Responsive cooperation

PANDIT Motilal Nehru, who had in a previous speech cleared the air by describing civil disobedience as only the ultimate sanction, further elucidated his position and that of his party in his speech at the public meeting he addressed in Bombay on the eve of his departure from that city. “The Swaraj party,” he said, “stands for its own programme, which includes cooperation and non-cooperation, construction and destruction, as occasion and national interests demand. As declared in the Juhu statement, it considers it its duty to sacrifice, if necessary, even non-cooperation to the real interests of the country. Change, which is the very essence of living and dynamic force, is inevitable in a party which is so pre-eminently a party of action as the Swaraj party.” But if this is the policy of the Swaraj party, as we for our part have always understood it to be, why has Nehru so energetically and vigorously been fighting the Maharashtra party, whose watchword is and has always been “responsive cooperation,” which as explained by Mr Kelkar in a famous speech, is the same thing as “responsive non-cooperation”? What else did Bal Gangadhar Tilak mean by the phrase than that the nationalist party should cooperate or non-cooperate with the Government according to the circumstances, in which the policy of the Government naturally played an essential part? It is perfectly true, as Nehru says, that the question of responsive cooperation can arise only when the Government makes a gesture to which the country can respond.