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examine critically examine the concept of dyarchy was postulated in Act of 1919

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Dyarchy: Democracy, Autocracy and the Scalar Sovereignty of Interwar India

Article (PDF Available) in Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East36(1) · January 2016 with 231 Reads

DOI: 10.1215/1089201x-3482111

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Stephen Legg

24.27

University of Nottingham

Abstract

The 1919 Government of India Act instituted sweeping constitutional reforms that were inspired by the concept of “dyarchy”. This innovation in constitutional history devolved powers to the provinces and then divided these roles of government into reserved and transferred subjects, the latter of which would be administered by elected Indian ministers. Recent scholarship has been reassessing the local biopolitical potential unleashed by the 1919 Act. In this paper I revisit dyarchy at the national scale to show how this “All-India” re-visioning of Indian sovereignty was actually negotiated in relation to its imperial and international outsides and the exigencies of retaining governmental control inside the provinces. This paper will propose a constitutional historical geography of dyarchy, focusing on three scales and the forms of comparison they allow. First, Lionel Curtis’s political geometries and the international genealogies of his federalist aspirations are explored. Secondly, the partially democratic level of the province is shown to have been rigorously penetrated by, and categorically subordinated to, the central tier of colonial autocracy, which orchestrated a political geography of exclusion and exception. Finally, rival conceptions of time and sequentiality will be used to examine the basis for nationalist criticisms and exploitations of dyarchy’s reconfigurations of democracy, biopolitics, and the vital mass of the people.

The
Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Actand also known as the Black Act, was a legislative act passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on March 10, 1919, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, incarceration without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act 1915during the First World War. It was enacted in light of a perceived threat from revolutionary nationalist organisations of re-engaging in similar conspiracies as during the war which the Government felt the lapse of the DIRA regulations would enable.[1][2][3][4][5]

Passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee and named after its president, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this act effectively authorized the government to imprison any person suspected of terrorismliving in the Raj for up to two years without a trial, and gave the imperial authorities power to deal with all revolutionary activities.

The unpopular legislation provided for stricter control of the press, arrests without warrant, indefinite detention without trial, and juryless in camera trials for proscribed political acts. The accused were denied the right to know the accusers and the evidence used in the trial.[6] Those convicted were required to deposit securities upon release, and were prohibited from taking part in any political, educational, or religious activities.[6] On the report of the committee, headed by Justice Rowlatt, two bills were introduced in the central legislature in February 1919. These bills came to be known as "black bills". They gave enormous powers to the police to search a place and arrest any person they disapproved of without warrant. A well known description of the bills at that time was: No Dalil, No Vakil, No Appeal i.e., no pleas, no lawyer, no Appeal. Despite much opposition, the Rowlatt Act was passed in March 1919. The purpose of the act was to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country.

Mahatma Gandhi, among other Indian leaders, was extremely critical of the Act and argued that not everyone should be punished in response to isolated political crimes. The Act angered many Indian leaders and the public, which caused the government to implement repressive measures. Gandhi and others thought that constitutional opposition to the measure was fruitless, so on April 6, a "hartal" was organised where Indians would suspend all business and would fast, pray and hold public meetings against the 'Black Act' as a sign of their opposition and civil disobedience would be offered against the law. This event was known as the Rowlatt Satyagraha.


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