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S. P. Sinha
‐
Indian lawyer and statesman
Other names
Satyendra Prasanno Sinha
Satyendra Prasanna Sinha
Lord Sinha
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
London
WC2A 3TL
United Kingdom
Place of death
Berhampore, Bengal, India
Date of time spent in Britain
1881–6, 1917–20, 1926
About
Satyendra Prasanno Sinha was born in Raipur in Bengal in 1863. He entered Presidency College, Calcutta in 1878, married Gobinda Mohini, with whom he had four sons and three daughters, in 1880 and left for England in 1881 without taking a degree.
In England he joined Lincoln's Inn, where he won a scholarship of £50 a year for four years to study Roman law, jurisprudence, constitutional law and international law. Later he also won the Lincoln's Inn scholarship of £100 for three years. Sinha was called to the Bar in 1886 and finished his education by touring the European continent. In 1886 he returned to Calcutta, where he joined the City College as a lecturer in law and also practised as a barrister.
In 1905 Sinha was appointed as advocate-general of Bengal, a post that was confirmed in 1908, and in 1909 Lord Morley appointed him legal member of the Governor-General's Executive Council, the first Indian in this position. In 1915 he was elected President of the Indian National Congress. In 1917 Sinha returned to England to work for Secretary of State E. S. Montagu, first as an assistant and later as a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and Conference along with the Maharaja of Bikaner. In London he stayed with William Wedderburn for a few days. He received the Freedom of the City of London in 1917, took a place on the King's Counsel in 1918 (the first Indian to do so) and in 1926 was made a bencher of Lincoln's Inn. In 1919 he was made Under-Secretary of State for India, raised to the peerage as Baron Sinha of Raipur and saw the Government of India Act of 1919 through the House of Lords. He returned to India in 1920.
It is known that his third son, Sushil Kumar, studied at Colet Preparatory School in Hammersmith (1907–9), St Paul's School, London (1909–13) and Balliol College, Oxford (1913–17) and joined the Indian Civil Service but appeared to settle in England. In 1926 Satyendra Prasanno Sinha joined the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London but his health forced him to winter in India. He died in Berhampore, Bengal on 4 March 1928.
Maharaja of Bikaner (colleague in the Imperial War Cabinet and Conference Cabinet), E. S. Montagu, Lord Morley, Bhupinder Singh (Maharaja of Patiala), William Wedderburn.
The Future of India: Presidential Address to the Indian National Congress, 1915 (London: J. Truscott & Son, 1916)
The Insistent Claims of Indian Reform: Speeches at the Banquet in London to Lord Sinha on 7th March 1919 (London: P. L. Warner, 1919)
Speeches and Writings of Lord Sinha, with a Portrait and a Sketch (Madras: G. A. Natesan & Co., 1919)
Cokayne, G. E., The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, 8 vols. (1887–98); new edn, ed. V. Gibbs and others, 14 vols in 15 (1910–98); microprint repr. (1982 and 1987)
FitzGerald, S. V., 'Sinha, Satyendra Prasanno, first Baron Sinha (1863–1928)', rev. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36112]
Sen, S. P., Dictionary of National Biography (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972–4)
Sengupta, S. and Basu, A., Samsada Bangali Caritabidhana (Kalikata: Sahitya Samsad, 1976)
Sir S. P. Sinha: A Sketch of His Life and Career (Madras: Natesan, 1918)
Official papers relating to the Paris peace conference, Mss Eur F 281, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Letters to Lord Carmichael and W. R. Gourlay, Hardinge MSS, Cambridge University Library
National Archives of India, New Delhi
Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi
The Imperial War Cabinet by Vandyk, 10 x 12 inch glass negative, 25 June 1918, NPG x32125
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Image credit
Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, 1st Baron Sinha by Bassano Ltd
whole-plate glass negative, 20 May 1920, NPG x120565
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
