Ilbert Bill

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The Graphic, 25 January 1884, p. 605: "The Native Agitation in India – A Meeting in the Town Hall, Bombay, in Support of Mr. Ilbert's Criminal Jurisdiction Bill".

The Ilbert Bill was a bill formally introduced on 9 February 1883 during the Viceroyship of the Marquess of Ripon, which was drafted by Sir Courtenay Peregine Ilbert, the legal member of the Council of the Governor-General of India. It concerned the jurisdiction of Magistrates or Sessions Judges to try charges against "European British subjects" if they were themselves not European.

It is named after Courtenay Ilbert, who had proposed it as a compromise between two previously suggested bills. However, the introduction of the bill led to intense opposition in Britain and from Britons living in India that ultimately played on ethnic tensions before it was enacted in 1884 in a severely compromised state.[1] The bitter controversy deepened antagonism between the British and Indians and was a prelude to the formation of the Indian National Congress in the next two years.

Controversy[]

Courtenay Ilbert drafted the "Bill to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882, so far as it relates to the exercise of jurisdiction over European British subjects",[2] which subsequently became known as the Ilbert bill. On 2 February 1883 he moved for leave to introduce the bill and it was formally introduced on 9 February 1883.[2]

The most vocal opponents of the bill were British tea and indigo plantation owners in Bengal, led by Griffith Evans. The European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association (which drew much of its membership from such plantation owners) was formed as a lobbying group to campaign against the Bill. Rumours began circulating that an English female was raped by an Indian in Calcutta. In reference to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when it was alleged that English women and girls were raped by Indian sepoys, many Britons living in India expressed great concern over the humiliation that British females would have to face appearing before Indian judges in the case of rape trials.[3] The British press in India spread wild rumours about how Indian judges would abuse their power to establish harems which they would then fill with British females. The allegations that Indian judges could not be trusted in dealing with cases involving British females helped raise considerable support against the bill.[4] John Beames, a long serving civil servant in India, stated "It is intensely distasteful and humiliating to all Europeans...it will tend seriously to impair the prestige of British rule in India...it conceals the elements of revolution which may ere long prove the ruin of the country".[5]

British women in India who opposed the bill further argued that Bengali women, who they frequently characterized as "ignorant", are neglected by their men, and that Bengali babu should therefore not be given the right to judge cases involving British women. Bengali women who supported the bill responded by claiming that they were more educated than the British women opposed to the bill, and pointed out that more Indian women had academic degrees than British women did at the time, alluding to the fact that the University of Calcutta became one of the first universities to admit female graduates to its degree programmes in 1878, before any of the British universities had done the same.[6]

Resolution[]

At first, as a result of popular disapproval of the Ilbert Bill by a majority of British women living in India, Viceroy Ripon (who had introduced the Bill) passed an amendment, whereby a jury of 50% Europeans was required if an Indian judge was to face a European on the dock.[7] Finally, a solution was adopted by way of compromise: jurisdiction to try Europeans would be conferred on European and Indian District Magistrates and Sessions Judges alike. However, a defendant would in all cases have the right to claim trial by a jury of which at least half the members must be European. The bill was then passed on 25 January 1884 as the Criminal Procedure Code Amendment Act 1884, coming into force on 1 May of that year.

Further reading[]

  • The Text of the original "Ilbert Bill" is reproduced in: Buckland, Charles Edward (1901). Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors. Calcutta: S. K. Lahiri & Co. pp. 771–774.
  • Ilbert Bill from Encyclopædia Britannica.
  • Bennett, Mary (1995). The Ilberts in India 1882–1886. An imperial miniature. London: British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. ISBN 9780907799542.
  • Dobbin, Christine (1965). "The Ilbert Bill: A Study of Anglo-Indian Opinion in India, 1883". Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand. 12:45 (45): 87–102. doi:10.1080/10314616508595312.
  • Faught, C. Brad (2006). "An Imperial Prime Minister? W.E. Gladstone and India, 1880–1885". Journal of the Historical Society. 6 (4): 555–578. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5923.2006.00198.x.
  • Hirschmann, Edwin (1980). "White Mutiny": The Ilbert Bill Crisis in India and the Genesis of the Indian National Congress. Heritage. OCLC 8141086.
  • Kaul, Chandrika (1993). "England and India: The Ilbert Bill, 1883: A case study of the metropolitan press". The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 30 (4): 413–436. doi:10.1177/001946469303000402. S2CID 144763646.

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ A Concise History of India, p. 120, at Google Books
  2. ^ a b Buckland, Charles Edward (1901). Bengal under the Lieutenant-Governors. Calcutta: S. K. Lahiri & Co. pp. 771–774.
  3. ^ Carter, Sarah (1997), Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada's Prairie West, McGill-Queen's University Press, p. 17, ISBN 0-7735-1656-5
  4. ^ Reina Lewis; Sara Mills (2003), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, Taylor & Francis, p. 444, ISBN 0-415-94275-6
  5. ^ Barbara D. Metcalf; Thomas R. Metcalf (2002). A Concise History of India. Cambridge University Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-521-63974-3.
  6. ^ Reina Lewis; Sara Mills (2003), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, Taylor & Francis, pp. 451–3, ISBN 0-415-94275-6
  7. ^ Ware, Vron (1992). Beyond the pale: White women, racism, and history. ISBN 978-0-86091-336-8.
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