Comment: Simon Commission. (2003, 20 Marks)
The Indian Statutory Commission, appointed in November 1927 under Sir John Simon, was the review of the 1919 reforms that Section 84A of the Government of India Act had promised after ten years. Its significance lies less in its report than in the reaction it provoked: an inquiry into India’s political future without a single Indian member re-united a fractured nationalism and pushed it towards independence.
Why and how it was constituted
- The Conservative Secretary of State Lord Birkenhead advanced the review by two years, fearing a Labour government would shape it more generously.
- All seven members were British MPs, including Clement Attlee; Birkenhead justified the all-white composition on the ground that Parliament’s commission must consist of parliamentarians.
- He also taunted Indians to produce an agreed constitution of their own — a challenge that boomeranged.
The Indian response
- The Madras Congress (December 1927, under M. A. Ansari) resolved to boycott it at every stage; the Muhammad Ali Jinnah faction of the Muslim League and the Liberals under Tej Bahadur Sapru joined in.
- On arrival at Bombay on 3 February 1928 it met a hartal and black flags with “Simon Go Back“. At Lahore on 30 October 1928 Lala Lajpat Rai was beaten in a lathi charge and died on 17 November; Bhagat Singh‘s group killed J. P. Saunders in reprisal.
- The constructive answer was the Nehru Report (1928) of the All Parties Conference, demanding dominion status, fundamental rights and joint electorates. Its rejection by League hardliners produced Jinnah’s Fourteen Points (1929), and the Congress, radicalised, adopted Purna Swaraj at Lahore (December 1929).
- Not all boycotted. The Justice Party, Punjab’s Unionists and B. R. Ambedkar — who gave evidence for the Depressed Classes in 1928 — cooperated, seeing a chance to press claims the Congress subsumed. The Dalit perspective thus reads Simon as an opening, not merely an insult.
Recommendations (Report, June 1930)
| Area | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Provinces | Abolish dyarchy; full provincial autonomy, with Governors’ emergency and safeguard powers |
| Centre | No responsible government; an indirectly elected federal assembly |
| Representation | Retain separate electorates pending communal agreement; widen the franchise |
| Long term | An eventual all-India federation with the princely states, and a consultative council with them |
| Other | Separate Burma; Indianise the army gradually |
Dominion status was not mentioned. Lord Irwin‘s declaration of 31 October 1929 and the Round Table Conferences (1930–32) overtook the report before it appeared.
Assessment
- Bipan Chandra‘s nationalist reading stresses its unintended effect: it ended the post-1922 lull and fused Congress, Liberals and a section of the League in protest.
- Yet its substance survived. Provincial autonomy and the federal idea became the core of the Government of India Act, 1935, and through it of the 1950 Constitution — the irony that the most boycotted commission supplied the most durable design.
- Its weakness was the premise that India’s constitution could be written for Indians. The same period’s Indian answer — the Nehru Report — anticipated the Constituent Assembly’s principle of self-authorship.
- The demand it fuelled for provincial autonomy runs on: from Tamil Nadu’s Rajamannar Committee (1969) through the Sarkaria and Punchhi Commissions to the committee under Justice Kurian Joseph that Tamil Nadu constituted in April 2025 to re-examine Union–State relations.
Conclusion
The Simon Commission failed as a British exercise in legitimacy but succeeded as a catalyst: it forced Indians to write their own constitutional programme, radicalised the Congress towards complete independence, and — ironically — bequeathed provincial autonomy to the very republic that rejected its authority.