SAPRU’S WARNING

HOWEVER opinion may differ regarding Dr Tej Bahadur Sapru’s actual achievement — and for our part we have already said what we think of it — no honest and impartial critic will deny that his speech at the Imperial Conference was a great forensic effort. It was a speech which only an accomplished advocate, who is absolutely convinced of the justice of his case and has taken great pains to master it in all its details and all its bearings, and who at the same time knows how to present his facts and marshal his arguments with the utmost effectiveness, could have made. As one goes through this long oration, one feels that while it contains almost everything that was worth saying, all or much of it is said in exactly the way that was best calculated to appeal to the assembled delegates. As Gopal Krishna Gokhale once said of himself, nothing could have been easier than for Dr Sapru to have summed up his case in a few brave words, but those words, while winning for the speaker the applause of his own countrymen to whom they were not addressed and for whom they were not primarily meant, would have produced no tangible effect upon those whose judgment and will Dr Sapru was out to influence. We have made no secret of our own opinion that the occasion required not speech but action, and that the best thing which Dr Sapru could have done would have been to withdraw from the conference as a protest against the Kenya decision. But we do think that having rejected this alternative, the course which Dr Sapru actually followed was the only rational, expedient course. 

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.