---
title: "Gandhi-Irwin Pact (1931): Terms & Significance"
description: "The Gandhi-Irwin Pact, signed on 5 March 1931, suspended the Civil Disobedience Movement and allowed Congress to join the Second Round Table Conference."
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/glossary/gandhi-irwin-pact"
---

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Model Diplomat Research Team · Last reviewed June 22, 2026

TL;DR

- The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was a political agreement signed on 5 March 1931 between Mahatma Gandhi and Viceroy Lord Irwin suspending the Civil Disobedience Movement.
- What did the Indian National Congress gain from the Gandhi-Irwin Pact?
- Why was the Gandhi-Irwin Pact criticised by younger nationalists?
- How is the Gandhi-Irwin Pact different from the Poona Pact?
- Did the Gandhi-Irwin Pact last?

[Civil Service & Diplomatic Exams](https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/civil-services/glossary)Updated June 22, 2026

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## Timeline

1. 5 March 1931

   The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was a political agreement signed on between Mahatma Gandhi and Viceroy Lord Irwin suspending the Civil Disobedience Movement.

2. 23 March 1931

   The Karachi session, however, met under the shadow of the executions of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru on , carried out despite widespread appeals; Gandh…

## Positions at a glance

### Indian National Congress

The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was a bilateral political settlement concluded on 5 March 1931 in New Delhi between Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, acting on behalf of the Indian National Congress, and Lord Irwin (Edward Wood, later Earl of Halifax), Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931. Its formal designation was the Delhi Pact, though it is universally known by the names of its two signatories. The agreement was a direct consequence of the Civil Disobedience Movement, launched by Gandhi with the Dandi Salt March of March–April 1930, which had by early 1931 filled British Indian jails with an estimated ninety thousand satyagrahis and severely disrupted revenue collection and trade. The legal and political backdrop was the British government's commitment, announced by Irwin in his October 1929 declaration, that the natural constitutional goal for India was Dominion status, and the convening of the First Round Table Conference in London (November 1930–January 1931), which the Congress had boycotted, rendering its conclusions politically hollow.

### All-India Muslim League

The Gandhi-Irwin Pact must be distinguished from the Poona Pact of September 1932, an agreement between Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar on the representation of the Depressed Classes following the Communal Award, with which it is sometimes confused. It is also distinct from the constitutional negotiations embodied in the Government of India Act 1935, which the Round Table process ultimately produced. Whereas the Lucknow Pact of 1916 was an intra-Indian accord between the Congress and the Muslim League, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was a negotiation between the nationalist movement and the colonial state, conducted on terms approaching, in form if not in substance, those between two contracting powers—a feature that Winston Churchill famously denounced, recoiling at the "nauseating" spectacle of the "half-naked fakir" parleying on equal terms with the King-Emperor's representative.

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Example

In March 1931 Mahatma Gandhi suspended the Civil Disobedience Movement under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, agreeing to attend the Second Round Table Conference in London later that year.

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