of the production of the indigo plant? We do not End on each occasion that some fresh little matter ha gone wrong which can be easily adjusted, but we End on every occasion alike that It is the system itself, which is condemned as being inherently wrong and impossible, and we see also repeated time after time the utter futility of bringing the matter to any lasting or satisfactory settlement by the only solutions that have so far been attempted, namely, an enhancement of the price paid for indigo and a reduction of the tenant’s burden by reducing the limit of the proportion of hisland which he would be required to earmark for indigo cultivation. Repeatedly those expedients have been tried—repeatedly they have failed to eifect a lasting solution, partly because they could not be universally enforced, but chiefly because no thinking can set right a system which is in itself inherently rotten and open to abuse.
The planters of course could not endure this. They took occasion to indulge in the most rapid and unbecoming attacks on Mr. Gandhi. One Mr. Irwin earned an unenviable notoriety by writing all sorts of scurrilous attacks touching personalities which have nothing to do with the subject of enquiry. Columns of such stuff appeared in the pages of the Pioneer: but Mr. Gandhi with a quiet humour replied in words which should have made the soul of Irwin penitent. The controversy on Mr. Gandhi’s dress and Mrs. Gandhi’s stall-keeping reveals the character of the two men, Mr. Irwin, fussy, vindictive, violent, ill-tempered, writhing like a wounded snake in anger and agony, and Mr. Gandhi secure in his righteousness, modest, quiet, strong and friendly with no malice and untainted by evil passions.
THE CONGRESS-LEAGUE SCHEME
By this time Mr. Gandhi had made the Guzerat Sabha a well-equipped organisation for effective social service. When in August 1917 it was announced that Mr. Montagu would be in India in connection with the scheme of Post-War Reforms, the Guzerat Sabha under the direction of Mr. Gandhi devised in November the admirable scheme of a monster petition in connection with the Congress League Scheme. The idea and the movement alike were opportune. Mr. Gandhi himself undertook the work in his province of Guzerat and carried it out with characteristic thoroughness. The suggestion was taken up by
