“If not now, then when?”

THOSE who are familiar with the history and literature of the Congress before the advent of the Mahatma with his gospel of non-cooperation, cannot have forgotten either the important speech delivered by Lord, then Sir, SP Sinha as President of the Bombay Congress in 1915 or the still more important speech delivered by Babu Ambika Charan Majumdar as President of the next Congress at Lucknow. The keynote of the first, which was not without merits of its own, was the opinion of the speaker, which he took no pains to conceal, that the time for self-government, which he defined, in the famous words of a distinguished American, as “the government of the people, by the people, for the people” had not yet come. The keynote of the second was a cogent, dignified but none the less emphatic reply to this declaration. In a memorable passage, Majumdar asked his predecessor in the chair the pertinent question, “if not now, then when”? There was no answer to that question at the time. There has been no answer to it since. Instead of answering the question, Lord Sinha, who in the meantime has held some of the highest offices so far held by an Indian, has thought fit, 10 years later, to reiterate the formula almost in identical words. He is not deterred from doing this by the knowledge that if he was driving a lonely furrow even in 1915, much more is he doing so now. In 1915-16, the Indian Moderate was much more modest in his political ambition than now, and yet we are not aware of a single Moderate leader of any importance who expressed his agreement with Lord Sinha or his dissent from Majumdar.