The Collected Works of Lala Lajpat Rai: January-December 1927

Lala Lajpat Rai was one of the outstanding leaders of modern India, a contemporary of Dadabhai Naroji, Tilak, Gokhale and Gandhi. His public life spanned the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. He practised law at the Lahore Chief Court and built up a lucrative practice, but was drawn very early into public activities pertaining to religious, educational and social reforms and then into nationalist politics. Lajpat Rai was one of the foremost leaders of the Indian National Congress. His arrest and deportation without trial to Burma in 1907 created a great sensation in India. He spent the war years (1914-18) in the United States propagating the Indian case for self- government. He returned to India in 1920 and had the honour of presiding over the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress which approved of Gandhi's campaign for non-cooperation with the government. He was deputy leader of the Swaraj Party in the Legislative Assembly and played a prominent role in provincial as well as national politics in the 1920s. While leading a demonstration against the Simmon Commision at Lahore in 1928 he received injuries in an assault by the police which hastened his death. The thirteenth volume covers the year 1927. Lajpat Rai continued to disapprove non-cooperation and boycott in the Assembly as followed by the Congress. He valued the work in the legislature whatever it was worth rather than total obstruction'. He said "non-cooperation was a good principle but not good in action". In the Assembly, Lajpat Rai participated in debates and extended his support to the popular issues and collaborated with the Congress party. Motilal Nehru and Ljpat Rai re-established cordial relations to work for the national cause. In May 1927 Lapat Rai left for Europe for rest and recuperation. He was in London, when Katherine Mayo's book Mother India appeared. It constituted an indiscriminate vilification of Indian civilization and culture. On return to India, he made it his first duty to give a befitting reply to Miss Mayo and by Jan. 1928 his book Unhappy India was in the press. The announcement of 8 November 1927 by the British Government to appoint the Simon Commission which had all white members to enquire into Indian constitutional reforms, caused indignation in India. Lajpat Rai questioned the right of the British Parliament to frame a constitution for India. As opposed to it, he felt that Indians should take up the task of drafting their own constitution. However, the Congress at Madras session (December 1927) decided to convene an All Parties Conference for the purpose of making a constitution for India.