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

176 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
At the time of the All-Parties Conference in Lucknow in
August, a new development took place. While the settlement
of the communal question made by the Nehru Committee
was welcome to the younger Nationalists, the recommendation
regarding a dominion form of government, coming as it did
after the Madras Congress resolution on independence, was
quite unacceptable to them. Their intention, therefore, was
to oppose the adoption of the Report at the All-Parties
Conference at Lucknow. Such a step would have given great
satisfaction and delight to the enemies of the Congress, would
have weakened the forces working for national unity and
would have increased the prestige of the Simon Commission
instead of destroying it. A private meeting of members of
the Congress Left Wing was therefore held at Lucknow to
decide our course of action and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and
I suggested that instead of dividing the House and thereby
wrecking the All-Parties Conference, we should content our-
selves by voicing our protest at the Conference and then
proceed to organise an Independence League in order to
carry on an active propaganda in the country in favour of
independence. This suggestion was accepted by the meet-
ing of Left-Wingers and following it, Pandit J. L. Nehru
and I made our position clear at the All-Parties Conference
on the question of independence, but refrained from dividing
the House. After the Conference, we started organising
branches of the Independence League all over the country
and in November, at a meeting held at Delhi, the Indepen-
dence League was formally inaugurated.
The ‘Independence Movement’ started at Lucknow was
contemporaneous with another movement—viz., the Students’
Movement. When the boycott of the Simon Commission was
launched in February, students all over Bengal and parti-
cularly in Calcutta, took an active part in it. Disciplinary
action was taken against many of them by the College authori-
ties and the students then began to feel the want of an organi-
sation of their own for fighting for their interests. Out of
this experience the Students’ Movement in Bengal was born.¹
¹ Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the writer were among the few public
men who encouraged the students at the time to organise themselves.