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Round Table Conferences (India)

Meetings held in 1930, 1931 & 1932 in London as a prelude to Government of India Act 1935

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Lab · Class 10Nationalism India

First Round Table Conference (November 1930 – January 1931)

The Round Table Conference officially inaugurated by George V on November 12, 1930 at Royal Gallery House of Lords in London and chaired by the Prime Minister. Ramsay MacDonald was also chairman of a subcommittee on minority representation, while for the duration his son, Malcolm MacDonald, performed liaison tasks with Lord Sankey's constitutional committee. One of the foremost advisers was Sir Malcolm Hailey, an Indian civil servant with thirty years experience. The leading Liberal on the committee, Lord Reading was "well aware of the troubles which might arise if and when India became independent." Clement Attlee, who served on the Simon Commission, wanted an early resolution but was baulked by the Conservatives in government until 1945. Sir Samuel Hoare wrote the cabinet a memo recommending a federal formula for the Government of India to "make it possible to give a semblance of responsible government and yet retain the realities and verities of British control." The idea was proposed by the princely states and other Liberal Indian leaders including Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru would welcome it. The minority Labour government hoped to win the support of Liberal and Conservative colleagues in parliament for a "responsive" Indian government at central and provincial levels and a conservative legislature.

The eight British political parties were represented by sixteen delegates. There were fifty-eight political leaders from British India and sixteen delegates from the princely states. In total 74 delegates from India attended the Conference. However, the Indian National Congress, along with Indian business leaders, kept away from the conference. Many of them, including Gandhi, were in jail for their participation in Civil Disobedience Movement. Their boycott doomed the conference to failure. Lord Irwin made a controversial statement declaring that India should be eventually granted Dominionship. The Conservatives were disgusted: "the whole conference was manipulated and manoeuvred by the Socialist Party", said Sir Winston Churchill, "to achieve the result they had set before themselves from the beginning, namely the conferring of responsible government at the centre upon Indians."

Participants

  • British Representatives:
    • Labour: Ramsay MacDonald, Lord Sankey, Wedgwood Benn, Arthur Henderson, J. H. Thomas, William Jowitt, Hastings Lees-Smith, Earl Russell
    • Conservative: Earl Peel, Marquess of Zetland, Samuel Hoare, Oliver Stanley
    • Liberal: Marquess of Reading, Marquess of Lothian, Sir Robert Hamilton, Isaac Foot
  • Muslim League: Aga Khan III (leader of British-Indian delegation), Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Muhammad Shafi, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Sir Abdul Halim Ghuznavi, Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, AK Fazlul Huq, Dr. Shafa'at Ahmad Khan, Raja Sher Muhammad Khan of Domeli
  • Indian States' Representatives: Maharaja of Alwar, Maharaja of Baroda, Maharaja of Darbhanga, Nawab of Bhopal, Maharaja of Bikaner, Rana of Dholpur, Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja of Nawanagar, Maharaja of Patiala (Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes), Maharaja of Rewa, Chief Sahib of Sangli, Sir Prabhashankar Pattani (Bhavnagar), Manubhai Mehta (Baroda), Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Khan (Gwalior), Akbar Hydari (Hyderabad), Mirza Ismail (Mysore), Kailash Narain Haksar (Jammu and Kashmir)
  • British-Indian Representatives:
    • Hindus: B. S. Moonje, M. R. Jayakar, Diwan Bahadur Raja Narendra Nath
    • Liberals: J. N. Basu, Tej Bahadur Sapru, C. Y. Chintamani, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad
    • Justice Party: Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Bhaskarrao Vithojirao Jadhav, Sir A. P. Patro
    • Depressed Classes: B. R. Ambedkar, Rettamalai Srinivasan
    • Sikhs: Sardar Ujjal Singh, Sardar Sampuran Singh
    • Parsis: Phiroze Sethna, Cowasji Jehangir, Homi Mody
    • Indian Christians: K. T. Paul (All India Conference of Indian Christians)
    • Europeans: Sir Hubert Carr, Sir Oscar de Glanville (Burma), T. F. Gavin Jones, C. E. Wood (Madras)
    • Anglo-Indians: Henry Gidney
    • Women: Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, Radhabai Subbarayan
    • Landlords: Maharaja Kameshwar Singh of Darbhanga (Bihar), Muhammad Ahmad Said Khan Chhatari (United Provinces), Maharaja of Paralakhemundi Estate (Orissa) Krushna Chandra Gajapati, Provash Chandra Mitter
    • Labour: N. M. Joshi, B. Shiva Rao
    • Universities: Syed Sultan Ahmed, Bisheshwar Dayal Seth
    • Burma: U Aung Thin, Ba U, M. M. Ohn Ghine
    • Sindh: Shah Nawaz Bhutto, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah
    • Other Provinces: Chandradhar Barua (Assam), Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum (NWFP), S. B. Tambe (Central Provinces)
    • Government of India: Narendra Nath Law, Bhupendra Nath Mitra, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, M. Ramachandra Rao
  • Officials attending in consultative capacity: W. M. Hailey, C. A. Innes, A. C. MacWatters, Sir Henry G. Haig, L. W. Reynolds
  • Indian States Delegation Staff:
    • Hyderabad: Sir Richard Chenevix-Trench, Nawab Mahdi Yar Jung, Ahmed Hussain, Nawab Sir Amin Jung Bahadur, Reginald Glancy
    • South Indian States: T. Raghavaiah
    • Baroda: V. T. Krishnamachari
    • Alwar: Fateh Naseeb Khan
    • Orissa States: K. C. Neogy
    • Nominated by the Chamber of Princes Special Organisation: L. F. Rushbrook Williams, Qazi Ali Haidar Abbasi, Jarmani Dass, Anna Babaji Latthe, D. A. Surve
  • Secretariats: S. K. Brown, V. Dawson, K. S. Fitze, W. H. Lewis, R. J. Stopford, John Coatman, Marmaduke Pickthall, K. M. Panikkar, N. S. Subba Rao, Geoffrey Corbett, A. Latifi, Girija Shankar Bajpai
  • Secretariat-General: R. H. A. Carter, Mian Abdul Aziz, W. D. Croft, G. E. J. Gent, B. G. Holdsworth, R. F. Mudie, G. S. Rajadhyaksha

Proceedings

The conference started with six plenary meetings where delegates put forward their issues nine sub-committees were formed to deal with several different matters including federal structure, provincial constitution, province of Sindh and NWFP, defense services and minorities e.t.c. These were followed by discussions on the reports of the sub-committees on Federal Structure, Provincial Constitution, Minorities, Burma, North West Frontier Province, Franchise, Defense services and Sindh. These were followed by 2 more plenary meetings and a final concluding session. It was difficult for progress to be made in the absence of the Indian National Congress but some advances were made. The Prime Minister wrote his diary "India has not considered. It was communalism and proportions of reserved seats" that exposed the worst side of Indian politics.

The idea of an All-India Federation was moved to the centre of discussion by Tej Bahadur Sapru. All the groups attending the conference supported this concept. The princely states agreed to the proposed federation provided that their internal sovereignty was guaranteed. The Muslim League also supported the federation as it had always been opposed to a strong Centre. The British agreed that representative government should be introduced on provincial level.

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