# The Round Tables and the Poona Pact
**गोलमेज़ सम्मेलन और पूना समझौता**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/poona-pact-1932/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1932 CE
- Where: Yerwada Central Jail, Pune (18.5646, 73.8897)
- Tags: political, religion

## Summary

Gandhi fasts in Yerwada jail against separate electorates for the depressed classes; on 24 September 1932 Ambedkar accepts reserved seats instead.

गांधी ने दलित वर्गों के लिए पृथक निर्वाचन के विरुद्ध यरवदा जेल में अनशन किया; 24 सितंबर 1932 को आंबेडकर ने उसके बदले आरक्षित सीटें स्वीकार कीं।

## Account

Three Round Table Conferences met in London between November 1930 and December 1932 to settle India's next constitution. At the second, in the autumn of 1931, Gandhi came as the Congress's only delegate and claimed to speak for all Indians, including the untouchables. B. R. Ambedkar, there as their delegate, demanded separate electorates for them, and the two men clashed in the minorities committee. The conference failed to agree, and Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award of 16 August 1932 gave the depressed classes separate electorates, along with a second vote in the general constituencies.

Gandhi, in Yerwada jail since January, began a fast unto death on 20 September. After four days of negotiation Ambedkar and the Hindu leaders signed the Poona Pact: in place of the Award's 78 separate seats, 148 seats in the provincial legislatures were reserved for the depressed classes, filled by joint electorates after a primary among depressed-class voters. Gandhi broke his fast on the 26th. The reserved seats passed into the Act of 1935 and, in another form, into the Constitution.

Ambedkar later called the fast "the worst form of coercion against a helpless people", made to take away the electorate the Award had given them. Gandhi's admirers see it as the moment he kept the untouchables inside a single Hindu electorate and began his campaign against untouchability.

## Sources

- Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables (1946 ed.) — https://archive.org/details/whatcongressgand00bram
- Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (1954) — https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.6522

## Image

M.R. Jayakar, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar at Yerwada jail, in Poona, on 24 September 1932, the day the Poona Pact was signed. Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AM.R._Jayakar%2C_Tej_Bahadur_Sapru_and_Dr._Babasaheb_Ambedkar_at_Yerwada_jail%2C_in_Poona%2C_on_24_September_1932%2C_the_day_the_Poona_Pact_was_signed.jpg

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