Lucknow pact

If we look back at India’s freedom movement, we see two milestones when Hindu-Muslim cooperation reached its zenith. One was the 1857 War of Independence, when Hindus and Muslims fought shoulder-to-shoulder against “Company Rule” – the colonial advancements of the East India Company.

The other was the Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League in December 1916, the principal architects of which were Tilak and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. 

Remarkably, Jinnah those days was a member, simultaneously, of both the Congress and the Muslim League. He was held in high esteem in both parties, and was popularly known as an ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity’.

Tilak and Jinnah had worked together in the previous decade. Hence, a confluence of India’s two main political streams led to the historic Lucknow Pact in 1916. AG Noorani, a prolific scholar, has described this convincingly in his book Jinnah and Tilak – Comrades in the Freedom Struggle.

More by design than by coincidence, the annual sessions of the Congress and the Muslim League took place around the same time, in the last week of December 1916, in Lucknow. The highlight of the Lucknow Pact was that the Congress and the Muslim League agreed on separate representation to Muslims and gave due weightage to their representation, higher than their percentage in population would warrant, in the Imperial/Provincial Legislatures where they were in a minority.

At the same time, applying the same principle, it increased the representation of non-Muslims and suitably reduced the representation in Muslims in the Muslim-majority provinces like Punjab and Bengal. As a result, the Pact conceded to the Muslims one-third of the seats in the Imperial Legislative Council.

The idea of separate electorates sounds odd, even repugnant, in today’s India. So does the seemingly undemocratic concept of over-representation to a religious community (to Muslims in Hindu-majority provinces and to Hindus in Muslim-majority provinces). However, we have to view this agreement from the point of view the conditions prevailing in India in the second decade of the last century.

The Indian Councils Act 1909, also known as the Morley-Minto Reforms, had conceded the Muslim demand for separate electorates in its highly restricted devolution of power to Indians. This was opposed by the Congress, which was in favour of joint electorates.

Sumitra Mahajan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Prakash Javadekar , Santosh Gangwar, SS Ahluwalia, LK Advani and Subramanian Swamy paying tribute to Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak on his birth anniversary at Parliament in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

At the same time, there was a realisation in large sections of both the Congress and the Muslim League that a united front of Hindus and Muslims was necessary to move towards meaningful self-governance. Tilak best represented this new thinking in the Congress and spoke effectively in favour of the party’s session in Lucknow endorsing separate electorates for Muslims and other provisions in the Pact.

Influential leaders like Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, BS Moonje and TB Sapru opposed him, saying he had surrendered to the Muslims by conceding the ‘anti-national and anti-democratic’ system of separate electorates. Yet, he stood his ground in Lucknow and staked his all for the Hindu-Muslim settlement.

Addressing over 2,000 delegates in the open session, and using words that only a leader with enormous conviction and self-confidence can, Tilak said: “It has been said that we, Hindus, have yielded too much. The concession that has been made to our Muhammadan brethren in the Legislative Council is really nothing too much. In proportion to the concession that had been made to the Moslems their enthusiasm and warm-hearted support is surely greater. I urge the audience to give effect actively to the resolution adopted by the Congress.”

Explicating his stand further in his address at the concurrent session of the Home Rule League in Lucknow. Tilak remarked:

There is a feeling among the Hindus that too much has been given to the Muslims. As a Hindu I have no objection to making this concession.We cannot rise from our present intolerable condition without the aid of the Muslims. So in order to gain the desired end there is no objection to giving a percentage, a greater percentage, to the Muslims. Their responsibility becomes greater, the greater the percentage of representation you give to them.They will be doubly bound to work for you and with you, with a zeal and enthusiasm greater than ever. The fight is at present a triangular one.

Tilak’s stand was that the “triangular” fight among Hindus, Muslims and the British should be reduced to a “two-way” fight between the British and the common front of Hindus and Muslims. And for bringing about this fundamental change, he was prepared to show that Hindus were willing to be magnanimous towards their Muslim brethren, who, after all, were fellow Indians.

What was important was for the Hindus and Muslims to sink their differences in the united struggle for Swaraj. Jinnah echoed Tilak’s thoughts and sentiments: “My message to the Mussalmans is to join hands with your Hindu brethren. My message to Hindus is to lift your backward brother up.”