Ancient history

Constitutional Development of Communalism (3)

Demand to make Sindh a Muslim-majority province

Immediately after the Allahabad Conference of 1930 AD, the first Round Table Conference was held in London in AD 1931 in which the representatives of the Muslim League demanded the reservation of seats in the Indian Legislative Assemblies for the Muslim community in proportion to the population. He also demanded that Sindh be given the status of a new Muslim majority province. In AD 1931, Jinnah said that to solve the problem of India, it was necessary to negotiate between four parties - (1) the British government, (2) the Indian state (indigenous princely states) (3) Muslims and (4) Hindus. In AD 1938, he repeated his argument.

British took out the wind of Hindu-Muslim unity

In AD 1932, efforts were made for Hindu-Muslim unity at the All India level and unity conference was organized. The committee appointed by this conference in November 1932 had come very close to the solution of the Hindu-Muslim problem. An agreement was also reached regarding the representation of Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly and it was decided that 32 percent seats would be given to Muslims.

But before the committee's work was completed, India Secretary Samuel Hore intervened and announced that the British government had decided to give 33.33 percent of the seats in the central assembly to Muslims. He also declared Sindh as a separate state and promised to give him abundant financial assistance. In this way all the hard work of the unity conference was ruined.

Communal Arbitration of AD 1932

When the communal problem could not be resolved even by the Round Table Conferences, on 16 August 1932, the British Government on its behalf announced the Communal Award. By this award, the British government gave 105 seats (42 percent) out of 250 to non-Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly, while the number of Hindus in India was 75 percent. Muslims were given 33 per cent seats while their population was 25 per cent.

The Simon Commission had proposed 150 out of 250 (60 percent) seats in the Central Legislative Assembly for non-Muslims, but Prime Minister McDonnell reduced these seats to 42 percent. It was natural for Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists to have resentment towards the government and Muslims. Under this arbitral decision, Europeans, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, kings and vassals were given the right to elect representatives of their respective communities in various provincial legislative assemblies through separate electoral system.

Due to the efforts of Dr. Ambedkar, the Depressed Classes were given the facility to elect their representatives through a separate electoral system. Thus, through this award, the British tried to promote Muslim communalism in the country on the principle of divide and rule, divide the Hindu society by giving separate representation to the Dalits, to disturb the national unity by giving undue importance to the Indian minorities. , by arranging separate elections for the kings and vassals, conspired to encourage the non-democratic elements and to control and weaken the activities of the progressive elements in India and by dividing the representation on the basis of religion and occupation, India in the pit of new problems thrown.

….. consecutively (4)