India Office : situated in Westminster, housed the offices of the Secretary of State for India (he held the rank of a Cabinet minister), who ruled today’s India + Pakistan + Bangladesh + Myanmar + Sri Lanka + Nepal, in tandem with the Viceroy in India. The two posts were created in 1858. The complex system of governing India created by William Pitt (1759-1806), Prime Minister 1783-1801 & 1804-06 by his India Bill, passed on 18 May 1784 as a Statute, had established a Board of Control or India Board, consisting of Commissioners for the affairs of India, with extensive powers. In 1834, the Home Govt. of India nominally passed from the East India Co. to the Crown, but the Statute left large powers to the Company’s Court of Directors. That system endured until 1858, when by an Act of Parliament India’s indirect slavery to the Company & its Board of Directors was replaced by the direct one to the British Parliament, in practice to the Govt. in power, which ruled India through its Secretary of State for India & its Viceroy-cum-Governor-General of India.
... No one can be long a Cabinet Minister in England and yet remain a man of unswerving principle. As Indian Secretary, Mr. Morley could not be expected to carry his philosophic principles into the India Office. On the contrary, there were several reasons why he should be even more reactionary than ordinary Secretaries of State. The Secretary of State does not represent India or stand for her interests;... in his growing ill-temper and intolerance of contradiction, but most in the mental languor which prevents him from questioning or scrutinising the opinions and information served up to him by the India Office. The verbatim fidelity with which he reproduces whatever Anglo-India tutors him to say, is strikingly evidenced by his answers to Messrs. Rutherford and O'Grady. His remarks on the situation in... accepted the assurance of the able and experienced Denzil and the level-headed Minto that the step was necessary. For they are the men on the spot, and Mr. Morley's conception of his position in the India Office is that he is there to act as a buffer between the men on the spot and adverse criticism. We need not discuss his utterances; they are merely faithful echoes of Anglo-Indian special pleading, in ...
... rather costly. The teacher was also careless ; so long as he got his money he simply left me with the horse and I was not particular." The final rejection of A. A. Ghose's candidature by the India Office was conveyed to him in a letter dated 7 December 1892. By the time the news reached Calcutta, Dr. K. D. Ghose was dead. The Bengalee, "We are very much concerned," it wrote, "to hear that... and disregard for the requirements of the examiner. "His excuse (such as it is) is that want of money prevented 1. To Sir Arthur G. Macpherson, Secretary, Judicial and Public Dept., India Office. Page 223 him from taking the needful lessons in riding, and that, at the last, anxiety and moral cowardice made him lose his head. He tells me that he did turn up at Woolwich for... to ride, the sooner he is disabused of such an absurd notion the better." Professor Prothero's good intentions had obviously raised the Earl's hackles. In a letter dated 7 December 1892, the India Office informed A. A. Ghose about their final decision to reject him. On 12 December, A. A. Ghose accepting the rejection — with relief and joy —applied "for the remainder of the allowance that would ...
... only printer and publisher have been arrested about a fortnight ago, but he has been put on trial. His bail was refused by the Chief Presidency Magistrate, but the High Court has granted it. The India Office, we wonder, knows nothing about all this. Mr. Montagu complains that 'considerable delay occurs just now in obtaining information.' This is indeed strange, for, he Page 76 can... Penal Code. MacDonald expressed his concern about the type of the official mind that was dealing with the exceedingly delicate situation in India: "I feel perfectly certain that unless the India Office will insist upon its officials administering India with some generosity, some catholicity of sentiment and some serious Page 77 attempt to associate with themselves men like Mr ...
... metropolis of the Empire". This idea about the British public is a pure superstition. The British public will never interfere with the action of its representatives and kinsmen in India and in the India Office, unless and until it finds itself in danger of losing its Empire in the East. The quarrel has to be fought out between the people of India and the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy and it must be fought ...
... me another chance, and again I didn't appear. Then they rejected me." A rejection that was to change the course of history. On 17 November 1892 the Civil Service Commission informed the India Office that "although several opportunities have been offered to Mr. A. A. Ghose of attending for examination in Riding ... he has repeatedly failed to attend at the time appointed;" therefore they were... Deputy Magistrate —I don't know why he went to England—who used to come to the Majlis and was supposed to be a spy. He may have reported to the Government." Thus the British Government — its India Office — dropped Sri Aurobindo like a hot potato. No, no, he was not 'hot'! Never. He was the Fire. During the Swadeshi days he came to be known as 'Fire-spark.' Or 'a volcano,' as Sister Nivedita saw ...
... debates until he left Baroda. It was in England while at Cambridge that he made revolutionary speeches at the meetings of the Indian Majlis which were recorded as a black mark against him by the India Office. Page 68 × MS (dictated) at ...
... unexpected. All these people go by scientific principles. Hore-Belisha is the only man who can do something new. Eden is good but not for this. He would be better as Foreign Secretary, and Irwin in the India Office where he could go on with his peace plan and appeasement. Pétain has something but he is too old. SATYENDRA: Weygand? SRI AUROBINDO: I don't know anything about him. NIRODBARAN: Is there ...
... traditional policy of Great Britain when faced with such a situation as now exists in India and it is the policy we may expect to see in play for the next few years if Mr. Morley remains at the India Office. How far it will succeed, will depend on the growth of the forward party which Page 195 is determined to be satisfied with no concessions that will not give the people control over the ...
... disappointment and no surprise. As the Kesari pointed out in the early days of his administration, the new Secretary of State might be a philosopher and defend human liberties in his books, but in the India Office he was bound to be a British statesman first of all and defend the continuance of British supremacy in India. But apart from this the whole temper of Mr. Morley's mind and the cast of his opinions ...
... future. What is to prevent a future Alexander Mackenzie in the Viceregal seat from so altering any measure that may be given as to render it nugatory and what is to prevent a future Curzon in the India Office from confirming this step rearwards? So far as we have been able to find, nothing at all. We are just where we were before, with concessions granted by arbitrary condescension which may be withdrawn ...
... removed that error. He publishes himself now as the righteous Bibhishan who, with the Sugrives, Angads and Hanumans of Madras and Allahabad, has gone to join the Avatar of Radical absolutism in the India Office, and ourselves as the Rakshasa to be destroyed by this new Holy Alliance. Even this formidable conjunction does not alarm us. At any rate Bibhishan has gone out of Lanka, and Bibhishans are always ...
... 'milch cow of the Empire', and indeed at times it seemed to be so regarded by politicians and bureaucrats in London. Educated Indians were embittered when India was made to pay the entire cost of the India Office building in Whitehall. They were further outraged when in 1867 it was made to pay the full costs of entertaining 2,500 guests at a lavish Ball honouring the Sultan of Turkey. In India, the hunger ...
... expressly written to influence the I. C. S. Commissioners, they yet throw sufficient light on the embarrassing ¹. Prothero to Cotton. 20 November 1892. India Office Library, London. ². Cotton to Macpherson. 19 November 1892. India Office Library, London. Page 12 economic pressure under which the three brothers lived for almost eight years; When Aurobindo, Manmohan and... is addressed to Laurence Binyon: ¹. 'The Literary Society", The Pauline , Vols. VII & VIII, No. 39 (December |1889),p 52. ². Sri Aurobindo to the Earl of Kimberley, 21 November 1892, India Office Library, London. Page 9 "As for the piece in the Daily News about me, it was stuck in simply because it is a Radical paper. We have no family relation to Lalmohan Ghose... Browning) are quoted. "Last night I was invited to coffee with one of the Dons and in his rooms I met the great O. B.;" otherwise Oscar Browning, ¹. Prothero to Cotton, 20 November 1892, India Office Library, London. ². "Father's Prophecy Baffled by the Son", Orient Illustrated Weekly, Vol. XIII, No. 21 (27 February 1949), pp. 6-7. Page 21 who is the feature par excellence ...
... Lockhart The Under Secretary of State India Office II 4 Nov. 1892 My dear Trevor I think Mr Ghose's case will be settled very shortly. He has passed his medical Examination and we expect to hear the result of his riding Examination soon. ¹. The author is indebted to the India Office Library in London and especially to Mr. S... qualified to be appointed to the Civil Service of India. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, John Hennell The Under Secretary of State, India Office VII Minute Paper. J & P Public Department. Letter from C. S. Commissioners Dated 17 Nov. 1892 Received 18 Nov. . ... Examination in Riding. Mr Ghose's Memorial is herewith returned. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, John faennell The Under Secretary of State India Office XVIII 30 Nov.' 92 Ghose Dear Trevor I return Mr Prothero's letter. We are going to notify to Mr Ghose that no further facilities will be afforded ...
... about how future mutinies could be prevented. They realised that it was inappropriate for a land the size of India to be governed by a private company and instead introduced direct rule through the India Office, a British Department of State. A hundred years after Plassey the rule of the Honourable East India Company finally did come to an end. Repercussions in South India ...
... Albless and sent to Pondicherry. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother listened carefully when Nolini-da read them out. Both approved the articles and sent words of appreciation, The Mother India's Office in Bombay was set up just six or seven weeks before the journal commenced. Veteran journalists from various parts of the city advised that material for the magazine should be collected s ...
... will not tolerate opposition within the law; and this will decide it. Meanwhile, why does the thunderbolt linger? Or is there again a hitch in London? With a Liberal, Lord Morley, at the India Office and a diehard. Lord Minto, as the Viceroy, there was always room for difference of opinion, at least on questions of detail. And even in India, the Government of Bengal and the central Government... Page 367 A search of the Karmayogin office yielded no results, and the officers of the Government felt checkmated, and found it difficult to justify their actions to Lord Morley at the India Office. "Although he escaped conviction in the Alipur case," the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Minto, "yet it is beyond doubt that his influence has been pernicious in the extreme ...
... the Divine, like everybody else, has a right to change His mind." Poor Abhaydev scratched his head all the more. In desperation he presented himself one morning at my personal Mother-India office. This office was located in a large beautiful garden-environment which had led me to abbreviate the description of it as "Editor's den to the designation "E-den". The prelapsarian atmosphere ...
... didn't retain the rank he had won in July 1890. There, however, remained one or two more hurdles. On 24 August 1892, Mr. Lockhart, Secretary to the Civil Service Commissioners, reported to the India Office that A. A. Ghose (Aravinda Ackroyd Ghose) was still to satisfy the Commissioners in respect of health and riding proficiency. He passed his medical examination in due course, but even as late... Four different chances were apparently given to him (from 9 August to 15 November), but he failed to appear for the test. On 17 November, therefore, the Civil Service Commissioners informed the India Office that they were "unable to certify that he is qualified to be appointed to the Civil Service in India". 34 The question has often been asked why, having secured the 11th place in the open ...
... Mohammedan soldiers, being the erstwhile ruling class, resented the idea of conversion more than their Hindu counterparts. According to Maya Gupta's research, based largely on sources in the India Office library, London, on 6 May 1806, 29 sepoys of the second battalion of the 4th Regiment who were ordered to wear the new turban refused to do so. Continuing their defiance the following day, placing ...
... He [Gokhale] publishes himself now as the righteous Bibhisan who, with the Sugrives, Angads, and Hanumans of Madras and Allahabad, has gone to join the Avatar of Radical Absolutism in the India Office, and ourselves as the Rakshasa to be destroyed by this new Holy Alliance. An intimate knowledge of the Ramayana is needed to appreciate the subtlety of Sri Aurobindo's assailment of the ...
... the akasha; the second imperfectly organised in rupa & vishaya, fluctuating in lipi, but perfect in thought, vangmaya & perceptive. Samadhi 1) Conversation. "in emergency". (political. IO [India Office] & India) 2) "At such a distance we find that we can do nothing" and a figure in dhoti. 3) a conversation in French on a gnomic Greek poet, perfect in form although derivative in substance ...
... requirements but riding, he was due the last instalment of the allowance given to probationers. This and the previous letter are reproduced here from the originals preserved in the Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London. Letters Written While Employed in the Princely State of Baroda, 1895 - 1906 . Sri Aurobindo wrote the letters reproduced in this section while working ...
... continuation of my previous wire of this day, I beg to inform you that Arabinda Ghose arrived at Pondicherry by S.S. Dupleix on the morning of 6th instant.11 He was received at the beach by the India office people. He is now kept in a separate house in the street wherein the proprietor Srinivasacharry lives. I am also informed that a few days before his arrival, Subramanya Bharati engaged a bungalow ...
... studies well gets to ride in cars and carriages? Well, I didn't get to ride a horse! (Laughter) Anyway, I believe that by then all the activities of the Indian Majlis were being reported to the India Office. Whenever famous or prominent Indians visited Cambridge, we would invite them to attend the Majlis meetings. They were rather old and moderate in their views; we were young hotheads and so the... innocent at the end of my long trial, the police always believed me to be guilty. I was not at all as good-natured as I appeared, this was the firm belief of everybody from the officials in London's India Office down to the police commissioner in Calcutta! They were waiting for the right opportunity to remove this thorn from their political flesh, and all that I said or did or wrote was constantly scrutinised ...
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