framework for a state; with this the younger Nehru was in agreement.
However, the Report favoured dominion status as a compromise formula
to bring as many people as possible on board, and concentrated instead on
the ‘communal problem’.
The Report recommended the abolition of separate electorates,
advocating instead joint electorates with reserved seats for minorities.
Jawaharlal’s view, which had some support outside the committee, was
that these seat reservations should then be abolished in ten years’ time;
this was not incorporated into the Report. The Muslim League, whose
participation was coordinated by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had done much
of the preliminary spadework to get sections of Muslim opinion to accept
the compromise of joint electorates with reserved seats. He expected
one-third of the seats in an eventual Central Assembly to be reserved
for Muslims, representation for Muslims in proportion to population
in Punjab and Bengal (which were Muslim-majority provinces), and the
creation of three new Muslim-majority provinces, Sindh, Baluchistan
and the North-West Frontier Province. This was strongly opposed by the
Hindu Mahasabha, who opposed the federal structure of the proposed
constitution, reserved seats in the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab
and Bengal, and the creation of new Muslim-majority provinces. The
Nehru Report, in trying to make concessions to the Mahasabha, lost the
support of Jinnah’s branch of the League: reserved seats were only accepted
at the Centre and in Muslim-minority provinces; and the creation of Sindh
as a separate province was deferred to an imagined period after the
attainment of dominion status. Jinnah, who had accepted a split in the
League to take the risk of participation in the All-Parties Conference,
made a further compromise attempt at the Calcutta session of the All-
Parties Conference in December 1928, pleading desperately that without
Hindu–Muslim unity the future of India could only be a bleak one. By
March 1929, he withdrew from the negotiations. The Nehru Report was
dead. Of some academic interest was its demand for universal adult
suffrage for both men and women, and the attack by some of the delegates
at Calcutta on the right to private property (which hardly put its sanctity
at risk).
The Simon Commission had succeeded in re-igniting political activ-
ity; the anti-Simon Commission black flag demonstrations once again
brought large numbers of people out onto the streets for a national cause.
The year 1928 saw large-scale demonstrations following the tour of the62 ‘INEFFECTUAL ANGEL’, 1927–39