Government of India Act 1935

Background

The Act followed a decade of constitutional review that began with the Simon Commission, appointed in 1927 to assess the working of the 1919 Government of India Act (the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms) and boycotted by most Indian political parties because it included no Indian members. Its recommendations, along with discussions at the three Round Table Conferences held in London between 1930 and 1932 — in which the Indian National Congress, under Mahatma Gandhi, participated only in the second — and a subsequent White Paper, shaped the bill that became law in 1935.

Main provisions

The Act's central feature was provincial autonomy: the eleven provinces of British India were granted responsible government, with elected ministries answerable to provincial legislatures across most subjects, replacing the earlier system of dyarchy introduced in 1919. It also provided for an All-India Federation that would have combined British India's provinces with the princely states, each retaining representation, but this federal scheme required accession by a specified number of princely states and was never brought into force, chiefly owing to the states' reluctance, itself rooted in rulers' concerns over loss of fiscal and administrative autonomy and uncertainty over the scheme's financial terms. Without the federation, the Act's provisions for the central government continued to operate much as they had under the 1919 Act, with the Governor-General retaining wide reserved powers over defence, foreign affairs, and finance. The franchise was extended to roughly a sixth of the adult population, still far short of universal suffrage, and separate electorates for Muslims and other communities, first introduced in 1909, were retained and extended.

Judicial and related arrangements

The Act also established a Federal Court of India, inaugurated at Delhi in 1937 to hear disputes between provinces and the centre and appeals from the provincial High Courts; it continued to function after 1947 until superseded by the Supreme Court of India in 1950. A related statute, the Government of Burma Act 1935, detached Burma from British India as a separate administration with effect from 1937, ending its earlier status as an Indian province.

Implementation and the 1937 elections

Provincial autonomy took effect with elections held in early 1937. The Indian National Congress won majorities or led coalitions in a majority of provinces and, after initial hesitation over the powers reserved to provincial governors, formed ministries in most of them; the All India Muslim League performed comparatively poorly in Muslim-majority provinces, an outcome that shaped its subsequent political strategy. Congress ministries resigned in 1939 in protest at India's inclusion in the Second World War without consultation.

Significance

Although its federal provisions never operated, the 1935 Act's structure of provincial government, its schedules dividing legislative subjects among central and provincial lists, and much of its institutional machinery were carried forward, with modification, into use as the working constitution of India and Pakistan after 1947, until each adopted its own constitution. Congress leaders criticized the Act at the time as inadequate self-government, objecting in particular to the governors' reserved powers and to the federal scheme's built-in weighting toward princely and conservative interests.