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

298 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
It was refreshing and heartening to find in the Working
Committee, at least one man who could think boldly and have
the courage to call a spade a spade. But though Mr. Nariman
was brilliant in his analysis, he was weak in action. His
suggestion for summoning the All-India Congress Committee
to end the existing stalemate was not taken seriously by the
General Secretary, Pandit Nehru and when the latter was
clapped in prison in January 1934, for making an alleged
seditious speech in Calcutta, no silver lining was visible in the
dark horizon. It was left to Dr. M. A. Ansari, the Moslem
leader of Delhi, to tackle the situation. During his visit to
England in 1933 he had been pained and humiliated by the
arrogance of the Conservative politicians and their assertion
that the Congress was down and out. That feeling was
heightened on finding on his return to India that the Congress
was in a state of suspended animation. After appealing to
the Mahatma to bring the Congress back to life once again,
he along with Dr. B. C. Roy of Calcutta, summoned a con-
ference of Congressmen of their way of thinking at Delhi in
March 1934. By that time, civil disobedience was as dead as
a door-nail, but the Congress could not function because of
the Ordinances and the Ordinances would not be withdrawn
by the Government till civil disobedience was unconditionally
withdrawn. The only way out of the mess was for the
Congress leaders to eat the humble pie, call off the civil-
disobedience campaign and thereby secure the withdrawal or
suspension of the Ordinances. The Delhi Conference pre-
pared the ground for that by resolving to revive the All-India
Swaraj Party to contest the elections to the Legislatures.¹ The
next month a larger Conference was summoned to pursue the
same topic and Ranchi (in Bihar) was chosen as the venue,
because the Mahatma would be there at the time. The
Conference confirmed the decision arrived at at Delhi to
revive the All-India Swaraj Party and the prime-movers,
Drs. Ansari and Roy, were able to secure the support of the
¹ Before the Delhi Conference, another Conference, called the Democratic
Swarajya Party Conference, had been held at Bombay at the instance of
Mr. N. C. Kelkar of Poona and Mr. Jamnadas Mehta of Bombay for
popularising the idea of fighting the next elections. This Conference had
large support from all parts of Maharashtra.