WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : APPENDIX VII 333
(2)
Extract from the Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, Vol. II.
N UMBER OF M UHAMMADAN S EATS
Para 85. We now take up the question of the proportion of seats in the various provincial councils to be set aside for Muhammadan members.
The Lucknow Pact, as we have already pointed out, included an agreement between Hindus and Moslems as to the proportion of Indian elected seats allotted in each province to the Muhammadan community, and its terms have been followed closely in the allocation of Muhammadan seats in the existing provincial legislatures. The Pact is no longer accepted by either side as offering a fair basis of representation and the rival contentions now put forward are indicated in paragraph 70 above. It is very much to be hoped that a renewed effort will be made between the two communities themselves to arrive at a fresh accommodation: but in the absence of agreement, a decision will have to be reached by others, on the assumption that separate electorates remain. Our own opinion is that in view of the existing position and of the weakness of the Moslem minority in six out of the eight [1] provinces, the present scale of weightage in favour of Muhammadans in those provinces might properly be retained. Thus, the proportion to be allotted to them, of seats filled from the “general” constituencies (other than the European general constituencies) would be determined as at present. But a claim has been put forward for a guarantee of Muhammadan representation which goes further than this—see paragraph 70 above and Appendix VII at the end of this chapter. This claim goes to the length of seeking to preserve the full security for representation now provided for Moslems in these six provinces and at the same time to enlarge in Bengal and the Punjab the present proportion of seats secured to the community by separate electorates to figures proportionate to their ratio of population. This would give Muhammadans a fixed and unalterable majority of the “general constituency” seats in both provinces. We cannot go so far. The continuance of the present scale of weightage in the six provinces could not—in the absence of a new general agreement between the communities—equitably be combined with so great a departure from the existing allocation in Bengal and the Punjab.
It would be unfair that Muhammadans should retain the very considerable weightage they now enjoy in the six provinces, and that there should at the same time be imposed, in face of HinduSikh opposition, a definite Moslem majority in the Punjab and in
1 Burma is not in question.