in England; and what may be called the “natural” disadvantages of an Indian career.

The Many-Layered Cake: A Case Study in the Reform of the Indian Empire

Whereas reformers (occasionally with intent to mislead, often because they are themselves misled) tend to describe their work as if it were a concerted, directed whole worked out with a minimal difference of attitude and opinion, historians often gravitate to the glaring points of conflict in studying the development of a reform act. From these it is easy and interesting to paint a colourful picture. One might (rather inaccurately) describe the evolution of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms as the product of a process of conflict between the ambitious, radical, eccentric, ego-centric, Jewish, Secretary of State for India, Montagu and the Edwardian, unambitious, conscientious, self-effacing Viceroy, Chelmsford. Similarly, there is some temptation to view the growth of these reforms as the outcome of a battle between the forces of light (Montagu and Chelmsford) and the forces of darkness (the provincial governors).

India in the First World War and after

Surendranath Banerjea, the pioneer leader of the Indian National Congress, recorded in his Autobiography A Nation in Making (I925): 'The most stirring event in I9I7 was the announcement made by Mr Montagu in the House of Commons promising the grant of responsible government, to be realized by progressive stages.' Whether the 'August announcement' figured very largely on the world scene or not, it was certainly a landmark in Indian political development. The outbreak of war in I9I4 had witnessed an extraordinary demonstration of loyalty and solidarity from all sections of the peoples of India. It might have been expected that princes and peasants would rally to the Raj in the hour of crisis, but the urban middle classes also competed in efforts to support the British cause, and only a fringe element of revolutionaries tried to exploit the possibility of Britain's difficulties to overthrow the Imperial power. Yet by the middle years of the war a mood of disillusionment had set in. The Viceroy and his Council realized the need to make some gesture to reassure Indian opinion, but their approach was pedestrian. A severe critic of Indian administration attitudes was Edwin Montagu, a rising Liberal politician who had been Under Secretary of State for India, I91o-I4. The Government of India became very much the target for criticism over its inadequate support for the Indian expeditionary force disastrously defeated in Mesopotamia. When the Report of the Mesopotamian Commission was published in July I9I7, Montagu (then out of office) delivered a vehement attack on those responsible: 'The Government of India is too wooden, too iron, too inelastic, too antediluvian to be of any use for the modern purposes we have in view.' After the debate, Austen Chamberlain felt bound to resign from the post of Secretary of

Lord Dufferin and the Indian National Congress, 1885–1888

In the spring of 1884 shortly before his viceroyalty came to an end, Lord Ripon wrote in an urgent manner to Lord Kimberley, then Secretary of State for India, about one of the more critical questions of policy confronting the Government of India: “You may rely upon it that there are few Indian questions of greater importance in the present day than those which relate to the mode in which we are to deal with the growing body of Natives educated by ourselves in Western learning and Western ideas.” Ripon was pointing to the existence of a new class of English-educated Indians within British-Indian society and to the failure of the Government of India to acknowledge this class and to absorb its talents and influence within the structure of British-Indian administration. That this problem begged for a realistic solution by 1884 and that it would continue to do so in the years ahead, he had no doubts whatsoever; it had been left too long to fester in a mode both damaging to the class itself and dangerous to British rule. In short, the English-educated Indian class had become a question of policy.Simply stated, as the opportunities for Western collegiate education expanded and the avenues leading towards entry into the East India Company's service became available, the doors either failed to open or were placed out of the reach of the educated Indians seeking entry. By 1850, with the new class in existence in limited numbers in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Delhi and with additional graduates appearing annually to swell its ranks, frustrations began to emerge as the graduates found themselves unable to secure the public employment which the Charter Act of 1833 had implied was to be their just right.

VI. The Twilight of the Whigs and the Reform of the Indian Councils, 1886–1892

In 1855 Sir Francis Baring described the Whigs as ‘a body of men…[who] when the people are roused stand between the constitution and revolution and go with the people, but not to extremities’. The Great Reform Bill and Russell's further franchise proposals from 1852 to 1866 were characteristic attempts to conciliate ‘the people’ by extending timely reforms which would preserve the balance of the British constitution. The Whigs had learned the moral of the story of the Sibylline books and accepted its relevance to the process of constitutional reform. Gladstone's Irish Home Rule bill signalled the passing of their moderating influence in the councils of liberalism. However, during the following six years they influenced the Tory government's response to the demands of the newly emerged Indian National Congress. From 1886 Lord Dufferin, the Whig viceroy, pressed for concessions that would ‘take the wind out of the sails’ of the Congress, and from 1889 his successor, Lord Lansdowne, pursued a similar approach. The Tory Councils Act of 1892 was no large constitutional advance. However, it embodied the principle of representation and the germ of the idea of election. That it went so far is attributable to the exertions of the Whig peers, at Westminster no less than in India. The Unionist Lord Northbrook, son of Sir Francis Baring and a former viceroy, proposed a crucial amendment to the Councils bill, and it was carried with the authoritative support of the earl of Kimberley, thrice Gladstone's secretary of state for India and one whom Morley recalled as ‘at the top of the Whigs that I have known’.

Keynes as a Public Servant

Of the forty years of his working life, John Maynard Keynes spent approximately eleven as a public official. These years of public service were broken into three widely separated and differing periods. Of the first two, I know no more than does most of my audience. The Keynes of the third period I had some limited and intermittent opportunity to observe.The Civil Service was Keynes's first choice as a career—or at least as the beginning of a career. Not achieving the first place necessary for the Treasury, he was assigned to the India Office where he remained from 1906 to 1908. John Morley was the secretary of state for India and the permanent secretary, Sir Arthur Godley, was an experienced and skilful administrator. I mention John Morley because it is well to remember that Keynes knew and understood Morley's generation though the Keynesians do not. I mention Godley because it was under him that Keynes acquired his knowledge of the workings of government and of the official's point of view. He was never thereafter completely an outsider as far as the government service was concerned. There too began his interest in Indian currency and finance which bore fruit in his Essays and in his work as a member of the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance in 1913. To this period too may perhaps be attributed his readier knowledge of India than of the Dominions.

Post-War Forest Policy in India

EIGHTY years have passed since the Indian Forest Service was inaugurated under the auspices of Sir Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India, Lord Elgin, Governor-General of India, and Mr. (later Sir Dietrich) Brandis, its first Inspector-General of Forests. It was the first forest service in the British Empire and Dominions, and the first attempt by the British Government to introduce a correct forestry administration into a country over which it ruled. Various factors, including the steady recruitment of its gazetted service from home and the high standard of training demanded by the India Office for its forest probationers, have gone to produce the forest service and the great forest estate it controlled up to the outbreak of the War of 1914–18. Perhaps one of the chief causes, accounting for the steady progress in achievement for the well-being of the forests and the people, so large a proportion of whom are dependent in many ways on efficient forest management, has been the presence of an Inspector-General of Forests as adviser to the Central Government without intermission down through this long term of years. Many a period of storm and stress, as one looks back, threatening one or more forest regions in different parts of India, were safely negotiated through the presence at the ear of the Central Government of a cool and far-seeing forestry administrator who, with his great experience, could weigh impartially the pros and cons of any policy suggested by a local administration, and advise accordingly.

Secretary of State for India v. Sardar Rustam Khan

Cession — Perpetual Lease of Territory at Quit Rent — Whether Constituting Cession.98State Succession — Respect of Private Rights — British Practice — Act of State — Exclusion of Jurisdiction of Municipal Courts — Perpetual Lease of Territory of Native Indian States — Whether constituting Cession of Sovereignty.

The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region

HERPETOLOGISTS, especially those in India, will greet with warm satisfaction the appearance of a new book dealing with the anguifauna of the Indo-Chinese sub-region. The revision of previous work has been eagerly awaited for some years, as nothing has appeared in book form dealing with this specified area since Boulenger's "Catalogue" in 1896. The Fauna of British India, Ceylon and Burma, including the whole of the Indo-Chinese Sub-Region (Published under the patronage of the Secretary of State for India.) Edited by Lt.-Col. R. B. S. Sewell. Reptilia and Amphibia. Vol. 3: Serpentes. By Malcolm A. Smith. Pp. xii + 584. (London: Taylor and Francis, Ltd., 1943.) 45s.

The Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun

IN a Dispatch of the Governor-General in Council, India (dated Nov. 1, 1862), which merits a closer study than some parts of the Empire and Commonwealth appear to have given it, the formation of an Indian Forest Service with an inspector-general of forests at its head as adviser to the Governor-General was advocated, in order to check the excessive exploitment and waste of the forests of that country, which had been greatly intensified with the increased demand following the establishment of ordered rule, and to reserve and conserve selected forest areas. In sanctioning the proposals, the Secretary of State for India wrote that whereas capital expenditure might and would be justifiably spent in ameliorating ruined forests and in opening out inaccessible ones, he was assured that the work projected would result ins a valuable forest estate accruing, which in due course, in addition to being of the greatest benefit to the people, would bring in an increasing revenue to the Government. This inspired prophecy was abundantly fulfilled.