CONGRESS POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1932, Page 7

CONGRESS POLICY

GANDHI'S DECLARATION

The editor has kindly asked me to say in theso columns "what I want" (wrote M.ihatma Gandhi in the "Daily Mail" just before the close of the Indian Conference). The title is a misnomer. I am here merely as an agent for the Indian National Congress, and I can want nothing apart from the Congress. "What I want," therefore, means what the Indian National Coagress wants. Lot mo then introduce my principal, the Indian National Congress, .to the reader. It is perhaps the oldest political organisation in India, and claims to represent the whole of India. I know that some people would deny this claim. I can only say that it is made by right of service. The Indian National Congress is over forty-seven years old. It was conceived by an Englishman, Allan Octavius Hume. It has had, besides Hindus, Mahonimedan, Parsi, and Christian presidents. It had two women, as presidents, Dr. Annie Besant and Mrs. Sarojini Naidoo. It has zemindars, too, as its members. The Indian National Congress is no respecter of persons It knows no distinction between classes or creeds or tlie sexes. It lias always championed the cause of the so-called untouchables, and has of recent years appointed an anti-untouchability committee for hastening the destruction of untouchability. But the unchallenged and unehallengable claim of the Indian National Congress consists in its representing the millions 'of dumb paupers living in the seven hundred thousand Indian villages who •constitute over So per cent, of the population. It is in the name of thin great organisation that I claim:— (1) Complete independence for India. (2) This does not exclude partnership at will and on terms of absolute equality. (3) Nor docs this exclude federation or such safeguards as may be deinonstrably necessary in the interest of India. I hope the readers of "The Daily Mail" will not bo frightened by the claim boldly put forth on behalf of the Congress. "Do mito others as you would that others should do unto you." On the strength of. the wise saying nineteen hundred years old, I hope that Englishmen and Englishwomen will not grudge India the freedom which she has remained without by reason of British rule. No reason should be necessary for a self-evident truth. Independence is every nation's birthright. It is India's also. But it may not be out of place to mention here that the people of India under British rule have become progressively poor and emasculate. The village industry has been killed and a whole nation has been disarmed. Nothing less than complete freedom in every sense of the term «au make India happy and strong.