Proposed Communal Solution- Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Proposed Communal Solution- Mahatma Gandhi

 

The scheme prepared by the Working Committee and suggested for adoption by the whole country is the result first of the incessant labours of Dr. Ansari and then of the subcommittee consisting of Pandit Malaviyaji, Dr. Ansari and Sardar Sardul Singh. I have never known Dr. Ansari so identified with and absorbed in anything as he has been about the communal question. He loves his profession and is content to live for it. If one finds him in politics or even as President of the Congress, he is there because friends have dragged him to the position. He is too noble and too patriotic to resist them. But the solution of the communal question he has made his first love. May these efforts be crowned with success! Even the noblest of virtues need to incarnate in human flesh before they can act. Intrinsically considered, the scheme appears to me to be sound, if the necessity for a communal solution be admitted. If we were pure nationalists, no scheme would be required. By religion we may be different, as a nation we should be one and indivisible. We will choose our legislators and appoint servants for their merits irrespective of their religion or race.

Judged by that standard, the scheme is a fall. But we are fallen. We suspect and fear one another and yet we want swaraj, for it is our birth-right. And so the Congress has offered a compromise. Maulana Shaukat Ali when he was with the Working Committee angrily said: ‘Why do you continually ask me what I want? I have told you what I want. Why don’t you tell me what you would give?’ The sting went home. The Congress formulae of pure nationalism were useless. His claim to represent Mussalmans as a whole was rejected. He was therefore entitled to know what the Congress could offer. The Congress could offer nothing that nationalistically inclined Sikhs, Mussalmans and Hindus were not prepared to agree to. Hence the subcommittee and then the scheme as hammered into shape by the Working Committee. The Working Committee can have no desire to force it down unwilling throats. But nationalists belonging to the three communities have now something to work by and upon. Let them unobtrusively cultivate opinion in their respective communities. I begin with the Hindus. We are an overwhelming majority. If we feel physically dwarfs before the Mussalman and the Sikh giants, we shall never grow through the legislatures. We shall grow by shedding fear, not by straining our limbs. Courage has never been known to be a matter of muscle; it is a matter of the heart. The toughest muscle has been known to tremble before an imaginary fear.

It was the heart that set the muscle a trembling. Let us take heart and endorse what the Mussalmans and the Sikhs ask. This is just, weighed in the scales of ahimsa otherwise spelt love. If this scheme results in opening the eyes of us Hindus, it would be well even though non-nationalist Sikhs and Mussalmans may reject it. If we accept this scheme without demur, we should be ready to accept any other that may be acceptable to all Sikhs and all Mussalmans. But let me not frighten us away from this scheme by pledging ourselves to any other in advance. My mind as an individual is made up and has been often expressed. But I do dare to ask the Hindus to accept this scheme because it is charged with the blessings of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviyaji and Sjt. Madhavrao Aney, not to speak of the other Hindu members of the Working Committee. However much it may have failed in the realization, the Congress has, from its very inception, set up pure nationalism as its ideal. It has endeavoured to break down communal barriers.

The following Lahore resolution was the culminating point in its advance towards nationalism: Hence the Congress is precluded from setting forth any communal solution of the communal problem. But at this critical juncture in the history of the nation, it is felt that the Working Committee should suggest for adoption by the country a solution though communal in appearance, yet as nearly national as possible and generally acceptable to the communities concerned. The Working Committee therefore after full and free discussion unanimously passed the following scheme:

I (a) The article in the constitution relating to Fundamental Rights shall include a guarantee to the communities concerned of the protection of their cultures, languages, scripts, education, profession and practice of religion, and religious endowments.

(b) Personal Laws shall be protected by specific provisions to be embodied in the constitutions.

(c) Protection of political and other rights of minority communities in the various provinces shall be the concern and be within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government.

2. The franchise shall be extended to all adult men and women.

3. (a) Joint electorates shall form the basis of representation in the future constitution of India.

(b) That for the Hindus in Sind, the Muslims in Assam and the Sikhs in the Punjab and N.W.F.P, and for Hindus and Muslims in any province where they are less than 25% of the population, seats shall be reserved in the Federal and Provincial Legislatures on the basis of population with the right to contest additional seats.

4. Appointments shall be made by non-party Public Service Commission’s which shall prescribe the minimum qualification, and which shall have due regard to the efficiency of the Public Service as well as to the principle of equal opportunity to all communities for a fair share in the public services of the country.

5. In the formation of Federal and Provincial Cabinets interests of minority communities should be recognized by convention.

6. The N.W.F.P Province and Baluchistan shall have the same form of government and administration as other provinces.

7. Sind shall be constituted into a separate province provided that the people of Sind are prepared to bear the financial burden of the separated province.

8. The future constitution of the country shall be federal. The residuary powers shall vest in the federating units, unless, on further examination, it is found to be against the best interests of India. The Working Committee has adopted the foregoing scheme as a compromise between the proposals based on undiluted communalism and undiluted nationalism. Whilst on the one hand the Working Committee hopes that the whole nation will endorse the scheme, on the other, it assures those who take extreme views and cannot adopt it that the Committee will gladly, as it is bound to by the Lahore resolution, accept without reservation any other scheme if it commands the acceptance of all the parties concerned.

 

Reference:

Young India, 16-7-1931