Sta,--Many of your readers will be grateful to you for
the editorial comments in which the appeal from the Chairman of the India Con- ciliation Group is placed in its proper light. Mr. Gandhi is not the uncrowned king of India and it is surely a very serious error to confuse "India Conciliation" with the appeasement of Mr. Gandhi and these who have accepted his leadership for their own purposes.
The aim of the Congress party is the political domination of India. But is "let Mr. Gandhi's object? Would it not be strictly accurate to laY that he is merely a political opportunist who uses the slogans of the day for his own ends? He his told us what these ends are in 1"c book, /ndian Home Rule, published in i9o8 and republished in
• Lt. Writing in 5921, some three Years before the reissue of this book, he said with regard to it: "I am individually working for the Rif rule pictured therein. But today my corporate activity is undoubtedly devoted to the attainment of Parliamentary Swaraj in accordance with the wishes of the people of India." In these words he draws a dis- tinction between his own aims and those he is temporarily serving.
What are his own aims? They are summed up in his book in two short sentences, which tell us a very great deal if we choose to consider them carefully. They read as follows: "a. Real Home Rule is Self Rule or Control.
2. The way to it is passive resistance: that is Soul force or love force."
The aphorism about real Home Rule might have been a mighty weapon in the hands of a devoted social reformer, but its political implications are purely anarchical. Gandhi is against all government, whether British or other, and he has no use at all for Parliamentary Democracy, as his actions prove. On August 7th he told the All-India
Congress Committee that he had read about the French Revolution and had been told by Pandit Nehru about the Russian revolution, adding: "But I hold that though theirs was a fight for the people, it was not the fight for real democracy that I envisage. My democracy means that every one is his own master."
The words italicised show that his political nihilism is unchanged. His pacifism is but a means to an end. Is it not time that the public realised that Gandhi has no constructive aims and that his entire politi- cal career has brought nothing beneficial to India? Even the achievement attributed to him, by Mr. Guy Wint, of having revived self-confidence in the average Indian, is by no means reflected in the attitude of most of India's political leaders who, with the exception of Mr. Jinnah, vie with one another in appeals to the British Government and people to solve their problems for them instead of attacking them themselves.
The only way in which Indians can be induced to try to heal their own differences is to avoid British interference and give the contending parties time to adjust their outlook and to appreciate what is being done for India by those patriotic Indians who now constitute the majority in the Government of the country.—Yours faithfully,
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