Peace or war?

WE have said that the Mahatma’s decision to retain his leadership is half-hearted and tentative, and that, judging from his two articles in Young India, the peace made between the two parties at Ahmedabad is no real lasting peace, but only a preliminary to, a preparation for, another way. The Mahatma himself is our authority for both statements. After pointing out the circumstances under which his present decision was forced upon him, he writes:– “I have, therefore, reluctantly decided to drink the bitter cup and continue to be in the Congress organisation and shoulder the responsibility for it until the Congress puts me in an actual numerical minority. I may not choose shortcuts. I must plod. I must pocket my pride and wait till I am driven out.” The very mood in which the Mahatma reveals himself in these words shows that he does not accept the decision of the All India Congress Committee as many of us would have liked him to accept it — as a substantial good — but only as an evil, though, for the present, a necessary and unavoidable evil. That the acceptance of this evil is with him a strictly temporary thing is abundantly clear from the words that follow those just quoted. “I must seemingly become a party man,” he says, “and show that I can still work as a no-party man. I must strive for a majority at the next Congress and endeavour so far as is possible to act impartially.” Do not these words mean that all that the Mahatma promises to his colleagues in the other camp is fairness and impartiality, which nobody ever doubted or could doubt in his case, and not cooperation, not the sinking of party differences, so far as it is possible to sink them, in an earnest effort to advance the common cause?