Proposed Indian Round Table Conference 1922

Descriptions of what happened vary greatly (listed from the most to least probable)

1. Malaviya Proposed Round Table, The Viceroy Lord Reading Agreed, Mahatma Gandhi Sabotages the Idea Read p 194-5 (references not given)

"The Prince of Wales was due in Calcutta on 24 December, and any more violent disorder there had to be prevented at all costs..... During the next two months over 30,000 people were arrested in India as a whole, and of the top leadership of the Non-Cooperation Movement, only Gandhi remained free…. There was a very real danger for the government that its new wave of repression would drive the Liberals and Moderates back into the Congress camp, which would have been disastrous. Malaviya had been urging the viceroy for some time to call a round-table conference with Gandhi and the Moderates. In mid-December, Reading agreed, promising at the same time to release the political prisoners, end the repressive measures, and even grant 'full provincial autonomy' if Gandhi would call off the non-co-operation movement…. At first, Gandhi agreed. But he quickly changed his mind, wiring Malaviya: ‘Non-co-operation can cease only after satisfactory result conference. In no case have I authority to decide for Congress.’ His ‘private notes’ made at the time give a more complex, perhaps more revealing, reason for his decision: ‘I am sorry,' he wrote, 'that I suspect Lord Reading of complicity in the plot to unman India for eternity.’

"There is little doubt that if Gandhi had agreed to attend the conference, the Moderates would have joined forces with him to achieve substantial constitutional concessions. Reading was prepared to give full responsible government to the provinces, despite the doubts of London and most of the senior governors. He told Montagu: ‘I ... was prepared to act on my own responsibility if the proper assurances had been forthcoming.’ This would have been not merely a step but a giant leap towards self-government, advancing the eventual transfer of power by a full 15 years. But it was not to be…. at a stormy annual session of Congress in Ahmedabad, Gandhi came under attack both from those who wanted to seek an accommodation with the government and those who wanted more militant action immediately. But in the end, as always, Gandhi carried the day, His rejection of Reading's offer was confirmed, and he was given dictatorial powers over non-co-operation. He announced that the postponed campaign of 'offensive civil disobedience' in Bardoli would go ahead.

"Although they had been upset by Gandhi's intransigence, some of the Moderates were still hoping to find some way of bringing Gandhi and Reading together, to achieve the positive constitutional advances they knew were possible. Jinnah and Malaviya called an all-parties conference in Bombay …. Gandhi attended 'informally', after Congress had agreed to postpone the start of civil disobedience until the end of the month. The motions calling for a round-table conference were passed unanimously, But then Gandhi threw another spanner in the, refusing to take part. Obsessed with putting full-scale satyagraha to the test, he decided that a conference 'for devising a scheme of full swaraj premature. India has not yet incontestably proved her strength'."

2. Reading Proposed Round Table – Cabinet Vetoes Bridge p. 11 (Based on D. A. Low, “The Government of India and the first Non-cooperation Movement, 1920-22”, Journal of Asian Studies, XXV (1966), pp. 241–59)

"Lord Reading, the Liberal Viceroy (1921-6), had reached the end of his tether…. faced with massive demonstrations looming against the Prince of Wales in Calcutta, he wavered add asked for permission to convene a round table, conference and offer concessions-possibly full provincial autonomy. An emergency meeting of the Cabinet India Committee refused him outright and told him to arrest Gandhi, who was still at large, forthwith. Still smarting over the Irish Treaty of the previous week, they were not prepared to retreat again at the bidding of a nervous Viceroy whose character some of them doubted. Gandhi was arrested in March 1922 and jailed for six years (though he was out in two). Civil disobedience collapsed."

3. Reading Opposes the Proposed Round Table Reading 1945 p. 195

"The situation was in fact critical. The influence of the Government had so gravely declined that in various quarters both in India and in England it was suggested that the only course was for the Viceroy to call a Round Table Conference in an attempt to reach an agreed settlement of India's political problems. But Lord Reading set his face against all such hints and proposals, and not only declared his intention of refusing to take the initiative in summoning such a conference but also of rejecting the proposal if made by anybody else. For he realized that there could be no compromise with the out-and-out extremists, who at this time were in full control of the non-co-operation movement; as he himself wrote: 'The truth is, the more I consider the question of a Round Table Conference, the more I lean to the conclusion that unless the non-co-operationists make very material changes in their programme, it will not be possible to conciliate them.'"