Constitutional Reforms in the Pre-Mutiny Period in India

Abstract

Study of the rise and growth of parliamentary institutions ever since the establishment of the British rule in India is beset with a strange spectacle of two divergent currents, each pushing things in its own direction, but both ultimately witnessing their confluence into a single channel as a result of which the present bicameral model of the Parliament came into being. The classical argument of the colonial statesmen based on their conviction that English parliamentary institutions could not be transplanted in a country ridden with social antagonism, economic stagnation and political backwardness assumed a ‘modified character’ for the better at the hands of enlightened liberal statesmen in the period following the first World War, no matter the dichotomy continued to prevail till the last constitutional dispensation in the form of the Indian nationalists. So, this paper will disclose all secret facts in this context.