द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

58 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE the Congress on a country-wide basis. The smallest unit would be the Village Congress Committee. Several such Committees would combine to form a Union Congress Com- mittee. Then there would be formed in succession—sub- divisional (also called Taluka or Tahsil), district, provincial and All-India Congress Committees. The All-India Congress Committee would be a body of about 350 members consisting of representatives from the different provinces. This Committee would elect a Working Committee of 15 members which would be the Supreme Executive of the Congress for the whole country. Further, the provinces were re-organised on a linguistic basis. For instance, the Madras Presidency was divided into Andhra, which is Telegu-speaking and Tamil-Nadu, which is Tamil-speaking. The basis of the new Congress Constitution was of a democratic and parliamentary character. Besides setting up a new Constitution, the Nagpur Congress laid down a definite plan of work for the coming year. Regarding the means to be followed by the Congress for attaining Swaraj, a change was made in the Constitution. Hitherto the Congress had been tied down to ‘constitutional’ means, but in future the Congress could adopt ‘all peaceful and legitimate’ means. This change had to be made in order to enable the Congress to resort to non-co-operation, which could be regarded as unconstitutional. Regarding both the goal and the means, the decision of the Nagpur Congress represented the golden mean between the views of the Right-Wingers like Pandit Malaviya and Mr. Jinnah and the youthful Left-Wingers who swamped the Congress for the first time in 1920. The latter desired the goal of the Congress to be complete independence to be attained by all possible means. It was Mr. Gandhi, however, who by virtue of his tremendous influence and popularity was able to keep the Left-Wingers at bay. The Constitution that was adopted at Nagpur and which holds good even to-day, was practically his own draft. A year before, at Amritsar, he had been author- ised by the Congress to revise the existing Constitution of that body. Among the other resolutions adopted were those relating