Montagu-Chelmsford reforms

Background

Edwin Montagu, appointed Secretary of State for India in 1917, announced in the House of Commons that British policy would henceforth aim at "increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration" and the "gradual development of self-governing institutions," with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India within the British Empire. The declaration came amid wartime pressure: India's large contribution of manpower and revenue to the First World War had sharpened Indian demands for political concessions, and the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League had jointly pressed for constitutional advance in the Lucknow Pact of 1916. Montagu and Viceroy Lord Chelmsford toured India and produced a joint report in 1918 that formed the basis of the Government of India Act 1919.

Provisions

The Act's central innovation was dyarchy (dual government) at the provincial level. Provincial subjects were divided into "transferred" subjects, such as education, public health, local government and agriculture, which were placed under Indian ministers responsible to the enlarged provincial legislative councils, and "reserved" subjects, including finance, police, justice and land revenue, which remained under the British governor and his executive council, answerable to London rather than to the legislature. At the centre, a bicameral legislature was created, comprising the Legislative Assembly and the Council of State, though the Viceroy and his executive council retained ultimate control and could override the legislature. The franchise was widened but remained narrow, based on property, tax and educational qualifications that excluded the great majority of the population; separate electorates for Muslims, continued from the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909, were retained and extended to Sikhs in Punjab. The Act also mandated a statutory review after ten years, which led to the appointment of the Simon Commission in 1927.

Reception and consequences

Indian political opinion was divided and largely unsatisfied. The Indian National Congress, meeting at its Amritsar session in December 1919, described the reforms as "inadequate, unsatisfactory and disappointing," though it did not initially call for their outright rejection. Any goodwill the reforms might have generated was undercut by their near-simultaneous passage alongside the Rowlatt Act of 1919, which extended wartime emergency powers of detention without trial, and by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre at Amritsar in April 1919, which convinced much of nationalist opinion that constitutional concession and colonial repression could coexist. Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress moved toward outright non-cooperation with the reformed institutions from 1920. Dyarchy itself proved administratively awkward, since transferred and reserved departments depended on the same revenue base, and it was abandoned in favour of full provincial autonomy under the Government of India Act 1935.