An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Alok Oak (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2023-24)
Dominion Status as a fait accompli: A. B. Keith, British India and Constitutional Crisis of Imperial Unity (1919-42)
The interwar years (1919-1939) were marked by a particularly tense relationship between Imperial Britain and its colonies. Responding to a shift in global narrative favouring ‘nation’s right to self-determination’, Britain became overly protective of its Empire during the post- World War I years. In India, the embittered anti-colonial struggle centred around the notion of ‘Dominion Status’ leading to serious debates about the nature and function of the concept, limits to sovereignty of Dominion legislatures and the right of secession. Arthur Berriedale Keith (1879-1944) (Regius Professor of Sanskrit and Lecturer in the Constitution of the British Empire at University of Edinburgh) acted as an influential interlocutor in these debates. Through numerous scholarly texts, governmental reports and press notes, Keith exhibited liberal-paternalist attitude supporting India’s claim to Dominionhood. However, he also drew from the prevalent tenets of international law to retain Britain’s control over the colonies and, thus, maintain Imperial unity. In this presentation, I shall be exploring this fundamental paradox in Keith’s thinking which was nurtured, I shall argue, through his peculiar constitutional readings of the British Commonwealth of Nations, a Dominion’s right to quasi-sovereignty and the overall legality of India’s anti-colonial mass struggle.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81857401179
Passcode: 6aSe7GF7