Bergstrom, G. W. Jr., “Lord Willingdon and India, 1931-1936: a study of an imperial administrator”, 1978, D.Phil., Oxford, 30-4695. Brief summary.

Note – This is the key source on Willingdon’s viceroyalty. It should be reads together with Tomlinson 1979, Basudev Chatterji 1992, Rothermund 1988, Rothermund 1992 and Rothermund 1983.

“Lord Willingdon …. Served under all monarchs from Queen Victoria through George VI, eleven prime ministers … and received posts from Liberal (his own party), Conservative, Labour and Coalition administrations…. (M)ost important in influencing his thinking while Viceroy … (were his) 11 years as Governor of Bombay and Madras and a term as Governor-General of Canada…. Emphasis is placed upon the Viceroy’s two-point administrative policy which he perfected while serving as Governor of Bombay and Madras. That policy called for full maintenance of the rule of law in India, sincere and repeated efforts towards obtaining absolutely equal partnership with other dominions under the Crown. The evolution of the Government of India Act 1935, and the attitudes of the British Parliament, British Diehards, H.M.G., Congress, the Indian Muslims, Indian Princes, M. K. Gandhi and other concerned interests are reviewed in relation to the Viceroy and his policy. Primary source material has been drawn from relevant private papers and official records at the major archives in London and New Delhi, and supplemented by the discovery and use of hitherto unconsulted private letters of the Viceroy….

The thesis attempts to identify and examine … questions of political and constitutional importance largely on the All-India level. Concentration is placed upon Lord Willingdon’s reaction to them in relation to H.M.G.’s Indian policy and the associated responses and strategies of Indian political groups…. The statement of Lord Irwin, defined Montagu’s declaration as containing a promise of Dominion Status, to which H.M.G. was committed…. (S)hortly before Lord Willingdon became Viceroy in April 1931, the Dominion Status demand was converted into a demand for an All-India Federation. Indian liberals hoped the federal scheme for Britain and princely India would, through … central responsibility, obtain Dominion Status for India at a date earlier than could otherwise be expected…. A primary issue which hindered All-India Federation, and which Willingdon was constantly contending with throughout his Viceroyalty was that of voluntary accession to the Federation by India’s Princely States (see Government of India Act 1935). As Lord Mountbatten pointed out … had there been an All-India Federation prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, a suitable political structure would have been in existence in India which might have made it possible for events concerned with the transfer of power there to have proceeded on entirely different and more peaceful lines. All-India Federation, Hindu-Muslim communal controversies, Gandhi-Congress nationalist agitation, and British domestic Diehard machinations were the four major political problems with which Willington had to contend, while attempting to carry out his responsibility of administering India, and maintaining the country within the framework of the British Empire, but not as an indefinitely dependant subject country…. His scope for original or dramatic policy action in India was especially limited. This was due to the fact that H.M.G. was concerned throughout most of Willington’s viceroyalty with defining the specifics of an already sketched Indian policy….

(Lord Willingdon) understood his duty … and did not waver in carrying it out, regardless of his strong personal dislike of ordinance rules and such measures… Lord Willingdon left is successor, the Marquess of Linlithgow, a relatively quiet and peaceful India, which bore little resemblance to the much more shaken and disrupted nation he had initially inherited five years previously.” From the introduction and abstract.