Question

Choose the correct option with respect to the Poona Pact.

1. Signed in August 1931 between Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar.
2. Signed in August 1931 between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Irwin.
3. Signed in August 1932 between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Irwin.
4. Signed in August 1932 between Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar.

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 4 : Signed in August 1932 between Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar.

The correct answer is Signed in August 1932 between Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar.

• The Poona pact was Signed in August 1932 between Mahatma Gandhi and BR Ambedkar.
  • The Poona Pact was an agreement between Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Ambedkar on behalf of the depressed classes and upper-caste.
  • Hindu leaders on the reservation of electoral seats for the depressed classes in the legislature of the British Indian government in 1930.
  •  It emphatically sealed his leadership of the depressed classes across India.
  • He made the entire country, and not just the Congress Party, morally responsible for the uplift of the depressed classes.
  • The pact signifies a solution derived by amalgamating two different ideologies:
    • Ambedkar: Political Approach
    • Gandhi: Social Approach

• Background of the Poona Pact:
  • On August 16, 1932, the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, announced the Communal Award which provided for separate electorates for the Depressed Classes.
    •  the Muslims, the Europeans, the Sikhs, the Anglo-Indians, and the Indian-based Christians.
  • The Award of 1932 was built on the notion of separate electorates that the British government had already put in place through the Morley-Minto Reforms (1909) and the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms (1919).
  • Under a separate electorates system, each community was allocated a number of seats in the legislatures, and only members from these communities would be eligible to vote to elect a representative of the same community to legislative assemblies.
  • Mahatma Gandhi was bitterly opposed to the communal award, as the award in the continuum of constant efforts of the British imperialists to divide Indian people into a number of special-interest groups and to weaken the national movement.
  • Initially, Ambedkar was in favor of the award, as according to him political solutions like a separate electorate would work for the upliftment of depressed classes.
• Significance of Poona Pact:
  • The Poona Pact was an emphatic acceptance by upper-class Hindus that the depressed classes constituted the most discriminated sections of Indian society.
  • It was also conceded that something concrete had to be done to give depressed classes a political voice.
  • Most of all the pact made the depressed classes a formidable political force for the first time in Indian history.
  • The pact made the entire country morally responsible for the uplift of the depressed classes.
    • As the concessions agreed to in the Poona Pact were precursors to the world’s largest affirmative program launched much later in independent India.
• Madan Mohan Malaviya signed it on behalf of Gandhi.

• The Communal Award was based on the findings of the Indian Franchise Committee, called the Lothian Committee.
• Instead of the 80 seats given by the British, the depressed classes got 147 seats.