Negotiations

The government, represented by Lord Irwin, decided to negotiate with Gandhi. The Gandhi–Irwin
Pact was signed in March 1931. The British Government agreed to free all political prisoners, in return
for the suspension of the civil disobedience movement. According to the pact, Gandhi was invited to
attend the Round Table Conference in London for discussions and as the sole representative of the
Indian National Congress. The conference was a disappointment to Gandhi and the nationalists. Gandhi
expected to discuss India's independence, while the British side focused on the Indian princes and Indian
minorities rather than on a transfer of power. Lord Irwin's successor, Lord Willingdon, took a hard line
against India as an independent nation, began a new campaign of controlling and subduing the
nationalist movement. Gandhi was again arrested, and the government tried and failed to negate his
influence by completely isolating him from his followers.
In Britain, Winston Churchill, a prominent Conservative politician who was then out of office but later
became its prime minister, became a vigorous and articulate critic of Gandhi and opponent of his long-
term plans. Churchill often ridiculed Gandhi, saying in a widely reported 1931 speech:
It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a
fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace....to
parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
Churchill's bitterness against Gandhi grew in the 1930s. He called Gandhi as the one who was "seditious
in aim" whose evil genius and multiform menace was attacking the British empire. Churchill called him a
dictator, a "Hindu Mussolini", fomenting a race war, trying to replace the Raj with Brahmin cronies,
playing on the ignorance of Indian masses, all for selfish gain. Churchill attempted to isolate Gandhi, and
his criticism of Gandhi was widely covered by European and American press. It gained Churchill
sympathetic support, but it also increased support for Gandhi among Europeans. The developments
heightened Churchill's anxiety that the "British themselves would give up out of pacifism and misplaced
conscience".
Round Table Conferences
During the discussions between Gandhi and the British government over 1931–32 at the Round Table
Conferences, Gandhi, now aged about 62, sought constitutional reforms as a preparation to the end of
colonial British rule, and begin the self-rule by Indians. The British side sought reforms that would keep
Indian subcontinent as a colony. The British negotiators proposed constitutional reforms on a British
Dominion model that established separate electorates based on religious and social divisions. The British
questioned the Congress party and Gandhi's authority to speak for all of India. They invited Indian
religious leaders, such as Muslims and Sikhs, to press their demands along religious lines, as well as B. R.
Ambedkar as the representative leader of the untouchables. Gandhi vehemently opposed a constitution
that enshrined rights or representations based on communal divisions, because he feared that it would
not bring people together but divide them, perpetuate their status and divert the attention from India's
struggle to end the colonial rule.
The Second Round Table conference was the only time he left India between 1914 and his death in
1948. He declined the government's offer of accommodation in an expensive West End hotel, preferring
to stay in the East End, to live among working-class people, as he did in India. He based himself in a
small cell-bedroom at Kingsley Hall for the three-month duration of his stay and was enthusiastically
received by East Enders. During this time he renewed his links with the British vegetarian movement.
After Gandhi returned from the Second Round Table conference, he started a new satyagraha. He was
arrested and imprisoned at the Yerwada Jail, Pune. While he was in prison, the British government
enacted a new law that granted untouchables a separate electorate. It came to be known as
the Communal Award. In protest, Gandhi started a fast-unto-death, while he was held in prison. The
resulting public outcry forced the government, in consultations with Ambedkar, to replace the
Communal Award with a compromise Poona Pact.

In 1934 Gandhi resigned from Congress party membership. He did not disagree with the party's position
but felt that if he resigned, his popularity with Indians would cease to stifle the party's membership,
which actually varied, including communists, socialists, trade unionists, students, religious conservatives,
and those with pro-business convictions, and that these various voices would get a chance to make
themselves heard. Gandhi also wanted to avoid being a target for Raj propaganda by leading a party that
had temporarily accepted political accommodation with the Raj.
Gandhi returned to active politics again in 1936, with the Nehru presidency and the Lucknow session of
the Congress. Although Gandhi wanted a total focus on the task of winning independence and not
speculation about India's future, he did not restrain the Congress from adopting socialism as its goal.
Gandhi had a clash with Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been elected president in 1938, and who had
previously expressed a lack of faith in nonviolence as a means of protest. Despite Gandhi's opposition,
Bose won a second term as Congress President, against Gandhi's nominee, Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya; but
left the Congress when the All-India leaders resigned en masse in protest of his abandonment of the
principles introduced by Gandhi. Gandhi declared that Sitaramayya's defeat was his defeat.