BharatNotes What is Communal Award?
The Communal Award was a scheme of communal electoral representation for British India announced on 16 August 1932 by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, which is why it is also called the MacDonald Award. It was issued after Indian delegates at the Second Round Table Conference (1931) failed to agree on the minorities question, leaving the British government to impose its own settlement. Its most explosive provision was the extension of separate electorates to the Depressed Classes (today's Scheduled Castes), treating them as a minority distinct from the Hindu community.
Key Features
- Separate electorates continued for Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans, with the principle of weightage applied in seat allocation.
- Depressed Classes recognised as a minority: they were to elect their own representatives through separate constituencies, while also retaining a vote in the general constituencies (a "double vote"), an arrangement intended to operate for 20 years.
- Reserved seats were also provided for special interests such as labour, commerce, landholders and women, and for Marathas in certain Bombay constituencies.
- The communal scheme of representation was later carried, as modified by the Poona Pact, into the Government of India Act, 1935.
Reactions and the Poona Pact
Dr B. R. Ambedkar supported the Award, arguing that only autonomous political representation could protect a community excluded from Hindu social life. Gandhi, imprisoned in Yerwada Jail, Poona, condemned it as a British attempt to permanently divide Hindus and began a fast unto death on 20 September 1932. Frantic negotiations produced the Poona Pact, signed on 24 September 1932 by leaders of caste Hindus and the Depressed Classes (Madan Mohan Malaviya was a principal signatory on the caste-Hindu side); Gandhi broke his fast on 26 September 1932.
| Provision | Communal Award (Aug 1932) | Poona Pact (Sep 1932) |
|---|---|---|
| Electorate for Depressed Classes | Separate electorates | Joint electorates with reserved seats |
| Provincial legislature seats | 71 | 148 |
| Central legislature | Communal allocation | 18% of British India general seats reserved |
| Candidate selection | Direct separate election | Primary election of a panel of four by Depressed Classes voters |
Significance
The Communal Award episode crystallised the Gandhi–Ambedkar debate on caste and political safeguards, accelerated anti-untouchability campaigns (including the Harijan Sevak Sangh, founded in 1932), and entrenched the system of joint electorates with reserved seats that independent India's Constitution retained for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Articles 330 and 332). It also deepened communal separation in electoral politics, a trend many historians link to the eventual demand for Partition.
UPSC Angle
This is a foundational concept that underpins questions on the national movement of the 1930s — the Round Table Conferences, Civil Disobedience Movement, Poona Pact, Government of India Act 1935, and the evolution of separate electorates from the Morley–Minto Reforms (1909). Aspirants should remember the trio of dates — Award (16 August 1932), Gandhi's fast (20 September 1932), Poona Pact (24 September 1932) — and the 71-to-148 seat change, alongside the analytical Mains theme of separate versus joint electorates.
