Maulana Mohamed Ali, a journalist and the leader, with his brother Shaukat Ali, of the Khilafat movement, had presided over the Congress in 1923. He broke with it over the Nehru Report of 1928, which he opposed for asking only for dominion status and for its treatment of Muslims. He came to the first Round Table Conference in London as a Muslim delegate while gravely ill, and he gave this speech seated in the plenary session. He died in London on 4 January 1931, before the conference ended.
He says he has come to return home "with the substance of freedom in my hand," and adds: "I would even prefer to die in a foreign country so long as it is a free country, and if you do not give us freedom in India you will have to give me a grave here." He declares, "The one thing to which I am committed is complete independence," but warns the British that if the delegates go back "without the birth of a new Dominion we shall go back, believe me, to a lost Dominion." Turning to the Muslim position, he observes that India has never before been ruled by a majority. Even so, "I, belonging to a minority community, accept that majority rule," because Muslims are a majority in some provinces and India is bound to have a federal system. He insists that federation, including the princes, must come "to-day, now." The proceedings record interruptions from other delegates, which are kept.
A shortened version that follows the main line of the argument. Cuts are marked […]. Read the full text.
[p. 89] Maulana Muhammad Ali: Mr. Chairman, may I exercise the privilege of the invalid and remain seated? My friend, Dr. Moonje, has explained his position as to how he has been called a traitor to his country. I think we are bracketed together here again. As he knows very well, on the day when he and I were to depart from India black flags were to be flown to wish us God-speed, and the wishes of people with whom we had been working all these years were that the boat "Viceroy of India" might prove very unseaworthy. Even when I came to this country one newspaper in England which I have helped to stabilise financially—I am very glad to see it has a million sale to-day—the "Daily Herald," published my photograph and called me a convert—I suppose a convert from patriotism to treachery. There is in Parliament, besides the Conservative peer who spoke yesterday frankly and sincerely, another very conservative gentleman, who was my tutor, my professor at Oxford, Sir Charles Oman, and it is from his history that I quote one short sentence which formed the subject of one of the questions asked us in the Indian Civil Service Examination, for which I appeared and failed: "The Saracen alone it was impossible to convert." I do not claim to have in me Aryan blood like all the white people here and Dr. Moonje. I have the blood in me which my Lord Reading—who sent me to prison—has perhaps running in his veins. I am a Semite, and if he has not been converted from Zionism, I too am not converted from Islam, and my anchor holds. I am the only person belonging to my party who has been selected by His Excellency [p. 90] the Viceroy, or the Government of His Majesty here, or whoever it is who has appointed these wonderful Delegates. Whose Delegates we are we do not know. I do not pretend to represent anybody: but I will say this much, and I feel certain that when you have heard me—I hope patiently—you will say that I am right in my claim, that at least I am not misrepresenting myself, and I think that should be enough. In politics there is too much misrepresentation even of oneself.
[…] He answers Lord Peel, praises the King and the princes, and lists his many illnesses.
I hope you will forgive this long introduction about my ill-health and ailments and all sorts of things; but the fact is that to-day the one purpose for which I come is this—that I want to go back to my country if I can go back with the substance of freedom in my hand. Otherwise I will not go back to a slave country. I would even prefer to die in a foreign country so long as it is a free country, and if you do not give us freedom in India you will have to give me a grave here.
[…] He thanks Baldwin for sending Lord Irwin and answers Lord Peel's warning about non-co-operators.
I have not come to ask for Dominion Status. I do not believe in the attainment of Dominion Status. The one thing to which I am committed is complete independence. In Madras in 1927 we passed a resolution making that our goal. In 1928, in the Convention of All Parties, the adoption of the Nehru Report Constitution was moved, the very first clause of which was about Dominion Status. Even my old secretary, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the President of the Congress to-day, was kept down by his father. There is a Persian proverb which says, "Be a dog, do not be a younger brother." And when you see my big brother over there, "Seven feet by five," as Colonel Wedgwood called him, you can well believe I believe in this Persian proverb. In the case of Jawaharlal I would say, "Be a cat, do not be the son of your father." For it was his father who, as President of the Congress, throttled poor Jawaharlal at Calcutta in 1928. Well, I got up in his place, when he could not speak for complete independence, and I opposed the clause dealing with Dominion Status. But in 1929 I would not go further like Jawaharlal and make it my creed, because once we make it our creed in the Congress, we cannot admit anybody into the Congress who does not hold that creed. I liked to keep the door open for negotiation. I would not like to slam the door in the face of anybody. His Excellency Lord Irwin, a Conservative Viceroy, was "The man on the spot." And he was sufficiently impressed by what he saw on the spot and came here. When we come to London we hear that everybody is appealing to "the man in the street." Whether "the man in the street" is ever heard or not, I do not know; but Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook and everybody else always talk about "the man in the street" as the final court of appeal. In India it is always "the man on the spot." Well, "the man on the spot" came here and he talked to the leading "man in the street," who is presiding here. I am sure he preached to the converted. They brought round Mr. Baldwin also; they brought round some Conservatives; they brought round everybody they could, and made the announcement that Dominion Status was meant, when in 1917 they said "Responsible Government." That cleared the fog which had been created in a very memorable meeting of the Indian Legislative Assembly in 1924 by the Officer in charge of the Home Department at the time, who I am glad is present here to-day.
[p. 94] As I said two or three days ago, India has put on fifty-league boots. We are making forced marches which will astonish the world, and we will not go back to India unless a new Dominion is born. If we go back to India without the birth of a new Dominion we shall go back, believe me, to a lost Dominion. We shall go back to an America. Then you will witness, not within the British Commonwealth or the British Empire, but outside it, with the Indian Princes, with Dr. Moonje, with Mr. Jayakar, with myself and my brother, a Free and United States of India. It will be something more than that. As I wrote shortly after leaving Oxford long years ago, in India we shall have something better than an America, because we shall not only have a United States, but we shall have United Faiths.
“Not like to like, but like in difference;
Self-reverent each and reverencing each;
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other, e'en as those who love."
It is with these passions surging in our hearts that we have come here. It now depends upon our Conservative friends, upon our Radical friends, upon our Labour friends, and still more upon the one man whom I trust more in England than anybody else—His Majesty King George, the grandson of Victoria the Good, whose love for India nobody dare deny. Her whole life was the Magna Charta of India, and in her grandson's time history will be written again like this: "George III lost America. George V won India!"
We are told that there are difficulties. It is said, "Look at the States." But I come from the States, and I know they present no difficulty whatever. "Then there is the Army." Well, what about the Army? It is the biggest indictment against Great Britain that the Army is not ours to-day, and if you ever use that excuse of the Army you will condemn yourselves out of your own mouths. Let me tell you frankly and honestly, but in a friendly way, that your greatest sin was the emasculation of India.
[…] He says Indians must learn the will to die, and blames Britain for Hindu-Muslim division.
One word as to the Mussalman position, with which I shall deal at length on some other occasion. Many people in England ask us why this question of Hindu and Mussalman comes into politics, and what it has to do with these things. I reply, “It is a wrong conception of religion that you have, if you exclude politics from it. It is not dogma; it is not ritual; religion, to my mind, means the interpretation of life.” I have a culture, a polity, an outlook on life—a complete synthesis which is Islam. Where God commands I am a Mussalman first, a Mussalman second, and a Mussalman last, and nothing but a Mussalman. If you ask me to enter into your Empire or into your Nation by leaving that synthesis, that polity, that culture, that ethics, I will not do it. My first duty is to my Maker, not to H.M. The King, nor to my companion Dr. Moonje; my first duty is to my Maker, and that is the case with Dr. Moonje also. He must be a Hindu first, and I must be a Mussalman first, so far as that duty is concerned. But where India is concerned, where India’s freedom is concerned, where the welfare of India is concerned, I am an Indian first, an Indian second, an Indian last, and nothing but an Indian.
I belong to two circles of equal size, but which are not concentric. One is India, and the other is the Muslim world. When I came to England in 1920 at the head of the Khilafat Delegation, my friends said, "You must have some sort of a crest for your stationery." I decided to have it with two circles on it. In one circle was the word "India"; in the other circle was Islam, with the word "Khilafat." We as Indian Mussalmans came in both circles. We belong to these two circles, each of more than 300 millions, and we can leave neither. We are not nationalists but supernationalists, and I, as a Mussalman, say that "God made man and the Devil made the nation." Nationalism divides; our religion binds. No religious wars, no crusades, have seen such holocausts and have been so cruel as your last war, and that was a war of your nationalism, and not my Jehad.
But where our country is concerned, where the question of taxation is concerned, where our crops are concerned, where the weather is concerned, where all associations in those thousands of matters of ordinary life are concerned which are for the welfare of India, how can I say, "I am a Mussalman and he is a Hindu"? Make no mistake about the quarrels between Hindu and Mussalman; they are founded only on the fear of domination. If there is one other sin with which I charge Great Britain, in addition to the sin of emasculating India, it is the sin of making wrong histories about India and teaching them to us in our schools, with the result that our schoolboys have learnt wrong Indian history. The quarrels which are sometimes visible in our streets on certain holidays are quarrels the motives of which have been instilled into the hearts of our so-called intelligentsia—I call it unintelligentsia—by the wrong [p. 97] history taught us in our schools for political purposes. If that feeling, which writes "Révanche" so large over the politics of certain people in India, existed as it does, and if it existed to the extent which it does to-day, and the Mussalmans were everywhere in a minority of 25 per cent. and the Hindus were everywhere in a majority of 66 per cent., I could see no ray of hope to-day; but thanks to the jerrymandering of our saints and our soldiers, if there are Provinces like that of my friend Dr. Moonje, in which I am only 4 per cent., there are other Provinces where I am 93 per cent., as in the Province of my friend Nawab Sir Abdul Qaiyum, for which we demand equal freedom. There is the old Province of Sind, where the Mussalmans first landed, where they are 73 per cent.; in the Punjab they are 56 per cent., and in Bengal 54 per cent. That gives us our safeguard, for we demand hostages as we have willingly given hostages to Hindus in the other Provinces where they form huge majorities.
I want you to realise that for the first time you are introducing a big revolution into India; for the first time majority rule is to be introduced into India. In the days of Lord Rama there was no majority rule, or he would not have been exiled. The old Pandu and Kuru rulers, who gambled their kingdoms away, did not have majority rule; Mahmud of Ghazni and Akbar and Aurengzeb did not have majority rule, nor did Sivaji; when Ranjit Singh ruled in the Punjab, he too did not have majority rule; when Warren Hastings and Clive ruled India, they did not have majority rule; and even in the days of Lord Irwin there is no majority rule. For the first time in India we are going to introduce majority rule, and I, belonging to a minority community, accept that majority rule, although I know very well that if 51 people say that 2 and 2 make 5, and 49 people say that 2 and 2 make 4, the fact that 51 say that 2 and 2 make 5 does not cause them to make 5. Still, I am prepared to submit to majority rule. Luckily, however, there are Mussalman majorities in certain Provinces, and with the federal form of government, which is suited to India, not only for the solution of the Hindu-Muslim problem, but is essential for the sake of the Princes also, this is in our favour. The centrifugal and centripetal tendencies are so well balanced in India that we are bound to have a federal system of government there, not as a distant ideal, as the Government of India says, but to-day, now, this minute. We shall leave this Conference only with federation established in India, with new treaties made with the Princes, with the consent of the Crown and the Princes.
[…] He reassures the princes and recounts Indian soldiers telling Gandhi they wanted Swaraj.
The Government of India Despatch goes further than Sir John Simon's Report and says that the Army should not be under the control of the Government of England but under the Government of India. There are three Members of the Government of India the pigment of whose skin is the same as mine, and in some cases even darker. Two of them were my stable companions in England as students, and the third also studied here at that time. If these people can control the Army, why cannot Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru be Prime Minister of India? Why cannot Sir Muhammad Shafi or Mr. Jinnah be Prime Minister of India, and control the Indian Army? Or why cannot even a humble man like myself or my big brother become the Commander-in-Chief of India? I have no doubt exhausted your patience, but I can assure you my speech has been, so far as I too am concerned, both exhausting and exhaustive. I now take my seat and I hope I shall not be called upon to speak again in the Plenary Conference until you announce, Mr. Chairman, that India is as free as England.
Indian Round Table Conference, 12th November, 1930–19th January, 1931: Proceedings (Government of India, Central Publication Branch, 1931), pp. 89–99. Includes interjections recorded in the proceedings.