1 - Motilal Nehru close to/away from Gandhi: Between Constitutional Agitator and Gandhian Non-Cooperator

　　　　　　　　The purpose of this presentation is to examine Motilal Nehru’s attitudes on M. K. Gandhi around 1920, when he swung between constitutional moderation and Gandhian radicalism. The moderate leaders including Gopal Krishna Gokhale who preferred self-government within the British Empire to absolute independence were predominant in the Indian National Congress from its foundation in 1885 to Gandhi’s ascendancy in 1920.
　　　　　　　　Motilal, the father of Jawaharlal, was a prominent moderate leader in the United Provinces, British India. Based on his exceedingly high estimation of British constitutionalism, he criticized the extremists who confused swadeshi with boycott in the Swadeshi Movement after the Partition of Bengal in 1905. Until the World War I, he was a constitutional agitator in search for self-ruling Indian dominion.
　　　　　　　　But it was the British forceful policies towards India including the preventive detention of Annie Besant, the Rowlatt Act, and the Amritsar massacre during and soon after the WWI that changed Motilal into an anti-British non-cooperator under the leadership of Gandhi calling for boycotting educational, administrative, and judicial institutions of the colonial government and refusing to pay taxes. But after the Gandhi’s declaration of ceasing the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1922, Motilal returned from a Gandhian radical to a constitutional moderate campaigning for gradual progress in the colonial political system. The moderate agitator led again the Congress and nationalist movement until his death in 1931. His political reconversion in 1922 showed the fragility of the Gandhian radical approach of non-cooperation.