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308 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
responsibility. We, therefore, informed Lala Lajpat Rai that the question of postponement be placed before the meeting. This was consequently done but apart from the absence of Lala Lajpat Rai and of the gentlemen named by him the attendance was otherwise also too meagre for coming to any decision. In our opinion there was moreover no material for coming to any definite conclusions nor is there likelihood of any being reached in the near future……”
There is no doubt that this statement truly summed up the state of mind of the parties concerned. The late Lala Lajpat Rai, the spokesman of the Hindus on the committee, had already said in an article in the Leader of Allahabad that there was no immediate hurry for a fresh pact and that he declined to accept the view that a Hindu majority in some provinces and a Muslim majority in others was the only way to Hindu-Muslim unity.
The question of Hindu-Muslim unity was again taken up in 1927. This attempt was made just prior to the Simon Commission inquiry, in the hope that it would be successful as the attempt made prior to the Montagu-Chelmsford inquiry in 1916 and which had fructified in the Lucknow Pact. As a preliminary, a conference of leading Muslims was held in Delhi on the 20th March 1927 at which certain proposals* for safeguarding the interest of the Muslims were considered. These proposals, which were known as the Delhi proposals, were considered by the Congress at its session held in Madras in December 1927. At the same time, the Congress passed a resolution† authorizing its Working Committee to confer with similar committees to be appointed by other organizations to draft a Swaraj constitution for India. The Liberal Federation and the Muslim League passed similar resolutions appointing their representatives to join in the deliberations. Other organizations were also invited by the Congress Working Committee to send their spokesmen. The All-Parties Conference,‡ as the committee came to be called, met on 12th February 1928 and appointed a sub-committee to frame a constitution. The committee prepared a report with a draft of the constitution—which
- These proposals will be found in the Indian Quarterly Register, 1927, Vol.1, p. 33. These proposals subsequently became the basis of Mr. Jinnah’s 14 points.
† For the resolution of the Congress on these proposals, see Ibid., 1927, Vol. II, pp. 397-98.
‡ For the origin, history and composition of the All-Parties Convention and for the text of the report, Ibid., 1928, Vol. I, pp. 1-142.