Viceroys of India 1858 to 1947: List and Major Events

When the Revolt of 1857 was put down, the East India Company lost its political role. The Government of India Act of 1858 transferred the government of India to the Crown, created the office of the Secretary of State for India with a Council of fifteen members in London, and turned the Governor-General of India into the Viceroy, the direct representative of the British sovereign. Twenty Viceroys held the office between 1858 and 1947, and the chain of events a student has to remember, from the Indian Councils Acts to the partition of Bengal, from the shifting of the capital to the Quit India Movement, is most easily held in memory by pinning each event to the Viceroy under whom it happened.

From Governor-General to Viceroy

Warren Hastings had become the first Governor-General of Bengal under the Regulating Act, and Lord William Bentinck the first Governor-General of India under the Charter Act of 1833. Lord Canning, who was Governor-General when the revolt broke out, became the first Viceroy in 1858. Under him the Indian Councils Act of 1861 restored the legislative power of the Bombay and Madras presidencies and brought Indians into the legislative council as non-official members, the Indian High Courts Act of 1861 set up High Courts at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, and the Doctrine of Lapse was withdrawn. Lord Mayo, Viceroy from 1869, began the first regular census of 1872, set up the Department of Agriculture and the Rajkumar College at Kathiawar, and is the only Viceroy to have been assassinated in office, stabbed by Sher Ali Afridi at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands in 1872.

Lytton, Ripon and Curzon

Lord Lytton is remembered for repression and for the famine of 1876 to 1878, during which he held the grand Delhi Durbar of 1877 to proclaim Queen Victoria the Empress of India. He passed the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which gagged Indian language newspapers, and the Arms Act of 1878, and lowered the maximum age for the civil services examination from twenty-one to nineteen. Lord Ripon, the most liberal of the Viceroys, repealed the Vernacular Press Act in 1882, passed the Local Self-Government Resolution of 1882 that earned him the title of father of local self-government in India, appointed the Hunter Commission on education in 1882 and passed the first Factory Act of 1881. The Ilbert Bill of 1883, which proposed to let Indian judges try European subjects, raised such a storm among the European community that it had to be watered down. Lord Curzon, Viceroy from 1899 to 1905, created the Archaeological Survey of India and passed the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act of 1904, set up the Police Commission under Andrew Fraser and the Universities Commission under Thomas Raleigh, carved out the North West Frontier Province, and ordered the partition of Bengal in 1905, which set off the Swadeshi Movement.

The Viceroys and the national movement

The last years

Lord Linlithgow was the longest serving Viceroy. India was taken into the Second World War during his term without consulting the legislatures, the Congress ministries resigned in 1939, the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution of 1940, and the Quit India Movement of August 1942 was crushed under him. Lord Wavell called the Simla Conference of 1945 on the basis of the Wavell Plan, received the Cabinet Mission in 1946 and faced Direct Action Day and the communal killings that followed. Lord Mountbatten arrived in March 1947, announced the plan of 3 June 1947 for the partition of the country, and under the Indian Independence Act became the first Governor-General of independent India, with C. Rajagopalachari succeeding him as the first and only Indian to hold that post.