Indian Councils Act of 1909

Indian Councils Act of 1909, series of reform measures enacted in 1909 by the British Parliament, the main component of which directly introduced the elective principle to membership in the imperial and local legislative councils in India. The act was formulated by John Morley, secretary of state for India (1905–10).

In Great Britain the Liberal Party had scored an electoral victory in 1906 that marked the dawn of a new era of reforms for British India. The relatively new secretary of state—hampered though he was by Lord Minto, the British viceroy of India (1905–10)—was able to introduce several important innovations into the legislative and administrative machinery of the British Indian government. Implementing Queen Victoria’s promise of equality of opportunity for Indians, he appointed two Indian members to his council at Whitehall: one a Muslim, Sayyid Husain Bilgrami, who had taken an active role in the founding of the Muslim League; and the other a Hindu, Krishna G. Gupta, a senior Indian in the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Morley also persuaded a reluctant Lord Minto to appoint to the viceroy’s Executive Council the first Indian member, Satyendra P. Sinha, in 1909.

Though the initial electorate base designated by the 1909 act was only a small minority of Indians authorized by property ownership and education, in 1910 some 135 elected Indian representatives took their seats as members of legislative councils throughout British India. The act also increased the maximum additional membership of the Imperial Legislative Council from 16 (to which it had been raised by the Indian Councils Act of 1892) to 60. In the provincial councils of Bombay (now Mumbai), Bengal, and Madras (now Chennai), which had been created in 1861, the permissible total membership had been earlier raised to 20 by the Indian Councils Act of 1892. That number was raised to 50 in 1909, even though a majority of the members were to be unofficial. The number of council members in other provinces was similarly increased.

When Morley abolished the official majorities of provincial legislatures, it was on the advice of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and other liberal leaders of the Indian National Congress, such as Romesh Chunder Dutt. He overrode the bitter opposition of not only the ICS but also his own viceroy and council. Morley believed, as did many other British Liberal politicians, that the only justification for British rule over India was to bequeath to India Britain’s greatest political institution: parliamentary government. Lord Minto and his officials in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Simla (now Shimla) wrote strict regulations for the implementation of the reforms and insisted on the retention of executive veto power over all legislation. Elected members of the new councils were empowered, nevertheless, to question the executive informally or formally about all aspects concerning the annual budget. Members were also permitted to introduce legislative proposals of their own.