considered moderate enough to do business with later. Those considered
terrorists were not so well treated, with their rate of death in custody, often
on the far-off penal colony of the Andaman Islands, extremely alarming to
those who cared to glance in that direction.)DISAPPOINTMENT
In 1922, Motilal Nehru had emerged from jail to find the Congress and
the ‘national movement’ in fragments. He had accepted Gandhi’s call
for a boycott of government and all its institutions more for strategic
than ideological reasons. Now that Gandhi had so unceremoniously
betrayed the movement, and retreated to his ashram, something ought
to be done. Intra-Congress debates threw up two broad groups, the ‘no-
changers’ and the ‘pro-changers’. A new strategy was required – so argued
the pro-changers, C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru. Both had not felt that the
Non-Cooperation Movement necessitated abstention from other arenas
of struggle. Now that the Movement was no more, the earlier rules ought
not to apply anyway. Struggle was to be continued through the reformed
Legislative Councils, which if nothing else could be arenas for agitation
and publicity. A new party was created for that purpose, the Congress
Khilafat Swaraj Party – the Swaraj Party for short. Motilal and C.R. Das
developed a close understanding that broadened into friendship, cut short
by Das’s death in 1925.
The new party turned in very good electoral performances and was
able to regularly outdebate the official bloc within the legislature. The
Swarajists formed a loose alliance with Muslim and moderate members
of the Central Legislative Councils, which was also able to outvote the
official bloc in terms of numbers, and repeatedly did so throughout 1924.
But the 1919 Constitution gave the viceroy powers to veto decisions of
the Legislature, so nothing concrete came of it. Nonetheless, it was good
propaganda. In December 1924, under Gandhi’s presidency, the Indian
National Congress came to agree with the Swarajists’ position, retro-
spectively endorsing their decision. But by this time the Swarajist leaders
were themselves not so sure that they agreed with their own position.
What had begun as participation in the Councils in order to obstruct the
working of an imposed Constitution became for many an opportunity
for ‘dialogue’, as many British administrators had hoped. Some members
of the Swarajist were weaned away to join the official bloc by offers of52 THE YOUNG GANDHIAN