THE NEHRU REPORT When the report of Simon Commission was presented in the Parliament in October, 1927, for approval, India was going through a political turmoil. The Congress and Muslim League had already rejected the recommendations of Simon Commission which made Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India to declare in the Parliament, “The Indians are0 divided, opposed and fed up of each other that they are unable to produce a unanimously accepted constitution.” The Indian leaders accepted the challenge and convened an All Parties Conference in February, 1928 to prepare a draft for the constitutional reforms. The Conference appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Moti Lal Nehru to identity the principles for India's future constitution. The other members of the committee were Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, G.R. Pardhan, MA. Jaikar, N.A. Joshi, Sir Ali Imam and Shoaib Qureshi (Muslim members). ‘The representation of Muslims on the committee ‘was of an insignificant nature, The Muslim members attended only one meeting of the Committee and put their signatures when the report was ready. The report submitted by the committee is known as ‘Nehru Report” which contained the following major recommendations:~- 1. Full responsible government on the model of the constitution of the self- ‘governing dominions to be introduced in the sub-continent. 2 “Separate electorate should bb replaced with the joint electorate with reservation of seats for the minorities in proportion to their population 3, The foreign affairs, army and defence should be placed under the control of parliament and Viceroy. 4, Sindh should be separated from Bombay to form a new province if it were capable of bearing its expenditures. 5, Full provincial status be given to NW.F.P. and Balochistan, 6 Hindi should be made official language. ‘The Nehru Report clearly reflected the Hindu mind and was based on anti- Muslim and antilsiam sentiments. An All Parties National Conference was convened in Caloutta in December, 1928 to considerthe Nehru Report. The Quaid-e-Azam proposed three amendments in the Nehru Report which were as follows:-- * 1/3rd_ representation for Muslims in the Central Legislature. 2: Muslim representation in Punjab and Bengal on the basis of population. 3. Residuary powers should be given to provinces instead of central government. The amendments proposed by Quaid- e-Azam were very reasonable and did not reflect a sharp contrast of ideas and point of view. Dr. Ambedekar says, “These amendments show, that the gulf between the Hindus and Muslims was not in any way a wide one. Yet there was no desire to bridge the same”. All these amendments, when put to vote, were rejected by the Hindu majority. The Quaid-e-Azam declared, “The Nehru Committee has adopted a narrow minded policy to ruin the political future of the Muslims. | regret to declare that the report is extremely ambiguous and does not deserve to be implemented”.