THE FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE PARTITION OF INDIACongress had to be paid in kind, i.e. a certain amount of home-spun yarn.
But this soon became a routine command performance and Gandhi’s
message was lost. The handwoven cloth which the Congressmen wore in
order to emphasise their faith in self-reliance also degenerated into a kind
of uniform—and did not necessarily guarantee the integrity of the wearer.
Among the younger generation of nationalists there were critical voices
which dissented from Gandhi’s programme and ideas. Jawaharlal Nehru
and Subhas Chandra Bose were the mentors of this younger generation. An
anti-imperialism based on socialist ideology was propagated by them and
they hoped for a simultaneous political and socio-economic emancipation
of India. Jawaharlal Nehru had studied in England and had then joined the
national movement together with his father, Motilal; following his
attendance at the Congress of the Oppressed Nations in Brussels in 1927,
he had returned to India with a new radical message. He had joined the
League against Imperialism and with Bose had co-founded an Indian
Independence League which stood for complete independence and tried to
enlist the Congress to this end. Bose, who still worked in close partnership
with Nehru at that time, had succeeded C.R.Das as leader of the Congress
in Bengal. Das had died in 1925 at a very crucial juncture in Indian
politics. Bose was in sympathy with the Bengal tradition of the national
revolutionaries who preferred violent action to Gandhi’s non-violence.
Gandhi, who always had an instinct for political trends, tried his best to
tame the young radical opposition in the Congress by getting Jawaharlal
Nehru elected as Congress president in 1929.
This Congress session had to arrive at an important decision. The
demand for Dominion status had not been met by the British, a draft
constitution prepared for this purpose by an All-Party Conference chaired
by Motilal Nehru had hardly been taken note of by them. Viceroy Lord
Irwin had made a declaration which was so vague and non-committal that
it could not satisfy the aspirations of the Indian nationalists. The
declaration had been edited in London so carefully that Irwin could state
much less than he had originally envisaged. In this atmosphere of mutual
frustration the Congress was forced to start a new campaign of national
agitation. Everybody looked to Gandhi for a suitable programme. Gandhi
now personally moved the resolution demanding India’s complete
independence—a step he had rejected at the previous session, so that Irwin
might still have the chance of offering Dominion status.
Civil disobedience and the Gandhi-Irwin pactGandhi was given a general authorisation by the Congress for any kind of
campaign which he might suggest, but he took his own time before he
announced his new plan. He had not forgotten the lessons of the earlier
campaigns. The multitude of boycotts had lessened rather than enhanced