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

86 ' THE INDIAN STRUGGLE
lingua franca for the whole country. Spontaneously, Khadi
became the official uniform for all Congressmen. In short,
all the features of a modern political party became visible in
India. The credit for such achievements naturally belongs
to the leader of the movement—Mahatma Gandhi. He has
unfortunately been guilty of many serious blunders—‘Hima-
layan blunders,’ to use his own language. And the fact that
even to-day he is enthroned in the hearts of his countrymen
does not mean that he has been free from errors of judgment
but that his positive achievements have been really so great
that his countrymen are prepared to forgive his mistakes.
It is necessary, in this connection, to refer to some of the
shortcomings inherent in the movement from the very begin-
ning and which were to reveal themselves more and more
with the lapse of time. In the first place, too much power and
responsibility was handed over to one man. The disadvantages
of such a state of things were not so great, while Deshbandhu
C. R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai and Pandit Motilal Nehru were
alive, since they could control the Mahatma to some extent.
But since their death the entire intellect of the Congress has
been mortgaged to one man and those who dare to think
freely and speak out openly are regarded by the Mahatma and
his disciples as heretics and treated as such. Secondly, the
promise of ‘Swaraj within one year’ was not only unwise but
childish. It made the Congress appear so foolish before all
reasonable men. No doubt the Mahatma’s disciples have tried
subsequently to explain away the point by saying that the
country did not fulfil the conditions and so Swaraj could not
be won within one year. The explanation is as unsatisfactory
as the original promise was unwise—because arguing in the
same way, any leader can say that if you fulfil certain con-
ditions you can be free in one hour. In making political
forecasts, no leader worth the name should impose impossible
conditions. He should estimate what conditions are likely to
be fulfilled and what results are likely to be achieved in a
given set of circumstances. Thirdly, the introduction of the
Khilafat question into Indian politics was unfortunate. As
has already been pointed out, if the Khilafatist Moslems had
not started a separate organisation but had joined the Indian