Lord Ripon: The ‘Father of Self-Government in India’

1885 Lord Ripon India Bombay AND British Army Port Moresby

September 2, 2023

How did a British administrator come to be known as the ‘father of local self-government in India’? Read on for the story of Lord Ripon, a Viceroy of India whose liberal policies were way ahead of his times – a man who championed the cause of Indians even as his own compatriots plotted his downfall.

‘Fittest of rulers was he for a loud-mouthed, cackling land… This was his “policy” – turmoil and babble and causeless strife.’*

This is how Rudyard Kipling described Lord Ripon, the British Viceroy of India in the late 1800s. Now why would the writer of dreamy poetry and legendary animal stories that have enthralled children and adults alike for generations use such spiteful words? Because, the ‘gentle’ Kipling was at heart an imperialist. However, this story is not about Kipling, but about Ripon. Lord Ripon was a committed liberal and a champion of democracy. And for precisely that reason, he was vilified by his unworthy opponents.

George Frederick Samuel Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon, was born in 1827, at 10, Downing Street, the official residence of the British prime minister. That was because his father was the serving prime minister. Ripon belonged to an aristocratic family. In fact, he was so privileged that he was not sent to school or college but was privately tutored. But for a person born into such privilege, he showed remarkable sensitivity to the poor and oppressed. So it was not surprising that he joined the Liberal party. Between 1858 and 1908, he held many important posts, including Secretary of State for War, First Lord of the Admiralty and more.

In 1880, the Liberal prime minister William Gladstone appointed Ripon as the Viceroy of India. Known as Gladstone’s man in India, Ripon was no stranger to the country. He had served as both Under-Secretary and Secretary of State for India. He arrived with a plan.

Ripon started with a disadvantage: he had inherited a war that hurt domestic growth. In 1878, Britain had pushed India into the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Now it had degenerated into a hopeless stalemate, draining the Indian government’s money and energies, with no possibility of any strategic benefit.

Ripon began a process of disengagement whereby the British troops would ‘honourably’ withdraw without much loss. This was a delicate operation, because during the war, Afghanistan had splintered into many warring regions. Barely 2 months after he assumed office, disaster struck. One powerful splinter group attacked and slaughtered British troops at Maiwand. The British troops were forced to retreat. The war hawks in England unfairly blamed Ripon. Randolph Churchill (Winston Churchill’s father) made it a cause celebre in the parliament, saying that the defeat was attributable not to the field commander (Brigadier Burrows) but to Ripon’s incompetent policies. Ripon weathered the storm and completed the honourable disengagement by 1881.

Ripon now turned his attention to domestic affairs. It had not even been 25 years since the First War of Independence, and there was a trust deficit between Indians and the British. Ripon’s predecessor, Lord Lytton, had worsened this by passing the Vernacular Press Act, which targeted the local Indian languages press. It was meant to suppress Indian criticism of the British policies in general and the Afghan War in particular. The government could easily shut down a press and confiscate equipment of non-English publications if they failed to comply. With the war behind him, Ripon repealed the Vernacular Press Act, and this won the hearts of Indians.

Revolt of 1857 — A scene from the First War of Indian Independence

Although the Industrial Revolution had not percolated to India in a big way, its evils had somehow made their way to the country. Ripon was sensitive to the woes of the vulnerable working class. He passed the first ever Factories Act in 1881. It prohibited employing children below 7, reduced hours of work for children up to 12, ensured reasonable daily working hours with periodic rest breaks for all labourers and introduced safety procedures for machine workers. It was a very progressive legislation for those days. He reduced the salt taxes, because salt was such an important ingredient of people’s diet. Liberals like Florence Nightingale were his supporters, though it did not mean much in a British society dominated by Imperialists.

Detour: Read more about the British salt tax in our blog – The Great Wall of Thorns.

Ripon felt that Indians should have more say in governing their own land. He began delegating more power to local elected bodies. Many historians believe that Ripon was the ‘father of local self-government’ in India. Madras resonated with the slogan Ripon engal Appan (meaning ‘Ripon is our father’)!

Then came Ripon’s biggest move. In the British courts, everyone was supposedly equal in the eyes of the law. But it was a colonial myth. Actually, some people were more equal**. By the time Ripon took charge, qualified Indians – some of them learned jurists – were already serving as judges in High Courts. But there was a serious restriction on the jurisdiction of Indian magistrates and judges. If one of the defendants was European, only a British judge could preside over the court, even if an equally qualified native Indian judge was available. This was blatant racism.

Now, Ripon saw the unfairness of it all. He appointed Sir Courtenay Ilbert, an excellent jurist and a humanitarian, as the Law Member of the Viceroy’s Council. With Ripon’s backing, he drafted the Ilbert Bill of 1883 which recommended equal power to Indian judges.

When it was tabled, it created an uproar. The British community in Calcutta (the Indian capital then), went berserk. Thousands of protesters took to the streets, carrying caricatures of Indian magistrates, calling them ‘wily snakes’ and other degrading names. Ilbert and Ripon were branded traitors to the nation and their effigies were burnt. The English papers in India and the British papers in England further stoked the racist fire.

The agitators achieved their aim of shocking the administration into relenting. After a series of negotiations, the amended bill was passed by the Indian (Imperial) Legislative Council in 1884. The original intention of the bill was severely compromised. In its new form, Indian magistrates could try European defendants, but the Europeans could easily bypass this process by demanding a special jury that was 50% European.

Ripon’s noble project was thwarted by vested interests. He saw no point in continuing, and resigned in 1884, a year before the end of his term. On the last day, he took a train from Calcutta to Bombay (the ship to England sailed from Bombay). Thousands of Indians lined up by the railway line and bowed silently to their hero. He had fought so hard, even antagonising his own countrymen, just for them!

Ripon’s exit was a turning point. Indian leaders now realised that the British were never serious about handing administrative power to Indians. It could be won only by taking the fight to the streets; the anti-Ilbert British protesters had just shown how it could be done.

Ripon’s legacy is still honoured in India. Thus, we have a town named Riponpet in Karnataka, a Ripon Street in Calcutta, and a Ripon Club in Bombay. There was even a Ripon Building in Multan, Pakistan (now called Jinnah Building). In 1913, the Madras Municipality opened its new building at Periamet, and named it after Ripon. The city corporation still functions out of this building. It came up three decades after Ripon resigned, when he was not even alive – yet his name was the obvious choice. After all, he was one of India’s greatest champions of local self-government.

Ripon Building in 1990, Chennai — Ripon Building

Notes

1. *The introductory lines are from the poem ‘A Lost Leader’ by Rudyard Kipling in 1885. This anti-Ripon poem was soaked in vitriol.

2. **From Animal Farm by George Orwell: ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal’. Orwell was an ex colonial police officer who resigned and became a great critic of British imperialism.

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Tags: BritishRaj, ChennaiCorporation, ColonialHistory, IlbertBill, IndianHistory, IndianJudiciary, Ripon, RiponBuilding

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Lord Ripon, originally known as George Frederick Samuel Robinson, was the Governor General and Viceroy of India from 1880 to 1884. Before he came to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to join as Governor General and Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon (Earl of Ripon) was a member of parliament from 1852 to 1879. While in parliament, he held the posts of Under Secretary for War (1859-61), Under Secretary for India (1861-63), Secretary of State for War (1863-1866), Secretary for state of India (1866), and Lord President of the Council (1868-73). He was made Marques in 1871.

Early Life of Lord Ripon
George Frederick Samuel Robinson was born on October 24th 1827, at 10 Downing Street in London, as the son of Frederick John Robinson, Prime Minister at that time, and Lady Sarah. He joined the House of Commons in 1852, as member for Hull and later appeared for Huddersfield. In the year 1859, Lord Ripon succeeded his father for the title of Earl of Ripon and Viscount Goderich, entering the House of Lords, and later that year, succeeded his cousin as Earl de Grey.

Political Career of Lord Ripon
In the year 1861, Lord Ripon first took office as Earl de Grey, and remained as an active member of Liberal Cabinet till his demise. Lord Ripon became Privy Counsellor in 1863. He also remained as Secretary of State for War, for the years 1863-66, under the guidance of Palmerston and in 1866; he was Secretary of State for India. Lord Ripon was Lord President of the Council from 1868 to 1873, in the Gladstone administration. He was also the chairman of the joint commission which drew the Treaty of Washington in the United States of America. Thus, he became the Marquess of Ripon. Lord Ripon also became Knight of the Garter in the year 1869. He was also Grand Master Mason from 1870 to 1874, when Lord Ripon converted to Catholicism.

Reform Policies of Lord Ripon
Lord Ripon, Indian Viceroy

The change of government in Britain with the Liberal Party of Gladstone in power led to a corresponding change in the top executive of India as well. Lord Ripon, who had previously held high posts in the India Office two times, was appointed the Governor General and Viceroy of India. Lord Ripon, a radical liberal among the liberals, set his reform programme in motion immediately after he assumed power on 8 June 1880. His earliest measure was to end the protracted Anglo-Afghan hostilities. He entered into a peace treaty with the new Afghan, Amir Abdur Rahman. The new Amir agreed, in return for an annual subsidy, to determine his foreign policy in consultation with the government of India.

Lord Ripon made remarkable contribution to the development of Local Government. In 1882, he abandoned the existing system of local government by the officially nominated people. His reform thought, as he declared, was directed to educating the people politically and educationally. According to his local self-government plan, the enormous Local Boards were split into smaller units to achieve greater efficiency. In order to ensure popular participation in the management of local affairs, the existing nomination system was replaced by election system.

But due to opposition from the British civilians, who believed the natives were not yet prepared for electoral system, Ripon could not implement his electoral ideas as fully as he intended to. The nominated members on the local committees, rural and urban, remained side by side with the elected members. The famous Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885, though enacted after Ripon's departure, got its origin from the Rent Commission that he established in 1880, in response to widespread peasant unrest in the country. Against the rack-renting Zamindars and Taluqdars, the Bengal Raiyats were agitating for long. The Rent Commission was asked to study the agrarian problems and make appropriate recommendations for legislative actions. The upshot of the commission report (1882) was a long debate on the rights and liabilities of tenants and the eventual enactment of the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 under which the Raiyats got considerable rights in land that they lost under the Permanent Settlement.

Education was one of the most important issues that Lord Ripon focused upon. As Lord President of the Council in the Liberal Government of Gladstone, Ripon had been responsible for bringing important educational reforms. As Governor General, Ripon gave high priority on education, particularly primary education. He set up a committee, called Indian Education Commission (1882), for looking into the problems of primary and secondary education.

Controversial Policies of Lord Ripon
The most controversial Ilbert Bill issue particularly marked Ripon's administration. The controversy arose out of the question of the jurisdiction of native judges over European subjects. The Law member, Sir Courtney Ilbert, introduced a bill banning the protected status of the white and seeking equality of all subjects, native or otherwise, in the eye of law. The Anglo Indian community put up a strong resistance movement to the passage of the bill and forced the government to enact the bill by bringing substantial amendment to its original spirit and letter.

The liberal policy of Ripon met resistance again when he repealed in 1882 the controversial Vernacular Press Act (1878) that required the editors of Indian newspapers either to give an undertaking, not to publish any matter objectionable to government or to submit the proof sheets before publication for scrutiny. The native press hailed his action, but the Anglo-Indian press and the community were against the idea of granting freedom of press to the natives. However, Ripon's idea about granting freedom of press to all without showing any racial discrimination prevailed.

Death of Lord Ripon
Ripon left India in December 1884. Lord Ripon died at the age of 81, in the year 1909. No other Governor General before or after Ripon was dearer to the natives as he was and conversely no other Governor General was possibly as detestable to the Anglo-Indian community as Ripon.

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Lord Ripon: The ‘Father of Self-Government in India’

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