The Swarajist defeat
WE are frankly not surprised at the serious defeat which the Swarajists have just suffered in the Bengal Council. No intelligent observer could have had any difficulty in foreseeing that the position they had taken up could lead to no other result, and if they themselves did not or could not anticipate it, it was only because the actual players sometimes see far less of the game than the spectators. Not only were the Swarajists in a minority in the council, but the matter was one in which they certainly did not represent the majority of politically minded people, whether in their own province or any other. We do not forget that with the independent nationalists, the Swarajists did form a majority in the council, that in this case there was also a nationalist amendment to the official resolution, and that the Swarajists as a body supported this amendment. But the nationalist amendment was not an amendment moved on behalf of the Nationalist Party, which as a party did not vote in favour of it. That the two parties did not work in concert in this case is, indeed, clear from the results of the divisions on the two amendments, the votes cast in favour of them being 41 in one case and 44 in the other, while the total strength of the Swarajist-cum-Nationalist Party was, we believe, in the neighbourhood of 70. Nor can we honestly say that the weight of argument, as distinguished from the weight of votes, was in this case with the Swarajists.
