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From Colonial to Sovereign Status: Some Problems of Transition with Special Reference to India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Percival Spear
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Extract

Since the Second World War transitions from colonial to sovereign status have become so frequent as to be almost commonplace. The royal family in England has had an extra chore added to its duties in inaugurating new constitutions. Britain, which was thought by many before the war to be regulating the speed of inevitable gradualness by that of the tortoise, or even the glacier rather than the hare, has in recent years been sometimes accused of headlong haste and even Gadarene precipitation. Some of this proper speed or improper haste has been the result of lessons hardly learnt. Since there is much ground to be covered before the last colonial regime passes into independence, or some newly enfranchised states achieve stability, it is worth examining more closely the experience of one colonial region, for which purpose I propose to consider India.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , August 1958 , pp. 567 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1958

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References

1 Premier U Aung San and several cabinet colleagues in July 1947.

2 This is the usual abbreviation, which will be used throughout this article, for the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, inaugurated in 1921, and so called from Mr. E. S. Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, and Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy at the time. They introduced a measure of self-government in the Indian provinces.

3 The Royal Commission appointed in 1927 to survey the working of the reforms and report on the next step. Sir John Simon, later Foreign and Home Secretary, was the Chairman of the Commission.

4 He died at Stapleton, near Bristol, while on a visit to England. There is a monument in Hindu style to him in Arno's Vale Cemetery, Bristol, to which Indians make pilgrimage on the anniversary of his death, September 27.

5 Mountstuart Elphinstone, Resident of Poona 1811–18, Governor of Bombay 1819–27.

6 Founded in 1885. The Viceroy was Lord Dufferin, the English Presidents were Sir G. Yule, Sir. W. Wedderburn, A. Webb, and Sir. H. Cotton.

7 Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General, 1828–35. Macaulay was the first Law member of the Governor-General's Council from 1834.

8 Sir John, later Lord Lawrence, Chief Commissioner of the Punjab 1852–59, Viceroy of India 1864–69.

9 An illegal meeting was dispersed by General Dyer at the cost of 379 lives and many injured. His action was condemned by the Hunter Commission but the House of Lords passed a resolution in his favour.

10 That Dominion Status was the goal of Indian constitutional development.

11 President of the Punjab Board of Administration 1849–52, died at Lucknow 1857.

12 The Indian government enjoyed fiscal autonomy subject to the observance of imperial preference on certain articles.

13 (London, 1955). The second volume of the work The Men Who Ruled India. The first volume is entitled The Founders (1953).

14 The Charter Act of 1833, which renewed the East India Company's Charter for twenty years, but ended the Company's trading activities in India.

15 The Morley-Minto reforms, named after Lord Morley and Lord Minto, respectively Secretary of State for India and Viceroy at the time. They enlarged the numbers and powers of the Legislative Councils, introduced communal representation and admitted Indians to the Viceroy's Executive Council.