Gandhi and Anarchy

by Sir C. Sankaran Nair

Towards the end of the month the Times of India observed:—

"Writing in the latest issue of Navajivan, his Gujarati newspaper, Mr. Gandhi makes the interesting announcement that if Swaraj is not obtained by December, he will either die of a broken heart or retire from public life, leaving the heedless people of India to their resources. Were so clear a pronouncement by any other politician, we could say definitely that when the new year dawns Mr. Gandhi will no longer be actively engaged in politics!"

Can there be any possible doubt that all these statements were made by him in order to impress upon his dupes the fact that they were going to get Swaraj within a year and to deceive his followers to follow him and finance him. Yet what was the situation! Almost every item in his programme has been tried and found useless to attain Home Rule. I would again draw attention to the speech of the President of the Thana District conference for a review of the situation as it then stood in the opinion of one of his prominent followers, (App. VI). This is the opinion of most of his prominent supporters who have been opposing Mr. Gandhi's programme from the very beginning and accordingly the programme was practically shelved and at the Congress held at the end of the year it was resolved to suspend all the activities of the Congress on which stress was much laid. The programme of the volunteer organisation throughout the country was to be carried out on a more extensive scale and the laws of the country were to be defied by disobeying the notifications issued by Government. The Congress also recommended civil disobedience as the only civilised and effective substitute for an armed rebellion and recommended individual disobedience as well as mass civil disobedience when the mass of the people have been sufficiently trained in the practice of non-violence. And the activities of the Congress were to be suspended for that purpose (App. XX). "Offensive civil disobedience herein recommended is thus defined. Offensive civil disobedience means deliberate and wilful breach of State made non-moral laws—that is, laws the breach of which does not involve moral turpitude—not for the purpose of securing the repeal of, or relief from hardships arising from obedience to such laws, but for the purpose of diminishing the authority of, or overthrowing, the State."

What took place at the Congress itself was remarkable. The President of the Moslem League, Moulana Hajrat Mohini, who was also a member of the National Congress, proposed his resolution for complete independence. He is reported to have said that although last year they have been promised Swaraj, the redress of the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs within a year, they had so far achieved nothing (App. XVIII for his view). Mr. Gandhi denied that there was any limitation of one year when the creed was accepted in Nagpur and Calcutta. The special representative of the Congress organ, the Bombay Chronicle says: "The feeling in general appear to be in favour of Moulana Hajrat Mohini's resolution" though it was not carried on account of the passionate appeal of Mahatma Gandhi against it. It is instructive to read the resolutions (Appendix XX) that were then passed. Thus Swaraj was to come on September 1-1921, October 31-1921, December 13-1921. At the Congress in December, 1921, Mr. Gandhi gave up fixing any date for the attainment of Swaraj.

The resolution passed in September, 1920, was seditious. The resolution passed in December, 1921, is openly revolutionary, and in fact Gandhi made no secret of it. He says: "Lord Reading must clearly understand that the non-co-operators are at war with the Government. They have declared rebellion against it in as much as it has committed a breach of faith with the Mussalmans. It has humiliated the Punjab and insists upon imposing its will upon the people and refuses to repair the breach and repent for the wrong done in the Punjab" (Young India). Mr. Gandhi also said: "The Government want to goad us into violence or abject surrender. We must do neither. We must retort by such civil disobedience as would compel shooting." The volunteer organizations were pledged to act accordingly. Yet when the Government notified those illegal associations and punished those who defied them, the rebels indignantly remonstrate against what they call coercion and interference with the liberty of person and security of property. They want to be in the limelight to evoke the admiration of America and Europe for their patriotism in rebelling against a Satanic Government. But they are wanting in the redeeming features of these rebels elsewhere—their contempt of danger and death. That is left here to the ignorant masses—the dupes of these men who seek to protect themselves from danger by their doctrine of non-violence.

NON-VIOLENT NON-CO-OPERATION

How on earth is it possible to imagine that all activities would be non-violent when those who are carrying them on proclaim themselves rebels against constitutional authority and are bent upon destroying it; when they say that they must commit civil disobedience of a character that would compel the officials to shoot them! when we know that one large section of it, the Mahomedans, follow a militant religion which not only sanctions but requires them to use force to vindicate what they consider to be their religious law. When we consider further the nature of the activities of those who carry on the Non-co-operation movement there can be still less room to doubt that riots ending in bloodshed are bound to follow. In order to carry out the Non-co-operation campaign India is divided into various Congress provinces. Congress committees are formed consisting of members who are also pledged to carry out the Congress principles: there are also volunteer organizations formed. The function of these bodies is to impress upon the people of the country the enormity of Government's crime with reference to the Punjab and the Khilafat and the consequent necessity of Home Rule or Swaraj. For attaining such Swaraj they advocate progressive non-co-operation by "peaceful" methods. Such methods consist of various steps which are described in the speech of Mr. Macpherson, extracted below. Starting, perhaps, peacefully they soon exhibit a tendency to violence and when Mahomedan sentiments are involved, when appeals are made to Mahomedan religious feelings, that tendency becomes almost irresistible in their case. Opposition to constituted authority inflames them into violence and instead of submitting to violence at the hands of authorities according to the dictates of Gandhi—a counsel of perfection—they retort—and murder is the result. The process is so well put by Mr. Macpherson in the Behar Legislative Council that I take the liberty of quoting the following extract from his speech:—

"It is necessary to consider what is the essence of the non-co-operation movement, what are its ultimate objects and what are its methods. From the moment Mr. Gandhi first unfolded his plan of campaign—that was, I think, at a Benares or Allahabad Conference in 1920—there has never been any doubt in my mind that the objects of the movement were entirely unconstitutional, that its methods were illegal and that its prosecution to the bitter end is bound to result in violence, disorder and anarchy, however much non-violence may be proclaimed as the watchword of its leaders. The movement cannot be judged by its earlier and comparatively innocuous stages, as if these stood by themselves. I refer to the resignation of titles, the boycott of Government schools and colleges, the abandonment of their profession by legal practitioners and other such manifestations of non-co-operation, although all these items in the programme have done an infinite amount of harm, especially to the youth of the country, and even these earlier stages have been marked by repeated outbursts of violence, by a concerted system of intimidation and social boycott, and by the excitement of racial hatred which has had deplorable results in individual cases. No, the plan of campaign must be taken as a whole, and judged by its closing stages, the enforcement of civil disobedience towards the laws of the country, interference with the police and the judicial administration, the invasion of police stations, picketing of Courts, the seduction of the troops from their allegiance, and the refusal to pay taxes or rent or revenue. The movement must indeed be judged by its ultimate object, which is the paralysis and subversion of the existing Government and by its inevitable result, general disorder and bloodshed and widespread misery amongst all classes and communities. If pursued to the bitter end, it will assuredly have this result, whether it succeeds or fails, and should it (which God forbid) succeed, the end can only be a state of chaos which will make India the prey of the violent tribes that dwell around her borders or the hungry hordes of Central Asia who, in the course of history, have more than once invaded India. The object of the movement being what it is, the overthrow of the existing Government in India, what is the use of telling us that either its leaders or its followers have signed a pledge of non-violence? The pledge is a farce, it has already been broken a hundred times over, and the longer the movement continues and the further it advances, the more it will be broken."

That this has been the case is illustrated by almost all the riots which have taken place. Malabar stands first in its unenviable notoriety. There the Congress committees were formed; the Khilafat committees also were formed; Gandhi and Shaukat Ali visited Malabar, preached their sermons and the usual result followed. With Mahomedans Swaraj was only their secondary aim, their principal object being the redress of the Khalif's wrongs and the establishment of a Khilafat kingdom in the country. When, therefore, the British Government interfered with the activities of some of the Khilafat leaders the Mohomedan population as a whole rose in rebellion and invited the Hindus to join them. The Hindus as a body remained loyal; and the results were disastrous both to the Mahomedans and to the Hindus, more than two thousand Mahomedans killed by troops according to official estimates, thousands more in other ways; far larger numbers wounded; the number of Hindus butchered in circumstances of barbarity, flayed alive, made to dig their own graves before slaughter, running into thousands; women and purdah women too, raped, not in a fit of passion but systematically for months passed from hand to hand and with calculated revolting and horrible cruelty for which I have not been able to find a parallel in history. Thousands were forcibly converted. All this done in the name of, and to enforce, the Khilafat movement: all this due directly to the visit of Gandhi and Shaukat Ali and to the organization of Khilafat associations. They carried on their activities openly without any obstruction by the authorities; the Government of Madras was prevented from interfering with Khilafat agitators by the Government of India who are therefore as responsible as if they had directly ordered all this frightfulness.