Freedom Through Disobedience

by Chitta Ranjan Das

DEMANDS FOR PUNJAB WRONGS, KHILAFAT AND SWARAJ

We are on the eve of great changes, and the world-forces are upon us. The victory of Kemal Pasha has broken the bonds of Asia and she is all astir with life. It is Prometheus who spoke within her, and ‘her thoughts’ are like the many forests of vale through which the might of whirlwind and rain had passed. The stir within every European country for the real freedom of the people has also worked a marvellous transformation in the mentality of subject races. That which was more or less a matter of Ideal has now come within the range of practical politics. The Indian nation has found out its bearings. At such a time as this it is necessary for us to reconsider and to restate our demands. Our demands regarding the Punjab wrongs have got to be restated because many of them have already been realised. Our demands regarding Khilafat have got to be reconsidered, because some of them have already been worked out and we hope that before Lausanne Commission has finished their work very little of it will remain unrealised. Our demand for Swaraj must now be presented in a more practical shape. The Congress should frame a clear scheme of what we mean by a system of government which may serve as a real foundation for Swaraj. Hitherto, we have not defined any such system of Government. We have not done so advisedly as it was on the psychological aspect of Swaraj that we concentrated our attention. But circumstances to-day have changed. The desire is making us impatient. It is therefore the duty of the Congress to place before the Country a clear scheme of the system of Government which we demand. Swaraj, as I have said, is indefinable and is not to be confused with any particular system of Government. Yet the national mind must express itself, and although the full outward expression of Swaraj covers the whole life history of a nation, the formulation of such a demand cannot be any further delayed.

SCHEME OF A GOVERNMENT

It is hardly within the province of this address to deal with any detail scheme of any such Government. I cannot, however, allow this opportunity to pass without giving you an expression of my opinion as to the character of that system of Government. No system of Government which is not for the people and by the people can even be regarded as the true foundation of Swaraj. I am firmly convinced that a parliamentary Government is not a government by the people and for the people. Many of us believe that the middle class must win Swaraj for the masses. I do not believe in the possibility of any class movement being ever converted into a movement for Swaraj. If to-day the British Parliament grants Provincial autonomy in the provinces with responsibility in the Central Government, I for one, will protest against, because that will inevitably lead to the concentration of the power in the hands of the middle class. I do not believe that the middle class will then part with their power. How will it profit India, if in place of the White Bureaucracy that now rules over her, there is substituted an Indian Bureaucracy of the middle classes. Bureaucracy is Bureaucracy and I believe that the very idea of Swaraj is inconsistent with the existence of a Bureaucracy. My ideal of Swaraj will never be satisfied unless the people co-operate with us in its attainment. Any other attempt will inevitably lead to what European Socialists call the “Bourgeoise” Government. In France and in other European countries it is the middle class who fought the battle of freedom and the result is that power is still in the hands of this class. Having usurped the power they are unwilling to face with it. If to-day the whole Europe is engaged in a battle of real freedom it is because the nations of Europe are gathering their strength to wrest this power from the hands of the middle classes. I desire to avoid repetition of that chapter of European history. It is for India to show the light to the world, Swaraj by Non-violence and Swaraj by the people.

To me the organisation of village life and the practical autonomy of small local centres are more important than either provincial autonomy or central responsibility; and if the choice lay between the two, I would unhesitatingly accept the autonomy of the local centres. I must not be understood as implying that the village centres will he disconnected units. They must be held together by a system of co-operation and integration. For the present, there must be power in the hands of the provincial and the Indian Government; but the ideal should be accepted once for all, that the proper function of the central authority, whether in the provincial or in the Indian Government is to advise, having a residuary power of control only in case of need and to be exercised under proper safeguard. I maintain that real Swaraj can only be attained by vesting the power of Government in these local centres, and I suggest that the Congress should appoint a Committee to draw up a scheme of Government which would be acceptable to the Nation.

The most advanced thought of Europe is turning from the false individualism on which European culture and institutions are based to what I know to be the ideal of the ancient village organisation of India. According to this thought modern democracy of the ballot box and large crowds has failed, but real democracy has not yet been tried. What is the real democracy of modern European thought?

The foundation of real democracy must be laid in small centres—not gradual decentralisation which implies a previous centralisation—but a gradual integration of the practically autonomous small centres into one living harmonious whole. What is wanted is a human state, not a mechanical contrivance. We want the growth of institutions and organisations which are really dynamic in their nature and not the mere static stability of a centralised state.

This strain of European thought found some expression in the philosophy of Hegel according to whom “human institutions belong to the region not of inert externality, but of mind and purpose and are therefore dynamic and self-developing.”

Modern European thought has made it clear that from the individual to the “unified state,” it is one continuous process of real and natural growth. Sovereignity (Swaraj) is a relative notion. “The individual is sovereign over himself”—attains his Swaraj “in so far as he can develop control and unify his manifold nature.” From the individual we come to the integrated neighbourhood which is the real foundation of the unified State, which again in its turn gives us the true ideal of the world-state. This integrated neighbourhood is a great deal more than the mere physical contiguity of the people who live in the neighbourhood area. It requires the coalition of what has been called “neighbourhood consciousness.” In other words, the question is “how can the force generated by the neighbourhood life become part of our whole critic and national life?” It is this question which now democracy takes upon itself to solve.

The process prescribed is the generation of the collective will. The democracy which obtains to-day rests on an attempt of securing a common will by a process of addition. This really means a war of wills, the issue being left to be decided by a mere superiority of numbers. New democracy discountenances this process of addition, and insists on the discovery of detailed means and methods by which the different wills of a neighbourhood entity may grow into one common collective will. This process is not a process addition but of integration and the consciousness of the neighbourhood thus awakened must express the common collective will of that neighbourhood entity. The collective will of several neighbourhood centres, must by a similar process of integration be allowed to evolve the Common collective will of the whole nation. It is only thus, by a similar process of integration that any league of nations may be real and the vision of a world state may be realized. The whole of this philosophy is based on the idea of the evolution of the individual. The idea is to “release the powers of the individual.” Ordinary notions of state have little to do with true individualism, (i. e.) with the individual as consciously responsible for the life from which he draws his breath and to which he contributes his all. According to this school of thought ‘Representative government, party organisation, majority rule, with all their excrescences in their stead must appear the organisation of non-partisan groups for the begetting, the bringing into being of common ideas, a common purpose and the collective will.’ This means the true development and extension of the individual self. The institutions that exist to-day have made machines of men. No Government will be successful, no true Government is possible which does not rest on the individual. “Up to the present moment,” says the gifted authoress of the New State, “we have never seen the individual yet. The search for him has been the whole long striving of our Anglo-Saxon history. We sought to improve the method of representation and failed to find him. We sought to reach him by extending the suffrage to every man and then to every woman and yet he eludes us. Direct Government now seeks the individual.” In another place the same writer says; “Thus group organisation releases us from the domination of mere numbers, thus democracy transcends time and space. It can never be understood except as a spiritual force. Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is not a collection of units, but a network of human relations. Democracy is not worked out at the polling booths, it is the bringing forth of a genuine collective will, one to which every single being must contribute the whole of his complex life, as one which every single being must express the whole of it at one point. Thus the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.” According to this school of thought no living state is possible without the development and the extension of the individual self. The State itself is no static unit. Nor is it an arbitrary creation. “It is a process; a continual self-modification to express its different stages of growth in which each and all must be so flexible that continual change of form is twin fellow of continual growth.” This can only be realised when there is a clear perception that individuals and groups and the nation stand in no antithesis. The integration of all these into one conscious whole means and must necessarily mean the integration of the wills of individuals into the common and collective will of the entire nation.