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PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION 287
rejected the Report because it recommended the abolition of separate electorates. But that was certainly not the reason why it was condemned by the Khilafat Conference or the Jamiatul-Ulema— the two Muslim organizations which went with the Congress through the same fiery ordeal of non-co-operation and civil disobedience and whose utterances expressed far more truly the real opinion of Muslim masses on the issues relating to the political affairs of the country than did the utterances of any other Muslim organization.
Maulana Mahomed Ali set out his reasons for the rejection of the Nehru Report in his Presidential address to the All-India Khilafat Conference held in Calcutta in 1928. He said* :—
“ [I] was a member of the Indian National Congress, its Working Committee, the All-India Muslim League and
[I] have come to the Khilafat Conference to express (my views) on the important political issues of the time, which should have the serious attention of the whole Muslim community.
“ In the All-Parties Convention he had said that India should have complete independence and there was no communalism in it. Yet he was being heckled at every moment and stopped during his speech at every step.
“The Nehru Report had as its preamble admitted the bondage of servitude.... Freedom and Dominion Status were widely divergent things.........
“I ask, when you boast of your nationalism and condemn communalism, show me a country in the world like your India—your nationalist India.
“You make compromises in your constitution every day with false doctrines, immoral conceptions and wrong ideas but you make no compromise with our communalists — with separate electorates and reserved seats. Twentyfive per cent, is our portion of population and yet you will not give us 33 per cent, in the Assembly. You are a Jew, a Bania. But to the English you give the status of your dominion.”
- The Indian Quarterly Register, 1928 , Vol. II, pp. 402-403.