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

: SIGNS OF COMING UPHEAVAL 195
supremacy over the Congress. The Left-Wingers did not
like the idea that one of their most outstanding spokesmen
should accept the Presidentship of the Lahore Congress,
because it was clear that that Congress would be dominated
by the Mahatma and the President would be a mere dummy.
They were of opinion that a Left-Wing leader should accept
the Presidentship only when he was in a position to have his
programme adopted by the Congress. But the Mahatma took
a clever step in supporting the candidature of Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru and his election as President opened a new chapter
in his public career. Since then, Pandit J. L. Nehru has been
a consistent and unfailing supporter of the Mahatma. '
In the meantime the Simon Commission had been busy
with its own work and on October 16th, 1929, after some sort
of pre-arrangement, Sir John Simon wrote to the Prime
Minister, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, asking for an extension of
the terms of reference in order to enable him to examine the
methods whereby the future relations between the Indian
states and the British Indian provinces could be readjusted.
He also suggested that after the publication of the Commis-
sion's Report, a conference should be arranged between the
representatives of His Majesty's Government and represen-
tatives of British India and the States. To both these sug-
gestions the Cabinet agreed. The same month Lord Irwin
returned to India and soon after his arrival, he issued a
statement on October 31st, 1929, saying that he had been
'authorised by His Majesty's Government to state clearly
that in their judgment, it is implicit in the Declaration of
1917 that the natural issue of India's constitutional progress,
as there contemplated, is the attainment of Dominion Status.'
He further stated that a Round Table Conference would be
held in London after the publication of the report of the
Simon Commission as had been suggested by Sir John Simon
himself.
The situation created by this new attitude on the part of
the British Cabinet and the Viceroy did not remain un-
noticed or unutilised. In the absence of Deshbandhu Das,
there was at least one other personality who could seize the
opportunity at once and, fortunately for him, he then occupied