It was a wet and windy September in London. The year was 1931.
M.K. Gandhi, almost 62 years old then, was there to attend the Second Round Table Conference (RTC) as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. Called by the British government to discuss the prospect of political changes in India, the conclave was showing up the fissures in India’s polity. In two other Indian barristers — M.A. Jinnah, leading the Muslims at the Conference, and B.R. Ambedkar, the clear leader of the Depressed Classes — the divides stood out.
The only political change Gandhi and the Indian National Congress required was complete independence. Jinnah, Ambedkar and representatives of India’s princes, Sikhs, zamindars and other ‘minority interests’ sought to tear up Gandhi’s claim that the Congress represented an inclusive India which wanted nothing more and could do with nothing less than Swaraj for all Indians, in equality.
