A Brief History of Simla Conference
- Lord Wavell Invited the most prominent 21, political leaders, to the Viceregal Lodge, Simla, and this conference started from 25th June to 14th July 1945. The list of Invited guests also included Dr. B.R Ambedkar to represent the “Depressed Classes”, Tara Singh representing “Sikhs”, M.N Roy to represent the laborers, and other prominent leaders to represent non congress or non-league persuasions.
- Abul Kalam Azad spoke in his capacity as the President of the INC clarifying its non-communal stance that the INC will maintain and expressing disagreement towards the demands proposed by Jinnah. In rebuttal, Jinnah accused the INC of being Hindu-centric, this dispute carried on throughout the conference. Six of the sixteen members were assigned for Muslims.
- As per the Wavell Plan, the attendees were supposed to nominate members from their fold to be part of the executive council. All entities who took part in the conference nominated a member of the executive council. Tara Singh was to represent the Sikhs, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar would be representing the Depressed Class. Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Madhav Shrihari Aney, and B. N. Rau were the five “Caste-Hindus” who was nominated to the council.
- Out of these four Muslim members were to be nominated by the AIML. The AIML wanted the right to nominate all the six Muslim members to the Executive Council and demanded that AIML be recognized as the sole representative of Muslims.
- INC was ready to submit its list of candidates for the new executive council but Jinnah delayed the submission from AIML. On further correspondence with Wavell, Jinnah stood his ground and expected Wavell to agree to his demands. When Jinnah did not receive a response from Wavell, he declined to be part of the plan and completely withdrew from the talks. No concrete decision was taken at Simla resulting in the failure of the conference.
- The failure of Wavell’s effort was complete when the world war ended and the Labour Party came into power.
- The leaders of the Labour Party wanted to grant India its independence quickly, therefore sent the cabinet mission to fulfill this very purpose.
- The Simla Conference is viewed as one of the major events that led to the partition of the country. M. Jinnah’s stubborn stance on the creation of a separate state for Muslims and apprehension against the INC nominating Muslim representatives caused the occurrence of partition to be inevitable.
Wavell Plan and Shimla Conference
Wavell Plan and Shimla Conference: Sir Archibald Wavell succeeded Lord Linlithgow as Viceroy of India in September 1943, appointed by Winston Churchill during a period of unrest between the British Empire and advocates of Indian independence. As a former Commander in Chief of India, Wavell brought insight into the pressing issues of the time.
The Simla Conference of 1945, held during Wavell’s tenure, gathered notable figures from India’s freedom movement to discuss post-independence roles and representation. Despite the conference’s aim to address these issues, it failed to reach a consensus, serving instead to amplify individual community demands, ultimately leading to its failure.