What CR Das said
Lahore, Wednesday, August 20, 1924
IT was a fine speech which CR Das delivered as President of the Swaraj Party Conference which held its sittings in Calcutta on Saturday and Sunday. Appropriately enough, he began by repeating what he and other nationalist leaders had said again and again, that the Swaraj for which the country was fighting meant simply the right of the people to govern themselves, and was not to be confused with any particular system of government. “Systems of government,” he said, “come and go. Systems of government are established one day, only to be broken another day, and another system is re-established upon the ashes of the old system. What we want is a clear declaration by the people of the country that we have got the right to establish our own system of government according to the temper and genius of the people, and we want that right to be recognised by our alien rulers.” This was a conclusive answer to those who have been perpetually twitting the nationalist party in India with their unwillingness or inability to define Swaraj. As a matter of fact, it has been defined for practical and necessarily provisional purposes as parliamentary self-government, and it is just because that definition has not satisfied those who do not wish to be satisfied and whose only purpose is to defeat the people’s cherished object, that it does become necessary for the leaders of the country to reiterate the first principle of nationalist, and indeed, of all democratic politics. When, however, Das went on to say that it was not for the British to confer this right of self-government on India, but for the people themselves to take that right, to seize it and compel the Government to recognise what they had seized, he was on more debatable ground.
