Correspondence
A LETTER FROM KARACHI. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is possible that the Congress held this year at Karachi will prove to be the most important in the Party's history. There 'have been many more exciting meetings during its forty-five years' existence. It was not quarrelsome, like the famous Congress at Surat, and there was little of the fiercely anti-British feeling shown last year at Lahore. It was an orderly and business-like meeting, with everything admirably organized and stage-managed, but it was chiefly remarkable for a general feeling that the Congress had for the first time become a constructive political force.
There seemed a chance that all these years of agitation and propaganda were going to lead to something definite. The change in atmosphere was exactly similar to that which occurred in the Labour Party when it became apparent, about 1922 and 1923, that they were likely to' form a Government within a year or two. To anyone, like the writer, who has attended a number of Labour Party conferences, ihe resem- blance was at times almost ludicrous. There was the same strong ", platform " round a popular leader, and the same opposition quoting former resolutions and speeches, repeating the old formulae, and getting most of the applause, but very few of the votes. Certainly the Labour Party since the War has had no one with the complete personal ascendancy which Mahatma Gandhi wields at the present moment, and it would be tempting but unwise to begin finding Congress counter- parts for Mr. Henderson, Mr. Maxton, and Mr. Jack Jones, but the general technique of managing the Congress is almost exactly the same.
This was shown very clearly when the main resolution had to come, first before the Subjects Committee, and then before the full session. This resolution had been very carefully drawn up. It confirmed the " Pact," it appointed Gandhi to go to the Conference with others chosen by the small " working com- mittee," it stated the Congress aims, and then in reality left Gandhi free to negotiate as best he could. On each occasion the " platform " opened with one of their strongest cards. The one man who could have fought Gandhi with any chance of success was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. If he had merely " sulked in his tent " he would have spoilt the whole atmo- sphere of the Congress. He was known to have disliked the Pact, but he had agreed to it before the Congress. and he sup- ported Gandhi with an unequivocal loyalty. He spoke first both at the Committee meeting, a large semi-public affair, and also to the 25,000 who attended at the evening session in the " pandal." After him came the unconverted " left- wingers," and here the " platform " had an advantage which is not granted to the Labour Party executive. It so happened that very few of the opposition could speak Hindi, while nearly all of those definitely supporting the Mahatma have invariably used Hindi, which is now, according to Congress ideas, to be the lingua franca of India. Jemnadas Mehta is an exceedingly clever debater, but although a Gujerati of the same caste as Gandhi he speaks Hindi so badly that he inva- riably has to ask permission to talk English, and the good- humoured chaff which this causes certainly weakens his effec- tiveness. Many spokesmen from the League of Youth suffer from the same disability, as they come either from Bombay or Madras.
It was soon clear that opposition inside the Congress takes two lines. There are some fervent nationalists who want the struggle to start again immediately, and feel that the pact was a surrender just when their side was on the point of winning. Most of the young men, however, are really Socialists. The League of Youth speakers are very like certain young men in the Independent Labour Party. They use the same formulae. Their arguments are just as logical, convincing, and com- pletely devoid of any political reality. An Indian audience is very tolerant of such oratory, because few of them ever tire of dialectical arguments. It would seem, however, that those who are past their first youth will applaud but not vote for those who would find the reformation of the world so easy. There was therefore no cohesion in the opposition, and the " platform " was right to allow it plenty of rope. They wisely, however, put up one or two more solid speakers in support before Mahatma Gandhi himself came and, squatting in front of the loud speaker, began to collect his flock. He has now adopted a very informal way of talking. He is able to speak quietly, because he is heard in complete silence, and his pawky humour is extremely effective. By the time he has finished everyone has completely forgotten the opposition, and the platform hardly troubles to take a vote.
The Congress closed in a mood of reserved optimism, though one already begins to hear the grumbles of the young men who find this new kind of Congress dull, and will find polities under a new Constitution duller still The older hands fully realize the difficulty of-Gandhi's triple task. Somehow he has,, during the next few months, to obtain a settlement on the 'communal Question, an agreement with the Princes on the
terms of federation, and then go to London to face British politicians on the question of the future relations between the two countries. We shall be a very foolish country if we make the last task the hardest, for if there is one thing clear in the present political struggle it is the essential moderation of Gandhi, and that he has at the present moment the whole- hearted support of every Indian who wishes to do constructive work for his country. Meanwhile he is himself proceeding as if our problems are bound to be solved. The Congress Party is the only political party with even the semblance of a real organization, the rest are merely collections of individual politicians each of whom has to settle with his constituents as best he can. Gandhi takes the line that the Congress Party should now become a great left wing party in Indian politics, adopting almost word for word most of those ideas which find themselves from time to time in the British Labour Party programme.
There is no doubt that such a party will be urgently needed in India. It will be against caste restrictions, landlordism, and the sweating of the town worker, and though it will pro- bably, like the English Labour Party, fall far short of its pro- mises, it is a very good augury for the future that, within a few hours of gaining Congress support for the Pact, Gandhi was detailing a general policy which would have won the hearty approval of, shall one say, Keir Hardie. It means that the various sinister influences which will certainly try to cap- ture any new responsible government will have to start to build up organizations in the country against a Party which has several years' start in popularity and experience. This should go some way to appease those who believe that a responsible Indian Government is going to bear harder than the present system upon the poorer peasants and town
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