Change for the worse
THERE is a significant passage in this week’s Young India that unfortunately leaves no room for doubt in one’s mind that the Mahatma is no longer as keen on bringing about a united Congress as he was believed to be two months, perhaps even a month, ago. “Neither the spinning wheel nor the boycott of foreign cloth,” he writes, “can be expeditiously worked in the teeth of opposition from within the Congress ranks. Indeed, we must strive to gain the support of non-Congressmen for the national constructive programme. They may not like spinning or wearing khaddar as part of the franchise, but I have not met many Liberals who have any objection to hand-spinning as a cottage industry or to the use of khaddar as such and apart from the franchise. It may be constitutionally impossible for all parties to accept the existing Congress creed or the new franchise and therefore to become Congressmen. But I hope that the existence of the creed or the new franchise will not be a bar against joint work wherever it is possible.” If these words mean anything, they mean that the Mahatma has now made up his mind or, at any rate, is inclined to accept the lower ideal of an occasional united front in the presence of the higher ideal of a united Congress as the symbol, the outward expression, the organ of a united India. They mean also that he no longer wishes the Congress, as he undoubtedly did at one time, to be India’s national assembly, but is content to leave it to play the much humbler role of a body representing only the advanced wing of the nation.
