K. F. NARIMAN’S STATEMENT

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

K. F. NARIMAN’S STATEMENT

 

 

 I am grateful to Mahatma Gandhi and D. N. Bahadurji for having taken me into their confidence and shown me a copy of their findings and judgment in an inquiry made by them. I have studied them carefully and must accept them as findings arrived at by judges who were judges of my choice and whom I have the privilege of regarding as my friends. It is open to them to publish their judgment but they have generously offered not to publish it if I publicly declare that I am satisfied with their verdict. I accordingly do so and feel that in doing so I owe a statement to the public. I am convinced that in the matter of the election of 1934 I neglected my duty as a responsible office-bearer of the Congress and gave some of my friends cause to feel that my neglect amounted to a grave breach of trust. In the matter of election of the leader of the Bombay Parliamentary Party in 1937, I am sorry to confess that I misjudged the general position and on the strength of the statement made by some of the legislators I felt a grievance which I allowed my friends and part of the Press to share with me. As a result, considerable bitterness was aroused and Sardar Vallabhbhai was even charged by a section of the Press with having acted through communal prejudice. I have publicly stated before and do so now that this charge was entirely unfounded and whatever the Sardar did or did not do, was from a sense of public duty. I am sorry that the agitation against Sardar should have taken a personal aspect and even a communal aspect and that I should have been the cause of taking up so much of the time of Mahatma Gandhi and Bahadurji over a grievance which the public have a right to say was more fancied than real. Having said this I feel that I owe some kind of reparation to the public whom I have all these years claimed to serve. And in order that the confidence in me may be fully restored, I deliberately declare my intention not to seek on the expiry of my term of those offices re-election to all positions and places of trust that I now enjoy and my determination to serve the Congress and the public by being out of those offices in order that passions and bitterness may cease and peace and harmony may be restored.