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

86 ' THE INDIAN STRUGGLE lingua franca for the whole country. Spontaneously, Khadi became the official uniform for all Congressmen. In short, all the features of a modern political party became visible in India. The credit for such achievements naturally belongs to the leader of the movement—Mahatma Gandhi. He has unfortunately been guilty of many serious blunders—‘Hima- layan blunders,’ to use his own language. And the fact that even to-day he is enthroned in the hearts of his countrymen does not mean that he has been free from errors of judgment but that his positive achievements have been really so great that his countrymen are prepared to forgive his mistakes. It is necessary, in this connection, to refer to some of the shortcomings inherent in the movement from the very begin- ning and which were to reveal themselves more and more with the lapse of time. In the first place, too much power and responsibility was handed over to one man. The disadvantages of such a state of things were not so great, while Deshbandhu C. R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai and Pandit Motilal Nehru were alive, since they could control the Mahatma to some extent. But since their death the entire intellect of the Congress has been mortgaged to one man and those who dare to think freely and speak out openly are regarded by the Mahatma and his disciples as heretics and treated as such. Secondly, the promise of ‘Swaraj within one year’ was not only unwise but childish. It made the Congress appear so foolish before all reasonable men. No doubt the Mahatma’s disciples have tried subsequently to explain away the point by saying that the country did not fulfil the conditions and so Swaraj could not be won within one year. The explanation is as unsatisfactory as the original promise was unwise—because arguing in the same way, any leader can say that if you fulfil certain con- ditions you can be free in one hour. In making political forecasts, no leader worth the name should impose impossible conditions. He should estimate what conditions are likely to be fulfilled and what results are likely to be achieved in a given set of circumstances. Thirdly, the introduction of the Khilafat question into Indian politics was unfortunate. As has already been pointed out, if the Khilafatist Moslems had not started a separate organisation but had joined the Indian