ABSTRACT
On 9 February 1883, the Law Member of the Government of India, C. P. Ilbert, introduced a bill in the Legislative Council to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Indian Penal Code. The Bill, popularly called the Ilbert Bill, proposed to give various classes of native officials in the colonial administra tive service limited criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects living in the mofussil or country towns in India.1 The Ilbert Bill, which was widely inter preted as a challenge to the control European capitalists exercised over sources of raw material and labour in the interiors of India, provoked a ‘white mutiny5 from Anglo-Indian officials and non-officials alike.2 The opposition secured a victory when the Viceroy Lord Ripon was forced into an agreement or ‘con cordat’ to get a modified bill passed on 25 January 1884, which undermined the original principle of the Ilbert Bill. Although the new Act accorded native magistrates criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects in the mofus5i/s, the special legal status of European British subjects was preserved. The European British subjects in the mofussils won the right to demand trial by a jury of whom at least half were European British subjects or Americans.
