The triangular fight

IT is not without some reluctance that we have ventured to give our opinion of the triangular fight that took place in the Assembly on Wednesday over the motion of Pandit Motilal Nehru for the rejection of the demand for the Railway Board. As Nehru himself observed, we are a little perturbed by the rise and fall of the official barometer, but it becomes a matter of serious consideration when the centre of disturbance is shifted to other parts of the House. And when this other part happens to be one to which, as much as to the Swarajists, one looks for the true and unfaltering expression of India’s judgment and will in all vital matters, the position becomes still more serious. And yet in the present case, candour leaves us no choice but to say that those Independents, who either voted with the government or remained neutral, did not represent either the judgment or the will of the country. It is not meant, of course, that they took the same view of the matter as the Treasury benches. The fight would not be the triangular fight it was if they did. Nor could anyone in his senses imagine such men as Jinnah and Bepin Chandra Pal opposing the Swarajists in any matter for the same reason for which the government or its habitual supporters oppose them. In the present case, both Jinnah and Pal made it clear that their reasons were entirely different, that in fact, they opposed the Swarajist policy for the simple reason that “they were not prepared at present to carry that policy to its logical consequence.”