The Quiet Revolutionary
As Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon was rather more popular with the people of India than he was with some of his own civil servants.
1880
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
As Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon was rather more popular with the people of India than he was with some of his own civil servants.
1880
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
When Lord Ripon took over as Viceroy of India in 1880, he at once set about including more Indians in Government, and allowing the local press to hold lawmakers to account. Many opposed him and it took a long time for his policy to bear fruit, but Ram Chandra Palit believed that it was Ripon, and not his critics, who was truly British.
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THE enactment of the Vernacular Press Law had excited much dissatisfaction.* To the Viceroy was left the settlement of the question as to whether it should be repealed or allowed to remain in force. The local authorities were consulted, the necessary information was collected, and then without any fuss or demonstration the Act was quietly repealed — the liberty of the Vernacular Press was restored, and the people of India were taught the lesson that though one administration may err, the justice of the British nation is triumphant in the end. In the same quiet way, when Sir Richard Garth took leave for three months, a native of India was appointed Chief Justice in his place.*
That Government is entitled to the gratitude of the people of this country, which for the first time proclaimed to all India that henceforth, there shall be nothing to preclude a native of India from filling the highest office in the gift of his Sovereign, provided that he possesses the necessary qualifications.*
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Introduced in 1878 by Ripon’s predecessor Lord Lytton, it was a rather desperate attempt to stifle criticism at a time when Lytton lived in fear of Russian invasion through Afghanistan, a fear which the Secretary of State for India, Lord Salisbury, did not share: see ‘Never Trust Experts’. The Act also forbade Indians to bear weapons.
This was Sir Romesh Chandra Mitra or Mitter (1840-1899), a judge in the High Court of Calcutta since 1874, and appointed to his temporary post in 1882. As Chief Justice, Mitra was authorised to try and sentence Europeans, which caused a considerable uproar. Sir Romesh was a man of remarkably high personal standards: he retired on January 1st 1890 because he had been late for court. He was knighted the following June. A bust of Mitra stands in the court to this day.
See Queen Victoria’s promise to the people of India in Equal before the Law.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.