Lieutenant Colonel Sir Arthur John Dring was the second Prime Minister of the princely state of Bahawalpur. He was also the senior member of the Indian Political Service in the last decades of the British Raj, Assistant Private Secretary to the Governor-General of India and an advisor to governments on plebiscites for two former British colonies in Africa. Dring Stadium, the site of the second test cricket match of the India-Pakistan test series in 1955, is named after him. He was called John throughout his life.

Bahawalpur was a princely state in subsidiary alliance with British Raj and later Dominion of Pakistan, that was a part of the Punjab States Agency. The state covered an area of 45,911 km2 (17,726 sq mi) and had a population of 1,341,209 in 1941. The capital of the state was the town of Bahawalpur.