What was cabinet mission

The Muslim League was not open to changing any part of the Plan and so any consensus between the Congress and the Muslim League broke down. Further attempts by the Cabinet Mission at reconciliation failed. Nonetheless, the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly began and an interim government, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the Prime minister, was set-up.

At the same time, the Assembly also asserted that its legitimacy was derived from the people of India and not the Plan. The Cabinet Mission Plan is critical to scholarly works that engage with various aspects of Indian constitutionalism, law, politics and history, particularly on partition and federalism. The Cabinet Mission Plan continues to be relevant to scholars and the general public in understanding and making sense of not only the origins of the Indian Constitution, but also the future of the Indian republic.

The Congress rejected it. But within a few weeks the Viceroy began endeavouring to somehow get the Congress in the Interim Government for fear of possible 'mass action', even if the League stayed out. On 2 September a Congress-dominated interim government headed by Nehru was sworn in, who was still opposing compulsory grouping. The Muslim League joined the Cabinet after some hesitation, but decided to boycott the constituent assembly.

Toggle navigation Banglapedia. Finally, Jinnah suffered from the disadvantage that it was the Muslim League, a minority party, which alone demanded Pakistan. The Congress, the smaller minorities, and the British Government including the comparatively fair-minded Wavell with whom the final decision lay were all strongly opposed to the partition of British India.

Quaid-i-Azam the constitutionalist took appropriate steps to strengthen his hand as the spokesman of the Muslim League. Nearly members of the Provincial and Central Legislatures who had recently been elected on the Muslim League ticket from all parts of India attended it. This impressive show of strength, staged in the very city where the members of the Cabinet Mission were quartered, demonstrated to the Mission and all the others that the million Muslims of India were solidly behind the demand for Pakistan and further that the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was their undisputed supreme leader.

The Mission began their talks by first informing themselves of the views of the different leaders and parties. When they found the view-points of the League and the Congress irreconcilable, they gave a chance to the parties to agree between themselves. This included a Conference at Simla May , popularly known as the Second Simla Conference, to which the Congress and the League were each asked to nominate four delegates for discussions with one another as well as with the Mission.

When it became clear that the parties would not be able to reach a concord, the Mission on May 16, , put forward their proposals in the form of a Statement.

When the Mission first arrived in New Delhi the atmosphere for an agreement between the parties was not propitious. The issue of "one or two Indias" had been bitterly contested at the elections and the two major parties, the Congress and the Muslim League, had each of them almost swept the board in their respective constituencies.

To some extent, perhaps, this outstanding success of the two major parties simplified the matter because the smaller parties had been relegated to the background by the electorate, but on the other hand it had of course reinforced the major parties in their directly opposed policies. There was another factor which had an influence and which perhaps I may mention, and that was the weather. Summer in New Delhi is not the best time and place for negotiations. The excessive heat and latterly, in June, the dampness, made it difficult for all parties to maintain that atmosphere of calm and patient deliberation which is so essential in dealing with such complex problems.

Perhaps here the House will permit me, in this association, to pay a very real and sincere tribute to the noble Lord who presided over our Mission and whose calm, patient, and determined conduct of the negotiations was so largely responsible for the results that we are able to report. Lord Pethick-Lawrence. In coming to the negotiations I would like to divide them into four periods: The first from the time of our arrival to the end of April; the second from the end of April to 16th May, when we issued our first statement; the third from 16th May until 16th June, when we issued our second main statement; and the fourth from 16th June until we left India on 29th June.

I will deal shortly with each of these periods, and at the same time with the more important of the documents to be found in the various White Papers, of which there are five, which relate to each of those periods. First, then, let me take the initial months of negotiation. During this period we arranged to see in formal interviews those communities, sections, parties, and individuals whom we felt could assist in solving the many problems.

There was some criticism of the time we spent upon these interviews, but we were convinced that they were well worth while, and they certainly enabled all of us to appreciate the feelings and the vastly differing desires of the very diverse population of ,, people with whose representatives we were dealing.

In addition to the many interviews, we received a host of written representations and, I may add, a very voluminous correspondence as well.

It was at the termination of this first interviewing period that we left New Delhi for four days' holiday in Kashmir. We indicated our hope before leaving New Delhi that the two principal parties might come together for negotiations between themselves during our absence. Immediately on our return, finding that nothing further had transpired during our absence, we set ourselves the task of bringing together the Muslim League and the Congress, because we were determined not to lose any opportunity of reaching an agreement between them.

Apart from the difficulty of arriving at a common view as to the form of the Constituent Assembly, and the composition of the interim Government, which were the two main points, there was, in these initial stages, a wide difference of general approach between the two parties.

The Congress held strongly that the question of the interim Government should first be settled, after which a settlement on the Constituent Assembly issue should follow. The Muslim League, on the other hand, were equally firm that they could not discuss the composition of the interim Government until the longer term question associated with the setting up of the constitution-making machinery had been settled.

It was not practicable to obtain a settlement of both questions simultaneously, and we came to the conclusion that the best chance to ultimate agreement upon the whole matter was to deal with the longer term question first and thereafter immediately to tackle the problem of the interim Government. It was upon that basis that we proceeded, and it, therefore, became necessary to work out, with the leaders of the two main parties some basis upon which those parties would be prepared to meet for discussion of the long-term problem.

A difficulty here was, of course that the Muslim League were committed up to the hilt to an independent, fully sovereign Pakistan as a separate entity, while the Congress were equally strongly pledged to a unitary India, though they had stated that they could not compel the people of any territorial unit to remain in an Indian Union against their declared will.

The second stage of our negotiations was, therefore, introduced by a very intense period of personal interviews and conversations during which a joint basis was worked out for discussion and ultimately both parties, while making it clear that they were in no way bound, expressed their willingness to meet in Simla to discuss the matter.

The basis is set out in the first letter in Command Paper in these words: The future constitutional structure of British India to be as follows: A Union Government dealing with the following subjects: Foreign Affairs, Defence and Communications. There will be two groups of Provinces, the one of the predominantly Hindu Provinces, and the other of the predominantly Muslim Provinces, dealing with all other subjects which the Provinces in the respective groups desire to be dealt with in common.

The Provincial Governments will deal with all other subjects and will have all the residuary sovereign rights. It was upon this purposely vague formula, worked out in conjunction with the leaders of the two parties, that we were able to bring together to confer with us in Simla four representatives each from the Congress and the Muslim League.

We were not over-optimistic regarding a final agreement at this stage, but what we hoped for, and in fact realised, was a much closer approach to a solution which would narrow the gap between the two parties and so enable us subsequently to put forward to them suggestions for bridging that gap. Towards the end of the Simla talks, the two sides produced written statements as to their rival demands which are to be found in Documents 19, 20 and 21 of Command Paper It will be seen from these documents that both sides had moved very considerably from their initial standpoints.

It was not possible to get the parties any closer to one another at Simla, and so, with their consent, the meetings were terminated after lasting a fortnight, and the Mission announced that it would return to New Delhi and put out a statement of its own views.

We had in fact worked very hard on the production of a plan while at Simla, adapting it in the light of the negotiations that took place there, and on our return to New Delhi we were able to finalise it quickly, so that it was issued on 16th May. It is perhaps worth stating that, contrary to allegations which were made in some quarters in India, we had not gone out to India with any cut and dried plan.

We went out with open minds, since our object was not to impose a plan on India, but to help the Indians to agree a plan among themselves. The statement of 16th May is contained in Command Paper The first eleven paragraphs of that statement deal with introductory matters, and also express our views as to the impracticability of a wholly sovereign Pakistan, whether on the larger or the smaller basis. In paragraph 12 we deal with the Congress suggestion of a particular type of limited union, and in paragraph 13 we point out the impracticability of that scheme.

Paragraph 14 deals with the position as to the Indian States, to which I will presently refer, and paragraphs 15 to 22 lay down our suggestions for the long term solution and for the setting up of the Constituent Assembly.

I would ask the House to note particularly the method we adopted and our reason for adopting it. We did not desire in any way to interfere with the making of the future Constitution of India, which was and is a matter entirely for the Indians.

On the other hand, we were suggesting to the different communities that they should join in the forming of a constitution-making body on a certain basis which we believed to conform to the greatest common measure of agreement between them. We had to offer each of them some security that if they came in on that basis it would not be changed without their consent. So we adopted the following plan:. In paragraph 15, we recommended a basic form for the future Constitution.

These recommendations were the logical outcome of the Simla negotiations. I will not go into them in detail now, because I have no doubt that they are by now familiar to the House. The point to note is that the three-tier system as it has been christened, is nothing more than our recommendation to the Indian people; but as it was on this basis that we were asking the parties to join in the formation of a Constituent Assembly, it was necessary in paragraph 19 vii to stipulate that the provisions of paragraph 15 should not be varied without a majority in each of the two major communities.

That was designed with, we were sure, the assent of the Congress, to give a degree of security to the Muslims, if they came in on the basis of our recommendations. Our reason for taking that step was set out quite clearly in paragraph 16 of the statement. In paragraph 18 we give our reasons for adopting the population basis for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. That method has, I think, met with very general approval. The results of that basis of representation are also set out in paragraph 19, which gives details of the proposal for the constitution making machinery.

In paragraph 19 iv and paragraph 20, we lay down the special procedure for the extra protection of minorities, and to this we attach great importance. The straight population basis for the Constituent Assembly, with election by the single transferable vote, inevitably results in the minorities to some extent losing their existing weightage in the Provincial Legislature.

It was wholly impracticable to extend the population basis to each of the minorities, because their numbers are so divided up among the different Provinces that it would, in practice, have resulted in some of them not gaining any representation at all. We therefore took only three major divisions, Muslim, Sikhs and General. In the latter category, Congress are, of course, the vast majority, and if, as in fact they are doing, they provide adequate opportunities for the minority representatives to get elected, the minorities will gain and not lose by that arrangement.

Despite this, we still felt that the minorities should have some special consideration and we were sure, from our negotiations, that both the major parties were anxious to give them good and fair treatment. We proposed, therefore, the advisory committee of paragraph This provides a way of initiating the recommendations for minority protection in the Constitution, in a body which should consist mainly of minority representatives.

We believe that this method is more likely to produce sound and just results than an insignificant minority in the Constituent Assembly, which is the most that could, by any electoral device, have been obtained for the minorities. Paragraph 22 mentions the need for a treaty to regulate the matters remaining outstanding between the two countries on the transfer of power, and paragraph 23 deals with the matter of the interim Government, to which I shall come presently.

This, then, was the document which, on i6th May, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, we presented to the Indian people as the next stage in the negotiations. It gained an excellent reception in India, although, of course, there were points in it which were criticised on many sides. Neither of the two major parties could achieve the whole of their objective through it, but it presented a practical and flexible compromise, which we hoped both might accept.

Before leaving this second period, I should add that, during our stay at Simla, the Viceroy had taken the opportunity of opening the discussions as to the formation of the interim Government which, as we stated in paragraph 23 of the document of 16th May, we regarded as a matter of great importance. We stated then, and we still take the view, that a coalition Government, having full popular support, was necessary, and that we were anxious to settle its composition as soon as possible, so that the two things, the constitution-making machinery and the interim Government, could go forward together.

Moreover, it appeared clear at that time, as I have pointed out, that the Congress was unlikely to accept the long-term plan until a solution had also been found for the short-term question of the interim Government. Thus we came to the end of the second period. There was then a time of waiting—not for us but for the others—which was essential in order to give the party leaders time to consult and, we hoped, to persuade, their followers to accept the statement of 16th May.

It had to be assessed and weighed up by the Indian leaders and by public opinion so that, during this period of waiting, there was a great deal to be done by way of explanation, elucidation and persuasion, to try to convince those responsible that they should agree to our suggestions and proposals.

Some of these activities are illustrated by the rather voluminous correspondence contained in Command Paper , and these letters, I would warn the House, must be read as progressive stages in a negotiation.

From them can be observed the gradual elimination of some of the difficulties which seemed insuperable to the parties in the first instance. I need not trouble the House with them now, though I would emphasise that the points of disagreement were very few, whereas the general degree of acceptance of the statement was very great. During this period, the discussions on the interim Government proceeded side by side with those relating to the statement of 16th May.

This led to a certain amount of admixture of the two issues and, I think, to a growing sense on all sides of the interrelation of the two. On 6th June, the All India Muslim League passed a resolution which, while critical of the contents of the statement of 16th May, particularly on the Pakistan issue, and while reserving opinions on that point, yet definitely accepted the scheme put forward by the Mission.

That was a great step forward, and it must have required no little courage and determination on Mr. Jinnah's part, in the light of the strong views held and very forcibly expressed by his followers, to support and carry this Resolution through the Muslim League. The Congress, who met immediately after the All-India Muslim League, were still anxious that the two issues should be dealt with together.

There were a number of matters as regards the statement of 16th May which disturbed them, and as to which they sought assurances or alterations. On 25th May the Mission, following upon a statement by Mr. This covers a number of points raised by both sides. The Mission felt that after that statement, they could not go further into the matter by way of formal explanation or elaboration. There were two main points which the Congress were stressing as to the statement of 16th May.

The first was as to whether the provinces were compelled to come into the sections of the Constituent Assembly—sections A, B and C—in the first instance, or whether they could stay out if they wished. We made it quite clear that it was an essential feature of the scheme that the provinces should go into sections, though, if groups were subsequently formed, they could afterwards opt out of those groups.

A fear was expressed that, somehow or other, the new Provincial constitutions might be so manoeuvred as to make it impossible for the Provinces afterwards to opt out. I do not myself see how such a thing would be possible, but if anything of that kind were to be attempted, it would be a clear breach of the basic understanding of the scheme. The essence of the constitution-making scheme is that the provincial representatives in sections A, B and C, mentioned in paragraph 19, should have the opportunity of meeting together and deliberating upon the desirability of forming a "group," and upon the nature and extent of the subjects to be dealt with by the group.

If, when the pattern of the group ultimately emerges, any Province wishes to withdraw from the group, because it is not satisfied, then it is at liberty to do so after the first election under the new Constitution, when, with no doubt a wider electorate than at present, that matter can be made a straight election issue. The second point which disturbed Congress was as to the European vote.

The Congress took the view that, as we had laid down that the constitution was to be made by Indians for Indians, Europeans had no locus at all in this matter.

So far as sitting in the Constituent Assembly was concerned, that seemed pretty clear, and while we were in India the European Party in the Bengal Legislature—which is the important case in point of course—expressed clearly their intention neither to nominate nor to vote for any European in the Constituent Assembly and that resolution will be found in Command Paper document 6 Since our departure they have gone further and have decided to take no part in the election at all.

That will be found in Document 7. The same has been done, I understand, by the Europeans in Assam. That matter has, therefore, been got out of the way, not by our decision, but by the sensible and cooperative attitude of the Europeans themselves, who have, throughout, done their best to assist towards the working out of the new regime in India. But, before I leave the matter of the new Constituent Assembly, I would like to mention some of the recent reports coming from India as to the alleged intentions of the parties in joining the Constituent Assembly.

We saw representatives of both parties shortly before we left India, and they stated to us quite categorically that it was their intention to go into the Assembly with the object of making it work. They are, of course, at perfect liberty to advance their own views on what should or should not be the basis of a future Constitution.

That is the purpose of the Constituent Assembly—to hammer out agreement from diverse opinions and plans—and likewise they can put forward their views as to how the Constituent Assembly should conduct its business.

But, having agreed to the statement of 16th May on the Constituent Assembly, elected in accordance with that statement, they cannot, of course, go outside the terms of what has been agreed. That would not be fair to the other parties who have come in, and it is on the basis of that agreed procedure, that His Majesty's Government have said they will accept the decision of the Constituent Assembly. As to the States, they need have no anxiety. It is for them to agree freely to come in, or not, as they choose, and it is for that purpose that they have set up the negotiating committee and I am sure that that committee will have the wisdom to work out an acceptable basis for their cooperation in the Constituent Assembly.

It is, after all, upon the free consents of the many diverse elements of the Indian people that the success of the new Constitution will depend, and I am confident, from all that was said to us in India, that all parties appreciate that fundamental fact. Union cannot be by force; it must be by agreement.

It will be the task of the Constituent Assembly to attain that agreement, which will be possible if the majorities and minorities alike are tolerant and are prepared to cooperate for the future of all India.

I must take up the question of the interim Government, for, as other difficulties cleared away, this gradually emerged as the crucial issue in the third period. The Viceroy had started, as I have said, his discussions in Simla on the basis of five representatives of Congress, five from the Muslim League, and two representatives of minorities. That basis was to some extent influenced by the discussions which he had had in the previous year, in the autumn of , in Simla.

As will appear from the correspondence in Cmd. Paper , the Congress took strong exception to parity between the two parties, and parity at this stage became the foremost obstruction to progress. There are three possible forms of parity—first, between the Muslim League and Congress an a party basis; secondly, between Muslims and Hindus on a communal basis; and, third, between Muslims and Hindus other than scheduled castes.

We were aiming at a coalition of political parties, and so were concerned with the first form of parity. We sought to overcome the difficulty about this by adding a Congress representative of the depressed classes to their five representatives, thus making six Congress to five Muslim League, and retaining the two other minority representatives, one of whom would, of course, have been a Sikh.

This would have given an interim Government of 13 in all, and not 12 as originally suggested. This proposal Mr. Jinnah was prepared to put to his Committee and it would, I think, have been accepted by them, but Congress were not satisfied with it.

At this stage we tried to get a meeting between Pandit Nehru and Mr. Jinnah in the hope that at such a meeting a compromise could be achieved, but, as will be seen from the letters 9, 10 and 11, that attempt proved abortive. There was apparently some misunderstanding by Mr. Jinnah as to the status of the original 5: 5: 2 proposal. This is shown by his letter of the 8th June—No. Jinnah upon this point.

If the right hon. Gentleman did not talk quite so much, perhaps he would hear. It was the basis of the negotiations upon which it was hoped agreement might be reached, but nothing more. We thus reached a complete deadlock, as is shown by the letter of the Congress President, which is No. Jinnah that Congress had not accepted the basis. There resulted from this the second main statement of 16th June, which is document 21 in Command Paper That proposed Government was built up on the basis of six Congress, including one from the depressed classes, five Muslim League, one Sikh and two others—a Parsi and an Indian Christian, thus making 14 in all.

The Viceroy had had unofficial and tentative lists of names from both sides, and these were largely used as the basis of the selection of the 14 names.

Thus ended, with this publication, the third stage of the negotiations. On this occasion Mr. Jinnah took up the position verbally that he would await the Congress decision before giving the decision of the Muslim League, and that will be found confirmed in the letters 26 and 26A.

The Congress were very much troubled by the type of parity that still remained between Muslims and Hindus, other than scheduled castes, and also by the inclusion of Sir. Engineer, not because of his personal qualifications—which they admitted were of the highest—but because they considered that he was holding an official post which they thought gave him an official rather than a representative character. The major problem, however, was still that of parity.

It might have been that, despite all the difficulties, Congress would have consented to this arrangement had there not been an unfortunate and widely publicised disclosure of certain letters written by Mr.

Jinnah at this precise moment. The most important of these was that which is numbered 22 in the White Paper , which contained the following sentence: The Muslim League would never accept the nomination of any Muslim by you "— that was the Viceroy—.

That at once became the major issue. Congress were, in fact, considering the possibility of asking for the substitution of one of their Hindus by a Muslim in order, in that way, to get over the parity difficulty, and they might perhaps have waived this suggestion of nominating a Muslim had it not been that this public challenge was at this moment made as to their right to do so. Congress has, of course, as everybody knows, always insisted upon the non-communal nature of its organisation, and it has fully demonstrated this fact by its nomination of personnel to those Provincial Governments in which it has a large majority.

It was made perfectly clear to Mr. Jinnah on more than one occasion that neither the Viceroy nor the Mission could accept his claim to a monopoly of Muslim appointments, though the Muslim League was certainly to be regarded as the major representative of Muslim interests. In order to explain the subsequent events, I must now return to the statement of 16th June. In paragraph 8 of that statement we had laid down the course which we should pursue in the event of both or either of the two major parties being unable to accept a Coalition Government on the basis there laid down.

If either refused, the whole basis of the proposed Coalition fell to the ground, but we desired to protect any who had agreed to cooperate in the plan of 16th May for the Constituent Assembly, and so we stated that in the event of failure to form a Coalition on the lines set out— It is the intention of the Viceroy to proceed with the formation of an Interim Government which will be as representative as possible of those willing to accept the statement of May 16th.

Up to 16th June this indicated the Muslim League only, as neither Congress nor the Sikhs had up to that time given any decision. When Congress ultimately came to their final decision, they decided, I am glad to say, to accept the statement of 16th May while, unfortunately, rejecting the interim Government proposed, for those reasons that I have already stated, and this appears from the letter No. This acceptance of the statement of 16th May was, I think, an act of statesmanship on their part, as it enabled progress to be made towards the working out of the new constitution.

Immediately we received that letter No. Jinnah —within an hour, I think—and told him the position, giving him a copy of the letter and informing him that the scheme of 16th June had fallen to the ground since Congress had turned it down, and this was confirmed the same evening by the letter No.

Up to that moment the Muslim League had arrived at no decision as to their attitude to the proposal of 16th June. As I have already pointed out, they had adopted the line that they must await the Congress decision before themselves deciding.

Jinnah went straight from this meeting with us to his own Working Committee, who thereupon passed a Resolution, which is set out in Document 34 accepting the scheme of i6th June. Presumably Mr. Jinnah told his Working Committee what had passed at the interview, though he does not make that clear in his letter No.

Jinnah seemed to think that the acceptance by Congress of the statement of 16th May had put him into a false position and that we should have proceeded forthwith to the formation of an interim Government with the Muslim League alone.

His arguments on this point will be found in the statement he made to the Press, which is Document 39, and in his letter to the Viceroy No. It is easy, of course, to realise the disappointment of Mr. Jinnah that Congress had not accepted what apparently seemed to him the acceptable arrangement of 16th June, for the Coalition Government there set out, while, at the same time, qualifying themselves for consultation upon the formation of some other interim Government by agreeing to operate the plan of 16th May.

Jinnah was anxious to enter the Coalition Government laid down in the statement of 16th June but as paragraph 8 of that statement made the setting up of such a Government dependent upon acceptance by both parties it was impossible to proceed upon that basis when one party—and that the major party—had stated its unwillingness to accept.

The situation now is that the Viceroy will proceed to act under paragraph 8 of the statement of 16th June. There has been quite understandable criticism of the fact that a purely temporary official Government has been set up in the meantime. Before the right hon. Could the right hon. We shall then have all the case before us. I thought I had made it clear.