The Government of India Act, 1935

The Government of India Act, 1935 had 321 sections. It was the longest Act the British Parliament had ever passed. Yet its biggest promise, an All-India Federation, never came into force.

What did work became a blueprint for India’s own Constitution. This lesson covers where the Act came from, the federation that never happened, and how much of it survived after 1947.

1Where did the Government of India Act, 1935 come from?

The Act had a long road behind it.

• The Act grew out of the Simon Commission’s report, three Round Table Conferences and the 1933 White Paper.
• The Simon Commission was appointed in 1927. It had no Indian members, which angered Indian leaders. The Round Table Conferences ran from 1930 to 1932.
• It received royal assent on 2 August 1935.
• It had 321 sections and 10 schedules. That made it the longest Act Parliament had passed up to then.
• Winston Churchill fought it for years. He saw it as giving up the Empire’s grip on India.
• His opposition cost him a place in the governments of Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin.

2Why did the All-India Federation never happen?

Its biggest promise never came into force.

• The Act proposed an All-India Federation. It would join British Indian provinces with the princely states.
• It could start only if princely states with at least half the states’ population and half their seats agreed to join.
• That threshold was never reached. Rulers feared losing their power. They also feared being outvoted by an elected British Indian majority.
• Lord Linlithgow chaired the Joint Select Committee of 1933-34. He then became Viceroy in 1936.
• When war broke out in 1939, he suspended the federal scheme. It was never revived.
• The Governor-General also kept special powers. He could act on his own to protect minorities and the peace.
• Defence and Foreign Affairs stayed with the Governor-General. Residuary powers did too.

3What actually changed in 1937?

Provincial autonomy was the part that worked.

• Provincial autonomy took effect on 1 April 1937. It replaced the dyarchy of the 1919 Act.
• Before this, the 1919 Act had split provincial subjects into reserved and transferred groups. Ministers held only the transferred ones.
• Elected provincial ministries now controlled provincial subjects. Governors kept special powers.
• The franchise grew from about 5 million to about 35 million people. That was roughly 10% of the population.
• Sind was separated from Bombay and Orissa was made a province, both in 1936.
• Six provinces got two-house legislatures: Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, Madras, Assam and the United Provinces.
• Burma was separated from British India on the same day.
• The Federal Court began work in 1937. It was the forerunner of the Supreme Court.
• After the Poona Pact of 1932, the Act reserved seats for the “depressed classes”. Separate electorates stayed for Muslims, Sikhs and Europeans.

4What was Nehru’s verdict on the Act?

Congress hated it, and still used it.

• Jawaharlal Nehru attacked the Act sharply. He called it “a machine with strong brakes but no engine”.
• He is also widely quoted as calling it “a new charter of slavery”.
• Even so, the 1937 provincial elections gave Congress power in most provinces. It formed ministries in a majority of them.
• Congress did not initially form a ministry in Punjab. The Unionist Party held the ground there.
• Many Congress leaders opposed the Act, yet they chose to contest. They wanted to show their strength among voters.
• Congress ministries resigned in 1939. They protested India’s entry into the war without consultation.

5How did the Act become a blueprint for the Constitution?

Much of it carried into 1950.

• The Constitution took effect on 26 January 1950 and repealed the 1935 Act. But it kept much of it.
• The three-list division of powers became the Union, State and Concurrent Lists of the Seventh Schedule.
• The Federal Court became the model for the Supreme Court.
• Public Service Commissions carried over as the UPSC and the State Public Service Commissions.
• The office of Governor continued. In India, the President appoints Governors, and their powers differ.
• Section 93 let a Governor take over a province that could not be run under the Act. Article 356, President’s Rule, adapted this idea.
• One big difference: residuary powers. In 1935 they sat with the Governor-General. The Constitution gives them to Parliament.