INDIAN PEER DEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 296, 6 March 1928, Page 1

INDIAN PEER DEAD

BRILLIANT CAREER By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. DELHI, Monday. The death has occurred of Lord Sinha from heart failure.—A. and N.Z.Sun. Satyandra Prassano Sinha, the AngloIndian statesman, who was born of an ancient Kayastha family at Raipur, Bengal, in June, 1864. had a remarkable career. He matriculated at 14, won manv prizes and scholarships, and was called to the Bar in 188 G. 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. In 1916 he was again appointed Advocate-General for Bengal. He and the Maharaja of Bikaner were the first Anglo-Indians to participate in Empire deliberations, for in 1917 they assisted the Secretary of State at the meetings of the Imperial War Conference. Sinha joined the Bengal Executive Council in the same year, but returned to England in 193 8 as a member of the Imperial War Cabinet and Conference. No sooner had he got back to India that he was recalled to London and Paris as an Indian member of the Peace Conference. Knighted in 1915, he was made a K.C. in 1913, a distinction not previously conferred on a barrister of Anglo-Indian birth or practising in India. In 1919 he was appointed to the Ministry as Under-Secretary for India, and being raised to the peerage as Baron Sinha of Raipur. In 1920 he was appointed Governor of Behar and Orissa, being the first Anglo-Indian to preside over a British province. He resigned owing to ill-health in December. 1921, when he received the K.C.S.I. and the freedom of the City of London