Who declared that the demand for separate electorates was not only harmful for the nation but also for the minorities?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Govind Ballabh Pant
On 27 August 1947, B. Pocker Bahadur from Madras made a powerful plea in the Constituent Assembly for continuing separate electorates. Countering this demand, Govind Ballabh Pant declared that separate electorates were not only harmful for the nation but also for the minorities. He agreed with Bahadur that a democracy should be judged by the confidence it created among different sections of people, but called separate electorates a suicidal demand that would permanently isolate the minorities and deprive them of any effective say within the government.
NCERT (2025-26): “3.1 The problem with separate electorates … On 27 August 1947, B. Pocker Bahadur from Madras made a powerful plea for continuing separate electorates. Minorities exist in all lands, argued Bahadur; they could not be wished away, they could not be ‘erased out of existence’. The need was to create a political framework in which minorities could live in harmony with others,… Countering the demand for separate electorates, Govind Ballabh Pant declared that it was not only harmful for the nation but also for the minorities. He agreed with Bahadur that the success of a democracy was to be judged by the confidence it generated amongst different sections of people. He agreed too that every citizen in a free state should be treated in a manner that satisfied ‘not only his material wants but also his spiritual sense of self-respect’, and that the majority community had an obligation to try and understand the problems of minorities, and empathise with their aspirations. Yet Pant opposed the idea of separate electorates. It was a suicidal demand, he argued, that would permanently isolate the minorities, make them vulnerable, and deprive them of any effective say within the government.…” |