HISTORY PROJECT

VI TRIMESTER

Nehru Report of 1928

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Submitted by:
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 Acknowledgements

I take this opportunity to express a deep sense of gratitude to National Law Institute University,
Bhopal for providing me with this excellent opportunity to make this project. I sincerely thank
everybody who helped with the completion of this project. I am greatly obliged to History
teacher for his guidance, monitoring and encouragement throughout the course of this project. I
am also thankful to the Library Administration for providing me with the necessary books and
sources needed for the completion of this project.

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 Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4

Historical Background.....................................................................................................................5

Contribution and Aftermath.............................................................................................................6

Contemporary Relevance.................................................................................................................8

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................10

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 Introduction

The Nehru Report of 1928 proposed a new dominion status for the constitution of India. It was
prepared by a committee of the All Parties Conference consisting of 9 members, chaired by
Motilal Nehru with Jawaharlal Nehru as the secretary. The final memorandum was signed by
Motilal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Ali Imam, Mangal Singh, Tej Bahadur Sapru, G.R.
Pradhan, Shuaib Qureshi and M.S. Aney. Shuaib Qureshi did not agree to all the
recommendations.

British policy had always been that the British Parliament decided about the Indian constitutional
development, and Indians would be consulted whenever necessary. This was given in the
Government of India Act 1919. Indians did not have a right to frame their own constitution until
the Cripps Mission 1942.

The Nehru Report gave Indians a dominion status within the British Commonwealth. It
comprised the following:

 A Bill of Rights, which did not find a place in the eventual Government of India Act
1935.
 All governmental power and authority – legislative, executive, judicial – shall be derived
through the people and exercised in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution.
 A federal system with residuary powers vested in the centre.
 It laid down the machinery of the government – creation of a Supreme Court and a
suggestion that the provinces be linguistically demarcated.
 Men and women shall have equal rights as citizens of India and there shall not be any
state religion.
 It did not provide for separate electorates or weightage for minority, which was
eventually included in Government of India Act 1935. However, it did allow reservation
of seats for minorities in provinces where minorities were less than 10%, which was
strictly to be in proportion to the size of the community.
 The language of the Commonwealth shall be Indian written in Devnagri, Hindi, Bengali,
Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, or Kannada. The use of English language shall be
allowed.

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 Historical Background

The all-white Simon Commission was rejected by the Indian leaders. While Nehru and Bose
wanted a complete Swaraj, others were satisfied with a dominion status for that time being. In
the annual session of Congress in December 1927 at Madras, a resolution was passed for
complete boycott of the Simon Commission “at every stage and in every form”.

On 3rd February 1928, when the Simon Commission landed in Bombay, a hartal was observed in
Mumbai, and wherever the commission went people came out in procession to show the historic
“Simon Go Back”. But still, the commission had to do its job.

This led to a speech by Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, where he challenged the
Indian leaders to make their own constitution implying that they will not be able to make one.

This ignited the fire in Indian leaders to call the All Parties Conference in February and May
1928. The nine-membered committee, headed by Motilal Nehru, presented the Nehru Committee
Report in August 1928 which was the draft constitution at Lucknow. Almost all Indian leaders
accepted it except a few, including Jinnah, who voted against it.

In the congress session in December 1928, held at Calcutta, the report received a majority vote.
Congress gave ultimatum to the British Government to accept it by 31 st December 1929 and
threatened for a mass movement if not accepted. The British however did not accept it.

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 Contribution and Aftermath

This was the first attempt by Indians to draft a constitution.

Before this, Annie Besant along with a few friends had made a non-official effort once, but most
of the leaders did not show much enthusiasm towards it. Later, it was revised in January–
February 1925 by the All Parties Conference at Delhi and was formally approved by a
convention held in April at Cawnpore. It was drafted as a statue. In December 1925, this was
presented in the House of Commons under the title, “The Commonwealth of India Bill”.

This Bill consisted of the following:

 Subject to certain temporary reservations, it shall confer full Dominion status to India.
 Until the Indian Parliament makes an act signifying its readiness to assume control, the
Viceroy will be in charge of the military, naval forces and foreign relations.
 If Indian Parliament wishes to take any step regarding any Indian state, it shall not do so
without the prior approval of the Viceroy.
 This draft had a Bill of Rights conferring inter alia guarantee to personal liberty, equality
of sex, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience.

These things did not arouse popular enthusiasm; leaders were not interested in preparing a
constructive alternative system, rather wanted to oppose the existing one.

The Nehru proposals were rejected by most of the League leaders. In turn, Jinnah decided to
draft his Fourteen Points in 1929 which ultimately became the main demands of the Muslim
community for fighting for Indian independence. They had two main issues:

 The Lucknow Pact of 1916 provided separate electorates and weightage to the Muslim
community, but these were rejected by the Nehru Report.
 They demanded that the residuary powers go to the provinces, because they realized that
they would always be a minority at the Centre, but they were a majority in the North-East
and North-West provinces.

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According to Jinnah, the Committee had adopted a narrow-minded policy to ruin the political
future of the Muslims. He considered the report to be extremely ambiguous and that it did not
deserve to be implemented. The inability of the Congress to include these points is one of the
major factors in the eventual partition of India.

By abolishing separate electorates and rejecting the principle of weightage for Muslim
minorities, the report proposed a reversal of the Lucknow Pact.

During the three Indian Round Table Conferences (1930–1932), the Nehru Report along with
that of the Simon Commission was available to the participants. However, the Government of
India Act 1935 owes more to the Simon Commission than the Nehru Report.

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 Contemporary Relevance

The Nehru Report included various recommendations that contained the seed of a Constitution
for India. It rejected separate electorates and advanced a joint electorate based on universal adult
suffrage with reservation of seats for minorities where there were not adequately represented;
suggested by a body of 19 fundamental rights and proposed a bicameral legislature for the centre
and a responsible Governor-General. However, instead of complete independence, it favoured
‘Dominion Status’ along the line of self-governing dominions of the British Empire as the next
stage of the nationalist goal. This was, however, a majority decision and many leaders including
Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose did not share this objective.

In the category of Fundamental Rights, various civil and political rights were listed. One
significant fundamental right was the ‘secular character of the state’, which became one of the
pillars of the Preamble in the Constitution of India during the 1970’s. The Nehru Report,
acknowledging the linguistic diversity of India, recognised that ‘the redistribution of provinces
[should] be on linguistic bases’.

The Nehru Report was considered by an All-Parties Conference in December 1928, and
subsequently, the Congress at its annual session in December 1928 adopted the report as
approved by the British Parliament as a future blueprint for India.

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 Conclusion

The Nehru Report is of utmost significance to the Indian Freedom Struggle as it was the first
attempt by the political players to draft their own Constitution. Even though prior attempts had
been made in pursuit of the said objective none were as successful for reason of being made at a
smaller stage without as much participation or agreement.

However, the reception of the by the Hindu Communalist and the Muslim League leading proved
the point of the British that Indians could not stand united on the front of independence as there
stood vast religious and sectoral barriers amongst the citizens.

Nonetheless, it realized the notion of Freedom that was being demanded and made ‘Independent
India’ more than a mental construct into something more concrete. It was a declaration that India
was ready for independence and in many ways, may be considered as a contemporary to the
Virginia Declaration of the United States.

When the Constituent Assembly convened to draft India’s Constitution, The Nehru Report was
taken to unanimously serve as guidelines in framing the document and as such constitute the
basic principles behind it. Some suggestions such as secularism and universal adult suffrage have
been explicitly mentioned in the Preamble while some concepts such as democracy and
republicanism have been the indispensable underlying principles of the Constitution.

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 Bibliography

For the successful completion of this project I have gathered information from the following
sources:

Literary Sources

Abbas Hoveyda: Indian Government and Politics

Online Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehru_Report

http://www.gktoday.in/nehru-report-1928/

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