BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 130 of 144

Correct — D, The Ilbert Bill. Lord Lytton was Viceroy from 1876 to 1880; the Ilbert Bill belongs to his successor, Lord Ripon, who held office from 1880 to 1884. It was drafted by Sir Courtenay Ilbert, the Law Member of the Viceroy's Council, as an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882 to let senior Indian judges try European British subjects; leave to introduce it was moved on 2 February 1883 and it was formally introduced to the Imperial Legislative Council on 9 February 1883, with Gladstone's government backing Ripon. Lytton had already been out of India for more than two years. The other three are all his. The Vernacular Press Act was passed unanimously by his Council on 14 March 1878, empowering the government to seize the press and paper of any Indian-language newspaper that printed matter it judged seditious; it provoked the Calcutta protest led by the Indian Association and Surendranath Banerjee, and — the detail that seals this question — it was repealed in 1882 by Ripon, the same Viceroy the Ilbert Bill belongs to. The Indian Arms Act, also of 1878, made it a criminal offence to keep, bear or trade a firearm without a government licence, with up to three years' imprisonment and up to seven for concealment, while exempting Europeans, Anglo-Indians, certain colonial officials and 'all persons of Kodava race' — an exemption list that made its purpose unmistakable, and which Gandhi in 1918 called the blackest of all British misdeeds. And after the Great Famine of 1876-78, in which somewhere between five and nine million people died, Lytton appointed the Famine Commission under Sir Richard Strachey, whose recommendations produced the provincial famine codes and a famine-relief fund. Three of 1877-79 under Lytton; one of 1883 under Ripon.

• (a)The Strachey Commission — This one is Lytton's, so it cannot be the answer. He appointed the Famine Commission under Sir Richard Strachey after the Great Famine of 1876-78 had killed millions across the Deccan, Madras and Bombay; the Commission reported in 1880 and its recommendations became the basis of the provincial famine codes and a standing famine-relief fund. A candidate may hesitate here because there were two prominent Stracheys in India at once — Richard on the Famine Commission and his brother John as Finance Member, who abolished the cotton import duties in 1879 — but both served under Lytton.
• (b)The Arms Act — Also Lytton's. The Indian Arms Act of 1878 required a government licence to manufacture, sell, possess or carry a firearm anywhere in British India, and set penalties of up to three years' imprisonment, rising to seven for concealment. What made it a nationalist grievance for the next forty years was not the licensing but the exemptions: Europeans, Anglo-Indians and certain classes of officials were placed outside it, so the law disarmed Indians as a class. It is confusable with the Rowlatt Act of 1919 or the Public Safety Act, but its date and its author are not in doubt.
• (c)The Vernacular Press Act — The most famous of Lytton's measures, and therefore the one nobody picks — which is why it is here. Passed by the Viceroy's Council on 14 March 1878, it let the government demand a bond from any Indian-language newspaper and confiscate its press and paper for printing seditious matter, and it applied to Indian-language papers only, not to the English press. Bengali editors evaded it briefly by switching the Amrita Bazar Patrika to English overnight. Ripon repealed it in 1882 — which is exactly why students who half-remember 'Ripon and the press' sometimes assign the Act itself to him.

Lytton and Ripon are studied as a matched pair because they were opposites appointed by opposite governments in London. Lytton came out in 1876 under Disraeli's Conservatives with instructions to raise the prestige of the Crown and to face down Russia in Central Asia. He staged the Delhi Durbar of 1 January 1877 — 68,000 people and 15,000 troops — to proclaim Victoria Empress of India, while the Great Famine was killing millions in the south and west; he passed the Vernacular Press Act and the Arms Act in 1878; he lowered the maximum age for the Indian Civil Service examination from twenty-one to nineteen, which pushed the examination further out of Indian reach; he removed the import duties on British cotton cloth in 1879 at the cost of Indian revenue; and in November 1878 he ordered the invasion that opened the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Ripon arrived in 1880 under Gladstone's Liberals with a mandate to undo much of it: he repealed the Vernacular Press Act in 1882, passed the first Factory Act in 1881, extended local self-government in 1882 in a resolution that earned him the name Father of Local Self-Government in India, appointed the Hunter Commission on education in 1882, and backed the Ilbert Bill in 1883. The European backlash to that Bill — the so-called white mutiny — showed Indian professionals how organised opposition worked, and the Indian National Congress was founded two years later.

A 'not associated with' question rewards the candidate who reads the instruction rather than the options, because the instinct is to hunt for the item that looks right and mark it. Here three of the four measures are Lytton's and the odd one out is the answer. The efficient route is not to recall four separate attributions but to hold one pair of dates: Lytton 1876-1880, Ripon 1880-1884. Everything in the option list is then decided by a year. The Vernacular Press Act and the Arms Act are both 1878, the Strachey Famine Commission was appointed after the famine of 1876-78 and reported in 1880 — all inside Lytton's term — and the Ilbert Bill is 1883, which is inside Ripon's. The single discriminating fact is therefore the Ilbert Bill's date, and it is easy to anchor because the Bill is always taught alongside the founding of the Congress in 1885, which is plainly after Lytton has gone. Note also the deliberate near-miss the setter has built in: Ripon is the Viceroy who repealed Lytton's Press Act, so 'Ripon' and 'Vernacular Press Act' sit together in many students' memory. If that association fires first, option (c) starts to look like the odd one out and the question is lost.

• Lord Lytton was Viceroy from 1876 to 1880 and Lord Ripon from 1880 to 1884 — the single pair of dates that answers this question, since the Ilbert Bill was introduced to the Imperial Legislative Council on 9 February 1883
• The Vernacular Press Act was passed by the Viceroy's Council on 14 March 1878 and applied only to Indian-language newspapers, not to the English press; it drew a protest in Calcutta led by the Indian Association and Surendranath Banerjee, and Ripon repealed it in 1882
• The Indian Arms Act of 1878 required a licence to manufacture, sell, possess or carry firearms, with up to three years' imprisonment and seven for concealment, and exempted Europeans, Anglo-Indians, certain officials and 'all persons of Kodava race'; Gandhi in 1918 wrote that history would look on 'the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest' of British misdeeds
• The Great Famine of 1876-78 killed an estimated 5.5 to 9 million people; Lytton appointed the Famine Commission under Sir Richard Strachey, whose recommendations produced the provincial famine codes and a famine-relief fund, while his brother Sir John Strachey as Finance Member abolished the cotton import duties in 1879
• The Ilbert Bill was drafted by Sir Courtenay Ilbert as an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882 to allow senior Indian judges to try European British subjects; European agitation — including a mass protest at the Bengal Chamber's Calcutta town-hall meeting on 28 February 1883 — forced a compromise version in 1884, and the episode is widely credited with hastening the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885

• Assigning the Vernacular Press Act to Ripon because Ripon is the Viceroy who repealed it in 1882 — he undid the Act, Lytton passed it
• Reading past the word 'not' in the stem and marking the first option that is genuinely associated with Lytton
• Confusing the Strachey Famine Commission, appointed by Lytton, with the later Lyall (1898) and MacDonnell (1901) famine commissions, or with the Hunter Commission of 1882 on education under Ripon

BPSC's standard shape for colonial administration is 'which Viceroy is associated with X' or, as here, its inverted twin 'which is X not associated with', with the option list drawn from a single decade so the candidate cannot answer on a vague sense of period. The inversion is the trap, and it accounts for a fair share of avoidable losses on this paper. UPSC has asked exactly the same content in three different formats — a not-correctly-matched pairing that offered 'Vernacular Press Act — Curzon' against 'Ilbert Bill — Ripon' in 2004, a straight question on who repealed the Vernacular Press Act in 2005, and a question in 2013 asking what the Ilbert Bill controversy was about, with the Arms Act, the vernacular press and the cotton duty as its three distractors.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Famine Commission appointed under Sir Richard Strachey followed which of the following events?

  • (a)The Bengal famine of 1770
  • (b)The Orissa famine of 1866
  • (c)The Great Famine of 1876-78
  • (d)The famine of 1899-1900 in western and central India

  Answer(c) The Great Famine of 1876-78 — Lord Lytton appointed the Strachey Commission after that famine, and its recommendations produced the provincial famine codes and a famine-relief fund. The famine of 1899-1900 was followed by the MacDonnell Commission of 1901, under Lord Curzon.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was repealed during the viceroyalty of

  • (a)Lord Lytton
  • (b)Lord Ripon
  • (c)Lord Dufferin
  • (d)Lord Curzon

  Answer(b) Lord Ripon — the Act, passed by Lytton's Council on 14 March 1878, was repealed in 1882 under Ripon, whose government had announced the intention in a despatch of 28 February 1881.