The Congress presidentship

ASAF Ali’s suggestion in a recent statement to the Press that Pandit Motilal Nehru should be elected president of the Congress raises an important question affecting the Constitution of the party. The grounds on which the suggestion is based are, first, that the Congress will, under the altered conditions created by the recent correspondence between Mahatma Gandhi and Motilal Nehru, pass under the control of the Swarajists; and secondly, that under the Congress Constitution, the president of a session of the Congress is the party president for a whole year and as such the man chiefly responsible for carrying out the party policies and programmes during that year. As long as these grounds remain, there is much to be said for the view that the fittest man to preside over the next session of the Congress is the president of the Swaraj party who alone, as being the head of the party in power in the Congress, can best carry out the policies and programmes of the Congress while that party is in the ascendant. Only let us understand the implication of the view. That implication is that the president of the Swaraj party must not only be the president of the next Congress session, but of a great many subsequent sessions of the Congress, until, in fact, the Swaraj party ceases to be the principal party in the Congress. This would not be at all a bad thing and, would, in fact, be the only right thing if the Congress were a body like, say, the British Parliament, a body whose only business is the formulation and carrying out of policies and programmes. In reality, it is something more as, indeed, it is something less.