Unity or cooperation?
IF the political organisations that hold their annual sittings during the last week of December did not succeed at the sessions which have just come to a close in devising a plan by which the unity of the Congress can be restored, it is with some satisfaction we note that they did the next best thing. All of them, without exception, expressed their readiness to join in common deliberations on subjects in which there was general agreement. The Congress, as might have been expected, set the ball rolling. The Mahatma, who in his opening address to the Congress had called upon that body to plead with the Liberals and others who had seceded to rejoin the Congress, said in his concluding address that whether these parties were able to rejoin the Congress or not, his earnest request to them was that they might extend their sympathy and support to the Congress in everything that commended itself to their judgment. To this request, both the Liberal Federation and the Muslim League, the only two bodies whose positions were somewhat doubtful in this matter, expressed their readiness to respond. The former concluded its resolution on the subject of Congress reunion with the proposal that pending the fulfilment of the conditions on which its rejoining the Congress “depended, there should be cooperation between different political parties in matters upon which there was agreement”. This was, indeed, the policy which the federation authorised the Liberal members of the committee of the All-Party Conference to advocate. The same, in substance, was also the position of the president of the Muslim League.
