LORD SINHA DEAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19888, 6 March 1928, Page 9

LORD SINHA DEAD.

ANGLO-INDIAN STATESMAN. DETAILS OF HIS CAREER. (Received March 6, 1.5 a.m.) A. and N.Z.-Sun. DELHI, March 5. The death has occurred of Lord Sinha from heart failure. Satyandra Prassano Sinha, the AngloIndian statesman, who was born of an ancient Kayastha family at Raipur,Bengal, in June, 1864, had a remarkable career. Matriculating at the age of 14, he won ascholarship at the Presidency College, Calcutta, and in 1881 went to London. At Lincoln's Inn he secured many prizes and scholarships, and was called to the Bar in 1886. In practice at Calcutta he rose rapidly to a leading position and was appointed standing counsel to the Government of India in 1903. He was the first Anglo-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 November, 1910, when Lord Minto, who then retired from the Vice-Royalty, testified to the success of what some English critics had regarded as a dangerous innovation. Sinha resumed his legal practice and presided at the Indian National Congress at Bombay in 1915. Next year he was again appointed Advocate-General for Bengal. He and the Maharaja of Bikaner were tho first Anglo-Indians to participate in Empire deliberations, for in 1917 they assisted the Secretary of State f.t the meetings of tho Imperial War Conference. Sinha joined the Bengal Executive Council in the same year, out returned to England in 1918 as a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and Conference. No sooner had he got back to India than he was recalled to London and Paris 'as an Indian member of tho Peace Conference. Knighted in 1915, he was made a K.C. in 1913, a distinction not previously conferred on a barrister oi; Anglo-Indian birth or practising in India. When the Coalition Government was recast at the beginning of 1919, ho established further records for no AngloIndian 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 AngloIndian to be sworn a member of the Privy Council. In 1919 he skilfully conducted the Government of India Bill through the House of Lords and when the Dyarchy was initiated at the close of 1920, was appointed Governor of Behar and Orissa, being the first Anglo-Indian to preside over a British province. He stfesigned owing to ill-health in December, 1921, when he recceived the K.C.S.I. He also had the freedom of the City of London conferred on him.