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312 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
lull in the rioting which had become the order of the day. Between 1925 and 1926, rioting was renewed with an intensity and malignity unknown before. Shocked by this rioting, Lord Irwin, the then Viceroy of India, in his address to the Central Legislature on 29th August 1927 made an appeal to the two communities to stop the rioting and establish amity. Lord Irwin’s exhortation to establish amity was followed by another Unity Conference which was known as the Simla Unity Conference.* This Unity Conference met on the 30th August
1927 and issued an appeal beseeching both the communities to support the leaders in their efforts to arrive at a satisfactory settlement. The Conference appointed a Unity Committee which sat in Simla from 16th to 22nd September under the chairmanship of Mr. Jinnah. No conclusions were reached on any of the principal points involved in the cow and music questions and others pending before the Committee were not even touched. Some members felt that the Committee might break up. The Hindu members pressed that the Committee should meet again on some future convenient date. The Muslim members of the Committee were first divided in their opinion, but at last agreed to break up the Committee and the President was requested to summon a meeting if he received a requisition within six weeks from eleven specified members. Such a requisition never came and the Committee never met again.
The Simla Conference having failed, Mr. Srinivas Iyengar, the then President of the Congress, called a special conference of Hindus and Muslims which sat in Calcutta on the 27th and 28th October 1927. It came to be known as the Calcutta Unity Conference.† The Conference passed certain resolutions on the three burning questions. But the resolution had no support behind them as neither the Hindu Maha Sabha nor the Muslim League was represented at the Conference.
At one time it was possible to say that Hindu-Muslim unity was an ideal which not only must be realized but could be realized and leaders were blamed for not making sufficient efforts for its realization. Such was the view expressed in 1911 even by
- For the proceedings of this Conference, see the Indian Quarterly Register, Vol. II, pp. 39-50.
† For the proceedings of the Conference, see Ibid., pp. 50-58.