CDS (I) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 33 of 120

Correct — B, Separate electorates for untouchables. Through 1931 the leadership of the Depressed Classes, with B. R. Ambedkar at its head, was pressing one demand above all others: that the untouchable castes should elect their own representatives from their own rolls, rather than be chosen by an electorate the caste Hindus dominated. Ambedkar's argument at the Round Table Conferences was that caste-Hindu reformers could not represent the Depressed Classes and that they needed leaders of their own. The demand was conceded a year later. Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award of 16 August 1932 extended separate electorates to the Depressed Classes, reserving seats for them in the legislatures; Gandhi's fast unto death in Yerwada jail then forced the compromise of the Poona Pact of 24 September 1932, which kept the seats but put them inside a joint Hindu electorate.

• (a)Universal adult suffrage — Adult suffrage was a Congress demand of this period — the Karachi resolution of 1931 asked for it — and it would have helped the Depressed Classes eventually. It was not the specific constitutional protection their leaders were fighting for in 1931, which was a separate electoral roll.
• (c)Reserved seats for the minorities — Reserved seats within a joint electorate is precisely what the Depressed Classes were given instead, by the Poona Pact of September 1932, and Ambedkar accepted it only under the pressure of Gandhi's fast. Offering it as the 1931 demand inverts the sequence.
• (d)A unitary State in India — The shape of the future Indian state — federal or unitary — was being argued at the Round Table Conferences, but it was not a Depressed Classes demand. Their case was about who would elect their representatives, not about how power would be divided between centre and provinces.

A separate electorate gives a community its own roll of voters who elect their own members; a reserved seat inside a joint electorate keeps one common roll but sets aside seats that only members of that community may contest. The difference decided the Gandhi–Ambedkar quarrel of 1932: Ambedkar wanted the first, Gandhi held that it would cut the untouchables out of Hindu society, and the Poona Pact settled on the second with a much larger number of seats.

The chronology carries the answer. In 1931 the demand is made; in August 1932 the Communal Award grants it; in September 1932 the Poona Pact takes it back and substitutes reserved seats. Any option that names reserved seats therefore belongs to 1932, not 1931. It is worth saying where the confidence in this one comes from, because the Bombay meeting of 1931 named in the stem is not itself well documented in the standard reference works. UPSC has asserted the point independently: NDA 2024-I Q138 carries the statement that the All India Depressed Classes Leaders' Conference demanded separate electorate, and that statement is keyed as correct. The Depressed Classes leadership was not of one mind, though — M. C. Rajah's All India Depressed Classes Association argued for a joint electorate instead.

• Ambedkar argued that caste-Hindu reformers could not represent the Depressed Classes, who therefore needed representatives of their own choosing.
• The Communal Award of 16 August 1932 extended separate electorates to the Depressed Classes.
• Gandhi began a fast unto death in Yerwada jail against that provision in September 1932.
• The Poona Pact of 24 September 1932 replaced separate electorates with reserved seats in a joint electorate, raising the allotment from 71 seats to 148.
• Devdas Gandhi signed the Poona Pact on his father's behalf; Gandhi himself was not a signatory.

• Treating separate electorates and reserved seats as the same thing — the whole 1932 quarrel is the difference between them.
• Dating the Communal Award to 1933; it was announced on 16 August 1932.

Usually as a chronology or a match across the Round Table Conferences, the Communal Award and the Poona Pact, or as a statement-set on what each granted.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Poona Pact of 1932 provided for which one of the following?

  • (a)Separate electorates for the Depressed Classes
  • (b)Reserved seats for the Depressed Classes in a joint electorate
  • (c)Separate electorates for Indian Christians
  • (d)Universal adult suffrage in the provinces

  Answer(b) Reserved seats for the Depressed Classes in a joint electorate — it replaced the separate electorates granted by the Communal Award, raising the seats from 71 to 148.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Communal Award, which extended separate electorates to the Depressed Classes, was announced in which year?

  • (a)1928
  • (b)1930
  • (c)1932
  • (d)1935

  Answer(c) 1932 — Ramsay MacDonald announced it on 16 August 1932, after the Second Round Table Conference.