An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

It was not to be. When the war ended in triumph for Britain, India was denied its promised reward. Instead of self-government, the British offered the fraudulent Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms in 1918 which left all power in British hands and attempted to fob off the Indians with minimal authority over inconsequential issues. If Indians were disappointed, so were Britons with a sense of fair play. British MP Dr Rutherford declared: Never in the history of the world was such a hoax perpetrated upon a great people as England perpetrated upon India, when in return for India’s invaluable service during the War, we gave to the Indian nation such a discreditable, disgraceful, undemocratic, tyrannical constitution. Instead of offering more democracy, Britain went farther in the opposite direction. It passed the repressive Rowlatt Act in 1919, reimposing upon India all the wartime restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly that had been lifted with the Armistice. The Act vested the viceroy’s government with extraordinary powers to quell ‘sedition’ against the Empire by silencing and censoring the press, detaining political activists without trial, and arresting without a warrant any individuals suspected of treason against the Empire. The Act granted the authorities the power to arrest Indians on mere suspicion, and to try them in secrecy without a right to counsel or a right of appeal. It was a return to the practices of the Spanish Inquisition animated by the presumption of guil...