British-Indian Round Table Conferences in London

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The British-Indian Round Table Conferences in London (1930-1932) were a series of three round table conferences convened by the British government to deal with the future constitution of India . The conference resulted from a review of the Government of India Act of 1919 by the Simon Commission in 1927 , the report of which was published in 1930. Their plan was rejected by a central government and “[postponed] the idea of ​​a federal India into a distant and indefinite future […] None of the larger parties [came] to the conference with a specific plan, only with demands that contradicted each other stood ”( Aga Khan III. , memoir ). King George V presided over the opening meeting in the House of Lords .

First conference (November 1930 – January 1931)

The first conference (November 12, 1930-19 January 1931) attended 73 representatives from all Indian states and all parties except the Congress Party, which led a campaign of non-cooperation (or campaign of civil disobedience) against the government. When selecting the Indian congress participants, the British government was under the Labor -Premierminister Ramsay MacDonald had endeavored to include as many social groups. King George V said in his opening speech at the first conference:

“I shall follow the course of your proceedings […] with the closest and most sympathetic interest, not indeed without anxiety but with a greater confidence. The material conditions which surround the lives of my subjects in India affect me dearly, and will be ever present in my thoughts during your forthcoming deliberations. I also have in mind the just claims of majorities and minorities, of men and women, of town dwellers and tillers of the soil, of landlords and tenants, of the strong and the weak, of the rich and poor, of the races, castes and creeds of which the body politic is composed. For those things I care deeply. I cannot doubt that the true foundation of self-government is in the fusion of such divergent claims into mutual obligations and in their recognition and fulfillment. "

“I will follow the course of your negotiations [...] with the greatest and most sympathetic interest, not entirely without concern, but with greater confidence. I am deeply touched by the material circumstances in which my subjects live in India and will always be present in my thoughts during your forthcoming deliberations. I am also thinking of the fair claims of majorities and minorities, of men and women, of townspeople and arable farmers, of landowners and tenants, of the strong and weak, of the rich and poor, of the peoples, castes and beliefs that make up the political body is. All of this is very important to me. I have no doubt that the true basis of self-government is the amalgamation of such diverse claims into mutual obligations and their recognition and fulfillment. "

- King George V : opening speech to the first conference on November 12, 1930

The concrete results of the first conference were ultimately minimal. Some administrative reforms were decided and it was agreed in principle that the future India should be a federation. The Dominion status for India was proclaimed as a goal, without the need for a specific time or plan of action was decided. In India, the civil disobedience campaign continued unchecked.

Second Conference (September – December 1931)

British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to the right of Mahatma Gandhi at the Second Round Table Conference in London, October 1931. Fourth from the left in the foreground is BR Ambedkar , the representative of the Dalit ("Depressed Classes").

After the largely unsuccessful first conference, the British government came to the conclusion that a conference without the participation of the Indian National Congress could not be promising. Gandhi was released from prison and agreed to meet with the British Viceroy Lord Irwin . At the meeting on March 5, 1931, both agreed to end the movement of civil disobedience and to hold a second conference with the participation of Congress. On August 29, 1931, Gandhi embarked in Bombay to attend the conference in London. Shortly before the start of the conference, a government crisis broke out in the United Kingdom between 11 and 24 August 1931, mainly under the pressure of the Great Depression. Prime Minister MacDonald formed a " national government " with the participation of the Conservatives and Liberals . He was then expelled from the Labor Party. The new, conservatively-dominated government was much more skeptical of Indian aspirations for autonomy than the previous Labor government. The new negotiator on the British side as Secretary of State for India was Samuel Hoare in place of the previous Wedgwood Benn . At the conference, Gandhi claimed that the Congress spoke for all of India's residents. The assessment was rejected by other Indian delegates, especially those of the princely states. Basically, a two-chamber system was agreed in the discussions, in which, on the one hand, delegates in the provinces of British India should be elected for the first chamber, while the representatives of the princely states should sit in the second chamber. There were controversial points of view regarding the distribution of the voting weights. The representatives of the princely states, who made up about 2/5 of the land mass and about a quarter of the population of British India, demanded a much greater political weight than corresponded to these numerical proportions. Opposed to this, among others, the Muslim representatives, who feared that they would be minorized even more by the Hindus.

With regard to the claims of the Indian minorities (Muslims, Sikhs, the underprivileged castes, whose concerns were represented by Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar ), the British government took the position that this was an internal Indian problem and initially one between the various representatives of these groups Agreement must be reached. Gandhi was strictly against a communalist division of the votes into different electoral classes, in the sense that Muslim MPs should only be elected by the Muslims etc. and called this a " vivisection of the legislative assembly" (" a vivisection of the Legislature "). He advocated common constituencies for all population groups, whereby some constituencies should be reserved for minorities in order to guarantee their proportional representation. The Muslim delegates were against such a solution. At the center of the problem were the two large provinces of Punjab and Bengal , in which the Muslims each had a slim majority that the Muslim representatives would have liked to have institutionalized. To Gandhi's astonishment and disappointment, the representatives of the Dalits were also against the solution favored by Gandhi and demanded their own representation. The conference was overshadowed by reports of serious violent clashes between Muslims and Hindus in Kashmir and between various caste and casteless people in the area around Nasik in the Bombay presidency . Towards the end of the negotiations, Gandhi admitted contrite that it had not been possible to reach an agreement between the representatives of the Indian minorities. Towards the end of the conference, this increasingly came out of the focus of public interest, as Prime Minister MacDonald had meanwhile announced that the general election would be held for October 27, 1931 and reporting concentrated on it.

Nevertheless, under the presidency of Lord Chancellor Sankey , the conference was brought to a certain conclusion. It was decided that a bicameral system with an upper house or senate and a lower house should be set up in India in the future. The House of Lords was to consist of 200 members, 120 of whom were to be sent by the provincial governments of the provinces and 80 by the princely states. The House of Commons should be elected so that 100 members would be elected in the princely states and 200 members in the provinces. Exact commissions on how the members of the House of Commons were to be elected were not made. A general right to vote was not up for discussion. The princely states were left to regulate their voting mode themselves. The question of the representation of the minorities also remained unresolved. Progress has been made on issues of future financial management, justice and defense, but no final solutions have been found.

Ultimately, the conference was judged to be a major failure, as it resulted in few concrete changes. After Gandhi's return to India, the civil disobedience movement revived and Gandhi was arrested again on January 3, 1932, with other leaders of Congress.

Third Conference (November – December 1932)

The third conference (November 17–24, 1932) was shorter and less significant, and was attended neither by the Indian Congress Party nor by the British Labor Party .

The result of these deliberations was the Government of India Act 1935 , which established provincial autonomy and also a federal system, which was only partially implemented.

Attendees

Participants in the 1st conference

The participants in the November 1930 to January 1931 conference are listed below.

  • Representatives of the Indian princely states:
Jai Singh Prabhakar , Maharaja of Baroda , Nawab of Bhopal , Maharaja of Bikaner , Rana of Dholpur , Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir , Maharaja of Nawanagar , Maharaja of Patiala (Chancellor of the Princely Chamber ), Maharaja of Rewa , Chief Sahib of Sangashar, Sir Prabhash Pattani (Bhavnagar), Manubhai Mehta (Baroda), Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Khan ( Gwalior ), Akbar Hydari ( Hyderabad ), Mirza Ismail ( Mysore ), Col. Kailas Narain Haksar (Jammu and Kashmir)
  • Official participants in an advisory capacity:
WM Hailey , CA Innes , AC MacWatters, HG Haig, LW Reynolds
  • Secretaries:
SK Brown, V. Dawson, KS Fitze, WH Lewis, RJ Stopford, J. Coatman, Marmaduke Pickthall , KM Panikkar , NS Subba Rao, Geoffrey Corbett, A. Latifi, Girija Shankar Bajpai
  • General Secretaries: RHA Carter, Mian Abdul Aziz, WD Croft, GEJ Gent, BG Holdsworth , RF Mudie, GS Rajadhyaksha

Participants in the 2nd conference

The participants in the second conference from September to December 1931 were:

  • Representatives of the Indian princely states:
Maharaja of Alwar, Maharaja of Baroda, Nawab of Bhopal, Maharaja of Bikaner, Maharao of Cutch, Rana of Dholpur, Maharaja of Indore, Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja of Kapurthala, Maharaja of Nawanagar, Maharaja of Patiala, Maharaja of Rewa, Chief Sahib of Sangli, Raja of Korea, Raja of Sarila, Sir Prabhashankar Pattani (Bhavnagar), Manubhai Mehta (Baroda), Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Khan (Gwalior), Sir Muhammad Akbar Hydari (Hyderabad), Mirza Ismail (Mysore), Col KN Haksar (Jammu and Kashmir), T. Raghavaiah (Travancore), Liaqat Hayat Khan (Patiala)
  • British Indians, i.e. representatives of various social groups in British India:
Aga Khan III. , CP Ramaswami Iyer , Syed Ali Imam, Maulana Shaukat Ali , BR Ambedkar , Chandradhar Barua , JN Basu, EC Benthall, Shah Nawaz Bhutto , Ghanshyam Das Birla , Raja von Bobbili, Sir Hubert Carr, CY Chintamani , Muhammad Ahmad Said Khan Chhatari , Maneckji Dadabhoy, Maulvi Muhammad Shafi Daudi, Kameshwar Singh of Darbhanga, Surendra Kumar Datta , Raja Sher Muhammad Khan of Domeli, AK Fazlul Huq , Mahatma Gandhi , AH Ghuznavi, Henry Gidney , Sir Padamji Ginwala , VV Giri , Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah , Hafiz Hidayat Hussain, Muhammad Iqbal , A. Rangaswami Iyengar , Bhaskarrao Vithojirao Jadhav, Jamal Muhammad, MR Jayakar , Cowasji Jehangir , Muhammad Ali Jinnah , TF Gavin Jones, NM Joshi , Narendra Nath Law, Madan Mohan Malaviya , Nawab Sahibzada Sayed Muhammad Mehr Shah, Sir Provash Chandra Mitter, Homi Mody , BS Moonje , Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar , Sarojini Naidu , Diwan Bahadur Raja Narendra Nath, Sayed Muhammad Padshah Saheb Bahadur, AT Pannirselvam , Raja von Parlakimedi, Sir AP Patro , Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum , M. Ramachandra Rao, B. Shiva Rao , Syed Sultan Ahmed , Tej Bahadur Sapru, Muhammad Shafi , Sardar Sampuran Singh, VS Srinivasa Sastri, Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad , Bisheshwar Dayal Seth, Phiroze Sethna, Shafa'at Ahmad Khan , Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz , Rettamalai Srinivasan , Radhabai Subbarayan , SB Tambe , Purshotamdas Thakurdas, Sardar Ujjal Singh , CE Wood, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan
  • Staff of the Princely States Delegates:
VT Krishnamachari (Baroda), Richard Chenevix-Trench (Hyderabad), Nawab Mahdi Yar Jung (Hyderabad), SM Bapna (Indore), Amar Nath Atal (Jaipur), JW Young (Jodhpur), Ram Chandra Kak (Jammu and Kashmir), Sahibzada Abdus Samad Khan (Rampur), KC Neogy (Orissa states), LF Rushbrook Williams , Jarmani Dass, Muhammad Saleh Akbar Hydari , KM Panikkar , N. Madhava Rao
  • UK Delegate Staff:
HG Haig, V. Dawson, KS Fitze, JG Laithwaite, WH Lewis, PJ Patrick, J. Coatman, GT Garratt, RJ Stopford
  • British-Indian Delegate Staff:
Geoffrey Corbett, A. Latifi, Girija Shankar Bajpai , Benegal Rama Rau , Syed Amjad Ali , Aly Khan , AM Chaudhury, Mahadev Desai , Govind Malaviya, KT Shah, P. Sinha
  • General Secretaries:
RHA Carter, K. Anderson, CD Deshmukh , JM Sladen, Hugh MacGregor, GF Steward, AH Joyce, Syed Amjad Ali , Ram Babu Saksena

Participants in the 3rd conference

The following people took part in the third conference in November / December 1932:

  • Representatives of the Indian princely states:
Akbar Hydari (Dewan of Hyderabad), Mirza Ismail (Dewan of Mysore), VT Krishnamachari (Dewan of Baroda), Wajahat Hussain (Jammu and Kashmir), Sir Sukhdeo Prasad (Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur), JA Surve (Kolhapur), Raja Oudh Narain Bisarya (Bhopal), Manubhai Mehta (Bikaner), Nawab Liaqat Hayat Khan (Patiala), LF Rushbrook Williams (Nawanagar), Raja of Sarila (small states)
  • British Indian representatives:
Aga Khan III , BR Ambedkar (suppressed castes), Ramakrishna Ranga Rao of Bobbili, Sir Hubert Carr (European), Nanak Chand Pandit, AH Ghuznavi, Henry Gidney (Anglo-Indian), Hafiz Hidayat Hussain, Muhammad Iqbal , MR Jayakar , Cowasji Jehangir , NM Joshi (workers), Narasimha Chintaman Kelkar , Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar , Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz (women), AP Patro , Tej Bahadur Sapru, Shafa'at Ahmad Khan, Sir Shadi Lal, Tara Singh Malhotra , Sir Nripendra Nath Sircar, Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Memoirs of the Aga Khan, German, p. 289.
  2. ↑ quoted from the memoirs of Aga Khan III. at ismaili.net . - See the memoirs of the Aga Khan . Desch (1954), p. 288 & Naoroji M. Dumasia: The Aga Khan and His Ancestors: A Biographical and Historical Sketch . 1939, reprint 2008, p. 245 f. ( Online excerpt )
  3. ^ A b c d Frederick G. Pratt: The Indian Round Table Conference: Second Session. Pacific Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Feb. 1932), pp. 151-167. JSTOR 2749987
  4. ^ Indian Round Table Conference Proceedings. Calcutta Government of India Central publication branch, 1931, accessed April 16, 2016 (English, digitized version of the original publication ).
  5. ^ Indian Round Table Conference (Second Session) Proceedings of the Plenary Sessions. (PDF) Calcutta Government of India Central publication branch, January 1932, accessed on April 16, 2016 (English, digitized version of the original publication on the website www.irps.in ( Indian Railway Personnel Service Officers )).
  6. ↑ ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE (DELEGATES). millbanksystems.com, October 31, 1932, accessed April 16, 2016 (transcripts of the House of Commons debates).
  7. ↑ James Ramsay MacDonald; Great Britain. India Office .: Indian Round Table Conference (Third session) (17th November, 1932-24th December, 1932). London, HM Stationery Off., January 1933