Congress-Muslim League Unity in 1919-20
The Indian National Congress was formerly a completely developed political association when, in 1906, the All-India Muslim League was innovated at Dacca by a small group of Muslim leaders subscribing to the Aligarh academy of study, with the triadic object of promoting fidelity to the British Government, guarding and incubating the interests of the Muslim community and fosteringinter-communal concinnity. Virtually the first task which the recently formed body was called upon to shoulder brought it, utmost ominously, into direct conflict with interests which Congress represented. The Minto-Morley reforms scheme was at that time in the timber and the Congress-Muslim League Unity in 1919-20 Muslim League put forward the demand that statutory provision should be made for separate electorates in the new constitution. There was a great deal of Congress opposition to this demand — opposition which has persisted to the present day — but Congress expostulations were eventually withdrawn and, in the Council Act which came into force in 1909, the principle of separate electorates was formally recognised and executed. Therefore, in the first round of the battle which was fated to rage in the Indian political world with adding assertiveness in times to come, the Muslim League scored an easy palm over Congress.
The times incontinently following 1909 were, still, a period of adding collaboration between the two associations. Numerous causes contributed to this development. The top factor which drew the League within the instigative route of Congress was the hostility towards Britain (and other European powers) aroused amongst Indian Muslims generally as a result of the Balkan War, the Italian subjection of Turkey’s African conglomerate, Turkey’s participation against the Allied Powers in the Great War, and the Khilafat agitation that followed its termination. By 1912, the “ fidelity” clause was dropped from the statement of points and objects of the League. In 1913, the Congress-Muslim League Unity in 1919-20 League espoused a new constitution embodying in it a near variant of the also Congress objective, videlicet, the “ attainment under the aegis of the British Crown of a system of tone- government suitable to India through indigenous means.” The climax of Congress-League collaboration was reached in 1916 when a scheme of indigenous reforms was formulated by the leaders of two associations on the principles embodied in the Lucknow Pact. Congress-Muslim League Unity in 1919-20 This Pact handed, originally, that no measure affecting the vital interests of a community should be accepted if opposed by three-fourths of the members of that community in a legislative body and, secondly, that one-third of the Indian tagged members of houses must be Muslims tagged by separate electorates.