200px|thumbnail|right|[[Sidney Rowlatt, best remembered for his controversial presidency of the Rowlatt Committee, a sedition committee appointed in 1917 by the British Indian Government to evaluate the Indian independence movement and political terrorism in India.]]
The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, 1919, popularly known as the Rowlatt Act, was a law, applied during the British India period. It was a legislative council act hurriedly passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on 18 March 1919, despite the united opposition of its Indian members, indefinitely extending the emergency measures of preventive indefinite detention, imprisonment without trial and judicial review enacted in the Defence of India Act, 1915 during the First World War. It was enacted in the light of a perceived threat from revolutionary nationalists of re-engaging in similar conspiracies as had occurred during the war which the government felt the lapse of the Defence of India Act, 1915 would enable.
Purpose and introduction
The British Colonial Government passed the "Rowlatt Act", which gave power to the police to arrest any Indian person on the basis of mere suspicion. The purpose of the Act was to curb the growing nationalist upsurge in the country. Muhammad Ali Jinnah called this act a "Black Act", in his resignation letter to Viceroy of India, Frederic Thesiger, from the Imperial Legislative Council. Mahatma Gandhi called upon the people to perform Satyagraha against this act.
Passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee and named after its president, Sir Sidney Rowlatt, the act effectively authorized the colonial British government to imprison any person suspected of terrorism living in British India for up to two years without trial, and gave the colonial authorities power to deal with all revolutionary activities.
The unpopular legislation provided for stricter control of the press, indefinite detention without trial, and juryless in camera trials for proscribed political acts.