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Satyendra Prassano Sinha

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"SATYENDRA PRASSANO SINHA, 1ST Baron (1864-), Indian statesman, was born of an ancient Kayastha family in the village of Raipur, Birbhum district, Bengal, in June 1864. Matriculating at 14 he held a scholarship at the Presidency College, Calcutta, and in 1881 came to London to join Lincoln's Inn, where he won many prizes and scholarships, and was called to the bar in June 1886. In practice at Calcutta he rapidly rose to a leading position, and was appointed standing counsel to the Government of India in 1903. He was the first Indian to be appointed advocate-general of Bengal (1908), and the first to become a member of the Government of India. He held the law portfolio from April 1909 to Nov. 1910, up to the retirement from the viceroyalty of Lord Minto, who testified to the success of what some English critics regarded as a dangerous experiment. Sinha resumed his lucrative practice at the bar, presided at the Indian National Congress session at Bombay in 1915, and was again appointed advocate-general of Bengal (1916). He and the Maharaja of Bikaner were the first Indians to participate in Empire deliberations in London, for in 1917 they jointly assisted the Secretary of State at the meetings of the Imperial War Cabinet, and were members of the Imperial War Conference. Sinha joined the Bengal Executive Council in the same year, but returned to England in 1918 as a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and Imperial War Conference. Immediately on getting back to India he was called to London and Paris as an Indian member of the Peace Conference. Knighted in 1915, in 1918 he was made K.C., a distinction not previously conferred upon a barrister of Indian birth or practice. When the Coalition Government was recast at the beginning of 1919 he established further records for an Indian by being appointed to the Ministry as Under-Secretary for India, and being raised to the peerage as Baron Sinha of Raipur. He was the second Indian to be sworn of the Privy Council. He skilfully conducted the Government of India Act, 1919, through the House of Lords, and when dyarchy was initiated at the close of 1920 was appointed governor of Bihar and Orissa, being the first Indian to preside over a British province.