LUCKNOW PACT 1916

The Lucknow Pact of 1916

The Congress-Muslim League Lucknow Pact of 1916 caneasily be considered an important landmark during thenationalist movement in India. The Congress leadersagreed to the pact in the expectation that theexecutive-legislature relationship in the package of constitutional reforms would essentially be acontinuation of the Morley-Minto reforms. But theMontagu-Chelmsford reforms, when announced,revealed that the nature of this relationship would besignificantly different, leading the Congress leaders tooppose the pact and to the acceptance of communalelectorates for the Muslims that it entailed, before theSouthborough Committee. The pact also containedsignificant omissions and ambiguities which led todivergent interpretations on crucial provision.

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The Indian National Congress-All India Muslim Leagueagreement, popularly known as the Lucknow Pact, caneasily be considered one of the most important eventsin the trajectory of the nationalist movement in India. In themidst of the first world war, in 1916, both organisations pre-sented a joint scheme of constitutional reforms to the colonialrulers with the expectation that this scheme would be imple-mented once the war ended. This marked the coming togetherof two major political organisations in the country, whichhitherto had displayed a marked hostility to each other.The significance of the Lucknow Pact lies in the fact that it was the first time that the Congress reached an agreement with an organisation which was explicitly a “communal” one while the League, founded to counter the Congress’ claims torepresent the whole of India, reached an agreement with sameorganisation. The main feature of the pact was the demand foran expansion of the representative assemblies, both at the all-India and provincial levels, and appointment of Indians to theexecutive councils of the viceroy and the provincial governors.But more importantly, the Congress for the first time openly and explicitly conceded the principle of communal representa-tion by accepting separate electorates for Muslims, somethingthat it had grudgingly accepted as part of the Morley-Mintopackage of constitutional reforms. Moreover, Muslims weregranted a fixed proportion of seats both in the all-India andthe provincial legislatures. Since the pact was announced andapproved at the annual sessions of the two political organisationsheld at Lucknow in 1916, it is referred to, in the city’s name.Most of the same Congress leaders who supported the pactand the principles embodied in it went back on their supportand signalled their opposition soon afterwards in the submis-sions to the Indian Franchise Committee (known as the South-borough Committee after its chairman, Southborough). Thiscommittee, along with the Committee on the Division of Func-tions, was appointed to work out the details of the post-warpackage of constitutional reforms, known as the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms after its principal architects – the thensecretary of state for India, Edwin Montagu and the viceroy,Chelmsford. This crucial piece of evidence – the proceedingsof the Southborough Committee – has been completely overlooked in the major literature on the Lucknow Pact andits significance.

Issues Related to the Pact

The ultimate acceptance of the Lucknow Pact was preceded by long-drawn out negotiations which began in 1915. Till Decem-ber 1916, the leaders of both the Congress and the MuslimLeague were engaged in thrashing out the details of the pactand at the same time whittling down opposition from withintheir respective organisations. All the details of the pact werenot settled by the time both the parties met in Lucknow in De-cember 1916 (Owen 1972; Robinson 2008).

Apart from the long-standing nationalist demands likeallowing Indians to enter the armed services at the higher levelsand the separation of the judicial and executive functions, thepact essentially dealt with the all-India and provincial-levellegislative assemblies and the nature of the relations betweenthe executive and the legislature, at these two levels. First andforemost, it asked for a substantial expansion of the imperiallegislative council and the provincial legislative councils which were to have a majority of elected members. It was agreed thatin each of these councils the Muslims would be granted a fixedproportion of elective seats, ranging from 15% in the legisla-tive councils of both Madras and the Central Provinces to half in the Punjab. In the imperial legislative council, the Muslims were to have one-third of the total elective seats. Muslims were to elect their representatives through separate elector-ates and thus did not have the right to vote in the non-Muslimconstituencies. An exception was made in the case of the spe-cial interests’ constituencies where Muslims could vote. Allthis was done to guarantee that Muslims would receive a fixedquantum of representation in any future scheme of constitu-tional reforms thus helping to overcome their objections to any such scheme. The bulk of scholarly attention has been focusedon the lengthy negotiations which led to the fixing of the ac-tual proportions of Muslim representation in the councils andthe politics surrounding them (Owen 1972; Robinson 2008).


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