24 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Superintendent in charge of the Camp succeeded in getting hold of some papers which Mr. Jai Prakash Narain was surreptitiously trying to pass out of the Jail to his wife. That incident occurred in December 1941 and anyone who wants to understand what was happening within the Congress—within the Working Committee—I submit, ought to pay the greatest attention to that document. What does that document reveal ? That document, if I read it correctly, reveals four or five points. First of all—and I am using the words of Mr. Jai Prakash Narain himself—the Satyagraha which Mr. Gandhi was carrying on was held by a majority of Congressmen as a stupid farce; it had no sense, it had no meaning. Secondly, Mr. Jai Prakash Narain maintained that if the Congress wanted to achieve its goal it had better give up the task of attending to moral victories and should try to achieve political victories. That was again a hit against Mr. Gandhi. The second fact which the document revealed was that there were in existence in India certain parties who were not only not believing in non-violence but were pledged to violence and the parties that are referred to in that document, I find, are these, which are said to be within the Congress : The Communist Party of India, the Revoluitionary Socialist Party in Bengal, the Congress Socialist Party, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. It was the project of Mr. Jai Prakash Narain that all these bodies, except perhaps the Communist Party, should be amalgamated into one single organisation which should be a secret party, working within the Congress and working below ground, subterranean—to use the exact technical terminology. Mr. Jai Prakash Narain also suggested that this secret party should not only be within the Congress but should resort to political dacoities for the purpose of getting funds to carry on its own policy. If these two matters to which I have made reference do not convince reasonable people that the Congress was not to be trusted in the lip service which it rendered to the principle of non-violence, I do not know that there can be any better evidence by which a reasonable man can be convinced. That, Sir, is at any rate one of the circumstances on which Government relied in taking action at the stage it took.
Then I come to the second point which I have selected in offering my remarks in this maiden speech. It has been said by the Members of the Opposition that, although repression may be justifiable by the