Drafted by the Indian statesman V. K. Krishna Menon,[1] the declaration stated the agreement of the prime ministers to the continued membership of India in the organization after it becomes a republic. By that declaration, the Government of India had expressed its acceptance of the king as a symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and head of the Commonwealth.
The declaration dealt only with India, considered as an exceptional case, and it reaffirmed that the other members of the Commonwealth owed common allegiance to the Crown with an initial acceptance of the king as a head of the Commonwealth. However, it did establish a precedent that republicanism is compatible with membership in the organization.[2]
History
The declaration stated vis-à-vis India:
The Government of India have ... declared and affirmed India's desire to continue her full membership of the Commonwealth of Nations and her acceptance of the King as the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth.[3]
This formula has since been deemed to be a sufficient precedent for all other countries.
The issue had been discussed at the 1948 Prime Ministers Conference, the agenda of which was dominated by the imminent decisions of two states—India and Ireland—to declare themselves republics.[4] At the meeting, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru proposed a Ten Point Memorandum on the settlement between India and the Commonwealth.[5] The Cabinet Committee on Commonwealth Relations recognised that Nehru's proposals could not constitute a basis for continued Commonwealth membership, and that a further conference would be required.[4]
We join the Commonwealth obviously because we think it is beneficial to us and to certain causes in the world that we wish to advance. The other countries of the Commonwealth want us to remain there because they think it is beneficial to them. It is mutually understood that it is to the advantage of the nations in the Commonwealth and therefore they join. At the same time, it is made perfectly clear that each country is completely free to go its own way; it may be that they may go, sometimes go so far as to break away from the Commonwealth...Otherwise, apart from breaking the evil parts of the association, it is better to keep a co-operative association going which may do good in this world rather than break it.[6]
At the next conference, in April 1949, Nehru, seeking above all to avoid two-tiered membership,[4] conceded a more agreeable three-point programme, based upon common Commonwealth citizenship, a declaration of India's continued membership, and recognition of the monarch in a separate capacity than that as monarch.[4] This met general agreement, particularly with the new South African Premier Daniel François Malan, and, during the next two days, the draft was crafted into a final agreement.[4] To avoid criticism about eliminating the word British from the name of the Commonwealth, Nehru conceded a reference to the "British Commonwealth of Nations" in the opening paragraph of the document as an historically-appropriate reference.[4]
King George VI was reticently in favour of the separation of the titles of king and Head of the Commonwealth, having met and liked Nehru, but was concerned with the practicalities.[4] News of the agreement was hailed by all those of the opposition party in the British House of Commons, including Winston Churchill and Clement Davies.[4] By contrast, Jan Smuts, who had been defeated by Malan in the South African general election the previous year and was considered second only to Churchill as a Commonwealth statesman,[7] was strongly opposed.[8] In the South African context, with which Smuts was mainly concerned, republicanism was mainly identified with Afrikanerconservatism and with tighter racial segregation.[9] The London conference - concerned mainly with India and to some degree with Ireland, which recently declared itself a republic - did not pay much attention for the implications for South Africa.
India became a republic in 1950 and remained in the Commonwealth. However, Ireland, which was in the same situation, having passed the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, declared itself a republic on 18 April 1949,[10] ten days before the declaration, and therefore quit the Commonwealth.
Appendix
Text of the Declaration
The Governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Ceylon, whose countries are united as Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations and owe a common allegiance to the Crown, which is also the symbol of their free association, have considered the impending constitutional changes in India.
The Government of India have informed the other Governments of the Commonwealth of the intention of the Indian people that under the new constitution which is about to be adopted India shall become a sovereign independent republic. The Government of India have however declared and affirmed India’s desire to continue her full membership of the Commonwealth of Nations and her acceptance of The King as the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth.
The Governments of the other countries of the Commonwealth, the basis of whose membership of the Commonwealth is not hereby changed, accept and recognise India’s continuing membership in accordance with the terms of this declaration.
Accordingly the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Ceylon hereby declare that they remain united as free and equal members of the Commonwealth of Nations, freely co-operating in the pursuit of peace, liberty and progress.[11]
↑ Brecher cites the negotiations that led to the creation of the modern Commonwealth, Page 20 in Brecher’s India and World Politics: Krishna Menon’s View of the World, Oxford University Press, London 1968.
↑ "although it was asserted that the case of India depended upon its own special circumstances, it has inevitably been regarded as having established a precedent. Common allegiance could not, after the Prime Ministers' Declaration of April, 1949, be posited as a fundamental rule of the Commonwealth association, though it is conceived that recognition of the Queen as " Head of the Commonwealth " is, at least for the present, such a rule. The constitutional status of the Members of the Commonwealth other than India was not intended to be changed by the 1949 Declaration; and the words of 1926 and 1931, reciting their " common allegiance to the Crown," were reaffirmed. S. A. de Smith, The Royal Styles and Titles, The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, April 1953, p. 265. JSTOR755789
↑ "Status of India in the Commonwealth". Documents on Canadian External Relations. Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. 6 June 2007. Archived from the original on 15 April 2008. Retrieved 25 July 2007.
The Balfour Declaration of 1926, issued by the 1926 Imperial Conference of British Empire leaders in London, was named after Arthur Balfour, who was Lord President of the Council. It declared the United Kingdom and the Dominions to be:
... autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
The Statute of Westminster 1931 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that sets the basis for the relationship between the Dominions and the Crown.
The Irish Free State, also known by its Irish name Saorstát Éireann, was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between the forces of the Irish Republic – the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – and British Crown forces.
The Irish Republic was an unrecognised revolutionary state that declared its independence from the United Kingdom in January 1919. The Republic claimed jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland, but by 1920 its functional control was limited to only 21 of Ireland's 32 counties, and British state forces maintained a presence across much of the north-east, as well as Cork, Dublin and other major towns. The republic was strongest in rural areas, and through its military forces was able to influence the population in urban areas that it did not directly control.
The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 is an Act of the Oireachtas which declared that the description of Ireland was to be the Republic of Ireland, and vested in the president of Ireland the power to exercise the executive authority of the state in its external relations, on the advice of the Government of Ireland. The Act was signed into law on 21 December 1948 and came into force on 18 April 1949, Easter Monday, the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Easter Rising.
A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state within the Commonwealth that has Charles III as its monarch and ceremonial head of state. All the realms are independent of the others, though one person, resident in the United Kingdom, acts as monarch of each. The phrase Commonwealth realm is an informal description not used in any law.
Peter Fraser was a New Zealand politician who served as the 24th prime minister of New Zealand from 27 March 1940 until 13 December 1949. Considered a major figure in the history of the New Zealand Labour Party, he was in office longer than any other Labour prime minister, and is to date New Zealand's fourth-longest-serving head of government.
The Head of the Commonwealth is the ceremonial leader who symbolises "the free association of independent member nations" of the Commonwealth of Nations, an intergovernmental organisation that currently comprises 56 sovereign states. There is no set term of office or term limit and the role itself has no constitutional relevance to any of the member states within the Commonwealth. The position is currently held by King Charles III. Head of the Commonwealth is also a title of the monarch of each of the Commonwealth realms according to the Royal Style and Titles Act.
From 1910 to 1961 the Union of South Africa was a self-governing country that shared a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Empire. The monarch's constitutional roles were mostly delegated to the Governor-General of the Union of South Africa.
The state known today as Ireland is the successor state to the Irish Free State, which existed from December 1922 to December 1937. At its foundation, the Irish Free State was, in accordance with its constitution and the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, governed as a constitutional monarchy, in personal union with the monarchy of the United Kingdom and other members of what was then called the British Commonwealth. The monarch as head of state was represented in the Irish Free State by his Governor-General, who performed most of the monarch's duties based on the advice of elected Irish officials.
The criteria for membership in the Commonwealth of Nations, which apply to current and prospective member states, have been altered by a series of documents issued over the past eighty-two years.
The republics in the Commonwealth of Nations are the sovereign states in the organisation with a republican form of government. As of June 2022, 36 out of the 56 member states were republics. While Charles III is the titular Head of the Commonwealth, the King is not the head of state of the republican members. The King is however, the reigning monarch in the Commonwealth realms. The Head of the Commonwealth role does not carry with it any power; instead, it is a symbol of the free association of Commonwealth members.
The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 56 sovereign states, referred to as Commonwealth countries. Most of them were British colonies or dependencies of those colonies.
The Preamble to the Constitution of India is based on the Objectives Resolution, which was moved in the Constituent Assembly by Jawaharlal Nehru on 13 December 1946 accepted on 22 January 1947 and adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, coming into force on 26 January 1950, celebrated as the Republic Day of India, and was initially drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru. The words "socialist", "secular" and "integrity" were later added during the Indian emergency by Indira Gandhi.
The Commonwealth of Nations, often simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is an international association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire from which it developed. They are connected through their use of the English language and historical-cultural ties. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental relations, and the Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations between member nations. Numerous organisations are associated with and operate within the Commonwealth.
A dominion was any of several largely self-governing countries of the British Empire, once known collectively as the British Commonwealth of Nations. Progressing from colonies, their degrees of colonial self-governance increased unevenly over the late 19th century through the 1930s. Vestiges of empire lasted in some dominions well into the late 20th century. With the evolution of the British Empire following the 1945 conclusion of the Second World War into the modern Commonwealth of Nations, finalised in 1949, the dominions became independent states, either as Commonwealth republics or Commonwealth realms.
External association was a hypothetical relationship between Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations proposed by Éamon de Valera in 1921–1922, whereby Ireland would be a sovereign state associated with, but not a member of, the Commonwealth; the British monarch would be head of the association, but not head of state of Ireland. De Valera proposed external association as a compromise between isolationist Irish republicanism on the one hand and Dominion status on the other. Whereas a full republic could not be a member of the Commonwealth until the London Declaration of 1949, a Dominion could not be fully independent until the Statute of Westminster 1931.
From 1947 to 1956, the Dominion of Pakistan was a self-governing country within the Commonwealth of Nations that shared a monarch with the United Kingdom and the other Dominions of the Commonwealth. The monarch's constitutional roles in Pakistan were mostly delegated to a vice-regal representative, the governor-general of Pakistan.
The 1949 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was the fourth meeting of the Heads of government of the Commonwealth of Nations. It was held in the United Kingdom in April 1949 and was hosted by that country's prime minister, Clement Attlee.
The 1961 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference was the 11th Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Nations. It was held in the United Kingdom in March 1961, and was hosted by that country's Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
