The problem with separate electorates

On 27 August 1947, B. Pocker Bahadur from Madras made a powerful plea for continuing separate electorates for Muslims: he argued that minorities needed them to have a meaningful voice.

Most nationalists were strongly opposed. Vallabhbhai Patel called separate electorates a 'poison' that had entered the body politic, and the British mischief that had led to Partition.

Govind Ballabh Pant argued that they would be suicidal for the minorities themselves: they would isolate them permanently, make them vulnerable, and deprive them of influence within the government.

The nationalists stressed that there must be one loyalty, to the State. As one member put it: 'it is the citizen that must count', not the community.

By 1949, most Muslim members of the Assembly, like Begum Aizaas Rasul, came to oppose separate electorates too, agreeing that they were not in the interest of Muslims. One citizen, one loyalty.