Gandhi's Six-Day Fast in Yerwada Jail Ended With the Poona Pact of 24 September 1932, Which Raised the Seats Reserved for the Depressed Classes From 71 to 148 and Replaced Their Separate Electorate With Joint Voting

On 24 September 1932, at Madan Mohan Malaviya’s residence in Poona, leaders of the Depressed Classes and of the caste Hindus agreed that 148 seats in the provincial councils would be reserved for the Depressed Classes, against 71 in the British government’s Communal Award, and that the seats would be filled by joint electorates instead of a separate one. “Depressed Classes” was the official term of the day for communities treated as untouchable, now called Scheduled Castes or Dalits. Mohandas Gandhi had been fasting in Yerwada jail since 20 September, and he broke the fast at 5.15 p.m. on 26 September, once the British government accepted the deal.

What the Communal Award gave them

The Communal Award was Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s decision on how India’s communities would be represented in the provincial councils. It is dated 4 August 1932, and the University of Nottingham’s timeline puts its announcement on 16 August, while Ambedkar and Pyarelal, the author of The Epic Fast, date its publication in India to 17 August. Paragraph 9 dealt with the Depressed Classes. Their qualified voters would vote in a general constituency like everyone else. A set number of special seats would also be filled from special constituencies in which only qualified Depressed Class voters could vote, and those voters would vote in both. This is the “double vote”. The special constituencies were to end after 20 years unless abolished sooner.

The Award’s table of lower-house seats lists 18 for Madras, 10 for Bombay with Sind, 12 for the United Provinces, 7 for Bihar and Orissa, 10 for the Central Provinces and 4 for Assam, with none for the Punjab. For Bengal the text fixes no number and says only that the Depressed Classes should get “not less than 10 seats”. Those figures and Bengal’s ten make 71, the number Pyarelal uses. Ambedkar’s 1945 book, in its passage on the pact, puts the Award’s figure at 78. The Award covered provincial councils only and left the central legislature for later. The earlier history of separate electorates in India is told in the article on census, electorates and divide and rule.

Why Gandhi had promised to resist it

Gandhi took his position in public nine months earlier (the profile of him covers his wider career). He was in London because the March 1931 pact with Lord Irwin, covered in the article on the salt tax, committed Congress to attend the Round Table Conference. At its Minorities Committee on 13 November 1931 he told the delegates that separate electorates for the Depressed Classes would divide Hinduism, and that he would resist them even if he stood alone. “I would resist it with my life,” he said, and he added that he would “far rather that Hinduism died than that Untouchability lived.” The same speech called Ambedkar’s claim to speak for all untouchables improper. The fast threat was already on paper. On 11 March 1932 Gandhi wrote from jail to the Secretary of State, Sir Samuel Hoare, that a decision creating separate electorates would oblige him to “fast unto death.”

On 18 August he wrote to MacDonald from Yerwada that the fast would begin at noon on 20 September unless the decision was revised, adding that “I have to resist your decision with my life.” MacDonald replied on 8 September that the scheme kept the Depressed Classes inside the Hindu electorate and gave them two votes, and that the communities could substitute another arrangement if they agreed on one. Replying on 9 September, Gandhi said the matter was for him “one of pure religion.” He wrote that he would not be against “even over-representation of the Depressed Classes.” What he opposed was their statutory separation from the Hindu fold, and he described a separate electorate as “the injection of poison.”

Ambedkar’s case for a separate electorate

Ambedkar issued a press statement on 19 September, the day before the fast. In his words, he was astounded, and the fast left him in an unenviable position. Separate electorates, he pointed out, had been granted to Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans, and to landlords, labour and traders. Yet Gandhi was staking his life against only the Depressed Classes’ share. What he described was a community that depended on caste Hindus for its daily bread and met a standing refusal to let it rise, and he concluded that “some share of political power in order that it may protect itself is a paramount necessity.”

The case for the second vote came in his 1945 book. He put the Untouchables’ voting strength in each constituency at “one to ten.” Free to cast a second vote in the general contest, he argued, they would have made every caste Hindu candidate dependent on them, and no one could have afforded to ignore the Untouchables in his constituency. Although Gandhi declared a fast unto death, Ambedkar added, “he did not want to die.”

Bargaining beside a fasting man

The fast began on Tuesday 20 September. That afternoon at Birla House in Bombay, Ambedkar met a group of Hindu leaders that included Malaviya, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, C. Rajagopalachari, M. R. Jayakar and Rajendra Prasad. Pyarelal writes that Ambedkar at first would not agree to joint electorates. Sapru then proposed that Depressed Class voters first elect a panel of candidates, and that the general electorate choose among them. Welcoming the idea, Ambedkar asked for many more seats than the Award offered.

The rest of the account comes from Pyarelal’s The Epic Fast, which Ambedkar dismissed as the work of a Boswell. It is the fullest contemporary record and a sympathetic one, so each claim below is Pyarelal’s. On Wednesday 21 September Gandhi told a deputation that the panel idea “does not disturb me.” On Thursday Ambedkar came to Yerwada. “I want my compensation,” Pyarelal records him saying. If the panel suited some seats, Gandhi replied, it should apply to all of them. On Friday the negotiators sat round a table at Malaviya’s house. Ambedkar’s published scheme had asked for 197 seats, and a pair of statisticians from the Servants of India Society, A. V. Thakkar and Bakhle, brought the total down to a little over 160. The panel size went from Sapru’s three and Ambedkar’s two to four. Representation at the centre was fixed at 18 percent of the general seats.

The sticking point was how long the arrangement would last. Ambedkar wanted a referendum of the Depressed Classes after a stated period. On Saturday midday he went to the jail, and Gandhi said he could accept a referendum only after five years. “Five years or my life,” Pyarelal quotes him. Ten years was the lowest Ambedkar’s group would accept. Rajagopalachari then proposed dropping the referendum and leaving the reserved seats to mutual agreement among the communities in future. Ambedkar’s group accepted, and when Rajagopalachari carried the proposal to Gandhi he answered, “Excellent.” Pyarelal records 147 as the seat figure agreed that morning, while the text signed totals 148. Malaviya signed for the caste Hindus and Gandhi did not sign. The full conference in Bombay ratified the pact on Sunday 25 September. The Constitution of India archive heads the text as agreed on 24 September, the Saturday, though one printing of it gives 25 September as the date of signing.

What the nine clauses say

The first clause reserves seats out of the general seats in the provincial councils: Madras 30, Bombay with Sind 15, Punjab 8, Bihar and Orissa 18, Central Provinces 20, Assam 7, Bengal 30 and United Provinces 20, a total of 148. Every province gained over the Award’s table, and the Punjab went from none to eight. Voting is by joint electorate with a first round. All Depressed Class members on the general roll in a constituency form an electoral college that elects a panel of four candidates for each reserved seat by single vote, and the four with the most votes stand in the general election.

At the centre the same method applies, and 18 percent of the general seats for British India are reserved. The primaries end after ten years unless both sides end them sooner, while the reserved seats continue until the communities agree otherwise. The franchise follows the Lothian Committee report. No one may suffer a disability in local body elections or public appointments for belonging to the Depressed Classes, and each province must earmark part of its education grant for their schooling.

How the fast ended

Pyarelal reports that the Cabinet’s statement was issued in London and India on the morning of Monday 26 September, and that Haig communicated it to the Legislative Assembly. The statement accepted the pact’s scheme and seat numbers in place of the Award’s separate electorates. Clauses outside the Award’s scope were recognised as a pledge by the caste Hindus. For the centre the Government did not commit itself, and it described the 18 percent as a matter for the communities to arrange.

At about 4.15 p.m. Gandhi read the text and hesitated, because the Depressed Class leaders had accepted the pact as a whole. Hriday Nath Kunzru told him it was as full an acceptance as a government could give, Rajagopalachari agreed, and he gave way. Rabindranath Tagore, who had reached Yerwada that day, led the singing. Kasturba Gandhi handed him orange juice at 5.15 p.m. The South African History Online timeline also gives 26 September for the end of the fast. That evening Gandhi told the press that he was “wedded to the whole of that agreement” and that the Harijans, his new name for the Depressed Classes, could hold his life “as a hostage” for its fulfilment.

Ambedkar’s verdict

Ambedkar’s account of that week is in the 1945 book. He faced a choice, he wrote, between saving Gandhi’s life and saving the political rights the Prime Minister had given the Untouchables, and he “responded to the call of humanity.” The pact did give 148 seats where the Award gave fewer, he conceded, but the Award had given two benefits, a fixed quota elected by separate electorate and the double vote. “The second vote given by the Communal Award was a priceless privilege,” he wrote, and he called the rise in seats “no increase at all.” Hindus, he added, disliked the pact too but lacked the nerve to reject it.

Two disputes followed, in his telling. Before the Hammond Committee, which fixed the constituencies, the caste Hindus argued that the panel of four meant at least four. Ambedkar argued it meant no more than four, and he wrote that the committee accepted his reading. By his count the 1937 elections had 151 reserved seats, after Bihar and Orissa were adjusted, and the Congress won 78 of them. Most of those, he argued, were won with Hindu votes and did not represent the Scheduled Castes.

His view of Gandhi had been warmer in the weeks after the fast. Ashok Gopal records that in a letter to Janata readers dated 14 November 1932, Ambedkar read Gandhi’s new statements on untouchability as a real change, since Gandhi was now speaking Ambedkar’s language, and called him “our man.” Gopal adds that Ambedkar objected to Gandhi’s threat to fast again.

Gandhi’s verdict and what came after

The editors of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi write that many critics called the fast a form of coercion, while for Gandhi it was a spiritual act aimed at stinging the Hindu conscience. His message after breaking it called the settlement the beginning of the work of purification, and he said he would undergo as many fasts as it took to purge Hinduism of untouchability. The editors add that Hindu leaders pledged at public meetings in Bombay on 25 and 30 September to work for the removal of the disabilities the Depressed Classes suffered. Gopal’s account of Gandhi’s statement of 4 November 1932 says he reserved the right to resume the fast if the pact’s unwritten conditions went unmet. Gopal also judges Gandhi’s position uneven. In the Poona talks Gandhi called himself an untouchable by adoption, yet he spoke to Ambedkar of “your community” and pleaded for “my Caste Hindu brethren.”

According to Ambedkar, the British government wrote the pact into the Government of India Act. Reserved seats came up again in the Constituent Assembly in 1949. The Constitution of India archive records that the draft article first covered Muslims, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Indian Christians. The Drafting Committee’s chairman, Ambedkar (the article on the writing of the Constitution covers that committee), proposed limiting it to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in line with an Advisory Committee recommendation, and the Assembly adopted it on 24 August 1949 after two days of debate. Article 330 now reserves seats in the House of the People for the two groups in rough proportion to their share of the population.