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tinkering with the removal of Untouchability, Why, otherwise, we ask that the Nehru Committee was not made to include as much as a representative of the Depressed Classes ?”
“If any firm decision on the problem of minorities is going to take time and therefore freedom is also being delayed, then initially provincial autonomy would be acceptable. This was how Gandhiji without consultation of his friends conveyed his acceptance to the British Prime Minister. The disclosure of this private conversation raised a storm among Indian delegates. Dr. Sapru, Jaykar representing Progressive Hindus and Dr. Munje, Malviya etc. representnting Hindu Mahasabha were also terror-striken. They tried to verify Gandhiji’s statements. Induial Yagnik, who was a Brahmin and had long association with Gandhiji, had gone to London as special reporter of Sunday Advocate’. He wrote in the ‘Sunday Advocate’ dated
6th December 1931 thus :
‘Gandhi Accepts provincial Autonomy. But I venture to state that Gandhi has already delivered himself bound hand and foot into the kindly arms of the British rulers. I referred somewhat casually last week to Gandhi’s secret pact with Lord Lothian to agree to provincial autonomy as a first instalment of the new scheme of self-government for India. Of course, Gandhi had shrewdly hedged this agreement with the condition that representative of the self-governing Provinces and States should eventually be invited to form a Constituent Assembly which would be authorised to draft the new Federal Constitution for India. I understand that Government naturally did not agree to this condition. But they shrewdly seized on this agreement of Gandhis’, and gave it as wide a currency as possible of course, in an unofficial manner. Of course moderate politicians like Tej Bahadur Sapru and Mr. Jaykar were awfully enraged on hearing of these conversations and engaged in a very hot tussle with Gandhi. Mr. Jaykar, I am told, was particularly wild with the Congress plenipotentiary, and Gandhi is reported to have hotly replied that he was quite free to do what he liked, and he was perfectly sure of getting the Congress to agree to what ever he pleased. When the matter leaked out, however into the press, Gandhi naturally did his best to wriggle out of this secret understanding as Government had of course not agreed to the condition which formed an integral part of his agreement. But if you read between the lines of the special interview that Gandhi