Abstract
This article considers the proposition, advanced by Sujay Biswas, that the British ‘manufactured’ the demand for a separate ‘Untouchable’ electorate in the Communal Award of 1932. First, the evidence cited by Biswas is closely examined. His proposition is then assessed in the context of the deliberations of the colonial authorities in India, the provincial administration in the United Provinces (UP) and the Cabinet of the United Kingdom (UK). It is concluded that while communal electorates generally may have been used deliberately to divide Indians, there are no grounds for thinking that it was the case in that of the Depressed Castes.
Introduction
The reconsideration by Sujay Biswas of the 1932 Communal Decision 1 and the Poona Pact addresses a range of important issues across a wide canvass, which, although conflated in his presentation, need to be disentangled and considered separately. 2 His article pursues a number of subsidiary themes, but the primary focus is on the assertion that the colonial power encouraged the demand for separate electorates for the Depressed Classes (Untouchables) as part of a general strategy of ‘divide and rule’ in the subcontinent. 3 Biswas is in no doubt that this indeed was the case and the British were guilty of attempting deliberately to engineer the electoral arrangements for the Depressed Classes in order to further their own interests and ‘to create yet another fissure among the Indian people’. 4 He is concerned to use the example as a demonstration of ‘the constant effort of British imperialism to divide the Indian people’. 5 He even concludes that ‘The demand for separate electorates for the “Untouchables” was “manufactured” by the British Government.’ 6
It would be difficult to exaggerate the scale of the revisionist challenge that is mounted by Biswas. His relegation of the influence of Dalit assertion and agency in the demand for separate electorates will come as a surprise to those scholars only recently, and increasingly, uncovering the numerous dimensions of the autonomous struggle of the Depressed Classes to organise and gain recognition in the late colonial period. There is also a good case to be made that the British went to great lengths to avoid creating another separate electorate for the Depressed Classes. Furthermore, the general historiographical consensus has been that the imperial power settled on the Award only very reluctantly in the absence of agreement between the various Indian interests. As Ramnarayan Rawat put it, the Second Round Table Conference had ended in deadlock on the question of minority representation, and the Communal Award was announced to ‘break the impasse over the rights of minorities in India’.
7
And as Dwaipayan Sen recently deduced more generally from his close analysis of Bengal:
The Communal Award was not mere dispensation from above … written up variously as the British ‘communalization’ of politics, a pernicious colonial ploy to stagger the devolution of power, or the cunning of colonial governmental reason, such interpretations scant … the fact that representatives of India had failed to reach agreement among themselves.
8
The bold contention of Biswas therefore warrants close attention, and the evidence he presents to support it deserves careful scrutiny. For if he is correct in his assertions, then there would be profound implications, not only for the whole historiography of Dalit politics in the late colonial period but also for the popular view of the Poona Pact held by many Dalits over the generations. It is not my purpose or intention here to exonerate the imperial power from the opprobrium of employing a general strategy of divide and rule in the subcontinent—on that count it stands guilty. However, I do wish to examine closely and contest the claim that the specific electoral arrangements proposed for the Depressed Classes in the Communal Decision of 1932 were part of any imperial strategy of divide and rule. On first reading, while disagreeing with much of what Biswas said, I thought he had made a useful contribution to this important topic. On reconsideration I believe the article by Biswas to be both seriously weakened by inaccuracies and imprecision in its presentation and fundamentally mistaken in its approach.
Some Preliminary Issues
Among his ancillary themes, Biswas argues that many historians, ‘notably from the west’, have recommended separate electorates while they would make no such suggestions for their own countries.
9
He adds, ‘No separate electorates have ever been established in Western democracies to avoid majoritarian rule.’
10
Putting aside the admittedly limited examples which directly contradict him (Belgium, New Zealand and so on), and his curious recourse to ‘whataboutery’, the more important issue revealed by the comments of Biswas is that his approach dismisses the whole history and lively continuing discussion surrounding the question of compensatory discrimination, affirmative action and what has come to be called group representation. It is as if for him there can be only one model of democracy, namely, unmodified majoritarian rule achieved through single-member district plurality. Practices such as quotas, group representation, restricted nomination rights through regulated shortlists and most famously ‘majority–minority districting’ in the United States remain unexplored. Nearly two decades ago, Alistair McMillan consolidated a consideration of all of these issues into a comprehensive discussion of the history of the Indian electoral system and Dalit politics. As McMillan reflected:
In terms of electoral politics, a growing literature on ‘group representation’ has examined the need to change the rules of electoral competition in order that the outcome, in terms of the social composition of the legislature, is more representative of certain social groups.
11
Biswas extends his critique of ‘western’ observers to their disregard of the terms of the Poona Pact and claims that ‘It is also forgotten that the Poona Pact greatly increased Depressed Castes’ representation.’ 12 Nowhere in his article does he expand upon exactly how the representation of the Depressed Classes was ‘greatly increased’, and one must assume therefore that he is referring solely to the addition in the number of representatives. Of course it is undeniable that under the terms of the Poona Pact, the number of positions reserved in the provincial legislatures for the Depressed Classes almost doubled. 13 However, there is a world of difference between simply increasing the number of representatives and the reality of ‘greatly increased’ representation. The idea that merely increasing the numbers of legislators from a particular background necessarily improves their representation is most certainly open to question. Indeed, it is the issue that is at the very heart of the notions of democracy and group representation already discussed above.
The Challenge of Precision and Accuracy
One of the most serious charges Biswas makes is the accusation that Eleanor Zelliot misrepresented Gandhi’s view when she wrote that Gandhi ‘opposed any form of special representation involving reserved seats’. 14 However, Biswas distorts the sense of Zelliot’s text by omitting the beginning of the sentence she wrote. In the original, Zelliot begins, ‘At the second Round Table Conference….’ 15 The version Biswas gives, with his deletion of her initial words, totally changes Zelliot’s meaning.
Biswas then goes further to claim that Dhananjay Keer also ‘fully supports this view’ of Zelliot. 16 But a reading of Keer reveals that Keer was also talking about the position at the Second Round Table Conference. The paragraphs to which Biswas refers begin with the words ‘In the early days of February’, making it clear about which dates Keer is writing. 17
The indisputable fact is that Gandhi most certainly did oppose the reservation of seats for the Depressed Classes until a very late stage in the proceedings. Gandhi’s famous speech to the Minorities Sub-Committee at the Second Round Table Conference made his position clear. While the Indian National Congress, he stated, ‘will always accept any solution that may be acceptable to the Hindus, the Muhammadans and the Sikhs, Congress will be no party to special reservations or special electorates for any other minorities’. 18 If there was any ambiguity about Gandhi’s detailed presentation before the committee, he dispelled it the next day by personally writing directly to Prime Minister MacDonald. He confirmed once more that ‘the Congress will never be reconciled to any further extension of the principle of separate electorate or special statutory reservation.’ 19 As late as the eve of his fast on 9 September, he reaffirmed to MacDonald that he was against the ‘statutory separation’ of the Depressed Classes ‘even in a limited form’. 20 The matter was referred to once more at the time of the Poona negotiations by the Parsi leader Cowasji Jehangir, a member of the Minorities Sub-Committee, who had been a witness to Gandhi’s speech to the conference. He reminded the Central Assembly that ‘it was Gandhi’s refusal to allow Depressed Classes even reservation of seats in joint electorates that led Ambedkar to demand separate electorates’. 21 It was not until 15 September 1932 that Gandhi relented and stated that while he remained opposed to the reservation of seats, he was now willing to ‘abide by an agreement on the basis of joint electorates’. 22 This was the first time Gandhi had made any such concession on the question of reserved seats. In his prison interview on 21 September, he admitted to his previous ‘emphatic disapproval’ and ‘uncompromising opposition’ to statutory reservation of seats. He now claimed, curiously, that this was because he had never been shown any scheme for statutory reservation. 23 His vehement resistance, it seems, had been generated by his unfamiliarity with the subject.
The claim of Biswas that ‘Gandhi had never objected to the representation of the Depressed Classes in the Legislatures or even to their over-representation’ 24 is thus unfounded and a misrepresentation of the historical record.
Biswas has a similar problem when dealing with Perry Anderson. He accuses Anderson of making the ‘fantastic allegation’ that Gandhi confided to Vallabhbhai Patel that untouchables might ‘gang up with Muslim hooligans and kill caste Hindus’.
25
However, had Biswas consulted the official account of Gandhi’s discussion with Patel, he would have found it clearly recorded that Gandhi had stated on 21 August 1932:
They do not realize that the separate electorate will create division among Hindus so much so that it will lead to bloodshed. Untouchable hooligans will make common cause with Muslim hooligans and kill caste Hindus. Has the British Government no idea of all this? I do not think so.
26
We also have to challenge the assertion by Biswas that ‘the conversion movement to Buddhism among the Mahars had further alienated other Depressed Classes groups.’ 27 The fact is that there was no Buddhist conversion movement at the time to which Biswas refers. Indeed, the two sources Biswas cites in this context, Gokhale and Zelliot, state clearly in their work that mass conversions did not start until almost two decades later. 28 Ambedkar’s Yeola declaration of 1935 made no mention of any other religion, and certainly not Buddhism; he simply said, ‘I will not die a Hindu.’ Gokhale has described the timing and sequence of the Buddhist conversion movements explicitly, ‘The conversion promised by Ambedkar finally came to pass more than twenty years later, on the 14th of October, 1956. The religion chosen, Buddhism, had not even been a serious contender in the 1930s.’ 29 The conversion to Buddhism was such a significant episode in the history of Dalit emancipation that it is difficult to understand how Biswas can get his facts so dramatically wrong.
The grip of Biswas on precise and detailed citation falters once again when he looks to the work of S.K. Gupta. Biswas claims that Gupta ‘argues that a majority of the Depressed Classes, who had demanded separate electorates earlier, had definitely thinned’—in fact Gupta said no such thing. What he actually said was: ‘The majority had definitely thinned.’ 30 Biswas in his version has entirely changed the meaning of Gupta’s statement. Furthermore, Biswas tries to present Gupta’s findings as if they portray a finely balanced division between supporters and opponents of separate electorates. But Biswas can only do this by omitting in his quotation the beginning of Gupta’s sentence which clearly states: ‘Once again a majority of them reiterated their demand for separate electorates.’ 31
At other times, one wonders quite what significance Biswas is attaching to the evidence he produces or to the witnesses he cites. At one point he confuses William Wedgwood Benn with the succeeding Secretary of State for India, Samuel Hoare, to support his case. 32 Biswas writes, ‘Significantly, Benn (sic) was aware that their plan was “bad” and therefore thought it was “possible” that Gandhi would carry out his threat.’ 33 However, Hoare actually wrote, ‘Our scheme is only half as bad as he [Gandhi] was expecting. Nevertheless I imagine it is possible that he will carry his threat out.’ 34
One could point to more inaccuracies and imprecise references throughout Biswas’s article, but it would be a tiresome exercise. However, one final example needs to be addressed, as it is fundamental to the article and sets the tone of his argument. Biswas declares:
Significantly, according to the note circulated to the Commissioners and Collectors by the British Government, the Communal Award of 1932 was an institutional arrangement to split the Indian electorate primarily on grounds of religion.
35
This definitive statement is breathtaking. If true, it would alter our entire understanding of the events surrounding the Communal Decision. But, of course, it cannot be true. How could the ‘British government’ have possibly circulated a note to district-level administrators in India? Second, even if the fanciful event had taken place, why would the note contain such a damning admission from the authorities? Where did Biswas come across the idea to make this dramatically mistaken assertion? The answer is that he is drawing from (without citing the source) an article by Bidyut Chakrabarty (to which he does subsequently refer on the next page) but has spectacularly distorted the meaning of the original text. To begin with, Chakrabarty states quite clearly that the note was circulated by the Government of India and not by the British government.
36
But in order to appreciate the full scale of the misrepresentation, it is important to cite the words Chakrabarty actually used:
The Communal or Macdonald Award of 1932, according to the note circulated to the Commissioners and Collectors ‘by the British Government at the request of the Indians themselves’, was an institutional arrangement to split the Indian electorate primarily on grounds of religion.
37
Biswas has ignored the punctuation of the original article and consequently totally misunderstood and misrepresented the meaning of the text authored by Chakrabarty. The statement that the Award was ‘an institutional arrangement to split the Indian electorate’ was not, of course, contained in any circulated official note. There was no sort of official statement circulated by the ‘British government’ stating its intention ‘to split the Indian electorate’. None of this is contained in the official record as Biswas claims. It was in fact an opinion voiced by Chakrabarty. 38
The Core Argument
These lapses in precise attribution weaken Biswas’s case but what should we make of his central claim that the British ‘manufactured’ the demand of separate electorates for the Depressed Classes? Biswas relies heavily on those bundles of colonial government files which are concerned primarily with the communication of executive decisions already made, or conversely with the reporting back of reactions to those decisions. The method Biswas adopts is a perfectly sensible and reasonable way to go about investigating the issue. Hugely valuable insights can be derived from the sort of close attention that he devotes to this documentation and important conclusions drawn about the detailed operation of the machinery of the colonial state. However, the strength of his argument is undermined by the register he adopts when discussing this material. In the voice of Biswas, everyday prosaic exchanges between imperial bureaucrats are invested with a conspiratorial content which were probably far in excess of the purpose or intent of their authors. For Biswas, just the label of commonplace classifications, like ‘secret’ or ‘confidential’, immediately seems to suggest a malign machination, rather than a routine mode of communication between senior officers of the empire.
Nor does Biswas situate his analysis of these well-known exchanges in the context of the atmosphere of near panic and chaos surrounding official communications in India at this juncture. The documents he cites need to be read against the background of the collective anxiety pervading the authorities during this period. 39 The concern had even led its own senior bureaucrats to decry ‘the amateur efforts of Government’. 40 In London, the view was growing that ‘the amateur efforts’ of officials in India were now jeopardising the entire programme of constitutional review. 41 The secretary of state wrote repeatedly to the viceroy urging immediate improvements in official communications. But, as Hoare wearily reported to the prime minister, ‘Whether he is going to do anything or not, I cannot say.’ 42
The Government in India, stung by the criticism, set up an internal enquiry to investigate the situation. 43 However, matters deteriorated even further, as the arrangements surrounding the supposedly ‘secret’ and ‘confidential’ correspondence about the Communal Award descended into farce. The chief secretary in the United Provinces prematurely released a confidential copy on the Award which was promptly published. 44 In the United Kingdom, the prime minister could no longer hide his irritation with the incompetence displayed by the authorities in India; and his private secretary wrote to tell Hoare, ‘The Prime Minister hopes you will tell the Indian Government quite plainly of the mess which they have made with their Press!’ 45 It is important to stress that exchanges at this time, in the account given by Biswas, are presented as the assured and confident missives of a secure administration and a confident regime, not in the light of a government increasingly concerned about its handling of the public discourse.
Equally significant is the absence in Biswas’s account of any consideration of the evidence relating to the formulation and determination of policy by the UK government. Nor is any reference made to how this might have been informed by the advice and guidance of the colonial authorities. Biswas looks at how an already settled policy was adumbrated and justified by the Central government machine in India and communicated to the provincial authorities, press and wider public. He also investigates how the local provincial governments received that information and reported the reactions to it in their jurisdictions. But nowhere does he explore how the policy was originally decided upon and developed. He fails to demonstrate how the electoral arrangements for the Depressed Classes were formulated deliberately to underwrite a policy of divide and rule. At no point does he ask, let alone begin to answer, the question, of exactly how a demand for Depressed Class separate electorates was ‘manufactured’ by the British ‘to create yet another fissure among the Indian people’. 46 In short, he never examines the very question he claims he wants to answer or produce the evidence for his conclusion.
The Opposition to Communal Representation: A Long History
Biswas cites the radical nationalist analyses of the corrosive and deleterious effects of communal electorates, put forward by distinguished scholars such as Bipan Chandra, Ravinder Kumar and Aditya Mukerjee, to support him in this unexceptional and largely uncontested contention. But equally he could also have drawn on the evidence of a raft of liberal, and not so liberal, imperialists who were similarly vociferous in their condemnation of the ‘pernicious concept’ of separate representation and communal electorates.
From the moment in 1909 when Morley conceded the principle of separate electorates for Muslims, the reaction set in against what was almost universally recognised as a very bad settlement. Over the next twenty-five years, whenever colonial officialdom looked at the arrangement, it was usually with disapproval and a refusal to extend the practice. The Montagu–Chelmsford reforms warned portentously that the previous grant of separate electorates for Muslims had not received the cautious scrutiny it had needed before implementation. 47 And it especially warned against ‘the State’s arranging its members in any way which encourages them to think of themselves primarily as citizens of any smaller unit than itself’. 48 The associated Southborough Committee, investigating the franchise, only sanctioned the continuation of existing communal electorates in the hope that it would soon be possible to get rid of them. But at the same time it absolutely refused to extend the practice, for example, to the Mahars. 49 Especially, it should be remembered, these comments came in the wake of the Congress, including Gandhi, and the Muslim League themselves agreeing to the terms of the Lucknow Pact (1916)—a protocol that not only sanctioned separate communal electorates but also augmented them with the additional principle of ‘weightage’.
When the Muddiman review looked at separate electorates again in the mid-1920s, the members reported that ‘most of us look upon them as an obstacle to political advance’. 50 Furthermore, they warned that ‘great care should be exercised before any extension of the system of separate electorates and of reserved seats is permitted’. 51 Similarly, when it came to the Simon Commission, while most Depressed Class representatives had lobbied in favour of separate electorates, the recommendations warned against ‘stereotyping the differences between the depressed classes and the remainder of the Hindus’. And the commission went further to comment that although some groups might have already secured a separate electorate, ‘that is no reason for bringing other cases within this mode of treatment, if it can be avoided.’ 52
In no official investigation, report or commission between the reforms of 1919 and the Government of India Act of 1935 was there a single word of any support or approval which could have contributed to the ‘manufacture’ of a demand for separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. Additionally, every one of these reports contained further criticism of the general principle of communal representation. If the case for the Depressed Classes was ‘manufactured’, as Biswas claims, it most certainly was not constructed during this period in the official proceedings and the thinking of the colonial power.
Resistance to the extension of communal representation was just as vigorous at the more local level in the provinces. In UP, for example, Governor Meston led an energetic campaign advocating ‘further constitutional advance’. 53 Meston was convinced that any progress was dependent on the ending of communal representation and often spoke passionately in the legislature pouring scorn on ‘the pious hope [that] … separation will lead to compact union’. On one occasion, he condemned separate representation for being ‘a noxious weed in the fair garden of national unity’. 54 But he went further and commissioned his own report in the province that, in his words, should make explicit ‘reference to the theory and principles of democratic self-government’. 55 He emphasised the need for ‘the production of the largest possible competent electorate within the shortest possible period’. 56 When his report appeared, it condemned ‘wholly and unreservedly’ any system of communal representation and separate electorates as ‘incompatible with responsible and representative government’. It concluded, ‘In a word, where there is communal representation, representative government is doomed … we regard the separate Muhammadan electorate as a serious mistake.’ 57
The UP government in the mid-1920s responded to the Muddiman proposals advocating increase Depressed Class representation, and once again it resisted, arguing that ‘Politically the depressed classes are in no sense a community in themselves.’
58
Sentiment had not changed by the time of the Simon investigations. Again, the UP government replied to the findings of the commission by expressing its opposition to increasing Depressed Class numbers in the legislature because it would give ‘representation out of all proportion to their political importance’.
59
When Governor Hailey’s senior civil servant was given the job of assessing the Franchise Committee’s initial findings, he poured scorn on its proposals to increase Depressed Class representation:
Untouchability … cannot be justifiably made a reason for the grant of a political concession. One might as well give an extra vote to a man because he sweeps a crossing, or omits to clean his teeth.
60
Two months later, just before the announcement of the Award, the UP chief secretary further clarified the thinking in the province. He explained that there had always been a reluctance to consider the Depressed Classes as a separate political collective requiring special treatment in any way because the UP government
Are anxious to avoid doing anything which would emphasize any difference which now exists between these castes and the higher castes … [and] were impressed by the danger of creating by means of the electoral system yet another community in India, and of adding by this step to the difficulties of achieving constitutional advance on lines which have been followed elsewhere.
61
Looking through the detailed history of the consideration of the political position of the Depressed Classes in this one province, there is no evidence to support the view that the demand for separate electorates was being ‘manufactured’ in any way other than by the efforts and agency of the Dalits themselves. 62 And so, if this demand was not being generated in official enquiries, nor in the activities of the local colonial state, then perhaps we should look more widely to examine whether it was being manufactured by the architects of the Award at the most senior levels of the imperial power.
The Communal Award: The Importance of Lothian
The drafting of the Communal Award did not generate any enthusiasm in the ranks of the UK government, and a wearisome resignation pervaded the mood of all those involved in designing it. Hoare complained that he had not enjoyed the task of working on the award. ‘Indeed, I do not think that I have ever been involved in a more tiresome or thankless job,’ he told the editor of The Observer. 63 Hoare remained sceptical of the persuasive power of the complicated tabulations and the intricate workings used to explain the details of the settlement, in what he called this ‘parody of a constitution’. 64 In his scribbled aide-memoire notes for a Cabinet meeting, he reminded himself that his colleagues would have little time for what he called ‘this table of logarithms’, which he claimed ‘nobody can understand’ and he feared ‘nobody will be pleased with’. 65 Even Prime Minister MacDonald admitted his inability to cope with the precise recommendations and confessed that it was ‘quite hopeless for me, however, to pretend to examine the figures in detail’. 66 The ‘MacDonald Award’, it seems, was a mystery to MacDonald himself.
Nonetheless, the participants were absolutely clear about the position of the Depressed Classes. There is some evidence that Hoare, at the very beginning of his time as the secretary of state, did consider separate electorates for what he called ‘a section of the community which probably stands in greater need of protection than any other’.
67
However, after further discussion, particularly with his junior minister Lothian, he never raised the possibility again. As Hoare set about his task, he quickly saw the implications of Lothian’s conclusions regarding the Depressed Classes in the Franchise Report. He thought that the Award would avoid ‘giving them inadequate protection’, while at the same time it did not ‘smash up for ever the Hindu community’.
68
Earlier, he had told the viceroy that after discussing ‘this perplexing problem’ with Lothian he was
Impressed … by the argument that it is not in the interests of the depressed classes to be segregated into a wholly separate electorate so that other Hindus do not have to solicit their votes and their representatives will be no more than a small and uninfluential group in the legislatures.
69
What is rarely acknowledged adequately is the extent to which the work on the Communal Decision, and particularly its provisions affecting the Depressed Classes, was primarily undertaken by Lothian. 70 The Award may commonly be associated with MacDonald’s name, and much of the presentation was fronted by Hoare, but in reality it was Lothian who had worked on the detail behind the scenes and done all the heavy lifting. As Hoare reminded the prime minister, ‘The proposal we are actually making is Lothian’s proposal, founded upon his invaluable experience on the Franchise Committee.’ 71 And he reassured the Cabinet that Lothian had studied the question of the Depressed Classes ‘very closely’. 72 In almost three decades of involvement with India, Lothian certainly never advocated universal suffrage or home rule, but neither was he averse to contemplating those eventual possibilities. He was undoubtedly an imperialist but one of a particular liberal persuasion who advocated increasing self-government in India. As he put it repeatedly in his correspondence with Jawaharlal Nehru, most of all he believed in expanding the electorate. He was convinced that an increased number of voters would then fuel the growth of ‘political parties, concerned with political, social and economic reform [that] are the dynamic force which puts force and vitality into the constitutional machine’. 73 Lothian particularly wanted to increase the number of voters from the Depressed Classes. 74
After giving the question more consideration, Lothian submitted perhaps the most straightforward account of the way he was thinking in his note to Hoare of 18 July. He had, he explained, ‘been trying to clear my mind about the real significance of the communal settlement’. Now he provided his candid overall assessment of separate electorates:
They are the negation of responsible government and by entrenching communal division in the constituencies, make healthy political life in the provinces and anything like a true Indian nationality impossible while they last. So far as it goes this argument is unanswerable. It is an absurd and preposterous system….
75
Even at this late stage, Lothian hoped for a way out and that the provisions for separate representation could be dispensed with at any time. He was absolutely clear that communal separate electorates were inimical to the development of even the rudimentary representative democracy the colonial power had in mind with its new constitution. He advised his colleagues that he thought the government should make it clear that any communal settlement was only being made
because there is no other way forward, that they recognise the grave disadvantages of starting the new constitution on the basis of communal separate electorates … and will provide in the Constitution that the system can be abandoned by consent, at any time.
76
On 6 August, Hoare wrote to the prime minister that he was preparing the final draft taking into account the ‘suggestions of Irwin, Simon and Lothian’ and he hoped the text would soon be ready.
77
Lothian provided the draft to Hoare two days later, in which it was declared unequivocally:
The government have decided against creating a new system of separate electorates for the Depressed Classes. Opinion among the Depressed Classes themselves is clearly divided upon the subject and the Government believe that both in their own interests and in the interest of the Hindu community as a whole the Depressed Classes should form part of the general constituencies.
78
However, Hoare still had concerns with the detailed wording and scribbled in the margin of the typed draft that the language went too far and instructed: ‘We must be careful not to appear to cut down Ambedkar.’ 79 This directive was not in any way whatsoever an instruction to modify the policy, or to veer towards Ambedkar’s position on separate electorates, but merely an urging to amend the language and adjust the tone of the presentation of the proposal. Furthermore, Hoare reassured the prime minister. Gandhi’s concerns had been taken into full account; and he was certain, he told MacDonald, that ‘Lothian’s scheme for the Depressed Classes made Gandhi’s threat altogether unreasonable.’ 80
The British simply did not believe the arrangements they were proposing for the Depressed Classes under the terms of the Communal Decision amounted to the creation of another separate electorate. Furthermore, government thinking and statements at this time, both private and public, point to the general aversion to any expansion of communal or separate representation.
Gandhi’s Reaction
The Cabinet believed that it had settled on a carefully constructed compromise solution and one that would assuage the demands for separate electorates while neutralising the threat of Gandhi to resist with his life. The authorities were surprised when Gandhi claimed that the proposals were tantamount to the creation of another separate electorate and were astonished by his reaction to the announcement. It came as an even greater shock when Gandhi announced his intention to make good on his threat and embark on his ‘fast unto death’. Nobody was more surprised than Lothian who was convinced that Gandhi
must have misunderstood our decision about the depressed classes…. I think we ought to take steps to make clear to him that we are not creating separate electorates for them and that they are voting in the ordinary Hindu constituencies.
81
The Inspector-General of Prisons was dispatched twice to Gandhi’s gaol to confirm that he had properly understood the implications of the proposal. 82 For some, Gandhi’s decision was a cynical ploy to regain his leadership and restore the impetus of a waning civil disobedience movement. And Willingdon, never an enthusiast of the Mahatma, was in that number and was in no doubt that, with civil disobedience ‘at a very low ebb … I am convinced that this is really the main reason for Gandhi starting this particular stunt’. 83 Willingdon’s attitude was of no assistance in bringing an end to the crisis, but generally there was a more serious response as Gandhi announced his fast and efforts were immediately made to avert it.
Hoare informed the prime minister of Lothian’s puzzlement and reinforced the view that Gandhi simply could not have understood the terms of the award. Consequently, MacDonald immediately wrote to Gandhi reiterating the British government’s position. It was a long letter which repeatedly returned to the question of Gandhi’s interpretation of the decision. He wrote that he had received the news of Gandhi’s decision to go on fast with ‘much surprise’ and ‘sincere regret’. MacDonald sought to reassure Gandhi that he had taken ‘most careful account’ of his views when considering the question of Depressed Class representation, and that ‘we deliberately decided against the creation of what you describe as a communal electorate’. 84
In the end, the pleading of MacDonald mattered little and Gandhi’s fast was ended by agreement between the interested Indian parties themselves with no British involvement. The provisions for the Depressed Classes contained in the Communal Decision were dropped, as the British had always said they would do, in the wake of an alternative settlement between the Indians themselves. But had the Imperial power really ‘manufactured’ the demand among the Depressed Classes? And had the British actually ever even proposed what reasonably could be called a separate electorate for the Depressed Classes?
Was a Depressed Class Separate Electorate Ever Proposed?
Separate electorates in colonial India were certainly deeply divisive and socially corrosive. They cemented, exacerbated and institutionalised difference not only in the political, and particularly the electoral system, but in the wider society as well. They contributed to the divisions which spawned the violence of communal hatred. However, Biswas missed the opportunity to investigate the relationship of a general adherence to the practice of seeking to ‘divide and rule’ through the mechanism of separate electorates, to the specific circumstances surrounding the treatment of the Depressed Classes in the Communal Award 1932. The investigation of that question requires close attention to the evidence, detailed analysis of the sequence of events and respect for the documentary sources—not the sort of generalised assertions to which Biswas is disposed.
Here, it has been suggested that there is no evidence to support the contention that the British had manufactured a demand for the Depressed Classes to be granted a separate electorate. Furthermore, there is very little to indicate that the colonial power might ever have wanted to promote or introduce such a measure. Hoare had entertained the idea briefly early on when he assumed office but quickly dropped it. No other significant participant in the whole process ever promoted the notion. Nobody in the UK Cabinet supported it, there was no support in the ranks of the Government of India, and in provinces like UP, the prevailing official mood had always opposed sectional political representation of any kind, particularly of the Depressed Classes, and certainly resisted any extension of it. 85
Finally, we cannot end without an examination of the precise scale and dimensions of the proposal made in the Communal Decision. For Biswas, the Award ‘completely splintered the electorate’. Perhaps his verdict would not be so much of an exaggeration in the case of the Depressed Classes if it were true, as he also claims, that the ‘Untouchables … would have two votes each.’ 86 But of course that is not remotely true. The Communal Decision did not propose to give ‘two votes each’ to the Depressed Classes. It had intended to grant an additional vote to some enfranchised members in just a small proportion of constituencies. In fact, the proposal would have affected only a maximum of 81 seats in provincial legislatures out of the total of 1,748—that is less than 5%. 87 And what would the impact have been? How many members of the Depressed Class population would have been caught up in the proposal? What would the ‘splintering’ have looked like? Taking the example of UP, the settlement would have affected just 12 constituencies out of a total of 228. It would have ‘splintered’ off less than one person in a hundred of the Depressed Class population, and affected less than one in fifty of all voters and less than one in five of the small number of the Depressed Classes who were going to be enfranchised. 88
In summary, it is difficult to see how proposals on this scale with these kinds of numbers involved can be described as having ‘splintered the electorate’ and separated off the Depressed Classes. Perhaps it is even more difficult than imagining how the British ‘manufactured’ the demand for a separate electorate in the first place.