The Simon Commission, the Nehru Report and Jinnah's Fourteen Points (1927‑1929)

Government of India Act, 1919, and the Statutory Commission

Ten-Year Review Clause and the Early Appointment

The Government of India Act, 1919, which introduced dyarchy in the provinces, provided for the appointment of a statutory commission to inquire into and report on its working after 10 years of its coming into force. The review was therefore due in 1929. The Conservative Government in Britain appointed the commission two years ahead of schedule, in November 1927, because it feared defeat by the Labour Party and did not want to leave the question of India's future in Labour hands. Lord Birkenhead, the Conservative Secretary of State for India, was responsible for the appointment.

Indian leaders had already asked for a constitution framed with Indian consent. On 8 February 1924 Motilal Nehru moved a resolution in the Central Legislative Assembly asking the government to summon a representative Round Table Conference to recommend a scheme of a constitution for India. Known as the National Demand, it was passed by 76 votes to 48. In November 1927 the British answered with a commission on which no Indian sat.

Composition and Terms of the Indian Statutory Commission

The British Government appointed the seven-member Indian Statutory Commission on 8 November 1927, and Lord Birkenhead announced it in the House of Lords on 24 November 1927. All seven members were drawn from the British Parliament. The chairman, Sir John Simon, was the Liberal member for Spen Valley, and the Commission was popularly named after him. The other six were Clement Attlee and Vernon Hartshorn of the Labour Party, Edward Cadogan and George Lane-Fox of the Conservative Party, and two peers, Viscount Burnham and Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal. Attlee was later Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from 1945 to 1951, and his government granted India independence in 1947.

The Commission was to recommend whether India was ready for further constitutional reforms and on what lines, and its terms of reference also covered Burma. Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, supported the decision to leave out Indians. What angered Indians most was the notion behind the exclusion: Foreigners would decide whether India was fit for self-government. Indian opinion saw this as a violation of the principle of self-determination and a deliberate insult to the self-respect of Indians.

Boycott of the Simon Commission and the Simon Go Back Protests (1927‑1928)

Madras Congress of December 1927 and the Boycott Resolution

The Congress session at Madras in December 1927, held under the presidency of M. A. Ansari, decided to boycott the Commission "at every stage and in every form". The same session set up an All Parties Conference to draft a constitution for India, and Jawaharlal Nehru succeeded in getting a snap resolution passed that declared complete independence the goal of the Congress.

The boycott was taken up at once by almost every party, but not by all:

• Joined the boycott: The Congress, the Liberals and the majority faction of the Muslim League under Jinnah.
• Did not join the boycott: The Unionists in Punjab and the Justice Party in the south; B. R. Ambedkar, E. V. Ramasamy (Periyar) and Chhotu Ram supported the Commission, and an All-India Committee for Cooperation with the Simon Commission was set up under C. Sankaran Nair.

Gandhi took no direct part in the boycott campaign of 1928 but gave it his blessings, as he gave them to the peasant satyagraha at Bardoli that year.

Arrival at Bombay, the Hartal and the Youth Upsurge

The Commission landed in Bombay on 3 February 1928. On that day a countrywide hartal was organised and mass rallies were held. In every major city it visited, the Commission met black flag demonstrations, hartals and the slogan "Simon Go Back", coined by Yusuf Meherally; at Patna, Maghfoor Ahmad Ajazi led the demonstrations.

The boycott gave a new generation of youth their first taste of political action. Students and young people played the most active part in the protest and gave it a militant flavour. Youth leagues and conferences gained a real fillip, and Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose emerged as leaders of this new wave, travelling widely to address and preside over youth conferences. The upsurge also spread radical ideas of socialism, seen in groups such as the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the Workers' and Peasants' Parties and the Hindustani Sewa Dal in Karnataka.

Lahore Lathi Charge and the Death of Lala Lajpat Rai

The police came down heavily on the demonstrators, and the lathi charges did not spare senior leaders: Jawaharlal Nehru and G. B. Pant were beaten in Lucknow. The worst incident came at Lahore on 30 October 1928, when Lala Lajpat Rai, popularly known as Punjab Kesari, led a non-violent march against the Commission. On the orders of the Superintendent of Police, James Scott, the police beat the protesters with lathis, and Lajpat Rai was severely injured.

He still addressed a meeting the same evening and declared: "The Government which attacks its own innocent subjects has no claim to be called a civilised government. Bear in mind, such a government does not survive long. I declare that the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India." Lajpat Rai did not recover from his injuries and died on 17 November 1928, and his death further inflamed national sentiment. The revolutionary Bhagat Singh swore to avenge him, and on 17 December 1928, in a case of mistaken identity, he and Rajguru shot dead John Saunders, an assistant superintendent of the Lahore Police, instead of Scott.

Birkenhead's Challenge and the All Parties Conference

Birkenhead's Challenge to Produce an Agreed Constitution

Lord Birkenhead had long argued that Indians could not frame a concrete scheme of constitutional reform with the support of wide sections of Indian opinion. He first delivered his challenge on 7 July 1925 and repeated it while announcing the Simon Commission in the House of Lords: "Let them produce a constitution which carries behind it a fair measure of general agreement among the great peoples of India." The British used the same claim of Indian disunity to justify leaving Indians out of the Commission.

Indian leaders accepted the challenge, and the appointment of the Commission had a two-fold effect on Indian politics:

• Radical forces: It gave a stimulus to those who demanded complete independence and socio-economic reform.
• Indian unity: The effort to produce an agreed constitution drew in various political sections, and for a time the prospects of Indian unity seemed bright.

Motilal Nehru Committee and the Report of August 1928

At the initiative of the Congress, an All Parties Conference in 1928 appointed a committee chaired by Motilal Nehru "to determine the principles of the Constitution for India". Its members included Tej Bahadur Sapru, Subhas Chandra Bose, M. S. Aney, Mangal Singh, Ali Imam, Shuab Qureshi and G. R. Pradhan. The committee submitted the Nehru Report on 10 August 1928, and an All Parties Conference held at Lucknow in 1928 discussed it.

The Nehru Report was the first major attempt by Indians to draft a constitutional framework for the country, and it was in effect an outline of a draft constitution. Its recommendations were unanimous except on one point: The majority favoured dominion status as the basis of the constitution, while a section wanted complete independence and was given liberty of action.

Nehru Report of 1928: Recommendations for an Indian Constitution

Dominion Status and the Plan of Responsible Government

The Nehru Report confined itself to British India and looked to a future link between British India and the princely states on a federal basis. It recommended dominion status, on the lines of the self-governing dominions within the British Commonwealth, as the form of government Indians desired. The younger and more militant section of the Congress, with Jawaharlal Nehru prominent among them, resented this choice.

The Report planned full responsible government at the centre and in the provinces:

• Central legislature: A Parliament with a House of Representatives of 500 members elected on the basis of adult suffrage, for a term of five years, and a Senate of 200 members elected by the provincial councils, for a term of seven years.
• Central executive: A Governor-General appointed by the British Government but paid out of Indian revenues, acting on the advice of a central executive council responsible to Parliament.
• Provinces: Provincial councils with a five-year term, each headed by a governor acting on the advice of the provincial executive council.
• Centre and units: Residuary powers rested with the centre, so the structure was broadly unitary.
• Judiciary: A Supreme Court was to be created.

The Report laid down that "the language of the Union shall be Hindustani", written in either the Devanagari or the Urdu script, with the use of English permitted.

Joint Electorates, Reserved Seats and Linguistic Provinces

The Report rejected separate electorates, which had been the basis of constitutional reforms until then. In their place it proposed joint electorates with reservation of seats for Muslims at the centre and in the provinces where they were in a minority, in proportion to the Muslim population there, with the right to contest additional seats. No seats were to be reserved for Muslims in the provinces where they were in a majority, such as Punjab and Bengal. The Report favoured constituencies based on geography, on the ground that communities which depended on each other at elections would be bound closer together.

The Report also recommended that provinces be redistributed on a linguistic basis.

Nineteen Fundamental Rights and a Secular State

The Report laid special emphasis on fundamental rights, and it listed 19 of them. They included equal rights for women, the right to form unions, universal adult suffrage, the freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion, the right of free expression of opinion and of peaceful assembly, and the right to free elementary education. Every person of either sex who had reached the age of 21 was to be entitled to vote for the House of Representatives.

The Report proposed a secular state. There was to be no state religion, and the state was to be completely dissociated from religion; the secular character of the state was itself listed as a fundamental right. The Report also gave full protection to the cultural and religious interests of Muslims. Of the 19 rights it listed, 10 were later incorporated into the Constitution of India.

Delhi Proposals and the Communal Response to the Nehru Report

Delhi Proposals of 1927 and the Hindu Mahasabha's Objections

The drafting of the Nehru Report began with enthusiasm and unity, but communal differences soon crept in over the question of communal representation. Earlier, in 1927, a large number of Muslim leaders meeting at Delhi had framed four proposals for a future constitution, which came to be known as the Delhi Proposals:

• Electorates: Joint electorates in place of separate electorates, with reserved seats for Muslims.
• Centre: One-third representation for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly.
• Punjab and Bengal: Representation for Muslims in proportion to their population.
• Muslim-majority provinces: Sindh as a new province, and the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan raised to the same standing as the other provinces, giving three Muslim-majority provinces.

The Madras session of the Congress accepted these proposals in December 1927. The Hindu Mahasabha, however, strongly opposed the separation of Sindh and the reforms in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, which would have added Muslim-majority provinces, and the reservation of seats for Muslim majorities in Punjab and Bengal, which would have ensured Muslim control of both legislatures; it also demanded a strictly unitary structure. During the deliberations of the All Parties Conference, the Muslim League dissociated itself and held to its demand for reserved seats, especially in the central legislature and in the Muslim-majority provinces.

Motilal Nehru and the other drafters now faced a dilemma. If they accepted the demands of Muslim communal opinion, the Hindu communalists would withdraw their support; if they satisfied the Hindu communalists, the Muslim leaders would be estranged. The Report finally made three concessions to Hindu communal opinion: Joint electorates everywhere with reservation for Muslims only where they were in a minority; the separation of Sindh from Bombay only after dominion status was granted, and subject to weightage for the Hindu minority in Sindh; and a broadly unitary structure with residuary powers at the centre.

Jinnah's Amendments at the Calcutta Conference of December 1928

The All Parties Conference met at Calcutta in December 1928 to consider the Nehru Report. On behalf of the Muslim League, Jinnah proposed three amendments:

• Central legislature: One-third representation for Muslims.
• Bengal and Punjab: Reservation for Muslims in proportion to their population, until adult suffrage was established.
• Residuary powers: These were to rest with the provinces.

The amendments were not accepted, and the Muslim League concluded that the Report had set its demands aside. Muslim leaders such as the Aga Khan and Muhammad Shafi criticised the Report, and Jinnah rejoined the faction of the Muslim League led by Shafi.

Jinnah's Fourteen Points of March 1929

Demands of the Fourteen Points

Jinnah's Fourteen Points were the Muslim League's reply to the Nehru Report. Jinnah set them out in March 1929, at a meeting of the council of the All India Muslim League on 9 March and at the League's session in Delhi, over which he presided. They kept the Delhi Proposals' demands for a third of the central seats, for the separation of Sindh and for reforms in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, took in the three Calcutta amendments, went back to separate electorates and added a share for Muslims in the services and self-governing bodies. They asked for the following:

• Federal constitution: A federal form of constitution, with residuary powers vested in the provinces.
• Provincial autonomy: A uniform measure of autonomy for all provinces.
• Minority representation: Adequate and effective representation of minorities in every legislature and elected body, without reducing the majority in any province to a minority or even to equality.
• Central legislature: Muslim representation of not less than one-third.
• Separate electorates: Their continuation, with any community free to give up its separate electorate in favour of a joint electorate.
• Territorial redistribution: No redistribution that would affect the Muslim majority in Punjab, Bengal and the North-West Frontier Province.
• Religious liberty: Full religious liberty for all communities.
• Three-fourths rule: No bill or resolution to be passed in any legislature or elected body if three-fourths of the members of a community there opposed it as injurious to that community.
• Sindh: Its separation from the Bombay Presidency.
• North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan: Reforms on the same footing as in the other provinces.
• Services: An adequate share for Muslims in the services of the state and in local self-governing bodies.
• Culture and personal law: Safeguards for Muslim culture, education, language, religion, personal laws and charitable institutions.
• Cabinets: At least one-third Muslim ministers in every central and provincial cabinet.
• Amendment: No change in the constitution by the central legislature without the concurrence of the states constituting the Indian federation.

Nehru Report Against the Fourteen Points

The two documents differed on almost every point that mattered for the minorities. When he presented the Fourteen Points, Jinnah spoke of a "parting of ways" with the Congress. The Congress did not accept the demands, and Motilal Nehru and other Congress leaders opposed a less centralised government that gave the provinces more autonomy. The Fourteen Points became the basis of all later propaganda of the Muslim League and shaped Muslim political thinking for the next two decades, until the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

Independence for India League and the Calcutta Congress of 1928

Younger Leaders Against Dominion Status

The Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Sikh League were not the only critics of the Nehru Report. The younger section of the Congress, led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, regarded the goal of dominion status as a step backward, and the debates at the All Parties Conference strengthened their criticism. They refused to accept dominion status as the goal of the Congress and jointly set up the Independence for India League, a pressure group within the Congress that worked for complete independence.

The split was a generational one. The older leaders had built a consensus on dominion status over many years and did not want to drop it in haste. The younger leaders, many of whom had come to the front in the anti-Simon protests, wanted the Congress to adopt Purna Swaraj, or complete independence, as its goal at once.

Calcutta Congress of December 1928 and the One-Year Ultimatum

The Congress met at Calcutta in December 1928 under the presidency of Motilal Nehru, and the session approved the Nehru Report. The younger leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Satyamurthy, expressed their dissatisfaction with dominion status as the goal and demanded that the Congress adopt Purna Swaraj instead. Gandhi and Motilal Nehru proposed that the government be given two years to accept the demand for dominion status.

Under pressure from the younger leaders, the grace period was reduced to one year, and the session resolved as follows. If the government did not accept a constitution based on dominion status by the end of 1929, the Congress would not only demand complete independence but would also launch a civil disobedience movement to attain it. The compromise averted a split between the two wings and set a deadline that the British would have to meet within a year.

Political Activity of 1929 and the Irwin Declaration

Preparation for Mass Action in 1929

Gandhi travelled incessantly during 1929 to prepare the people for direct political action. He urged the youth to prepare for the coming struggle, helped organise constructive work in the villages and took up specific grievances on the lines of the Bardoli agitation of 1928. The Congress Working Committee formed a Foreign Cloth Boycott Committee to carry on an aggressive programme of boycott and public burning of foreign cloth; Gandhi began the campaign at Calcutta in March 1929 and was arrested, and bonfires of foreign cloth followed all over the country.

Other events kept the political temperature high during 1929:

• March 1929: The government arrested 31 labour leaders and put them on trial in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.
• April 1929: Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutt exploded a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly.
• May 1929: A Labour Government led by Ramsay MacDonald came to power in Britain.

Irwin Declaration of 31 October 1929 and the Delhi Manifesto

On 31 October 1929 the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, declared that it was implicit in Montagu's declaration of 1917 that "the natural issue of India's progress, as contemplated there, is the attainment of dominion status". He also promised a Round Table Conference once the Simon Commission had submitted its report. The offer was vague and placed dominion status in an unspecified future, and in practice it did not change British policy.

On 2 November 1929 a conference of prominent national leaders issued the Delhi Manifesto, which made three demands:

• Purpose of the conference: The Round Table Conference should frame a scheme to implement dominion status, and the basic principle of dominion status should be accepted at once.
• Representation: The Congress should have a majority of the representatives at the conference.
• Amnesty: The government should grant an amnesty and follow a general policy of conciliation.

Irwin rejected these demands on 23 December 1929. With the Calcutta deadline running out, the Congress met at Lahore in December 1929 under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru and adopted Purna Swaraj as its goal.

Simon Commission Report of 1930 and the Round Table Conferences

Abolition of Dyarchy, Federation and Separate Electorates

The Commission published its report in two volumes in June 1930. Its main recommendations were these:

• Provinces: Dyarchy was to be abolished and responsible government extended in the provinces, but the British governors were to keep much of their emergency powers, so in practice the provinces would gain little autonomy.
• Federation: A federation of British India and the princely states was to be established.
• Electorates: Separate electorates were to continue as long as tensions between Hindus and Muslims remained.
• Dominion status: The report did not mention dominion status at all.

Its publication, together with the repression of the Civil Disobedience Movement, upset even moderate political opinion. By the time it appeared, the Irwin Declaration had already overshadowed it.

Round Table Conferences and the Government of India Act, 1935

To consider the proposals of the Commission, the British Government convened three Round Table Conferences of representatives of the British Government, British India and the princely states, held from 1930 to 1932. Both the Nehru Report and the Simon Commission Report were available to the participants. The discussions produced a White Paper on constitutional reforms, which went to a Joint Select Committee of the British Parliament, and the recommendations of that committee, with certain changes, became the Government of India Act, 1935.

The 1935 Act owed much to the Simon Commission Report and little to the Nehru Report. It abolished dyarchy in the provinces and introduced provincial autonomy, as the Commission had proposed, and it kept and extended separate electorates. Most of the Nehru Report's features were included later, in the Constitution of India.

Significance of the Years 1927 to 1929 for the Freedom Struggle

Communal and Generational Fractures in the National Movement

The Simon Commission laid bare once again the refusal of the British to consult Indians about their own future, and it strengthened the call for complete self-rule. The boycott united almost every section of Indian opinion, but the effort to answer Birkenhead's challenge with an agreed constitution opened two fractures:

• Communal fracture: The Nehru Report replaced separate electorates with joint electorates and refused the Muslim League's amendments, and the League answered with the Fourteen Points.
• Generational fracture: The older leaders held to dominion status, while the younger leaders of the Independence for India League demanded complete independence and pushed the Congress towards it.

The failure of the constitutional effort sharpened the goal of the movement and prepared the ground for civil disobedience.

New Objectives Added to the Vision of Independence

The years from 1927 to 1929 added new objectives to the idea of Indian independence:

• Complete independence: The goal moved from self-government within the Empire to complete independence, from the Madras resolution of 1927 through the Independence for India League to Purna Swaraj at Lahore in 1929.
• Rights of citizens: The Nehru Report's 19 fundamental rights, including equal rights for women and universal adult suffrage, made civil liberties part of the national demand.
• A secular state: The Report's rule of no state religion made secularism part of the constitutional vision.
• Linguistic provinces: The Report proposed provinces drawn on the basis of language.
• Social and economic change: The youth upsurge of the anti-Simon campaign spread socialist ideas and demands for major socio-economic reform.

Sources

• NCERT: Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class VIII, Part II), Chapter 2, India's Long Road to Independence
• NCERT: India and the Contemporary World II (Class X), Chapter 2, Nationalism in India
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History, Part III (Class XII), Theme 13, Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement
• NCERT: Indian Constitution at Work (Class XI), Chapter 10, The Philosophy of the Constitution
• Wikipedia: Simon Commission
• Wikipedia: Nehru Report
• Wikipedia: Fourteen Points of Jinnah
• Wikipedia: Lala Lajpat Rai
• Wikipedia: Government of India Act 1919
• Wikipedia: John Simon, 1st Viscount Simon
• Wikipedia: Motilal Nehru
• Wikipedia: Jawaharlal Nehru
• Wikipedia: Muhammad Ali Jinnah
• UPSC: Previous year question papers
• PIB: Exhibition on Lala Lajpat Rai for his 150th birth anniversary (Ministry of Culture)
• PIB: Prime Minister's speech to the National Committee for the 150th birth anniversary of Motilal Nehru
• PM India: Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, former Prime Minister
• Rajya Sabha Secretariat: Fifty Years of Rajya Sabha (1952‑2002), Origin and History