WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : 13 A STRANGE EVENT
Banerjee. The former did recognize the need of social reform but thought that the Congress Session was not the proper platform for it. The latter denied that there was need for social reform and challenged the view that there cannot be political reform without social reform. Though the two schools within the Congress were fundamentally opposed to each other, they had not upto
1895 developed a spirit of antagonism and intolerance towards each other. The former school was in a dominant position and the result was that the Indian National Congress and the Social Conference functioned as two parallel organizations each devoting itself to its own particular aims and objects. So great was the spirit of co-operation and good will between the two that the annual sessions of the National Congress and Social Conference were held in immediate succession in the same pandal and a large majority of those who came to attend the Congress Session also attended the Social Conference. The Social Conference was, however, an eyesore to the Congressmen who belonged to the Anti-social Reform Section. This section was evidently getting restive at the kindly disposition and the accommodating spirit which the dominant section in the Congress was showing to the Social Conference particularly in the matter of allowing it to use the Congress pandal for holding its session. In 1895 when the Congress met in Poona, this Anti-Social Reform section rebelled and threatened to burn the Congress pandal if the Congress allowed it to be used by the Social Conference. This opposition to the Social Conference was headed by no other person than the late Mr. Tilak one of those social tories and political radicals with which India abounds and who was the father of the slogan “Swaraj is my birthright” which is now seen blazoned on Congress banners. The rebellion succeeded largely because the Pro-Social Reform Party in the Congress was not prepared to fight its opponents. [1] This rebellion had one effect. It settled that the Congress was not to entertain any question of social reform
1 That the Pro-Social Reform Party in the Congress did not like to take up the challenge is evident from the letter which Mr. Surrendranath Bannerjee wrote to Mr. Ranade over the question raised by Mr. Tilak’s Party regarding the use of the Congress pandal by the Social Conference in which he said “The raison d’etre for excluding social questions from our deliberations is that were we to take up such questions it might lead to serious differences ultimately culminating in a schism, and it is a matter of the first importance that we should prevent a split. The request of the other side is very unreasonable; but we have sometimes to submit to unreasonable demands to avert greater evils.”