"It is certainly not an unfair reading of Gandhi’s mind to state that he offered ‘hope that separatism would eventually disappear.’ This separatism had become an official part of India’s political landscape with the creation of the Muslim League in 1906 as a party advocating loyalty to the British Empire, along with special privileges and reservations for the Muslim community. But the Mahatma consistently mishandled the issue and helped solidify Muslim communal politics. By 1934, when the communal division of political power and government jobs was being consolidated in law, his Congress movement was reduced to looking the other way, or what Gandhi called ‘neither accepting nor rejecting’. The phrase of ‘neither accepting nor rejecting’ summed up Gandhiji’s position vis-à-vis the ‘Communal Award’, the plan to thoroughly communalize the legislatures under the Government of India Act 1935. The secular position would have been to oppose the plan outright and to insist on non-communal assemblies elected by a single electorate comprising all voting citizens, regardless of religion, who were free to vote for any candidate, regardless of the latter’s religion. ..."