Towards a united Congress

Lahore, Sunday, September 7, 1924

IT is now known that the recent Gandhi-Besant negotiations were not held merely for the purpose of an exchange of general views between the most powerful leader of the Congress and one of the most powerful leaders of that section of the progressive party, the party of self-government, who have now for some time been out of the Congress, but had the clear and well-defined object of discussing and devising measures with a view to restoring the unity of the Congress. We do not know if Mrs Besant had consulted her friends and fellow workers before she saw the Mahatma at his house. What we do know is that it would have been impossible to choose better instruments for bringing about the desired reunion of the two wings of the Congress which parted company about five years ago. Both leaders are supremely fit to play the role of peacemakers in this difficult and delicate matter. Both are constitutionally averse to doing things by halves when they are once satisfied that they have to be done. That in the present case both are firmly convinced that the unity of all political and patriotic workers in the country is essential to the speedy attainment of self-government is clear from their own pronouncements. To Mrs Besant, the recent visit to England has been a clear eye-opener. The Mahatma, who has always been in favour of a united platform for all who believe in self-government as India’s goal and in peaceful and legitimate means for the attainment of that goal, now sees more clearly than he ever did that it is essential that active steps should be taken towards making unity an accomplished fact.