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The Cabinet Mission came to India in February 1946. It was recognized as a very important phase of the final hurdle of India’s struggle for independence. The Cabinet Mission was sent by then Prime Minister Clement Atlee. The Cabinet Mission members comprised Sir Stafford Cripps, Pethick Lawrence, and A. V. Alexander. The purpose of this cabinet mission was to transfer the powers to the Indians.
Objectives of the Cabinet Mission
To give the Indians the necessary powers for self-rule and help them to frame a constitution.
To formulate the Constitution Assembly Body of India to make the constitution.
Establishing an executive council by keeping in mind the demands of the Indian parties. The proposals were given to ensure that a mutual agreement can be made as soon as possible between the two parties; the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League because they were not coming into any sort of agreement due to their major ideological differences.
Reasons for the failure of the Cabinet Mission
The prime reasons for the failure of the Cabinet Mission are:
The Congress wanted to control the majority of the power by forming a strong center and wanted to give minimum powers to the other provinces.
The Muslim League was extremely skeptical about the proposals of the cabinet mission. They did not trust them as they thought there would be a major imbalance of power and the Muslim communities would be deprived.
It was difficult to come to mutual terms and have a common ground as there was a massive ideological difference between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League.
Issues regarding the Dominion of India without any partition were another reason for the failure.
A conflict of interest between the Hindu and Muslim groups as two Muslim-majority provinces were grouped into two different groups and the remaining group comprised the Hindu majority.
The demand for the majority of power in Delhi was another reason for the failure of the cabinet mission. The most important powers like foreign affairs, defense, currency, and communications were demanded by the Indian National Congress and other minor powers were proposed to be vested upon the other provinces. This did not go well with the Muslim League.
The Indian National Congress was strictly against the idea of a weakened center and division of provinces based on religion. On the other hand, the Muslims demanded a separate state by mentioning that the Muslims will be neglected if they accepted the demands of congress.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did not accept the new proposals where the cabinet proposed two new states of India (Hindus) and Pakistan (Muslims) and other princely states who would have been given the choice of joining either one of the two. Instead, Nehru agreed to be a participant in the constituent assembly. As a result, the mission stayed in India without any success for even longer now as no conclusions were still made.
The Muslims did not take part in the Viceroy’s interim council after Congress nominated Zakir Hussain as one of the five members of the council. The Muslim League stated that they represented Indian Muslims and no other party and thus, the cabinet mission suffered more setbacks.
After Nehru headed the interim council and started to build a new government by forming governments in most of the princely states including the NWFP and started to work on the constitution, the Muslim League did not support that either and started forming separate governments in Bengal and Sindh.
Md. Ali Jinnah finally declared that it is now or never and the Muslim League must fight for the separate state of Pakistan and called for action. He declared Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946, and urged all Muslims to demand Pakistan.
Riots were experienced as a result and Bengal was amongst the worst sufferers as more than 5000 people were killed according to records. Mass killings were witnessed in Bihar and Noakhali. Riots also happened in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on the first day itself.
Conclusion
Ultimately, even with so many flaws of the cabinet mission, both parties decided to accept the proposals of the cabinet mission on June 24, 1946. However, later on, the Muslim League withdrew in their pursuit of a separate independent state.
