PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT 55
contrived to translate very little of it into practice, having regard to his personal influence and his pecuniary resources. Every year he goes on a tour to make collections for his Spinners. Has he ever set out on a crusade against Untouchability? Not one hundredth part of what he spends on the Charakha is spent by him for this cause. You all know how Mahatma Gandhi went on a three weeks’ fast to bring about unity between Hindus and Muslems. Has Mahatma Gandhi fasted even for a day to bring about a more charitable feeling between the touchables and the Untouchables? If these things had been done, one could have accepted the Congress platform. But we have not only no evidence of a genuine effort on the part of the Congress to remove the stigma of Untouchability; but we know that Swami Shradhanand had to leave the Congress in disgust because he found the Congress unwilling to do anything more than make a show in the matter. If one were to judge the colour of the Congress by its resolutions one will be slow to accept that the Congress stands for the masses. Its economic resolutions reflect the interests of the higher and the middle classes. Its commercial resolutions concern only the trader and the manufacturer, and the working man is severely left out. A body that stands for 1s.4d ratio and against 1s.6d. must forfeit its claim to be the guardian of the masses. The inclusion of the Salt Tax in the campaign of Civil Disobedience cannot give a different face to the Congress. The fulminations against the Salt Tax are welcome aids to political agitation. But just as the test of the pudding lies in the eating of it so also the true test of the Salt Tax campaign lies in the readiness to shift the burden by a substitute such as will cut the classes and spare the masses. Time alone can show the genuineness behind it. But I have no doubt that when the time for test comes many a Congressman will be in the camp of the classes and not of the masses. That the Congress should be lukewarm and apathetic to the masses is only inevitable. For, it represents a nationalist movement and is not a political party. As such its programme and policy must be a hodge-podge. It must be obvious to every one that when a body is constrained to take account of all and sundry it can take account of some only in name and that in case of conflict