द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

THE FIGHT RESUMED 283
in which Pandit Malaviya and Moulana Shaukat Ali took a
leading part. The Conference met on November 1st, under
the presidentship of Mr. Vijayaraghav Achariar, ex-President
of the Congress and a large number of representative Hindus
and Moslems attended. The atmosphere was one of perfect
cordiality. A great deal of progress was made in the nego-
tiations for a Hindu-Moslem settlement. But ultimately two
obstacles arose. On one side, the leaders of the communalist
section of the Moslems condemned the unity efforts. On the
other side, the Bengal problem proved insoluble, since the
Europeans would not surrender any seat allowed them
under the Communal Award and the Moslems would not be
content with less than 51 per cent. of the total number of
seats. Though the Conference did not come to a successful
conclusion, it had a moral value and it helped to clear the
atmosphere considerably.
We may now review the actions of the Government during
the year 1932. While taking the severest measures against the
Congress, the Viceroy constantly urged that the Government
would simultaneously push on the work of constitution-
making. About the middle of January, the Consultative
Committee was appointed for keeping the Government in
close touch with all the leaders of the other parties, barring
the Congress, through the Viceroy and especially for con-
sidering the recommendations of the Franchise, Federal
Finance and Indian States Inquiry Committees as a pre-
liminary to their consideration by His Majesty's Government.
Owing to the delay in issuing the Communal Award, the
Consultative Committee was twice postponed on the insistence
of the Moslem members. On June 27th, an announcement
was made by the Government to the effect that they had
decided to provide for Provincial Autonomy and Federation
in a single Bill and that they would abandon the Third
Session of the Round Table Conference. The Indian Liberal
leaders immediately lodged a strong protest against the
abandonment of the Round Table Conference and following
this, Messrs. Sastri, Jayakar, Joshi and Sir Tej Bahadur
Sapru resigned from the Consultative Committee. This
made the Government climb down a bit, and on July 7th,