Parliament

Abstract

The chief means by which the British parliament usurped the monarch’s power of rule over subjects was ‘responsible government’. Indians were introduced to the novel institution of the legislature by the British. As early as 1833, a conceptual distinction was made between the executive and legislative functions of the Governor-General’s Council. After the Indian Councils Act of 1861, there was both a gradual expansion of the legislative tasks entrusted to the legislative councils, and a progressive incorporation of ‘natives’ into the legislative machinery. The central Legislative Council was enlarged by the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 at the same time as officials ceased to make up the majority of provincial legislative councils. The belief persisted nonetheless that parliamentary politics was not suited to Indian conditions. Thus Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India, in the House of Lords during the first reading of the Indian Councils Bill on 17 December 1908: if the bill ‘were attempting to set up a Parliamentary system in India, or if it could be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or necessarily up to the establishment of a Parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing to do for it’ (Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, 17 December 1908, coll. 1985).