# The Government of India Act 1935
**भारत शासन अधिनियम 1935**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/goi-act-1935/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1935 CE – 1940 CE
- Where: Council House (Samvidhan Sadan), New Delhi (28.6172, 77.2081)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

The 1935 Act gives the provinces elected governments in 1937; its all-India federation never forms, but much of the Act passes into the Constitution.

1935 के अधिनियम ने 1937 में प्रांतों को निर्वाचित सरकारें दीं; इसका अखिल भारतीय संघ कभी नहीं बना, पर अधिनियम का बड़ा भाग संविधान में उतरा।

## Account

The Act, given royal assent on 2 August 1935 after the Simon report and the Round Tables, ran to 321 sections and 10 schedules. It ended dyarchy in the provinces and gave them ministries responsible to elected assemblies, with governors keeping emergency powers; widened the vote to between 30 and 35 million people; created a Federal Court; made Sind and Orissa provinces; and separated Burma and Aden from India. The all-India federation it designed needed the princes to join, and they never did. Nehru called it a machine with strong brakes and no engine.

In the elections of early 1937 the Congress won outright majorities in five provinces and went on to form ministries in eight of the eleven. The Muslim League won only a minority of the Muslim seats, and the experience of Congress rule pushed it toward a separate demand. When the Viceroy, Linlithgow, declared India at war on 3 September 1939 without consulting Indian leaders, the Congress ministries resigned, and the League marked their going as a Day of Deliverance. In March 1940, at Lahore, the League resolved that the Muslim-majority regions of the north-west and east should form independent states.

The pin marks Council House, the round building opened in 1927 for the central legislature, where the Constituent Assembly later met. The Constitution of 1950 took much of its administrative framework, including the lists of federal and provincial subjects and the emergency powers, from this Act.

## Sources

- Government of India Act 1935 — https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5and1Edw8/26/2/contents
- The Government of India Act 1935 (Indian edition, 1935) — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.284304

## Image

SansadBhavan. Bill Strong from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASansadBhavan.jpg

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