Swarajist policy

IT was a very important speech which Pandit Motilal Nehru made at Bombay on Saturday in opening the campaign on behalf of the Swaraj party for the forthcoming Council of State elections. After repeating his already famous statement that the party had sailed as near the wind as possible and could not sail any nearer, he said, “If something substantial is not done by the Government which the country would accept as honourable, proper and fitting settlement, the plain duty of the party would be to come out and work in the country and do what the Governor of the United Provinces in his recent address to durbaris had termed ‘educate our masters,’ namely, men in the village in India.” It is not quite clear what Nehru really meant by the words “come out,” whether he meant that the party leaders would resign their seats and again become full-fledged non-cooperators, or that while retaining their seats they would concentrate their attention largely on work in the country. It is difficult to believe that after the experience of the three years during which the Swarajists of today had non-cooperated with the Government along with other non-cooperators, anything like a boycott of the Councils in the old sense would ever again be attempted. For one thing, the attempt would amount to a confession of failure and prove those non-cooperators to have been right who had from the first ridiculed the idea of Council entry. Secondly, it would mean the throwing away of all those advantages which the Swaraj party has undoubtedly gained.