New Viceroy

Far more ceremonious than the inauguration of a President of the U. S. was the arrival in Bombay last week of the new Viceroy of India, the tall (6 ft. 3 in.), young (49), scholarly Scottish lord, Victor Alexander John Hope, Marquess of Linlithgow. Ahead of him had arrived his New Deal, the renovated and liberalized Indian Constitution based on Lord Linlithgow's own exhaustive 350-page investigation and recommendations (TIME, Aug. 12). What made 350,000,000 Indians so anxious last week for a sight of the half-dreamy, half-cranky face of their new Viceroy was that the new Constitution gives him the power to be either a messiah or a tyrant.

When the towering Scot, followed by his 6-ft. lady, stepped off the gangplank of the Strathmore, the white warships of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay harbor crashed out a 31-gun salute.* Shore batteries replied with 31 more reports. Under the dockside Arch of Bombay, called the "Gateway of India," waited British bigwigs and a selection of resplendent Indian princes. For hours Lord Linlithgow, though not yet officially Viceroy, shook hands with various delegations. Finally, with his lady and his daughters Anne, 22, Joan, 20, and Doreen, 16, he rode between lines of the viceregal scarlet-coated bodyguard to Government House at Malabar Point.

On the great, white stairs of Government House stood the retiring Viceroy, long-jawed, lean Freeman Freeman-Thomas, first Earl of Willingdon. Again 31 guns crashed out as Lord Linlithgow shook hands with Lord Willingdon, went inside for a long talk. Before Lord Linlithgow could become the new Viceroy, the old Viceroy must quit India. This Lord Willingdon proceeded to do next day, accompanied by a send-off precisely paralleling Lord Linlithgow's welcome.

Then, instead of following the usual custom of being inaugurated at Government House in Bombay, Lord Linlithgow went on to the capital at New Delhi to go through some even more impressive pageantry before buckling down to his job.

According to the new Indian Constitution, Viceroy Linlithgow's job is to speed the creation of autonomous Indian Provinces and an autonomous All-India Federal Government. The hitch in this proposed set-up is that at the same time the Viceroy and his provincial Governors have certain "duties"--the duty of protecting minorities including the British, the duty of maintaining order, the duty of ensuring India's financial stability and credit.

Viceroy Linlithgow may fulfill these duties either by creating a genuinely self-ruling British India or by perpetuating British rule by force. In the latter case, the new Constitution provides such increased outlets for Indian discontent as provincial cabinets and provincial legislatures elected by 14% of the native adult population. Viceroy Linlithgow retains such absolute powers as the right to overrule single-handed his own executive council and to veto laws passed by the Indian Legislature if he chooses to think they "affect the safety or tranquillity of British India."

Viceroy Linlithgow's ancestors have been Highland earls in Linlithgowshire for two centuries. A Scottish banker and landlord farmer, Lord Linlithgow was prepared for the British Empire's No. 1 job by a term as chairman of the Royal Commission on Indian Agriculture (1926-28), another as chairman of Parliament's Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (1933-35), which produced the famed Linlithgow Report. Capable of playing the pukka sahib at times, at small parties he is occasionally willing to give his "Imitation of a Maiden Aunt at a Children's Party."

*British India is generous with its salutes. In England the British King gets 21 guns, but when he goes to India, as Emperor, he gets 101. On all his anniversaries, British Indian guns go off 31 times. The Viceroy and members of the Royal family get 31 guns. Next in rank are 21 guns for foreign Sovereigns, the Sultan of Zanzibar, five Maharajas and the Nizam of Hyderabad. Even a political agent in India, when he arrives at a military station, gets an eleven-gun salute.

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