Lord Curzon

George Nathaniel Curzon, later 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (11 January 1859 to 20 March 1925), was Viceroy and Governor-General of India from 6 January 1899 to 18 November 1905. He was not a Sikh figure, and none of the sources used here shows him dealing with the Panth directly. He is in this record for two measures of his viceroyalty that changed the Punjab.

The frontier. On 9 November 1901 the North-West Frontier Province was created out of the north-western districts of the Punjab Province, as a separate Chief Commissioner's province. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism lists this as the separation of the trans-Indus region from the Punjab, and Curzon is the Viceroy credited with inaugurating the new province.

The land law. The Punjab Alienation of Land Act became law in 1900. Charles Rivaz presented the Bill to the Imperial Legislative Council on 27 September 1899. The Act sorted people into agricultural and non-agricultural tribes, banned with some exceptions permanent transfers of land from members of an agricultural tribe to buyers or creditors outside it, and stopped lenders outside those tribes from seizing the land of defaulting agricultural-tribe debtors. Studies of the Act find it reduced mortgage-backed credit, especially where professional moneylenders had been strong. The historian Kenneth Jones argued that the transfers it answered threatened the stability of the Punjab.

Bengal. Curzon's other best-known act, the partition of Bengal, took effect on 16 October 1905.

Key moments

• 6 January 1899: becomes Viceroy.
• 1900: the Punjab Alienation of Land Act becomes law.
• 9 November 1901: the North-West Frontier Province is separated from the Punjab.
• 16 October 1905: Bengal is partitioned; he leaves office on 18 November 1905.

What he is remembered for. Curzon is remembered above all for the Bengal partition. For the Punjab, he is the Viceroy under whom the province lost its frontier districts and gained a land law that limited who could acquire land from members of the listed agricultural tribes.