Ilbert Bill

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George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon

The Ilbert Bill was a law proposed in 1883 by George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon , then Governor General and Viceroy of India . It provided for an extension of the rights of the Indian people in British India . Among other things, it should make it possible for Indians to sit in court over the British in British India. The introduction of this new law sparked protests in both British India and the United Kingdom. Above all, British people who lived in India protested because they did not want to submit to the jurisdiction of people they did not consider to be of equal value. The law was not introduced until 1884 in a much toned-down form. The bitter discussion heightened tensions between the British and Indians and is one of the reasons that led to the founding of the Indian National Congress .

Discussion points

The strongest opposition to the Ilbert Bill came from British plantation owners, who feared that Indian judges, unlike British judges, would no longer tolerate the mistreatment of their plantation workers. Another point of argument referred to the Indian uprising of 1857 , during which allegedly numerous British women and girls were raped by Indian sepoys . For British women, in the opinion of the British colonialists, it was a great humiliation to appear before an Indian judge in a rape case. The British press has suggested that Indian judges would abuse their power to fill their harem with white girls and women.

This propaganda contributed significantly to the rejection of this law. British women who publicly opposed the bill argued that Bengali women were abused and despised by their husbands.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sarah Carter: Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada's Prairie West , McGill-Queen's University Press 1997, ISBN 0773516565 , p. 17
  2. ^ Nancy L. Paxton: Writing under the Raj: Gender, Race and Rape in the British Colonial Imagination , Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 1999, ISBN 0-8135-2601-9 , p. 118

literature

  • The Ilbert Bill: A Study of Anglo-Indian Opinion in India, 1883. Christine Dobbin. Historical Studies: Australia & New Zealand, 12:45 PM (1965), 87-104
  • White Mutiny. The Ilbert Bill Crisis in India and Genesis of the Indian National Congress. Richard Cashman. Pacific Affairs, vol. 55, no. 3 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 514-515
  • England and India: The Ilbert Bill, 1883: A case study of the metropolitan press. Chandrika Kaul. Indian Economic Social History Review 1993; 30; 413. this bill was not beneficial to anyone

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