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288 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The conference passed a short resolution in the following pithy terms:—
“This Conference declares once more that complete independence is our goal”.
Maulana Hasrat Mohani, as President of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Conference held in Allahabad in 1931, gave the same reasons for condemning the Nehru Report in words measured but not less scathing. Said* the Maulana :—
“My political creed with regard to India is now well known to everybody. I cannot accept anything short of complete independence, and, that too, on the model of the United States of America or the Soviet Russia which is essentially (1) democratic,
(2) federal and (3) centrifugal, and in which the rights of Muslim minorities are safeguarded.
“For some time the Jamiat-ul-Ulema of Delhi held fast to the creed of complete independence and it was mostly for this reason that it repudiated the Nehru Report which devised a unitary constitution instead of a federal one. Besides, when, after the Lahore session, the Congress, at the instance of Mahatma Gandhi, declared the burial of the Nehru Report on the banks of the Ravi and the resolution of complete independence was unanimously agreed upon, the Delhi Jamiat ventured to co-operate with the Congress and its programme of civil disobedience simply because it was the duty of every Indian, Hindu or Muslim, to take part in the struggle for independence.
“But unfortunately Gandhiji very soon went back upon his words and (1) while yet in jail he told the British journalist Mr. Slocombe that by complete independence he meant only the substance of independence, (2) besides, when he was released on expressing his inclination for compromise he devised the illusory term of ‘Purna Swaraj’ in place of complete independence and openly declared that in ‘Purna Swaraj’ there was no place for severance of the British connection, (3) by making a secret pact with Lord Irwin he definitely adopted the ideal of Dominion Status under the British Crown.
“After this change of front by Gandhiji the Delhi Jamiat ought to have desisted from blindly supporting the Mahatma and like the Nehru Report it should have completely rejected this formula of the Congress Working Committee by which the Nehru Report was sought to be revived at Bombay.
“But we do not know what unintelligible reasons induced the Delhi Jamiat-ul-Ulema to adopt ‘Purna Swaraj’ as their ideal, in spite of the knowledge that it does not mean complete independence but something
*The Indian Quarterly Register, 1931, Vol. II, pp. 238-39.