Framing Your Argument

In March 1940, in the same week, two Muslim leaders gave presidential addresses to their parties. Both spoke about the same fact: Muslims were about a quarter of India's people.

At Lahore, Muhammad Ali Jinnah told the Muslim League that the fact had been misread: "it has always been taken for granted mistakenly that the Mussalmans are a minority." They were a nation, he said, and a nation needs a homeland. At Ramgarh, Maulana Azad told the Congress, "I am a Musalman and am proud of that fact," and a few paragraphs later, "I am proud of being an Indian."

Neither man disputed the census. Each chose how to build an argument from it, and five years later both sat at the table at Simla. This guide describes eight ways that advocates have built arguments, drawn from hundreds of real speeches. Use them to build yours.

How to use this guide. Make one argument that changes what the room has to answer. The guide has three parts, and you do not need to read all of it.

• Part 1: Building your speech. Read all of it: persuasion at a conference table, your leverage, the opening, the close, choosing a framework, and your outline.
• Part 2: The eight frameworks. Read only the one you choose: Terms of the Deal · Knock Down, Build Up · The Promise and the Gap · Take Back the Word · The Charge Sheet · Diagnosis and Cure · The Hour Has Struck · One Story, Everyone's.
• Part 3: Delivering it. Read before you rehearse: your voice, the conventions of the room, and rehearsal.

Take the structure from this guide. Take your material and your voice from your role sheet and the sources assigned to your faction.

Part 1: Building your speech

Two jobs every Simla speech must do

Whatever framework you choose, your speech has two jobs besides its argument.

1. Establish your standing early. Within the first minute, say whom you speak for and what entitles you to speak for them. It need not be your first sentence: you can open with a document, an incident, or the charge against you, and reach your standing from there.
2. End on your terms. Your framework's last stage, whether the choice, the demand, or the ask, should leave the room knowing what you offer, what you require, and what happens if you do not get it.

Your framework, from Part 2, carries the argument from your first line to your last. "Choosing your framework," below, shows how to pick one.

Persuasion at a conference table

A conference speech differs from a rally speech in its audience, its evidence, and its goals.

The audience. You are speaking to rivals, each of whom can block a settlement, and to the Governors General, who will write the draft plan. The people you represent will also hear what you said. You will not convert anyone in the room. You can change what they think you will accept and what they will have to answer for.

The bargaining. The speech is also the start of the bargaining. The claims, concessions, and red lines you state in it are what you will negotiate with afterward.

The evidence. The classical appeals still apply, with some changes.

• Logos (reason). These leaders relied on documents: the dated record of who offered what, the text of acts, pacts, and resolutions, census figures, and seat counts. They relied most on what the other side had said, because a rival can dispute your statistic but not easily their own resolution. Look for evidence that another delegate will have to explain.
• Ethos (credibility). At Simla, credibility means standing. You earn a hearing by showing that you speak for someone. Who speaks for whom is the main question before the conference.
• Pathos (emotion). These speakers used emotion sparingly. They appealed to honor, shame, and sacrifice, and they warned of what would follow failure. They described the suffering of a whole people far more often than the suffering of one person.

The goals. A conference speech usually tries to do one or more of these things:

1. Fix the question. Get the room to argue about the problem as you define it.
2. Stake a claim. Put on the record whom you represent and what cannot be settled without you.
3. Hold someone to their word. Make a rival or the British answer for a promise.
4. Show what you would accept. The bargaining after the speeches needs a place to start.

Know your leverage

Before you choose a framework, work out what you hold that others need. Your role sheet's "Negotiating Position" and the scenario's description of your faction are the place to start. Leverage at Simla takes a few forms:

• The power to block. Votes, seats, or a community whose consent any settlement needs.
• The power to act outside the room. A strike, a hunger strike, a mass movement, a resignation, troops, a treaty.
• Moral standing. A promise the other side made, or a people the room cannot ignore.
• Your alternative. What you will do if the conference fails, and how much that would cost the others.

Your leverage should shape your framework. If you hold something the settlement needs, Terms of the Deal lets you set your price. If your leverage is moral, The Promise and the Gap or One Story, Everyone's turns it into an argument. If you have little of either, the petition variant of Terms of the Deal is honest about it.

A speech shows leverage; it does not spend it. Name what you hold in your standing and your terms, but keep your bottom line for the bargaining, and do not threaten an action you are not ready to call from the podium.

The opening: who are you to speak?

Most speakers of the period established standing in the first minute. Do the same. Early in the speech, tell the conference whom you represent and why your claim to represent them is good.

Standing does not have to be your first sentence. If every delegate begins "I speak for," thirty speeches will sound alike. The real speakers reached their standing by different routes, and five of them are listed below.

Standing can rest on several kinds of title. Use the ones your character holds.

Three rules:

• Keep it to three sentences. You will need the time for your argument.
• Give the proof. "I speak for the Telugu people" is an assertion. "I speak for the Andhra Mahasabha, which has met since 1913" names an organization the room can check.
• Answer the rival claimant. If someone else in the room claims the same people, say why your title is better. Do it before they raise it.

Five ways to open:

• State your title. This suits the first speaker from a faction.
• Reply to the speaker before you. Take up something they said, then say whom you speak for.
• Begin with the charge against you. State the objection, then say who is answering it.
• Begin with a document or an incident. Read the sentence or tell what happened, then say why it is yours to raise.
• Narrow the claim. If a colleague from your faction has already spoken, do not repeat the faction's claim. Say which part of its people or its case you speak for.

About the Andhra examples. The worked examples in this guide, starting with the openings below, all argue for a separate Andhra province for Telugu speakers, to be made from part of the Madras Presidency. The demand was real and decades old by 1945. It is not on the agenda at Simla, so you cannot lift an example into your own speech. The examples were written for this guide, and the incidents in them are invented.

Example openings (Andhra).

By mandate:

Mr. Chairman, I speak for the Andhra Mahasabha, which first met at Bapatla in 1913. It represents the Telugu districts of the Madras Presidency.

By service:

Mr. Chairman, I hold no office. I have worked for thirty years in the villages of the Kistna district, and I have been to prison three times with the men I speak for.

Against a rival claim:

Mr. Chairman, my friend from Madras says that he speaks for the whole Presidency. A large part of it does not speak his language. I speak for that part.

Replying to an earlier speaker:

Mr. Chairman, the last speaker asked the conference for patience. I have been asked for patience before, and I should like to say by whom. I speak for the Andhra Mahasabha, which first met in 1913.

Narrowing the claim:

Mr. Chairman, my colleague has told the conference whom the Mahasabha represents, and I shall not repeat it. I speak for the four Rayalaseema districts, which have their own reasons for wanting this province and their own fears about it.

The close: name your terms

The speeches of the period end by committing the speaker to something. When you sit down, the room should know what you will give, what you must have, and what follows if you do not get it. Test your draft: after hearing it, could another delegate write down your bargaining position in three sentences? If not, revise the close.

A close can include any of these. Most strong closes use two or three.

• The offer. Say what you will accept, concede, or contribute. Say it plainly, so that nobody misses it.
• The condition. "We will accept the general settlement on one condition." If you have several conditions, number them.
• The red line. Name the one thing you cannot sign. One red line is more credible than three.
• The warning. Say calmly what will happen outside the room if the conference fails you. At Simla a threat costs nothing, but an action must be called from the podium. Do not warn of anything you are not ready to call.
• The vow. Say what you yourself will do.
• Two outcomes. Describe in a sentence or two what follows if the conference succeeds and what follows if it fails.

Example closes (Andhra).

Offer, condition, red line:

We will accept a boundary commission, and we will accept its award on the city of Madras whichever way it goes. In return we ask that the constitution itself provide for provinces by language. We cannot accept a promise to consider the matter later. We have been asking since 1914.

Two outcomes:

If the conference agrees, the Telugu districts will support the settlement, and I will go home and say so. If it does not, I will have to tell them that the new government gave the same answer as the old one. I do not know what they will do then.

Do not end on a rhetorical question. Do not announce your structure with a phrase like "in conclusion" or "let me build my case."

Choosing your framework

Start with your leverage (see "Know your leverage"), then find your situation below.

A framework gives the usual order of an argument. Do not treat it as a form to fill in. Follow the reasoning, drop a step that does not fit your case, and borrow a step from another framework if it helps. Most of the real speeches in Part 2 do that. The Emotional Escalator from Greenwich Village is not on the list: rising intensity is a technique you can use inside any of these frameworks.

Terms of the Deal is listed first because every speech ends with terms. It is not the default. Choose it when the bargain is the whole point of your speech.

Use Take Back the Word only when the word itself is what the room is deciding: whether your people are a minority or a nation, or whether a party speaks for all of India. If you only need to define a term along the way, do it inside another framework.

You can combine two. Use one framework for the speech and borrow a single step from another. A Terms of the Deal speech can use a short charge sheet to state its stakes. A Knock Down, Build Up can turn on a redefinition. Do not attempt three in one short speech.

For the Governors General. Your opening is a different kind of speech. You announce a plan, explain why it takes the form it does, say what it means for each party, and ask for cooperation. Wavell's broadcast announcing the Simla Conference on 14 June 1945 is the model, in Speeches by Earl Wavell, 1943–47, pp. 73–76. When you defend the plan against objections, Macmillan's "wind of change," listed under The Hour Has Struck, shows an official telling a hostile audience that the old arrangements are finished.

A speech built on documents can be dry. Give it one sentence the room will remember, one specific thing it can picture, and one question a rival must answer. The Guide to Rhetorical Techniques shows how.

Your outline

Your role sheet gives the question your presentation must answer and the sources to draw on. You plan the speech in your Argument & Evidence outline. The assignment gives the requirements. Its seven parts are:

1. Central claim. What you want the conference to accept, and the one sentence you want the room to remember.
2. Standing. Whom you speak for, by what title, and who in the room disputes it.
3. Framework. Which one, why it fits your situation, which real speech you read as a model, and which framework you considered and rejected.
4. Outline and timing. One bullet for each stage of your speech, with its evidence and an approximate time. Mark the evidence that comes from the other side.
5. Evidence. Your sources, and the objections that named factions will raise, with your answers.
6. Rhetorical techniques. Two or more, chosen to serve the argument.
7. Opening and close. Your actual first and last sentences. The close states your terms.

A sample outline (Andhra). This is how the Promise and the Gap worked example in Part 2 would look in outline, for a four-minute speech. Bullets are enough.

Claim. The constitution must provide that provinces be drawn by language. The sentence for the room: "Was Nagpur a principle or a convenience?"

Standing. The Andhra Mahasabha, which has met since 1913 (mandate). My friend from Madras claims to speak for the whole Presidency, so I answer him in the first minute.

Framework. The Promise and the Gap, because three bodies have already stated our principle, and two of them are in the room. Model: Baldev Singh's 1944 statement holding Jinnah to the Sikandar–Jinnah Pact. Rejected: The Charge Sheet, because I need Congress's vote, not its guilt.

Outline and timing. 1. Opening: standing (0:00–0:30). The Mahasabha since 1913. Answer the rival claim from Madras. 2. Invoke the promise (0:30–1:15). The Congress constitution adopted at Nagpur, 1920, organised its provinces by language. (Their own document.) 3. Show the gap (1:15–1:45). Twenty-five years later, no province of India follows that rule for the Telugu people. 4. Prove it (1:45–2:45). The Government made Orissa a province on the same ground in 1936. (The Government's own decision.) The Madras legislature voted for provinces by language in 1938. (Madras's own resolution.) 5. Objection (2:45–3:20). Congress: "Provinces by language will divide the nation." Answer: every party here asks Britain for government by people who can speak to the governed, and we ask the same of Madras. 6. Close: terms (3:20–4:00). Offer: a boundary commission, and arbitration on the city of Madras. Condition: the principle in the constitution itself. Red line: no promise to consider it later.

Part 2: The eight frameworks

Each framework has the same parts: what it does, its structure, when to use it, three real speeches (the first, marked Start here, is short, and the notes say where to look in the long ones), a worked example on the Andhra question, and its common variants. Read the one you chose. Indian speeches marked "Archive" open in our Archive of speeches, writings and readings, checked against the printed sources and with a short introduction; the Archive has many more.

Terms of the Deal

Some delegates come to the table holding something the settlement needs. Every Simla speech ends with terms, but in this framework the terms are the whole speech. It was the framework of the Round Table Conferences, where princes, minorities, and parties came to say on what conditions they would join. New at Simla: none of the Greenwich Village frameworks was built for bargaining.

Structure

1. Establish good faith. Find common ground. Concede something about your own side's past, or about the other side's fears.
2. State the stakes. Say what your side brings: numbers, service, a treaty, a province. Say what you recognize of the other side's position.
3. Lay out the terms. Number them. Say what you ask, what you give in return, and what you cannot give up.
4. Put the choice. Say what follows if the room accepts, and what follows if it refuses.

When to use it

• You hold something the settlement needs, such as seats, territory, troops, or a treaty.
• You want the room to see your price before the bargaining starts.
• You must sell a compromise to your own side. Patel's variant, below, shows how.

The test that separates this framework from The Charge Sheet: do you offer something in return? A speech can begin with a long list of grievances and still be Terms of the Deal if it ends "on these conditions, we join."

Real speeches

• Start here: Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895. Text (Hanover College). The broker. Speaking to white and Black audiences at once, he offers a bargain to each in turn ("Cast down your bucket where you are") and states its terms plainly: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers." Short, clean, and controversial. Du Bois attacked the bargain for years afterward, which is worth discussing.
• The Maharaja of Bikaner, Round Table Conference, London, 17 November 1930. Text (Archive). The conditional offer. He opens on good faith and loyalty, states the princes' standing ("we stand without compromise on our treaty rights"), lays out the conditions for joining a federation, and warns that "federation cannot be achieved by coercion of the States in any form." The close is an appeal, not an ultimatum.
• Vallabhbhai Patel, Congress presidential address, Karachi, March 1931. Text (Archive). Selling the deal to your own side. Congress had just signed a truce with the Viceroy that many members disliked. Patel justifies it on the movement's own principles and insists "There is no receding" from the demand for complete independence. Read the first quarter. The rest becomes a program.

Also worth reading: Mohamed Ali and Ujjal Singh at the same Round Table session (archive link above), and B. R. Ambedkar's plenary speech of 20 November 1930.

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a parliamentarian.

Mr. Chairman, I will begin with what we owe. The Telugu and Tamil peoples have shared a legislature, a university, and a capital for as long as any of us has been alive, and many Tamil officers have served our districts well. Nothing I say today is said against them.

We know what our demand asks of others. The Tamil districts fear for the city of Madras. The Presidency fears for its revenue. Both fears are reasonable. Against them I set what we bring: the Telugu districts, which are a third of the Presidency, and the men who went to prison from them in 1921, in 1930, and in 1942.

Here are our terms. First, the constitution itself must provide that provinces may be formed by language. Second, a boundary commission will draw the line district by district, and we will accept its award. Third, we will bear our full share of the cost of a new capital and a new High Court. Fourth, on the city of Madras we accept arbitration, whichever way it goes.

If the conference accepts these terms, the Telugu members will vote for the settlement as a whole, and I will go home and defend it. If it refuses, we cannot vote for a constitution that leaves the question for later. We have been told "later" since 1914.

Variants

• The petition. For a speaker with little leverage. Give thanks and loyalty, state your claim to importance, list your requests, and close with assurance. The Aga Khan's deputation to Lord Minto in 1906 is the model.
• Selling the deal. Address your own side. Grant their anger first, show the deal on the movement's own principles, insist the goal is unchanged, and say what is still allowed.

Knock Down, Build Up

When a rival's scheme is on the table, the usual answer is to state it fairly, take it apart, and offer your own. It is among the most common frameworks in real advocacy, and it was especially common at the constitutional table. The third step matters most: a speaker who only demolishes is heard as obstructing. From Greenwich Village: this absorbs the rebuttal half of the Case-Builder's Brief, and the Satirical Takedown is one way to do its second step.

Structure

1. State their position. Use their own words: their scheme, their resolution, their excuses.
2. Take it apart. Go point by point. Show that it fails on its own terms, by its numbers, its logic, or its likely results.
3. Put yours in its place. Give your counter-proposal or principle.
4. Ask for the choice. Reject theirs and adopt ours.

When to use it

• A rival or the British has a scheme on the table.
• You present after the Governors General issue their draft plan. Test the draft, then propose your amendments.
• You can say in one or two sentences what you would do instead.

Real speeches

• Start here: Helen Keller, "Strike Against War," Carnegie Hall, New York, 1916. Text (marxists.org). About 2,300 words, with each stage in its own block. She states the case for military preparedness, demolishes it, and then puts her own in its place: "The kind of preparedness the workers want is reorganization and reconstruction of their whole life."
• B. R. Ambedkar, "Communal Deadlock and a Way to Solve It," Bombay, 6 May 1945. Text (Archive). Given seven weeks before Simla opened. He takes apart the proposals for a Constituent Assembly with tables of seats and votes ("The principle is that there is no principle"), then builds his own scheme from stated principles and asks the majority to accept a relative, not an absolute, majority. Read the opening sections and the conclusion.
• M. A. Jinnah, Central Legislative Assembly, 7 February 1935. Text (Archive). The debate version. He takes up an amendment and the Law Member's reply, calls the federal scheme "thoroughly rotten, fundamentally bad and totally unacceptable," and then says it is his duty "not merely to indulge in a flat negative" before offering his own three-part alternative.

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a barrister.

Mr. Chairman, my friend from Madras has offered the Telugu districts a regional committee of the Madras legislature in place of a province. I will take his proposal as he put it. It has three parts.

First, the committee would consist of the members from the Telugu districts. They already sit in the legislature. The proposal gives them a room of their own and nothing else.

Second, the committee would advise on matters that concern those districts. I ask whom it would advise. The answer is the Madras cabinet, which may take the advice or leave it. We have been advising Madras since 1914.

Third, the committee would cost nothing. That is true, and it tells the conference what the committee is worth.

I propose instead that the constitution allow a province to be formed where the people of a language area ask for it and a boundary commission confirms the line. Until the province exists, let the committee my friend proposes hold the powers over its own districts that a province would hold. If the proposal is meant seriously, he can accept that amendment. I ask the conference to adopt it.

Variants

• The Document on Trial. Take one text, announce your tests in advance, and apply them to its provisions one at a time. Rajendra Prasad treated the White Paper this way in 1934. This is the framework for anyone who speaks after the draft plan is issued.
• Verdict first. Open with your rejection, then give the reasons. It suits a walkout. Jinnah's statement after Simla failed works this way. It is weak at a table where you still need a deal, because it has no counter-plan.
• Satire. Restate the rival's case so faithfully that it sounds absurd. It delights your allies and rarely moves the deciders.

The Promise and the Gap

At a conference, the strongest appeal to conscience quotes the other side's own principle. You do not ask the room to accept yours. You quote theirs: a proclamation, a resolution, a pact, a pledge. Then you show how far their practice falls short and ask them to close the gap. Speakers in nearly every camp of the period quoted British pledges back to the British, and quoted each other's resolutions back to each other. From Greenwich Village: this is the Call to Conscience, anchored in a principle the other side already professes.

Structure

1. Invoke the promise. Quote it, and say who made it and when.
2. Show the gap. Show that present practice betrays it. Do not abuse those who made it.
3. Prove it. Give the dates, cases, and figures.
4. Demand redemption. Ask them to keep their word, or to say plainly that they no longer mean it.

When to use it

• Someone in the room made a promise or professes a principle that you can quote.
• You cannot compel anyone, but you hold the moral position.
• The audience does hold the principle. The framework fails against people who openly reject it.

Real speeches

• Start here: Martin Luther King Jr., "I have a dream," Washington, 1963. Text (NPR). The best-known example. The founders signed "a promissory note," and "America has defaulted on this promissory note." The first half is the arc. The second half, the dream, is the demand turned into a vision.
• Dadabhai Naoroji, Congress presidential address, Calcutta, 1906. Text (Archive). The first Congress call for "Swaraj." He builds the case almost entirely from British authorities' own words, including the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 ("We hold ourselves bound to the Natives of our Indian Territories by the same obligations of duty which bind us to our other subjects"), and shows that the colonies have received self-government while India has not. Read the first half, organized as numbered reasons.
• Sardar Baldev Singh, press statement, Lahore, May 1944. Text (Archive). Short, and close to Simla. Baldev Singh holds Jinnah to the Sikandar–Jinnah Pact and calls his new course "a unilateral repudiation of the pacts arrived at by Mr. Jinnah and the League with the Unionists." A press statement, not a speech.

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a barrister.

Mr. Chairman, I do not ask the conference to accept my opinion. I shall read three documents, none of them mine.

The first is the constitution that the Congress adopted at Nagpur in 1920. It organised the party's provinces by language. The Telugu districts had had a committee of their own since 1918, and Nagpur made that the rule for the whole country. I ask my friends in the Congress whether that was a principle or an arrangement of convenience. If it was a principle, it applies to the provinces of India as it applied to the provinces of the party. If it was a convenience, I should like them to say so.

The second is the Government's own decision of 1936. It made Orissa a province so that the Oriya people, until then divided among three administrations, should be under one. The Telugu people ask for the same thing on the same ground. I know of no ground on which the two cases can be distinguished, and none has been offered.

The third is the resolution of the Madras legislature in 1938, in favour of provinces drawn by language. I am told that Madras would be injured by what we ask. Madras has voted for it.

Three bodies have stated the principle. None of them has applied it to us. I ask the conference to write into the constitution what the Congress resolved, what the Government did for Orissa, and what Madras itself voted for.

Variants

• The vow. After the gap, admit your own part in it, then say what you yourself will do or go without until the promise is kept. Gandhi's statement at his trial in 1922 is the model. A Gandhian worker might say: "The promise was not mine to give, and I gave it. Until the Telugu districts are governed together, I will take no seat in the legislature at Madras." Make a vow only if you intend to keep it. The room will remember it, and so will the Scenario Director.
• Hold them to a pact. Quote a specific agreement between two parties in the room, as Baldev Singh does.
• Hold them to a treaty. The princes' form. Quote the treaties and proclamations by which the Crown bound itself to the States, and ask whether those obligations survive a transfer of power.

Take Back the Word

Much of the argument at Simla is over words: whether a community is a minority or a nation, whether unity means one center or a federation, and whether Congress speaks for India or for Hindus. In this framework you seize the disputed word, expose the meaning that has been used against you, give the meaning you claim is true, and draw the consequence. New at Simla: there is no Greenwich Village equivalent.

Structure

1. Name the disputed word. Use the label that has been applied to your side, or the term every side claims.
2. Expose the false meaning. Show that it is too narrow, hypocritical, or the opponent's own invention.
3. Give the true meaning. Define it, draw distinctions, and give examples.
4. Draw the consequence. Say what follows for the constitution, for your people, and for the decision now.

When to use it

• The dispute turns on a word, and the room knows it.
• Others doubt your right to speak because of who you are. Say who you are, in your own terms.
• You can state the consequence in one sentence.

Real speeches

• Start here: Louis D. Brandeis, "True Americanism," Boston, 1915. Text (VCU). Short, and every stage is easy to point to. He asks "What is Americanization?", rejects the answer that it means adopting American clothes and manners, defines the ideals, and finds the distinctive one: "It is inclusive brotherhood."
• M. A. Jinnah, Muslim League presidential address, Lahore, 22 March 1940. Text (Archive). The most important redefinition of the period: "it has always been taken for granted mistakenly that the Mussalmans are a minority." He argues they are a nation by any definition, and draws the consequence: homelands, territory, and a state. Read paragraphs 17–26. The redefinition is the turning point, though the speech also takes apart Congress's proposals.
• V. D. Savarkar, Hindu Mahasabha presidential address, Ahmedabad, December 1937. Text (Archive). He redefines "Hindu" and "nation" ("A country or a geographical unit does not in itself constitute a nation"), and draws an electoral consequence. It contains sustained hostility toward Muslims. Read it as a period source and a model of structure, not of content.

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a parliamentarian.

Mr. Chairman, several speakers have raised an objection to the Telugu claim, and it turns on one word. The word is unity. India is about to become one nation, they say, and this is the worst moment to divide it by language. If the Telugus have a province, the Tamils, the Kannadigas and the Malayalis will each want one.

I think a good deal of this is true. Provincial feeling can be turned against the nation, and we have seen it done.

But consider what unity is being made to mean. It is being made to mean that some millions of Indians must be governed in a language they cannot follow, by officers they cannot address, because that is how the Company's armies happened to draw the map. That is not unity. That is an accident of conquest.

Every party here asks Britain for self-government on the ground that a people should not be ruled by men who cannot speak to them. That is what unity means in a free country: every citizen able to understand his own government. On that meaning, a province in which the Telugu people can do so strengthens India.

So I ask the conference to write the principle into the constitution, and to let the boundaries follow it. If my friend knows a better rule for drawing provinces than the language of the people who live in them, I hope he will propose it.

Variants

• The Credo. For a speaker whose standing is disputed because of who they are: a Muslim in Congress, a prince who claims to be a patriot, a Communist who claims to be a nationalist. State both identities in sentences of equal weight, decline to choose between them, and offer history as proof that they have gone together. Azad's Ramgarh address of 1940 contains the classic statement.
• Reframe the question. "This is a question of Y, and we have been treating it as a question of X."
• First principles. Pose a question of definition, such as what a nation is or whose sovereignty it is, and reason from your answer to your position, testing the proposals in the room against it. It suits a speaker who claims the authority of a scholar or a religious teacher.

The Charge Sheet

Resigning ministers used this framework to explain why they could no longer serve, and prosecutors use it in court. You name the party responsible, count its wrongs one by one, show that the counts form a pattern, and demand redress. The counts carry the speech, so make each one specific: a date, a law, a decision, a number. New at Simla: there is no Greenwich Village equivalent.

Structure

1. Name the wrong. Open on the injury and the party responsible.
2. Count the particulars. Give separate, specific counts, often numbered.
3. Draw the verdict. Show that the counts are a policy, not an accident.
4. Demand redress. Say what must happen: repeal, removal, guarantees.

When to use it

• You can document a pattern of conduct by a named party.
• You are explaining a break: a resignation, a walkout, a refusal to join.
• You have a demand to make at the end.

At a negotiating table this framework hardens positions. If you need the other party's signature, consider Terms of the Deal, and use a short charge sheet as its second step.

Real speeches

• Start here: W. E. B. Du Bois for the Niagara Movement, "Address to the Country," Harpers Ferry, 1906. Text (Wake Forest). Short and clean. The year's wrongs, the verdict, then five numbered demands: "We want full manhood suffrage, and we want it now, henceforth and forever."
• Syama Prasad Mookerjee, statement on resigning from the Bengal Cabinet, February 1943. Text (Archive). Short. He counts the occasions on which officials overrode ministers, names the target ("My charge is directed against a coterie of officials"), and demands their removal.
• Lala Lajpat Rai, Congress special session presidential address, Calcutta, September 1920. Text (Archive). The formal indictment. On the Punjab martial law of 1919 he gives twelve numbered counts against the former Lieutenant-Governor ("I charge him with having deliberately deceived the Government of India as to the necessity of Martial Law"), then a lettered list of demands. Read only the Punjab section.

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a party organiser.

Mr. Chairman, I speak for the Andhra Mahasabha, and I come to make a charge against the government of the Madras Presidency. I make it against no officer by name.

First, the services. In the last recruitment for the Presidency's civil service, every examination was set and held in Madras city, and the boys of our districts were examined in English by men who could not test them in their own language.

Second, the courts. Appeals from our districts are heard in Madras, in a language the appellant cannot follow, at a distance most cannot afford to travel.

Third, the money. When relief works were opened in the last scarcity, the Tamil districts near the capital received them first.

Fourth, our requests. Each of these matters has been raised in the Madras legislature, and each time we were told that it would be considered.

I do not say that any officer acted from malice. I say that a Presidency governed from one city will be governed for that city. These are not accidents. They are what the arrangement produces.

We therefore demand three things. A province for the Telugu districts, written into the constitution. Until it exists, a member of the Madras cabinet charged with those districts. And an inquiry into recruitment for the services, reporting before the new constitution takes effect.

Diagnosis and Cure

Reformers name a problem, explain why it persists and why the easy remedies fail, and prescribe a program. The second step is what separates this framework from a wish list. Indian presidential addresses often took this shape, taking stock of the cause and setting out the program. From Greenwich Village: this is the Case-Builder's Investigation, with the "false leads" as the step that rules out shallow causes.

Structure

1. Name the problem. Size it with a figure, a fact, or a scene.
2. Find the root cause. Explain why it persists. Dismiss the shallow explanations and the remedies that leave it in place.
3. Prescribe the cure. Give a concrete program, usually numbered.
4. Assign the first steps. Say what this body should do now.

When to use it

• You have a program, and the room needs to see why lesser remedies will not do.
• The room agrees there is a problem but disagrees about its cause.
• You are speaking to your own side about strategy.

The test that separates this framework from The Charge Sheet: a Charge Sheet names a party and ends with a demand on it. Diagnosis and Cure names a condition or a system and ends with a program the audience adopts.

Real speeches

• Start here: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, "Lynching, Our National Crime," National Negro Conference, New York, 1909. Text (BlackPast). Under 2,000 words, built on numbered theses. Statistics, the root cause separated from the excuse, other remedies weighed and found wanting, then the cure: "Federal protection of American citizenship is the remedy for lynching." It ends with a first step for the conference itself.
• B. R. Ambedkar, All-India Depressed Classes Conference, Nagpur, July 1942 ("If democracy dies it will be our doom"). Text (Archive). Signposted throughout. He names the problem ("The only thing, therefore, we can depend upon for our continued progress is the capture of political power"), identifies the forces working against his people, sets out their political demands, and ends with a first step: one all-India organization. Read the first address.
• Rajendra Prasad, Congress presidential address, Bombay, October 1934. Text (Archive). The state-of-the-cause address. He tests the British White Paper, then turns ("I come now to our own policies and plans"), diagnoses Congress's own weaknesses, and prescribes a program. The pivot sentence marks the turn from diagnosis to program.

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a scholar.

Mr. Chairman, the Telugu districts hold more than a third of the people of the Presidency. They supply nothing like a third of its officers, its graduates, or its judges.

It is said that our people are less inclined to study. I have taught in our colleges for twenty years, and I do not believe it. It is said that more scholarships would mend the matter. They would help, and we are grateful for those we have. But a scholarship pays a boy's way to Madras. It does not change the fact that he must go there, study in a language not his own, and compete for posts that are decided there.

The cause is the arrangement itself. A Presidency governed from one city, in one administrative language, will draw its officers from that city and the districts around it. No scholarship will change that.

The cure has three parts. A province for the Telugu districts, with its own capital and High Court. Telugu as a language of its administration and its courts. A services commission of its own, examining candidates where they live.

I ask this conference for the first step only: that the constitution provide for provinces by language, and that a boundary commission be named to apply it.

The Hour Has Struck

This speech argues that this moment is different. The old way is finished, either because the world has changed or because patience has been tried and refused. You lay out the choice and ask for a decision now. Movement leaders used it at turning points. Officials used it to announce a new era. From Greenwich Village: this is a close relative of the Crossroads Approach, with more weight on why the old way is finished.

Structure

1. Name the hour. Say what has changed.
2. Show why the old way is finished. Give the signs of change, or the dated record of patience rebuffed.
3. Lay out the choice. The new course against the road to ruin, often two roads.
4. Commit now. No more postponement.

When to use it

• Your side made moderate requests in the past and was refused.
• You are accused of being impatient or of having changed your position.
• The room is inclined to postpone.

The test that separates this framework from Diagnosis and Cure: if the climax is a program to adopt, use Diagnosis and Cure. If the climax is a break with the past, use this one.

Real speeches

• Start here: Harold Macmillan, "The wind of change," Cape Town, 1960. Text (PDF). The official's version, delivered to an audience that disagreed: "The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact." A useful model for the Governors General.
• Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress presidential address, Lahore, December 1929. Text (Archive). The address that committed Congress to complete independence. The Viceroy's offer was vague, Dominion Status is a snare, "What will this Congress do?", and the commitment: "there will be no turning back." Read the middle third.
• Carrie Chapman Catt, "The Crisis," Atlantic City, 1916. Text (Emerson Kent). Long, but signposted, with a turn you can point to. "A crisis has come," two signs of change, then the turn on her own movement ("Are we prepared to grasp the victory? Alas, no!"), and the call: "The woman's hour has struck."

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a party organiser.

Mr. Chairman, every delegate here has said that the constitution of a free India will be written now, at this table or soon after it. That is why I speak now. We are told that our demand is new and badly timed. I shall give the dates.

In 1913 we first met at Bapatla. In 1914, at Bezwada, we resolved that the Telugu districts should form a province. The Government took no action. We waited.

In 1918 the Congress gave the Telugu districts a committee of their own, and at Nagpur in 1920 it organised all its provinces by language. We took that as a promise and we worked under it. We waited.

In 1928 the Nehru Report recommended provinces by language. In 1936 the Government made Orissa a province on exactly that ground. We asked for the same treatment and were told the time was not suitable. In 1938 the Madras legislature passed a resolution in our favour. The Secretary of State declined to act on it.

For thirty years the answer has been "not yet," and we accepted it because there was no constitution to write. Now there is. That leaves one question. Will the provinces of the new constitution follow language or not? If they will, we support the settlement. If they will not, the Telugu members cannot vote for it, and I would rather say so today than at the end.

Variants

• We tried everything. The worked example's form: a dated ladder of moderate requests refused, leading to a new course. It gives your side the moral high ground before you escalate. Prove that the patience was real.
• Two roads. Reduce the decision to a stark choice and describe where each road leads. Opponents will call it a false choice, so make both roads concrete.
• The wide frame. Begin far from the agenda, with the world and the century, and narrow to India and the decision in front of the room. Nehru built many of his addresses this way. In four minutes, give the world one paragraph.
• The historical lesson. Give a series of episodes that all teach the same thing, and make the present moment the last of them. Savarkar's addresses ran from 1857 forward this way. In four minutes, use three episodes.

One Story, Everyone's

The leaders of 1945 seldom told one person's story. They spoke of peoples and provinces. A speech built on one concrete story stands out in a room where most speakers deal in abstractions, and it suits delegates who speak for people with no seat at the conference. The story is only the first step: you must widen it until it stands for many, name what it reveals, and ask. From Greenwich Village: this is the Case History Approach, widened from one person to a whole people.

Structure

1. Tell one story. Give the place, the time, and what happened.
2. Widen it. Show that it is not unique: figures, other cases, "every season."
3. Name what it reveals. The system or the pattern behind it.
4. Ask. What the room must do about it.

Keep the story to about a minute. Steps two to four need most of your time.

When to use it

• You speak for people with no seat at the table.
• The room has heard the argument in general terms many times.
• You have a story you can defend. At Simla, take it from your role sheet or your assigned sources.

Real speeches

• Start here: Malala Yousafzai, United Nations, New York, 2013. Text (The Guardian). Short and modern. The shooting ("the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead"), widened to every child denied school, then a list of demands to governments. She announces the widening before she tells the story.
• Rabindranath Tagore, "Crisis in Civilization," Santiniketan, 1941. Text (Archive). The conversion story. Tagore tells of his early admiration for English liberalism and his slow loss of it ("Such is the tragic tale of the gradual loss of my faith in the claims of the European nations to civilization"), and widens it into a judgment on empire. It has no final ask. It ends in prophecy, so it shows only three of the four steps.
• Ida B. Wells, "Lynch Law in All Its Phases," Boston, 1893. Text (Voices of Democracy). The fullest model. The lynching of her friends in Memphis and her own exile, widened to the national record, named as a system, and then the ask: "Do you ask the remedy?"

Example (Andhra)

Speaker: a village leader.

Mr. Chairman, I come from a village near Ongole, and I want to tell the conference about one of my neighbours.

Last year he received a notice about the water-rate on his four acres. It was in English. He took it to the taluk office. The clerk there explained it to him in Tamil, which he does not speak. A man in our village who had worked in Madras told him what the clerk had said. The notice gave him thirty days to appeal. By then thirty-four had gone.

I do not say anyone wronged him. The officer who signed the notice did his work properly. So did the clerk. But my neighbour lost his appeal, and the same thing happens in our district every season.

It happens because the Presidency is governed from Madras city. The services are recruited there and the examinations are held there. A boy from our district who wants a government post has to go to Madras and do his work in other languages.

We have been offered more translators, and a Telugu clerk in each taluk office. That would help, and I am grateful for it. But the notices would still come from Madras.

We ask for a province where the man who writes the notice and the man who receives it speak the same language. I think every part of India will want the same once it governs itself.

Part 3: Delivering it

Finding your voice

The worked examples in Part 2 are written in several voices. Each is modeled on a kind of speaker who was at Simla or at the conferences before it. Choose the one closest to your character, and read your assigned sources to hear how that person spoke.

Voice and framework are separate choices. A barrister can give a Charge Sheet, and a scholar can give Terms of the Deal.

Whichever voice you choose, keep most of your sentences plain. The speeches of the period carried dates and documents for several sentences at a time. A speech in which every paragraph ends on a polished line sounds written, and the room stops trusting it.

The conventions of the room

The real conferences were formal and courteous, and speeches were short. Follow these conventions and your speech will sound like 1945.

• Address the chair. Begin "Your Excellency" to the Governors General, or "Mr. Chairman." Speak to your rivals through the chair.
• Say "my friend." Call an opponent "my friend from Madras" or "my friend Mr. So-and-so," especially when you are about to disagree.
• Do not abuse a rival by name. The real speakers often left opponents unnamed: "some of my co-religionists," "those who counsel patience." Everyone knew who was meant.
• Reply to those who spoke before you. Refer courteously to at least one earlier speaker. If someone has covered your ground, say so and shorten your speech.
• Number your points. Azad's statement at the real Simla conference survives as a numbered list, with lettered requests for clarification.
• Admit a fault on your own side. Many speakers of the period did.
• Be brief. You have four minutes. The Round Table Conference set a limit of ten. Wavell opened the real Simla conference in about two and a half. If you look up your character you may find addresses that ran an hour or more. Those were given to the speaker's own party. At the conference table the same people spoke briefly and stated conditions.

Rehearsal

Say the speech aloud before you give it. The Speaking Booth records you in your browser and reports your pace, your pauses, and your filler words.