The Indian National Congress

The meeting of the All India Congress Committee at Calcutta to settle the outstanding differences between Mr. Subhash Bose and the members o...

The meeting of the All India Congress Committee at Calcutta to settle the outstanding differences between Mr. Subhash Bose and the members of the old Working Committee is a momentous one. As at Rajkot Gandhiji has taken over the leadership from Sardar Patel and it is believed that the Congress will emerge out of the Calcutta discussions with either a new president or a "left Working Committee.

Sardar Patel whose activities in the past have brought on him the full measure of discontent against the policy of the Congress, will not attend the meeting at Calcutta for special reasons. This is both an advantage and a misfortune. The absence of the Sardar will permit of a discussion of policies apart from the chief personality involved in many of them in the past. After all, as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has pointed out, the acts and omissions of the Sardar had the approval of the Working Committee as well as of the Congress President whoever he was at the time. Pandit Nehru accepted full responsibility for the Nariman incident and rightly remarked that Mr. Bose was no less responsible for the Khare interlude. The Sardar, it is well known, has not the gift of convincing opponents of the justice of his case- an essential quality in a politician who has eschewed violence. No man can ask for a better advocate for his cause than Gandhiji, especially so when that cause is also Gandhiji's. Nevertheless it is not a gain either tor the Congress or to Indian politics if it appears too often to be the case that Gandhiji's time and energies are spent in pulling chestnuts out of the fire.