Assignment

Name Student: Muhammad Ahmed Jellani

Roll No: 18144156-033
Class: BS IT (E)
Semester: 3rd
Subject: Pak Study
Course Code: PKS-101
Submitted by: Muhammad Ahmed Jellani
Submitted to: Prof Dr. M Iqbal Roy

1|Page
 Cabinet Mission (1946)

Introduction:
The Cabinet Mission Plan was a statement made by the Cabinet Mission and
the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, on May 16, 1946, that contained proposals regarding the
constitutional future of India in the wake of Indian political parties and
representatives not coming to an agreement. The members of the Cabinet Mission
were: Lord Penthick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India, Sir Stafford Cripps,
President of the Board of Trade, and A.V Alexander, First Lord of Admiralty.
The Cabinet Mission' came to India aimed to discuss the transfer of power from
the British government to the Indian leadership, with the aim of preserving India's
unity and granting it independence.

2|Page
 Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India on February 19, 1946,
announced in Parliament that a special mission consisting of three Cabinet ministers,
in association with the Viceroy, would proceed to India, in order to hold discussions
with the Indian leaders. The three Cabinet ministers would be Pethick Lawrence, Sir
Stafford Cripps and A.V. Alexander. Cripps told the press conference on landing at
Karachi on March 23 that the purpose of the mission was “to get machinery set up
for framing the constitutional structure in which the Indians will have full control of
their destiny and the formation of a new interim government.” The Mission arrived
in Delhi on March 24 and left on June 29.

Jinnah faced extreme difficulties in the three-month-long gruelling

negotiations with the Cabinet Mission. The first of these was the continued delicate
state of his health. At a critical stage of the negotiations, he went down with
bronchitis and ran temperature for ten days. But he never gave up the fight and
battled till the end of the negotiations. Secondly, the Congress was still much
stronger than the Muslim League as a party. “They have the best organized — in fact
the only well organized — political machine; and they command almost unlimited
financial support they can always raise mob passion and mob support and could
undoubtedly bring about a very serious revolt against British rule.”– Mountbatten’s
“Report on the Last Viceroyalty”. Thirdly, The Congress had several powerful
spokesmen, while for the League Jinnah had to carry the entire burden of advocacy
single-handedly. Fourthly, the Mission was biased heavily in favour of the Congress.
Secretary of State Pethick-Lawrence and Cripps, the sharpest brains among them,
made no secret of their personal friendship for the Congress leaders. Wavell was
much perturbed by Pethick-Lawrence’s and Cripps’s private contacts with the
Congress leaders and the deference they showed to Gandhi. Finally, Jinnah suffered
from the disadvantage that it was the Muslim League, a minority party, which alone
demanded Pakistan. The Congress, the smaller minorities and the British
Government including the comparatively fair-minded Wavell with whom the final
decision lay, were all strongly opposed to the partition of British India.
Quaid-i-Azam the constitutionalist took appropriate steps to strengthen his
hand as the spokesman of the Muslim League. He convened a meeting of the Muslim
League Working Committee at Delhi (4-6 April 1946) which passed a resolution that
“the President alone should meet the Cabinet Delegation and the Viceroy. This was
immediately followed by an All India Muslim Legislator’s Convention. Nearly 500
members of the Provincial and Central Legislatures who had recently been elected
on the Muslim League ticket from all parts of India attended it. It was the first
gathering of its kind in the history of Indian politics and was called by some “the

3|Page
Muslim Constituent Assembly”. In his presidential address, Jinnah said that the
Convention would lay down “once and for all in equivocal terms what we stand for”.

A resolution passed unanimously by the Convention (the “Delhi Resolution”) stated

that no formula devised by the British Government for transferring power to the
peoples of India would be acceptable to the Muslim nations unless it conformed to
the following principles:
1. Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan in the North-West of India, namely
Pakistan, zones where the Muslims are in a dominant majority, be constituted
into a sovereign independent State and that an unequivocal undertaking be
given to implement the establishment of Pakistan without delay.
2. The two separate constitution-making bodies be set up by the people of
Pakistan and Hindustan for the purpose of framing their respective
Constitutions.
3. That the acceptance of the Muslim League demand of Pakistan and its
implementation without delay are the sine qua non for Muslim League
cooperation and participation in the formation of an Interim Government at
the Center.
4. That any attempt to impose a Constitution on a united-India basis or to force
any interim arrangement at the Center contrary to the Muslim League
demand will leave the Muslims no alternative but to resist any such imposition
by all possible means for their survival and national existence.

This impressive show of strength, staged in the very city where the members of the
Cabinet Mission were quartered, demonstrated to the Mission and to all the others
that the 100 million Muslims of India were solidly behind the demand for Pakistan
and further that the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was their undisputed
supreme leader.
The Mission began their talks by first informing themselves of the views of the
different leaders and parties. When they found the view-points of the League and
the Congress irreconcilable, they gave a chance to the parties to come to an
agreement between themselves. This included a Conference at Shimla (5-12 May),
popularly known as the Second Shimla Conference, to which the Congress and the
League were each asked to nominate four delegates for discussions with one another
as well as with the Mission. When it became clear that the parties would not be able
to reach a concord, the Mission on May 16, 1946, put forward their own proposals in
the form of a Statement.

4|Page
 Azad, the president of the Congress, conferred with the Mission on April 3 and
stated that the picture that the Congress had of the form of government in future
was that of a Federal Government with fully autonomous provinces with residuary
powers vested in the units. Gandhi met the Mission later on the same day. He called
Jinnah’s Pakistan “a sin” which he, Gandhi, would not commit.
At the outset of his interview with the Mission on April 4 the Quaid was asked
to give his reason why he thought Pakistan a must for the future of India. He replied
that never in long history these was “any Government of India in the sense of a single
government”. He went on to explain the irreconcilable social and cultural differences
between the Hindus and the Muslims and argued, “You cannot make a nation unless
there are essential uniting forces. How are you to put 100 million Muslims together
with 250 million people whose way of life is so different? No government can ever
work on such a basis and if this is forced upon India it must lead us on to disaster.”
The Second Shimla Conference having failed to produce an agreed solution,
on May 16, the Mission issued it’s own statement. The Cabinet Mission broadcast its
plan worldwide from New Delhi on Thursday night, May 16, 1946. It was a last hope
for a single Indian union to emerge peacefully in the wake of the British raj. The
statement reviewed the “fully independent sovereign state of Pakistan” option,
rejecting it for various reasons, among which were that it “would not solve the
communal minority problem” but only raise more such problems. The basic form of
the constitution recommended was a three-tier scheme with a minimal central union
at the top for only foreign affairs, defence and communication, and Provinces at the
bottom, which “should be free to form Groups with executive and legislatures,” with
each group being empowered to “determine the Provincial subjects to be taken in
common”. After ten years any Province could, by simple majority vote, “call for a
reconsideration of the terms of the constitution”. Details of the new constitution
were to be worked out by an assembly representing “as broad based and accurate” a
cross section of the population of India as possible. An elaborate method of assuring
representation of all the communities in power structure was outlined with due
consideration given to the representation of states as well as provinces.
The Quaid replied on the 19th , asking the Viceroy if the proposals were final
or whether they were subject to change or modification, and he also sought some
other clarification. The Viceroy promptly furnished the necessary explanations. It
seemed as if the Quaid would accept the Viceroy’s proposals. The Congress Working
Committee met in Delhi on June 25 and by a resolution rejected the proposals, as
“Congressmen can never give up the national character of the Congress or accept an
artificial and unjust party, or agree to the veto of a communal group.” Azad sent a
copy of the resolution to the Viceroy and in his covering letter protested against the
non-inclusion of a Muslim-Congressman from the Congress quota.

5|Page
 After the Congress stand had become known, the Working Committee of the
Muslim League resolved to join the Interim Government, in accordance with the
statement of the Viceroy dated 16th June. The interpretation of the Quaid-i-Azam
was that if the Congress rejected the proposals, the League accepted them, or vice
versa, the Viceroy would go ahead and form the interim Government without
including the representatives of the party that decided to stand out. But the
interpretation of the Viceroy and the Cabinet Mission was different from that of the
Quaid-i-Azam.
It became clear that the protracted negotiations carried out for about three
months by the Cabinet Mission did not materialize in a League-Congress
understanding, or in the formation of an interim Government. Towards the end of
June, the Cabinet Mission left for England, their task unfulfilled. It had, however not
been a complete failure. It was clear to the Indians that the acceptance of the
demand for Pakistan would be an integral part of any future settlement of the Indian
problem. In the meantime the League and the Congress were getting ready for
elections to the Constituent Assembly.

Cabinet Mission Plan (1946)

After the failure of British efforts to establish peace consensual constitutional

adjustment and the results of general elections, which created deadlock between
Muslim League and Congress, British government sent a special mission of Cabinet
ministers in India. This mission gave the plan to resolve the deadlock which is known
as Cabinet Mission Plan. The main purpose of the mission was setting up a
6|Page
constitutional frame work and Executive council with the help of Indian parties. Lord
Pethick Lawrence, the Secretary of State for India, Sir Stafford Cripps, the President
of the Board of Trade and A.V. Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty were the
members of this mission.
The mission held talks with the representatives of the Indian National
Congress and All India Muslim League for two weeks. On one side Congress was
eager that the task of constitution making should be given to the constituent
assembly. It also believed that best solution of all problems lay in federal form of
government. It demanded that the matters of defence, foreign affairs and
communication should be dealt by federal government. Moreover Congress did not
want to discuss about the idea about Pakistan. On the other hand Muslim League
leaders were saying that Hindus and Muslims had communal differences and they
also raise the voice for the partition of India. After an extensive discussion with
Congress and Muslim League the Cabinet Mission gave its own proposal on May 14
1946.
According to their own proposed plan their would be union of India
comprising British India and the Indian states that would deal with defence, foreign
affairs and communication. All residuary power would belong to provinces and the
provinces should be divided in to three sections. There would also be an interim
government with the support of all political parties.
The Muslim league accepted the plan initially Congress had accepted the plan
though it rejected the interim government. According to the plan government should
be given to Muslim League because it had accepted the interim government but
Viceroy did not give it to Muslim League. In the meantime Nehru said that Congress
had accepted the constituent assembly by changing the Cabinet plan. In these
circumstances Muslim League quit itself from the plan and Viceroy invited Congress
to made interim government although it had initially rejected it. However Viceroy
soon realised that it will give no fruit without Muslim League so he invited Muslim
League as well.

The Plan:
The mission made its own proposals, after inconclusive dialogue with the
Indian leadership, seeing that the Congress opposed Jinnah's demand for a Pakistan
comprising six full provinces. The mission proposed a complicated system for India
with three tiers: the provinces, provincial groupings and the centre. The centre's
power was to be confined to foreign affairs, defence, currency and

7|Page
communications. The provinces would keep all the other powers and were allowed
to establish three groups. The plan's main characteristic was the grouping of
provinces. Two groups would be constituted by the mainly-Muslim western and
eastern provinces. The third group would comprise the mostly-Hindu areas in the
south and the centre. Thus provinces such as UP, CP, Bombay, Bihar, Orissa and
Madras would make Group A. Group B would comprise Sind, Punjab, Northwest
Frontier and Baluchistan. Bengal and Assam would make a Group C.

The Reactions:
Through the scheme, the British expected to maintain Indian unity, as both
they and Congress wanted, and also providing Jinnah the substance of Pakistan. The
proposals almost satisfied Jinnah's insistence on a large Pakistan, which would avert
the moth-eaten Pakistan without the mostly non-Muslim districts in Bengal and
Punjab being partitioned away. By holding the full provinces of Punjab and Bengal,
Jinnah could satisfy the provincial leaders who feared losing power if their provinces
were divided. The presence of large Hindu minorities in Punjab and Bengal also
provided a safeguard for the Muslim minorities remaining in the mostly-Hindu
provinces.
Most of all, Jinnah wanted parity between Pakistan and India. He believed that
provincial groupings could best secure this. He claimed that Muslim India was a
'nation' equally entitled to central representations as Hindu India. Despite his
preference for only two groups, the Muslim League's Council accepted the mission's
proposals on 6 June 1946 after securing a guarantee from Wavell that the League
would be placed in the interim government if the Congress did not accept the plan.
The onus was now on Congress. It accepted the proposals, understanding it to
be a repudiation of the demand for Pakistan, and its position was that the provinces
should be allowed to stay out of groups that they did not want to join, in light of both
NWFP and Assam being ruled by Congress governments. However, Jinnah differed
and saw the grouping plan as mandatory. Another point of difference concerned the
Congress position that a sovereign constituent assembly would not be bound to the
plan. Jinnah insisted it be binding once the plan was accepted. The groupings plan
maintained India's unity, but the organisation's leadership and, most of all Nehru,
increasingly believed that the scheme would leave the centre without the strength to
achieve the party's ambitions. Congress' socialist section led by Nehru desired a
federal government able to industrialize the country and to eliminate poverty.
Nehru's speech on 10 July 1946 rejected the idea that the provinces would be
obliged to join a group and stated that the Congress was neither bound nor

8|Page
committed to the plan. In effect, Nehru's speech squashed the mission's plan and the
chance to keep India united. Jinnah interpreted the speech as another instance of
treachery by the Congress. With Nehru's speech on groupings, the Muslim League
rescinded its previous approval of the plan on 29 July.

Interim government:
Concerned by the diminishing British power Wavell was eager to inaugurate
an interim federal government. Disregarding Jinnah's veto, he authorised a cabinet in
which Nehru was the interim prime minister. Side-lined and with his Pakistan of
"groups" refused Jinnah became distraught. To achieve Pakistan and impose on
Congress that he could not be side-lined, he resorted to "direct action", which
sparked rioting and massacres. Direct Action Day further increased Wavell's resolve
to establish the interim government. On 2 September 1946, Nehru's cabinet was
installed.
Millions of Indian Muslim households flew black flags to protest the
installation of the Congress government. Jinnah did not himself join the interim
government but sent Liaquat Ali Khan into it to play a secondary role. Congress did
not want to give him the important position of home minister and instead allowed
him the post of finance minister. Liaquat Ali Khan infuriated Congress by using his
role to prevent the functioning of Congress ministries, demonstrating (under Jinnah's
instructions) the impossibility of a single government for India.
Britain tried to revive the cabinet mission's scheme by sending Nehru, Jinnah
and Wavell in December to meet Attlee, Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence. The inflexible
arguments were enough to cause Nehru to return to India and announce that "we
have now altogether stopped looking towards London." Meanwhile, Wavell
commenced the Constituent Assembly, which the League boycotted. He anticipated
that the League would enter it as it had joined the interim government. Instead, the
Congress became more forceful and asked him to drop ministers from the Muslim
League. Wavell was also not able to obtain a declaration from the British government
that would articulate their goals.
In the context of the worsening situation, Wavell drew up a breakdown plan
that provided for a gradual British exit, but his plan was considered fatalistic by the
Cabinet. When he insisted on his plan, he was replaced with Lord Mountbatten.

9|Page
Remarks:
In September 1945, the new elected Labour government in Britain expressed
its intention of creating a Constituent Assembly for India that would frame
India’s Constitution; the Cabinet Mission was sent to India in March 1946 to make
this happen. The Mission had to deal with a major obstacle: the two main political
parties – the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League – had fundamental
differences over India’s future. While the Muslim League wanted the Muslim
majority provinces of India to constitute a separate sovereign state of Pakistan, the
Congress wanted a united India. The Mission, at the Shimla Conference, attempted
to facilitate an agreement between the Muslim League and the Congress. When this
failed, the Mission came out with its own proposals known as the Cabinet Mission
Plan.
The Plan is around nine pages long - organised around twenty-four points.
While some parts of the Plan are written in explanatory prose – unpacking the
political context, approach and rationale behind its proposals, other parts of
the Plan are written in a quasi-legal style laying down the future steps to be taken
that included the form of elections to the Constituent Assembly and its preliminary
functioning. The core of the Plan is Point 15 (excerpted below) which lays out the
basic form of the future constitution of India.
Point 15 consists of six sub-points that proposed the basic form of the
Constitution of India; strikingly, all relate to the federal structure of India.
The Plan rejected the Muslim League demand for a separate state of Pakistan and
instead called for an Indian Union that consisted of British provinces and the Princely
States. While the Plan rejected Pakistan, it proposed a unique federal set-up that it
hoped would be acceptable to the Congress Party and the Muslim League: it
introduced the concept of grouping/sections; provinces and princely states were free
to form groups under the Union, having a legislature and executive, enjoying
significant autonomy.
The Plan was initially accepted by the Muslim League and the Congress Party.
However, the Congress Party soon rejected the ‘grouping’ part of the plan;
specifically, its was concerned about and opposed the grouping of provinces on the
basis of religion. The Muslim League was not open to changing any part of
the Plan and so any consensus between the Congress and the Muslim League broke
down. Further attempts by the Cabinet Mission at reconciliation failed. Nonetheless,
the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly began and an interim government, with
Jawaharlal Nehru as the Prime minister, was set-up. The Muslim League refused to
be part of both; it initiated ‘Direct Action Day’ triggering large-scale violence across
the country.

10 | P a g e
 The Plan, also referred to as the ‘State Paper’, had a significant influence over
the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly during its initial stages, particularly the
debates around Nehru's Objective Resolution and federalism. The Assembly
acknowledged that it was a creation of the Plan; it wanted to, as far as possible,
adhere to the Plan’s proposals as means of maintaining its legal legitimacy and to
keep the door open for the Muslim League to join its proceedings. At the same time,
the Assembly also asserted that its legitimacy was derived from the people of India
and not the Plan.
The Cabinet Mission Plan is critical to scholarly works that engage with various
aspects of Indian constitutionalism, law, politics and history, particularly on partition
and federalism. Recent work have paid close attention to British perspectives as well:
Walter Reid in Keeping the Jewel in the Crown emphasises the British self-interest
behind the setting up of the Cabinet Mission: ‘to secure Britain’s defence interests in
India and the Indian Ocean Area’. Other scholars have taken to evaluating the
Cabinet Mission and its Plan: Granville Austin argues that the Cabinet Mission (‘non-
Indians’) should have never attempted to mediate between the Congress and the
Muslim league: ‘it was foredoomed to failure’. The Cabinet Mission Plan continues to
be relevant to scholars and the general public in understanding and making sense of
not only the origins of the Indian Constitution, but also the future of the Indian
republic.

Post-mortem: Why the Cabinet Mission

Plan could have worked?
Federalism is based upon the clear division of authority between the different
levels of government, each of which has the power to raise finances to discharge its
constitutional obligations. Ideally, the centre, provinces, and local governments
should derive their income from different sources or, if that is not possible, negotiate
a formula. As the centre is invested with supreme judicial authority, and possesses a
near monopoly on professionally organized military power, it is in a position to settle
disputes between the federating units.
The Cabinet Mission Plan envisioned a three-tiered federation of provinces,
groups, and the centre. The centre would control defence, foreign affairs, and
communications and wield “the powers necessary to raise finances for the above
subjects.”56 This implied that the centre would also retain control of customs and
have the power to raise taxes. It is difficult to imagine how or why the Congress-
ruled provinces of Section A, which contained the bulk of India’s population and

11 | P a g e
wealth, would impede the financial administration of a centre in which the Congress
was the majority party.
The constitution-making process laid down by the Cabinet Mission Plan does
seem cumbersome on paper. First, everyone would meet together, then the
assembly would split into groups and provinces, and finally the representatives
would reassemble to decide the Union constitution, which, in ten years, would be
subject to review.
The argument that the process would cause endless delay and confusion
seems to ignore the centralized structure of the Congress and the Muslim League.
The Congress leadership would have been able to formulate a constitution within a
few years for Section A. Indeed, the actual process of constitution-making in India,
which took just three years, was remarkably fast for a country of its size and
diversity.
The experience of constitution-making in the smaller sovereign Pakistan that
emerged from partition does raise serious questions about the viability of the
Cabinet Mission Plan. There are, however, several compelling reasons why
constitution-making in Sections B and C would have proceeded much faster than it
did in Pakistan.
First, the Muslim League leadership from the minority provinces lost its
political base of support after partition. The conflict between the émigrés and the
entrenched local notables that developed after partition could not have occurred if
the Cabinet Mission Plan had been implemented. Second, since the groups would
first determine their constitutions separately, the problem of balancing the Bengali
majority that plagued West Pakistan politicians and caused so much acrimony could
not have arisen. Third, the relation between Islam and the state, which exacerbated
communal tensions and led to endless controversy in Pakistan, would never have
figured prominently as Groups B and C had an overall Muslim majority of sixty per
cent. Last, but certainly not the least, is the fact that if there had been a single centre
Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah would have probably remained President of the
Muslim League and participated actively in the constitutional debates.
It is manifestly evident that the implementation of the Cabinet Mission Plan
would have significantly altered the course of history. In a united India, the Muslims
would not have succumbed to military rule and autonomous institutions would have
continued to develop. The prospect of religious parties coming to power in the
centres or at the group levels could have been ruled out by the presence of large,
vocal, and politically organized minorities at an all-India and provincial level.
The possibility of provinces seceding/opting out of groups or the union itself
drew considerable criticism in 1946. Nehru, in his infamous July press conference at
12 | P a g e
Bombay pointed out that Assam and the N.W.F.P. would reject the compulsory
grouping at the earliest opportunity. That Section A was dominated by Congress and
opposed to compulsory grouping indicates that after the first general elections the
groups would have been modified and a two-tiered all-India federation established.
If events had developed along these lines, the Muslim League would have raised the
possibility of secession as its assent to the Cabinet Mission Plan was based on
compulsory grouping. Thus, it is reasonable to maintain, that the Cabinet Mission
Plan would have merely postponed partition until the first general elections.
A possible answer to this important point can be gleaned from the early
political history of Pakistan. The Muslim League’s performance as a political party
was dismal — an assessment confirmed by the 1954 elections and its rapid loss of
popularity in East Bengal. If the rate of deterioration was so fast in a country with a
Muslim majority of eighty-five per cent besieged by its Hindu neighbour, then it
could only have been faster under the Cabinet Mission’s scheme. Most probably,
after the first general elections the Muslim League would not have been in a position
to secede even if it had wanted to. On the other hand, the princely states could only
have acceded to a single centre, thus there was no chance of a war of imperial
succession.
Furthermore, it is a mistake to consider the Cabinet Mission Plan a complete
manual for the future constitution of India. It merely set the guidelines and outlined
the procedure most likely to secure maximum autonomy for the provinces without
compromising India’s administrative, economic, and military unity. A loose
constructionist interpretation of the Cabinet Mission Plan leaves little doubt that the
centre would have also retained control of foreign trade, currency, external loans,
defence production, and the judicial system. Nehru’s criticism of the Plan on July 10,
1946, is principally based upon what the Plan did not say or allow.

Conclusion:
Ultimately, the success of a complex solution to a complex set of problems
rests on the political will, creativity, and commitment of the major parties concerned.
Political will, however, is all too often a function of short-term perceived interests
and often operates according to an internal logic divorced from a sense of history.
Because the Plan was never implemented, the arguments for and against its
workability are speculative and belong in the realm of alternative history. Any
criticism of the Cabinet Mission Plan must be placed in the context of what has

13 | P a g e
happened in the decades since it was rejected for the present condition of the
Subcontinent has evolved out of the failure of the main parties to implement the
Cabinet Mission Plan.

The End

14 | P a g e