Another opportunity to draw on this book and the research behind it came in 1975 when I was invited to Pakistan’s Islamabad University’s Commemorative Conference on M. A. Jinnah, the acclaimed founder of Pakistan. I was asked to speak on Jinnah’s role in the Central Legislative Assembly, which I did in person. One of the anecdotes I shared in my seminar was a recollection of my 1963 interview with Lord M. Hailey, once upon a time an outstanding member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in India. One of the episodes he remembered about Jinnah was his sharp skill in the legislative debates. Jinnah was precise in his speech and, consistently, he picked up such points on which the official members of the Central Assembly, time and again, found themselves on the defensive. Few of his colleagues would miss Jinnah’s speech and they would always take notes of what he delivered, Lord Hailey reminisced. In sharing that one-time interview with the audience in the seminar, I was throwing light on the bizarre relationship between the non-official Indian legislators and the executive members in the Central Legislature of the bye gone days who were not accountable to the legislative body. ← xxii | xxiii →
When I returned to the Dhaka University, then East Pakistan in 1964, the “publish or perish” pressure obliged me to bring out my Ph.D. thesis in Dhaka with a local publisher. But I did it in a rush, with a slice of disappointment, without much of revision, polishing and serious editing even though a few generous people helped me towards the publication. They were acknowledged in its first edition and I have later reprinted it here as a matter of a chronological testimony of this book. The limited printing of the book was, however, stuck in poor marketing: I thought about a revised second edition, a wish that is fulfilled now after 54 years in hibernation! Meanwhile, in 1965, my thesis earned the Lord Campion Award of the British Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, for its contribution towards the “understanding of a representative institution”.
I am indeed delighted with this edition of the book and what I have been able to append to the earlier publication are summed up below:
• I have added a fresh comment or two to most of the chapters except my old Preface and a Foreword from my doctoral supervisor late Professor W. H. Morris-Jones for whose profound intellectual wisdom, I have maintained a life-long respect and gratitude.
• I have nearly rewritten the Conclusion Chapter (XI) with a new voice on quite a few points.
• At several chapters, I have changed or consolidated numerous sentences and restored the slips caused during the transcribing process from the original volume.
• The earlier graduate research done in England is intact in its detailed description laid across the chapters dealing with the Central Legislature’s structural-functional working—the original focus of this study. But I have added flashes of new perceptions drawn from my diverse research on Pakistan, Bangladesh, British India and Colonial Bengal over the last few decades. Rewritten comments and a few additions are more embedded in the Chapters VI, VII, IX and XI.
• I have added fresh points at different spots, but I did not radically change the original contents and quality of the chapters; Chapter I establishes the key stages of legislative history from 1861 to 1921, and there was not much of recent findings to add there. Chapter II puts the Central Legislature in the backdrop of Indian politics from 1921 to 1947—it falls in line with Chapters VI and IX, which too, in different ways, examine the Indian Legislature’s political relevance to the emerging ← xxiii | xxiv → nationalist campaigns, conflicting political trends, ventilation of grievances and the obdurate Hindu-Muslim discords. Chapter III lays out the legislative body’s electoral setting and Chapters V to VIII and X examine the composition, leadership, professional credentials and the social background of the legislators, law-making process, the institutional features and the relations between its two chambers. In addition, Chapter XI (Conclusion) sums up the achievements as well as the limitations of the Central Legislature, the Colonial India’s summit parliamentary institution.
• Partly based on my post-doctoral and more contemporary works, I have added that the political groupings in the Central Legislature, especially from the 1930s, reflected the growing Hindu-Muslim conflicts that ultimately catapulted to the 1947 division of India. Both the Hindu and Muslim religiosity and their respective communal colors found their expressions in the legislative chambers from 1926 as detailed in Chapters II, IX and XI (Conclusion).
• In course of a three-generational narrative in a village in Colonial Bengal, I found that my family elders’ remembrances about the Hindu-Muslim identity conflicts in the early decades of the 20th Century resonated in the larger provincial and central political forums: strikingly, some of those echoes were heard in New Delhi’s legislative floor long before the communal disputes transitioned themselves into a demand for Pakistan. I have touched on a few of such supplementary versions across this book’s couple of chapters; those are among the new elements added to this revised volume.
• Chapter VII’s title has been modified and there is a stroke of new analysis of the old data on the non-official members’ law-making achievements.
• The former statistical tables did not undergo any changes, but I tried my best to minimize the typographical errors, which were further checked during the polishing stage. As of this writing, I don’t have the resources to go back to the previous legislative research that I did in England in the 1960s.
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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1965)
This book attempts to study an important political institution of British India, namely the Central Legislature which was introduced under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms in 1921 as an experiment in representative institutions but continued to work till the transfer of power in 1947. The Central Legislature was not a full-fledged Parliament though it had wider powers and privileges compared to the pre-1921 legislative councils. Its status could best be described as a quasi-Parliament getting ready to assume the position of a sovereign Parliament. It was a peculiar institution with a majority of elected representatives faced by an immovable Executive which was legally responsible to the Whitehall. Yet the Executive was compelled under the pressure of elected representatives to be responsive and in some measure responsible to the Legislature. Even if they would have despised the hostile Assembly in private, the members of the bureaucracy sat and listened to the criticism and answered them often showing great parliamentary skill. The Government had to use persuasive and co-operative techniques to obtain support of the elected representatives.
The nationalist parties outside condemned the Central Legislature as an utterly inadequate institution; yet they never permanently ignored it. They wanted to get inside the Legislature firstly to ventilate political grievances ← xxv | xxvi → and secondly to influence the course of administration. In fact, the Central Legislature was the only all-India parliamentary forum where diversified forces came to play. It was the only institution which imparted parliamentary experience to many politicians at an all-India level who later came to occupy many important positions in the responsible governments of independent India and Pakistan. Viewed in this context, the study of the Central Legislature is fascinating for the students of political institution and the constitutional history of the sub-continent.
The present study emphasizes on the actual working of the Central Legislature from 1921 to 1947 in its various spheres. The subject matter of this book has been arranged in eleven chapters. Chapters I to III provide introductory background. Chapter II has been specially designed to indicate the place of the Legislature against the political background. Chapter IV has indicated the constitutional powers, privileges and procedures of the Legislature. Chapters V to VIII and X have made a detailed analysis of the actual working of the Central Legislature in its important spheres. Chapter IX has discussed at length the political grievances ventilated in the Central Legislature and Chapter XI has touched upon certain concluding remarks.
This