Comment: The Government of India Act, 1919. (2004, 20 Marks)
The Government of India Act, 1919 (royal assent 23 December 1919) gave statute form to the Montagu–Chelmsford Report and to Edwin Montagu‘s pledge of 1917 of the “progressive realisation of responsible government”. Its preamble made responsible government the declared goal of British policy for the first time — yet the same year produced the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh. The Act is best read as a calibrated mix of concession and control.
Main provisions
At the centre
- A bicameral legislature: a Legislative Assembly of 145 (104 elected) and a Council of State of 60 (34 elected), with a majority elected in each house for the first time.
- No responsibility of the executive to it: the Governor-General kept powers of veto, ordinance and certification — Lord Reading certified the doubling of the salt tax in 1923 after the Assembly rejected it — and much of the budget was non-votable.
- Three of the six ordinary members of the Viceroy’s Executive Council were, in practice, Indians.
In the provinces
- Dyarchy: subjects split into reserved (Governor and councillors) and transferred (ministers answerable to the legislature).
- Central and provincial subjects were listed separately and provincial budgets separated from the central one.
Representation
- Direct election replaced the indirect method, but on a narrow property-and-tax franchise of roughly five million voters.
- Communal representation was extended beyond Muslims to Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans.
- Women’s franchise was left to provincial legislatures; Madras enfranchised women on equal terms in 1921.
Imperial machinery
- A High Commissioner for India in London took over agency functions from the Secretary of State, paid from Indian revenues, while the Secretary of State’s salary moved to British funds.
- A Public Service Commission was provided for; it was set up in 1926.
- Section 84A required a statutory commission after ten years to review the system — the origin of the Simon Commission.
Assessment from different perspectives
- Nationalist (Bipan Chandra): the Congress’s special session of August 1918 called the proposals “disappointing and unsatisfactory”. The Moderates who accepted them left to form the Liberal Federation — a split the reforms were designed to produce, while Rowlatt supplied the stick.
- Marxist (R. Palme Dutt): a concession to the Indian propertied classes that widened collaboration without surrendering control of finance, police or the army.
- Cambridge school (John Gallagher, Anil Seal): devolution of power and patronage to provinces drew Indian politicians into elected arenas and shaped the provincial, faction-based nature of nationalist politics.
- Minority and Dalit perspectives: extended separate electorates entrenched communal politics, though they also gave smaller groups their first statutory voice — the dilemma that returned in 1932.
Legacy
- Bicameralism, the listing of subjects, a public service commission (Article 315) and the High Commissioner’s office all passed into the 1950 Constitution.
- The contrast measures the distance travelled: a propertied electorate of about five million in 1920 against nearly 97 crore registered electors in the 2024 general election, and a women’s vote once left to provincial discretion against the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, reserving one-third of legislative seats for women.
Conclusion
The 1919 Act conceded the principle of responsible government while withholding its substance at the centre. It failed to win Indian consent — Non-Cooperation followed within a year — but it laid the institutional grammar of bicameralism, divided subjects and elective politics on which Indian constitutionalism was later built.