Mahatmaji and No-changers

THE success which Mahatma Gandhi has achieved in his conference with the No-changers has made one thing perfectly clear. There will be no difficulty in having the Calcutta Pact accepted by the Congress. Despite signs of the revolt in certain quarters, it was not, however, from the No-changers that any well-informed person expected any serious difficulty in this matter. With a very few exceptions, the Mahatma’s personal ascendancy over the No-changers has always been even greater than over the rest of the country. This was shown at the conference itself by most of the leading No-changers taking little or no part in the discussion. It was also shown by the result of the two divisions that are reported to have taken place at the end of the discussion, one in respect of the spinning franchise, the other in respect of the rest of the pact; in both cases, there were only 12 persons found to vote against the Mahatma in a House consisting of 200 No-changers. Mahatmaji’s speech on the occasion is described as vigorous. Vigour is a quality which the Mahatma’s utterances, whether public or private, seldom lack, but we can surely discover nothing in the reported summary of his speech which could possibly convert any uninitiated person or of which anyone could honestly deny that the No-changers had it before them ever since the formulation of the pact. In view of the nature of the gathering he was addressing, what the Mahatma had apparently to do in the case of the spinning franchise was not to defend his proposal to replace the four-anna franchise by a form of franchise that is not only an innovation but is entirely subversive of all our accepted notions about what a franchise should be, but his whittling down of the original demand.