ABSTRACT
Indian nationalists willing to work with the imperial government to achieve reform, such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, had been co-opted by Lord Curzon to serve on his Council of India. The 1909 Indian Councils Act introduced a larger Imperial Legislative Council and provincial councils in which a minority of seats were reserved for Indian members, including seats to be filled by the first separate electorates for Muslims and Sikhs. The loose federation of the League with several regional Anglo-Indian Associations had initially come into being to organise wartime recruitment. Despite their cooperation in 1916 the Federal Council of four Anglo-Indian Associations and the General Council of the League 'each addressed the Government of India directly independent of the other'. Henry Gidney also began campaigning for a far more ambitious amalgamation of the various Anglo-Indian bodies, social, philanthropic, and political, than had existed under John Harold Arnold Abbott's war-prompted Federation.
