New Leader

The British call him C. R. because their tongues go all sticky over foreign names, especially foreign names like Chakravarti Rajagopalachariar.

C. R. emerged last week as probably the third most important man in Hindu India, after Mohandas Gandhi, former leader, and Jawaharlal Nehru, present leader of the Indian National Congress party. In fact, C. R. is the man responsible for Gandhi's no longer being leader of the Congress.

One of Gandhi's most intimate advisers, C. R. followed that holy man for many years on noncooperation, abolition of untouchability, hand-spinning, temperance, etc. He went to jail for his ideas, and wrote a book called Chats Behind Bars. Gaunt, hot-tempered, intellectual, he came to be regarded as the leader of the more cautious elements in the Congress, but after Pearl Harbor, C. R. decided that non-violence was no safeguard in such a violent world. With masterly tact he persuaded Gandhi not only to resign from leadership of the Congress, but to give his blessing to Nehru and the rest.

When Sir Stafford Cripps came to India, C. R. led the moderate faction in the Congress that favored accepting the proposal with minor changes, leaving details to be settled later. If the Congress had voted before the fall of Singapore, before the fall of Burma, and before the Japs began bombing India itself, C. R. might have carried the day, but he was overruled by a faction of defeatists and alarmists who did not want to accept power and its responsibility on the eve of invasion. So, paradoxically, the Congress rejected Britain's offer ostensibly because it did not give enough power, but actually because the Congress thought this was no time to be accepting any increase in power whatsoever.

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