At a time when caste and caste-based reservation have resurfaced with vigour on the nation’s political landscape it is interesting to recall how such reservation got into the political structure of the nation during the critical crossroads of its anti-colonial struggle. More so as the Hindu society is again showing its caste fault lines within with the people consolidating themselves on the basis of castes when the nation is preparing to go for the high-stake lok Sabha election barely a year away.
Things started in 1931 when the delegates of the religious minorities, Anglo-Indians and the Depressed Classes joined hands in churning out a ‘Minorities Pact’ during the london Round Table Conference which was held to evolve self-government for British-ruled India within the framework of a Constitution. Then British Premier Ramsay MacDonald interestingly said that the pact covered 115 million people or about 46 percent of India’s population. As per the ‘Minorities Pact,’ the Depressed Classes demanded ‘separate electorate’ on the lines Muslims, Christians and Sikhs were demanding. It meant that the people belonging to the Depressed Classes would elect members of the provincial legislatures from among the candidates from the same classes, leaving the caste Hindus with no role in the electoral process for the seats to be reserved for such classes.
Mahatma Gandhi who led the Congress delegation to the london Conference was stunned. He had anticipated fireworks on the festering communal question which is why he suggested to the Congress Working Committee that he would go to london only after the communal question was settled. But he was overruled and made to drink bitter cups of humiliation day after bitter day while in london. The behind- the- scene alignment, rampant shenanigans and endless bargaining and squabbling left him a deeply sad man. However, the Depressed Classes joining forces with the ‘communal elements’ operating on the religious lines to wreck the Hindu unity from within gave him a shuddering shock. He subsequently embarked on his historic Poona fast in September 1932 after the ‘Communal Award’ announced by Macdonald had granted separate electorate to the Depressed Classes.
Earlier, in November 1931, the Mahatma said during a meeting of the ‘Minorities Committee’, “I claim myself in my own person to represent the vast mass of the untouchables. Here I speak not merely on behalf of the Congress, but I speak on my own behalf, and I claim that I would get, if there was a referendum of the untouchables, their votes and I would top the poll. We do not want on our register and on our census ‘untouchables’ classified as a separate class. Sikhs may remain as such in perpetuity, so may Muslims, so may Europeans. Would untouchables remain untouchables in perpetuityIJ”
In March 1932, when he was in jail he wrote to Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary of State for India, that separate electorate if granted to the Depressed Classes under the new Constitution would divide the Hindu community without benefiting the Depressed Classes in the least. While recalling what he had said during the london Conference that he would resist with his life if the British government granted separate electorate to the Depressed Classes, he wrote, “This was not said in the heat of the moment or by way of rhetoric.”
After the ‘Communal Award’ was announced Gandhi wrote to then British Premier that he was undertaking a perpetual fast unto death and it would only end if his government decided to roll back separate electorate to the Depressed Classes.
The fast undertaken by the Mahatma paralysed India with anxiety from end to end as it was clear that he was determined to do or die for the cause of the unity of the Hindu society. The people from across the country observed a day-long fast and prayer on the day Gandhi’s fast began. At Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore spoke of the significance of the fast and of the imperative of ending the sin of untouchability across India. With the people stung in their conscience, temples, wells and other public places were thrown open to the ‘untouchables.’ An emergency meeting of the leaders of the caste Hindus and the Depressed Classes was held in Bombay to churn out alternative arrangements which would replace what was granted in the ‘Communal Award’ to save the precious life of the supreme leader of the nation. The solution that was hammered out by Gandhi’s bedside in jail was that the voters from the Depressed Classes would hold preliminary election and choose a panel of four candidates for each seat and these candidates would later submit to a joint election involving caste Hindus and Depressed Classes. Besides, the number of the seats for the Depressed Classes in the provincial legislatures was raised from 71 as in the British Award to 148. Besides, 19 percent of the general seats in the central legislature was reserved for the Depressed Classes. Such an arrangement was to continue unless terminated by mutual understanding. This was known in history as Poona Pact.
Mahatma Gandhi withdrew his fast, but he was later bitterly criticised by some Hindu leaders, particularly from Bengal, for ‘being coerced into yielding too much to the Depressed Classes’. However, Gandhi stuck to his guns. He was convinced that the caste Hindus could hardly be too generous, given the tyranny they had unleashed on their weaker brethren in the past. Interestingly, B R Ambedkar who proved instrumental in bringing about the pact later complained of being coerced into submission by the Gandhian blackmail.
However, what historian B R Nanda wrote in ‘The Making of a Nation,’ rings true. “If Gandhi had not fasted in 1932 and the separate electorate for the Scheduled Caste had not been modified by the Poona Pact it is likely that the problem of the Scheduled Castes would have added to the complexity of the negotiations in 1946/47, already bedevilled by Muslim separatism and princely intransigence.”