Freedom Through Disobedience

by Chitta Ranjan Das

I warn my countrymen against the policy of allowing these Reformed Councils to work their wicked will. There will undoubtedly be a further increase of taxation and there is an apprehension in my mind, I desire to express it with all the emphasis that I can command, that if we allow this policy of drift to continue the result will be that we shall lose the people who are with us to-day. Let us break the Councils if the Bureaucracy does not concede to the demands of the people. If there is fresh taxation as it is bound to be let the responsibility be on the Bureaucracy. Then you and I and the people will jointly fight the powers that be.

LABOUR ORGANISATION

I am further of opinion that the Congress should take up the work of Labour and Peasant organisation. With regard to labour there is a resolution of the Nagpur Congress, but I am sorry to say that it has not been acted upon. There is an apprehension in the minds of some non-co-operators that the cause of non-co-operation will suffer if we exploit Labour for Congress purposes. I confess again I do not understand the argument. The word “exploitation” has got an ugly association, and the argument assumes that Labour and Peasants are not with us in this struggle of Swaraj. I deny the assumption. My experience has convinced me that labour and the Peasantry of India to-day are, if anything, more eager to attain Swaraj than the so called middle and educated classes. If we are “exploiting” boys of tender years and students of colleges, if we are exploiting the women of India, if we are exploiting the whole of the middle classes irrespective of their creed and caste and occupation, may I ask what justification is there for leaving out Labourers and the Peasants? I suppose the answer is that they are welcome to be the members of the Congress Committees but that there should not be a separate organisation of them. But Labour has got a separate interest and they are often oppressed by foreign capitalists and the Peasantry of India is often oppressed by a class of men who are the standard bearers of the Bureaucracy. Is the service of this special interest in any way antagonistic to the service of nationalism? To find bread for the poor, to secure justice to a class of people who are engaged in a particular trade or avocation—how is that work different from the work of attaining Swaraj? Anything which strengthens the national cause, anything which supports the masses of India is surely as much a matter of Swaraj as any other items of work which the Congress has in hand. My advice is that the Congress should lose no time in appointing a Committee, a calm workable Committee to organise labour, and the peasantry of India. We have delayed the matter already too long. If the Congress fails to do its duty, you may expect to find organisations set up in the country by labour and peasants detached from you, dissociated from the cause of Swaraj which will inevitably bring within the arena of a peaceful evolution class struggles and the war of special interests. If the object of the Congress be to avoid that disgraceful issue let us take labour and the peasantry in hand, and let us organise them both from the point of view of their own special interests and also from the point of view of the higher ideal which demands the satisfaction of their special interests and the devotion of such interests to the cause of Swaraj. Here again we have to make use of very selfishness of the labourers and peasants, as we know that the fulfilment of that very selfishness requires its just and proper contribution to the life of the nation.

WORK ALREADY TAKEN UP

I now turn to the work which the Congress has already taken up. I may at once point out that it is not my desire that any work which the Congress has taken up should be surrendered. The change of direction which I advocate and the other practical change which I have mentioned is not by way of surrendering anything that is already on the plank but it is simply by way of addition.

BOYCOTT OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

I am firmly of opinion that the boycott of schools and colleges should be carried on as effectively as before. I defer from the Civil Disobedience Enquiry Committee when they propose the abandonment of the withdrawal of boys from such schools and colleges. The question to my mind is of vital importance. It is on the youth of the country that the cause of Swaraj largely depends—and what chance is there for a nation which willingly, knowingly sends its boys, its young men to schools and colleges to be stamped with the stamps of slavery and foreign culture? I do not desire to enter into the question more minutely. I have expressed my views on the subject so often that I find it unnecessary to repeat them. I, however, agree with the recommendation of the Enquiry Committee that national schools and colleges should also be started.

BOYCOTT OF LAW COURTS AND LAWYERS

With regard to the question of the boycott of lawyers and the legal institutions I agree with the main recommendations of the Committee. Many questions have been raised as to whether the right of defence should be allowed or not and on what occasions, and for what purposes. I have never been in love with formal rules, and I think it impossible to frame rules which will cover all the circumstances which may arise in particular cases. All that I desire to insist on, is the keeping in view of the principle of the boycott of courts.

HINDU-MUSLIM UNITY