Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
Political Writings and Speeches — 1909-1910
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 24th July 1909 — No.5
Facts and Opinions
A One-sided Proposal
A writer in the Indian World has been holding out the olive branch to the advanced Nationalist party and inviting them into the fold of the body which now calls itself the Congress.
The terms of this desirable conciliation seem to us a little peculiar.
The Nationalists are to give up all their contentions and in return the Bombay coterie may graciously give up their personal dislike of working with the Nationalist leaders.
This is gracious but a little unconvincing.
The only difficulty the mediator sees in the way is the constitutional point raised by a section of the Moderates against the arbitrary action of the Committee of the Convention in passing a constitution and forcing it on the delegates without submission to freely elected delegates sitting in a session of the Congress itself.
The mediator proposes to get round the objection by the Bombay coterie agreeing to pass the Constitution en bloc through the Congress provided an undertaking is given by the Nationalists that they will accept bodily the whole of the Constitution and make no opposition to any of its provisions!
A very remarkable proviso!
The writer assumes that the Nationalists have accepted the Constitution bodily and are willing to sign the creed.
We think he is in error in his assumptions.
The Nationalists are not likely to give any undertaking which will abrogate their constitutional right to make their own proposals about the Constitution at the beginning or to suggest amendments to it hereafter.
They will sign no creed, as it is against their principles to make the Congress a sectional body and they refuse to bind themselves to regard colonial self-government as the ultimate goal of our national development.
Whatever resolutions are passed by a properly constituted Congress they will accept as the temporary opinion of the majority while reserving the right, which all minorities reserve, of preaching their own convictions.
They refuse to regard the Madras Convention or the contemplated Lahore Convention as a sitting of the Congress or its resolutions as the will of the country.
The position taken, that the Bombay coterie are in possession of the Congress and it is theirs to admit the Nationalists or not at their pleasure is one we cannot recognise.
If there is to be a1 united Congress it must resume its life at the point where the Calcutta session broke off.
All that has happened in between is a time of interregnum.