The Nehru Report and Muslim Rights — Page 109
[ 109 ] either of sheer ignorance, or of lack of commonsense, or of knowledge of past history. SAFEGUARD IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT RESERVATION. ( First Argument}. The Nehru-Report itself falsifies the principle ex pounded by it. It has been urged, as already men�ioned, that it is advantageous for the Muslims to abandon the system of reservation of seats because in this they, in consequence of open contest, would be in a position to wrest more seats than they could claim on population basis. The Nehru Committee considers it to be a sound argument and thinks that it has been generous to the Muslim, inasmuch as it has opened to them new avenues of progress by conferring on them the right to contest seats with the Hindus. ( Vide the Nehru-Report, p. 52). It is, however, strange that in the same breath the com mittee agree that there is a possibility of the minorities being totally deprived of their rights. The Committee say :-'' After the resolution of the informal conference referred to above was passed it was pointed out to us that it would work great hardship on the lv1us1im minority who in all probability be able to elect no more than 30 or 40 Muslims from the Punjab and Bengal, and perhaps one or two from the U. P. , and Behar, to the central legislature of 500 members, and that there was little chance of any of the other provinces with less than 7 per cent. of the population returning a single Muslim. The re sult, it was argued, would be that the MusEms, who form nearly one-fourth of the total population of British India, would have no more than one-tenth of representation in the central legislature. The same reasoning, it was urged, applied to the legislatures of the provinces where the Moslems • are in small minorities. We recognise the