Communal Award and its Aftermath

Communal Award and its Aftermath

• After the failure of the Round Table Conferences, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald announced the Communal Award which further vitiated the political climate.
• The R.S.S. founded in 1925 was expanding and its volunteers had shot up to 1,00,000. 
• K.B. Hedgewar, V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalker were attempting to elaborate on the concept of the Hindu Rashtra and openly advocated that ‘the non-Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language…they must cease to be foreigners or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation claiming nothing.’  
• V.D. Savarkar asserted that ‘We Hindus are a Nation by ourselves.’
• Though the Congress had forbidden its members from joining the Mahasabha or the R.S.S. as early as 1934, it was only in December 1938 that the Congress Working Committee declared Mahasabha membership to be a disqualification for remaining in the Congress.

First Congress Ministries

• The nationalism of the Indian National Congress personified by Mahatma Gandhi was, who rejected the narrow nationalism exemplified by the Arya Samaj and the Aligargh movement and strove to evolve a political identity that transcended the different religions. 
• Notwithstanding the state-supported communalism of different hues, the Indian National Congress remained a dominant political force in India. 
• In the 1937 elections, Congress won in seven of the eleven provinces and formed the largest party in three others and emerged as a mass secular party. 
• The Muslim League’s performance was dismal and it succeeded in winning only 4.8 per cent of the Muslim votes. 
• Yet the Government branded congress as a Hindu organisation and projected the Muslim League as the real representative of the Muslims.
• Jinnah exploited the emotional campaign of Islam in danger’ to gain mass Muslim support after the 1936-37 elections – a divisive cause in which the Hindu Mahasabha came to its help through coalition ministries. 

Observation of Day of Deliverance

• The Second World War broke out in 1939 and the Viceroy of India Linlithgow immediately announced that India was also at war. 
• The Congress Working Committee decided that all Congress ministries in the provinces would resign. 
• The Muslim League celebrated the end of Congress rule as a Day of Deliverance on 22 December 1939. 
• It was in this atmosphere that the League passed its resolution on 26 March 1940 in Lahore demanding a separate nation for Muslims.
• Neither Jinnah nor Nawab Zafrullah Khan then had considered creation of separate state for Muslims practicable. 
• The League resolved that the British government before leaving India should effect the partition of the country into Indian union and Pakistan.

 Direct Action Day

• Hindu communalism and Muslim communalism fed on each other throughout the early 1940s. Muslim League openly boycotted the Quit India movement of 1942. 
• In the elections held in 1946 to the Constituent Assembly, Muslim League won all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly and most of the reserved provincial seats as well. 
• The Congress Party was successful in gathering most of the general electorate seats, but it could no longer effectively insist that it spoke for the entire population of British India.
• In 1946 Secretary of State Pethick- Lawrence led a three-member Cabinet Mission to New Delhi with the hope of resolving the Congress-Muslim League deadlock and, thus, of transferring British power to a single Indian administration. Cripps was primarily responsible for drafting the Cabinet Mission Plan. 
• Jinnah accepted the Cabinet Mission’s proposal, as did the Congress leaders. 
• But after several weeks of behind-the-scene negotiations, on July 29, 1946, the Muslim League adopted a resolution rejecting the Cabinet Mission Plan and called upon the Muslims throughout India to observe a ‘Direct Action Day’ in protest on August 16. 
• The rioting and killing that took place for four days in Calcutta led to a terrible violence resulting in thousands of deaths. 
• Gandhi who was until then resisting any effort to vivisect the country had to accede to the demand of the Muslim League for creation of Pakistan.
• Mountbatten who succeeded Wavell came to India as Viceroy to effect the partition plan and transfer of power.
• Finally the India and Pakistan became two separate nation as per the Mountbatten plan.