The compromise

WE have not before us at the time of writing the details of the compromise which is said to have been arrived at between the Mahatma and the Swarajists, but the very fact that this compromise has been arrived at during a session of the All-India Congress Committee which was probably the stormiest ever held, shows that the politics of the Congress has after the usual preliminaries entered upon a truly democratic stage. No other Constitution and no other form of government could have borne such a strain or achieved such a result. And if this compromise is one of those great decisive events which constitute distinct landmarks in the history of nations and public institutions, the central fact about it is the attitude of the Mahatma himself. He was the person primarily responsible for the crisis, and yet when the crisis reached its culminating point, it was he again who, by an adroit move, enabled the Congress to successfully tide over it. It is easy to deride his asking the House to rescind a clause in the Khaddar resolution immediately after it had been carried at his own instance as illogical and inconsistent. In reality, it was one of those masterstrokes of policy of which only genius of the highest order is capable. The ground he gave for his action was itself a triumph of that love of truth which is a part of the Mahatma’s being. The majority by which the penalty clause was carried, he said, was narrow and if the Swarajists had not left the meeting, the clause would have been defeated! That he should have said this may appear a simple thing to the dispassionate reader because it is so obviously right and proper.

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