Simon Commission


Simon Commission

 

a commission appointed by the British government in 1927 to report on the working of the constitution in India and to present recommendations for reforms. Its members were from the Conservative, Liberal, and Labour parties. J. A. Simon served as chairman.

The appointment of the commission, which had extremely limited functions and did not include a single representative from India itself, caused a wave of indignation and a growth in the anti-imperialist movement in India. The Indian National Congress Party formulated a demand (December 1927) that India be granted full national independence; the party also called for a boycott of the commission. The boycott campaign took on broad scope and attested to a new upsurge of the national liberation movement in India. The commission’s findings, gathered in India in 1928 and 1929 and published in 1930, resulted in effect merely in a recommendation that the question of the Indian constitution be discussed at a round table conference (seeINDIA ROUND TABLE CONFERENCES).