z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 04.indd MK SJ+DK 1 10 2013/YS 13 11 2013 265
PAKISTAN : COMMUNAL AGGRESSION 265
It will thus be seen that every time a proposal for the reform of the constitution comes forth, the Muslims are there, ready with some new political demand or demands. The only check upon such indefinite expansion of Muslim demands is the power of the British Government, which must be the final arbiter in any dispute between the Hindus and the Muslims. Who can confidently say that the decision of the British will not be in favour of the Muslims if the dispute relating to these new demands was referred to them for arbitration ? The more the Muslims demand the more accommodating the British seem to become. At any rate, past experience shows that the British have been inclined to give the Muslims more than what the Muslims had themselves asked. Two such instances can be cited.
One of these relates to the Lucknow Pact. The question was whether the British Government should accept the Pact. The authors of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report were disinclined to accept it for reasons which were very weighty. Speaking of the weightages granted to the Muslims by the Lucknow Pact, the authors of the Joint Report observed*:—
“Now a privileged position of this kind is open to the objection, that if any other community hereafter makes good a claim to separate representation, it can be satisfied only by deducting the non-Muslim seats, or by a rateable deduction from both Muslim and non-Muslim ; and Hindu and Muslim opinion are not likely to agree which process should be adopted. While, therefore, for reasons that we explain subsequently we assent to the maintenance of separate representation for Muhammadans, we are bound to reserve our approval of the particular proposals set before us, until we have ascertained what the effect upon other of interests will be, and have made fair provision for them.”
Notwithstanding this grave flaw in the Lucknow Pact, the Government of India, in its despatch referred to above, recommended that the terms of the Pact should be improved in so far as it related to the Muslims of Bengal. Its reasons make a strange reading. It argued that:—
“The Muhammadan representation which they [the authors of the Pact] propose for Bengal is manifestly insufficient.† It is questionable whether the claims of the Muhammadan population of Eastern Bengal
- Montagu-Chelmsford Report, 1918, para 163.
† The Government of India felt that injustice was done to the Punjab as well. But as there was no such special reason as there was in the case of Bengal, namely, the unsettling of the partition, they did not propose any augmentation in its representation as settled by the Pact.