Das-Lytton negotiations

WHAT has just been published about what is perhaps somewhat inaccurately described as the Das-Lytton negotiations will only whet the public curiosity instead of satisfying it. Who started these negotiations? When precisely were they started — before or after Lord Lytton became the acting Governor-General? Through whom were they carried on? And lastly, what was their nature? To none of these points, except the last, does Mahatma Gandhi appear to have referred at all in the interview he gave to the Englishman, while as regards the last, all that he said was that “he did not know the actual and verifiable contents of those communications”, though he did “perhaps know the general trend, which it was neither profitable nor advisable to disclose.” The only important statement made by the Mahatma was that “some kind of communications were certainly going on between Lord Lytton and Deshbandhu CR Das through an intermediary.” Here, again, the Mahatma did not say, probably because it was unnecessary, whether the discussions related only to the affairs of Bengal or those of Indian generally. The fact that the discussions were being carried on with Lord Lytton makes it practically certain that they related only to Bengal, for it is inconceivable that Lord Lytton would use his position as acting Governor-General for a few months to attempt a solution to the general Indian problem, instead of leaving that task to the permanent incumbent, especially as the latter was at that very time engaged in a series of conversations with a higher authority regarding this problem. Nor do the two Calcutta journals really throw much light on the points left obscure by the Mahatma, probably deliberately.