‘Indian National Party’

AS the Press was rigidly excluded from the deliberations of the All-Parties Conference at Bombay and as we have at the time of writing nothing but a meagre official account, not of the proceedings themselves but only of their result, it is difficult to form a correct idea either of the attitude of the parties whom the genius of Mr CY Chintamani and the exigencies of a political situation had brought together or of the value and importance of the decision arrived at. Sufficient unto the day, however, is the good and the evil thereof; and the broad fact stands out even from the official report that a party under the name and style of the “Indian National Party” was formed as the result of the deliberations of the conference. On that fact, we feel no hesitation in congratulating the parties concerned, subject to the essential condition that the unity, so far as it exists, is real and will outlast the emergency that has brought it about. Even the bare official report of the conference suffices to show that the main question discussed was whether the new party was to be a party within or without the Congress and that over this question there was a sharp cleavage of opinion. The Liberals, as might have been expected, were strongly opposed to the party being within the Congress; the “Responsive Cooperators” and those Independents of whom Mr Chakravarty was the spokesman were equally strongly in favour; while the Besantite Home Rulers and the Independents led by MA Jinnah and Bipin Chandra Pal probably stood midway between the two. The actual solution that was reached appears to have left the question of the new party being a party within or outside the Congress undecided.