The Nehru Report and Muslim Rights — Page 113
l 113 1 reserved seats wi11 be allotted to the Muslims in those areas only, where they are most numerous, and the. greater part of their voting strength would thus be spent in returning candidates from those reserved constituen cies. In the remaining parts of the province there will be left at the most only ten to fifteen per cent. of the total Muslim votes available fo: participation in open election. No sensible man can believe that where the ,. Muslims with their full voting strength could not return even their legitimate proportion of candidates, they would be able with their residual votes to win seat5; from the Hindus who would number 93 ° ,� of the population. It is thus clear, that according to the ·ehru-Report p in those provinces where the Muslims happen to be in a minority, they will never be able to win seats more than their share on the basis of population. With regard to the Punjab and Bengal, the Report itself states that the Muslims wil1 be able to return 30 to 40 candidates only, whereas on a population basis they would be en titled to 74 candidates. In a word, even according to the Nehru-Report there can be no safeguarding of Muslim rights without reservation of seats ; and no poli tical school in the world would justify that eighty million of human beings should be deprived of their legitimate rights. Second Argument. The second argument in favour of reservation \)f seats is that in India the division of the population into major and minor communities has, unlike Europe, its basis in religious diversity, whi1e in the West the parties have their origin in political differences and are, therefore, subject to constant changes. In the Indian groups, changes are Jess frequent. It thus happens that when