programmes of social service; others got on with their lives. Jawaharlal
attended the annual Congress session that year – but not much happened.
Some Moderates used the space to welcome the Morley-Minto reforms;
with their central figure, Tilak, still in jail, the Extremists were without
leadership.
Meanwhile, in Allahabad, Jawaharlal began his career as a lawyer,
desultorily working in his father’s practice, joining the Freemasons, and
generally taking on his socially allocated role, very much in the shadow
of his father – neither father nor son was in much doubt that some, at
least, of Jawaharlal’s success as a young lawyer could be attributed to
Motilal. Motilal, who took it for granted that this was the desired state
of affairs, was somewhat insensitive to the fact that his son might not see
it the same way. Jawaharlal was not a very good public speaker – he was
always clear, logical and cogent in his arguments, but without significant
demagogic skills. This was obviously a disadvantage to a practising
lawyer. It was also something that stayed with him through his political
career, but he did his best to overcome it – meticulously crafted and
rhetorically magnificent speeches were often delivered by him with
somewhat less of an impact than they might have had in another’s mouth- though the significance of many of the occasions on which he was called
upon to speak lent his words the gravity that his voice alone could not have
given them.
THE GREAT WAR
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 interrupted the boredom
of Indian public life. The hope of Turkish and German help for Indian
nationalists spurred diverse groups to action. Militant pan-Islamists began
to organise Indian Muslims against the British on the grounds that Britain
was at war with Turkey, the seat of the Khalifa, which claimed spiritual
leadership over all Muslims. Terrorist organisations attempted to organise
arms supplies and plan sabotage and military action, achieving some
successes in Bengal and the Punjab. Groups of revolutionaries began
to gather in Berlin, where the Indian Independence Committee was set
up in 1915 (many of its members were later to form the core of the early
Communist Party of India), a ‘Provisional Government of Free India’ was
set up in Kabul, and the Ghadr(‘Revolution’) party, a group active mainly
in the Punjab with its leadership in exile, made attempts to organise30 THE YOUNG GANDHIAN