ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE

• The Indians Round Table Conference held three session which are sometimes referred to, albeit erroneously, as the First, Second and Third Round Table Conferences.

First Session (November 12, 1930 to January 19, 1931)

• It was Simon Commission, who suggested in a letter from India on 16^th October 1929, to the British Prime Minister, Ramsay Macdonald to convene a conference of the representatives of both British India and the Indian States to take a final decision on the question of constitutional reforms for India.
• His suggestion was accepted by the British Cabinet, and subsequently Lord Irwin, the Governor-General of India, made his famous declaration, known as the `Deepavali Declaration’ (October 31, 1929) according to which the objective of British policy was to grant Dominion Status to India and a round table conference would be held in London after the Simon Commission had reported.
• It was attended by 16 representatives of the three British political parties, 16 delegates from the Indian States, and 57 delegates from British India.
• The Congress, which was unhappy with the report of Simon Commission, boycotted the conference.
• Other political parties and interest groups were well represented – Muslim League by Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Shafi, Aga Khan and Fazul Haq; Hindu Mahasabha by Moonje and Jayakar; Indian Liberal Federation by Tej Bahadur Sapru. C.Y. Chintamani, M.R. Jayakar and Srinivas Shastri; and Depressed Castes were represented by B.R. Ambedkar[11].
• The conference ended with the Indian princes agreeing for a federation with a weak responsible central government, but the communalist parties could not come to an agreement on the question of minority representation.
• The British realized the futility of holding a conference on the question of constitutional reforms for India without the representatives of the Congress.

Second Session (September 7 to December 1931)

• It was attended by Gandhi as the sole representative of the Congress (according to the terms of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931) along with all the representatives of other political parties, interest groups, etc.
• Before any progress could be made, the conference was soon deadlocked on the minorities issue, with separate electorates being demanded now not only by Muslims but also by the Depressed Castes, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans.
• Gandhi desperately fought against the concerted move to make all constitutional progress conditional on a solution of the communal problem, and even offered to accept all Muslim claims provided they supported the Congress demand for independence, but the Muslim delegates rejected the offer while the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sikhs strongly opposed it.
• With regard to the question of federation too, the Indian princes were less enthusiastic than in the first session.
• The Conference ended with Ramsay MacDonald announcing the formation of two new Muslim majority provinces (North Western Frontier Province and Sind) and the setting up of an Indian consultative committee, and three expert committee (on franchise, finance and states), and holding out the prospect of a unilateral British communal award if the Indians failed to agree on the minorities issue.
• An out maneuvered and dejected Gandhi returned to India and was immediately arrested and imprisoned by the British.

Third Session (1932 November 17 to December 24)

• It was held without Congress representation, and was attended by a far smaller number of representatives than that of the first two.
• In this session, the delegates agreed on almost all the issues.
• The British government, on the basis of the discussion at the three sessions, drafted its proposals for the reform of the Indian constitution, which were embodied in the White Paper published in March 1933.
• The White Paper was examined and approved by a joint committee of the British Parliament (October, 1934) and a bill, based on the report of this committee, was introduced and passed in the British Parliament as the Government of India Act of 1935[12].

THE COMMUNAL AWARD (1932)

• On August 16, 1932, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald made an announcement in the British Parliament about the representation of India communities in the provincial legislatures.
• Popularly known as the `Communal Award’, it provided for separate electorates for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans.
• Secondly, the Depressed Classes were assured separate special constituencies with a right to vote in the remaining general constituencies also.
• Thirdly, special constituencies with separate communal electorates were to be constituted for women in all provinces except the NWFP.
• Lastly, seven seats were to be reserved for the Marathas in certain selected plural-member constituencies in the Bombay Presidency.

POONA PACT (1932)

• The Poona Pact took place at Yerawada Jail in Pune, Maharashtra on 24th September, 1932.
• Gandhi strongly opposed the proposal of separate electorate for the depressed classes as he thought that it would disintegrate Hindu society.
• He went for an indefinite hunger strike starting from September 20,1932 against the decision of the then British Prime Minister J.Ramsay Mac Donald.
• Mr. Ramsay granted communal award to the depressed classes as he gave them separate position in the constitution for governance of British India.
• The whole country was agitated at the health concern of Mahatma Gandhi.
• A mass upsurge generated in India to save the life of Gandhi.
• Ambedkar was put in a great pressure and he was forced to soften his stand.
• The compromise between the leaders of caste Hindu and the depressed classes was achieved when Dr. B.R.Ambedkar signed the Poona Pact on September 24, 1932.
• This was a landmark step for Dalit movement in India that gave share to the Dalits in the political empowerment of democratic India.

Main provisions of the Pact:

• There shall be reserved seats for the depressed classes out of general electorate seats in the provincial legislature as follows- Madras 30; Bombay with Sind 25; Punjab 8; Bihar and Orissa 18; Central Provinces 20; Assam 7; Bengal 30; United Provinces 20. Total 148. These figures are based on the Prime Minister`s (British) decision.
• Election to these seats shall be by joint electorate subjects by the following procedures - the members of the depressed classes formed the Electoral College, which was in liberty to elect the panel of the depressed classes. Voting system was taken into consideration then. The legislature pointed out that the method of the single vote and four persons getting the highest number of votes in such primary elections shall be the candidates for election by the general electorate.

Central Legislature

• In the Central Legislature eighteen per cent of the seats allotted to the general electorate for British India in the said legislature shall be reserved for the Depressed Classes.
• The system of primary election to a panel of candidates for election to the Central and Provincial Legislatures as herein-before mentioned shall come to an end after the first ten years, unless terminated sooner by mutual agreement under the provision of clause 6 below.
• The system of representation of Depressed Classes by reserved seats in the Provincial and Central Legislatures as provided for in clauses (1) and (4) shall continue until determined otherwise by mutual agreement between the communities concerned in this settlement.
• The Franchise for the Central and Provincial Legislatures of the Depressed Classes shall be as indicated, in the Lothian Committee Report.
• There shall be no disabilities attached to any one on the ground of his being a member of the Depressed Classes in regard to any election to local bodies or appointment to the public services. Every endeavour shall be made to secure a fair representation of the Depressed Classes in these respects, subject to such educational qualifications as may be laid down for appointment to the Public Services.

SECOND PHASE OF REVOLUTIONARY TRENDS

Post WWI Developments

• After the First World War, the revolutionary activities began to slowly wane as it suffered major setbacks due to the arrest of prominent leaders.
• In the 1920s, some revolutionary activists began to reorganize.
• Frustrated and disillusioned by the inaction of the Congress, the revolutionaries in northern India were the first to reorganize under the leadership of the older veterans, Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjea and Sachindranath Sanyal whose Bandi Jiwan served as a textbook for the revolutionary movement.
• They met in Kanpur in October 1924 and founded the Hindustan Republican Association (or Army) to organize armed revolution to overthrow colonial rule.
• The advance of the armed struggle required bold and risky actions. Volunteers had to be recruited and trained and arms had to be procured, requiring money – hence raids on the British treasury.
• On 9 August 1925, ten men held up the 8-Down train at Kakori (a village near Lucknow), to get access to its railway cash. British reaction was quick and hard.
• Ashfaqulla Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged, four others were sent to the Andamans for life and seventeen others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
• The Kakori case was a major setback to the revolutionaries of northern India; but it was not a fatal blow.
• Younger men such as Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Varma and Jaidev Kapur in U.P., Bhagat Singh, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Sukhdev in Punjab set out to reorganize the HRA under the overall leadership of Chandrashekhar Azad.
• At this time, they were also strongly influenced by socialist ideas.
• At a Delhi meeting in September, 1928, a new collective leadership adopted socialism as their official goal and changed their party’s name to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (Army).
• On 8 April 1929, HSRA embarked on a plan to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly against the passage of two new repressive bills – the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill.
• The aim was not to cause any loss of life, but to use the daring action to awaken and energize the Indian masses and to ‘make the deaf hear‘.
• The objective was to get arrested and to use the trial court as a vehicle to disseminate their dreams and ideas for a new and liberated India.
• Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt were tried in the Assembly Bomb Case.
• Later Sukhdev, Rajguru and tens of other revolutionaries were also tried in a series of famous conspiracy cases.
• In March 1931, Rajguru, Sukhdev, and Bhagat Singh were hanged by the British in spite of tremendous popular opposition to their hanging.
• On 13 March 1940, Udham Singh shot Michael o' Dwyer, generally held responsible for the Amritsar massacre, in London.
• Allama Mashriqi founded Khaksar Tehreek[13] in order to direct particularly the Muslims towards the independence movement.
• In Bengal too, armed revolutionary groups started reorganizing and developing underground activities even as some of the leaders maintained their links with the Congress.
• One of their planned actions was to assassinate Charles Tegart, the much hated Police Commissioner of Calcutta.
• The attempt failed and Gopinath Saha was arrested and hanged for the attempt despite massive popular protest.
• Among the new ‘Revolt Groups,’ the most active and famous was the Chittagong group led by Surya Sen.
• Surya Sen had actively participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement and had become a teacher in a national school in Chittagong.
• He had also been closely associated with Congress work in Chittagong.
• Along with other colleagues in the local Congress committees, and several young recruits, Surya Sen and his compatriots decided to organize a rebellion, on however small a scale, to demonstrate that it was possible to challenge the armed might of the British empire in India.
• Their action plan was to include occupation of the two main armories in Chittagong and the seizing of their arms with which four large band of revolutionaries could be formed into an armed detachment.
• In a fierce fight, (April, 1930) eighty British troops and twelve revolutionaries died, but Chittagong could not be held by the revolutionaries.
• When the armed revolutionaries dispersed into the Chittagong countryside, most of the Muslim villagers gave food and shelter to the revolutionaries in hiding, enabling them to survive for three years.
• The Chittagong Armoury Raid had a tremendous impact on the people of Bengal and inspired numerous other acts of armed resistance.
• But Surya Sen was eventually caught and hanged in 1934.
• Many of his co-fighters were also caught and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
• Pritilata Waddedar led an attack on a European club in Chittagong in 1932, while Bina Das attempted to assassinate Stanley Jackson, the Governor of Bengal inside the convocation hall of Calcutta University.
• The Bengal Volunteers started operating in 1928. On 8 December 1930, the Benoy-Badal-Dinesh trio of the party entered the secretariat Writers' Building in Kolkata and murdered Col. N. S. Simpson, the Inspector General of Prisons.
• Just as it seemed that the national movement was completely slipping away from the influence of the Congress, Gandhi returned to the mode of non-violent struggle and launched the salt satyagraha (1930-31).
• The political scenario changed in the late 1930s — with the mainstream leaders considering several options offered by the British and with religious politics coming into play — revolutionary activities gradually declined.
• Many past revolutionaries joined mainstream politics by joining Congress and other parties, especially communist ones, while many of the activists were kept under hold in different jails across the country.

CONGRESS MINISTRIES OF 1937

General Election of 1937

• Under the Act of 1935 elections were held for the Provincial Legislatures in February, 1937.
• Although the Congress was opposed to many provisions of the Act, it decided to contest the elections with an object to make the working of Provincial autonomy impossible by refusing to cooperate with the Government.
• The Muslim League and the Liberals also agreed to fight the elections in order to judge the merits of the Act.
• The Congress obtained clear majorities in Madras, Bihar, UP, Bombay, Central Provinces and Orissa, the provinces which claimed two-thirds of the Indian population.
• In Assam, the Congress emerged as the single largest party by capturing 35 out of 108 seats.
• In NWFP also, it gained 19 out of 50 seats.
• The Muslim League fared relatively badly at the polls.
• It could secure only 51 of the total of 482 seats reserved for the Muslims in provincial assemblies.
• Nationalist Muslims contested 58 seats on Congress tickets and captured 26.
• The League could not show its strength even in Muslim majority provinces of Punjab, Bengal and NWFP.
• But it rather made notable gains in Hindu majority provinces of UP, Central Provinces, Bombay and others.
• In the Punjab, the Unionist Party[14], which was a coalition of all the communities, emerged as the strongest party.
• In Bengal, the Praja Party[15] and the Independents captured two-thirds of the total seats.
• After an acute controversy in the Congress circles over the question of the formation of ministries the issue was decided in favour of office acceptance.
• In July, 1937, the Congress formed its ministries in six Provinces of UP, Bihar, Madras, Bombay, Orissa and Central Provinces.
• In NWFP and Assam, it agreed to form coalition ministries with the cooperation of other political parties.
• In provinces where it had gained a clear majority, it refused to give any concession to the League in the cabinet.
• It felt that a set of ministers divided in loyalties would not be able to work in, a team spirit.
• The non-inclusion of League members in the cabinet, however, proved harmful. It strained the relations between the Hindus and Muslims.
• Muhammad Ali Jinnah leveled several charges against Congress.

Eleven Provincial Ministries of British India

• The ministries formed in 1937 in eleven provinces of India had different stories to tell.
• They could not function smoothly.
• In Bengal, Sind and Punjab the new setup worked for ten years.
• In other provinces, the so-called responsible governments remained in saddle just for two years.
• In October, 1939, the Congress ministries in eight provinces resigned on the war issue.
• The governors in those provinces, by issuing a Proclamation of Emergency, assumed all the executive and legislative powers to themselves.
• The Governors rule lasted till 1946, when fresh elections were held and responsible governments once against set up in the provinces.                 

Role of Governors in Congress-ruled Provinces

• In Congress-dominated provinces, the Governors usually behaved decently.
• They did not interfere much with the work of the Ministers.
• Instances when the Governor exercised their special powers were also few.
• They extended their cooperation to the ministries by giving their assent to nearly all the Act passed by the legislatures.
• Hence, the initial fear that the Governors, by invoking their special responsibilities, would obstruct and undo the work of the ministers, proved unnecessary.
• No doubt, a few dead-locks and crises did occur in Congress Provinces, but they were soon resolved.

Question of Political Prisoners in UP and Bihar

• The Congress ministries in UP and Bihar decided to release all the political prisoners in February, 1938.
• The Governors of both the provinces opposed this move on the excuse that such a step would disturb the peace in the provinces.
• The Governor General under Section 126 of the Act directed the Governors to refuse the release of prisoners by invoking their special responsibility.
• The ministries made it a prestige issue and resigned.
• It seemed for the time being, that even the provincial part of the Act was also not going to work well.
• The British Government ultimately relented.
• Negotiations started between the Governor General and the Congress and it was decided that the political prisoners would be released gradually, after examining each individual case thoroughly.

Alleged Congress Persecution of Muslims in UP

• The Congress decision not to join hands with any communal organization had severe repercussions.
• When the Congress left out the League in selecting the team of ministers, the League began to raise a bogey of Hindu tyranny over the Muslims.
• It alleged that Congress was essentially a Hindu organization and was committing atrocities on the poor Muslims[16].
• The Congress rebutted the League’s charges and demanded a judicial inquiry into the allegations made by Jinnah.
• The Viceroy, however, cancelled the proposal of inquiry, because he himself was satisfied with the fair and secular conduct of the Congress.
• The Governor General and the Governors refused to interfere with the working of Congress ministries in the name of safeguarding the interests of the minorities.
• Mr. Jinnah was sorely disappointed.
• Thus, the working of the Provincial Autonomy till 1939 remained quite satisfactory.
• The Governors remained true to the assurance given by the Governor General before the acceptance of office by the Congress.
• They acted as constitutional heads.
• After the resignation of Congress ministries in 1939, they once again became the real heads of the provinces.

Part Played by Governors in Non-Congress Provinces

• In non-Congress provinces, the Governors enjoyed unlimited powers.
• For instance, when the Governor General consulted the Punjab Governor on the question of the release of political prisoners, the latter, without even consulting the Chief Minister, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, wrote back that the Punjab Government was not going to release them.
• In October, 1942, Allah Bukhsh, the Chief Minister of Sind, was dismissed by the governor arbitrarily.
• In Sind, Bengal and NWFP, the governors showed undue favour to the League and tried to keep it in power in spite of its poor strength in the assembly.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE MINISTRIES

Constructive Work

• The Congress did laudable work during its term of office in various provinces.
• The Congress Ministers busied themselves with constructive work.
• Soon after assuming office, they set about tackling the questions of elementary education[17], industrial wages, cottage industries and uplift of Harijans.
• They provided relief to the agriculturists from indebtedness.
• Efforts were made to abolish the evil of drinking and to benefit the farmers by passing tenancy laws.
• The political prisoners were released and their properties restored.
• It served as a good training ground in public administration.
• The ministers gained confidence to shoulder the responsibilities of a similar nature after independence.   
• The short period of Congress rule gave a taste of self-government to the people.