Gandhi and Anarchy

by Sir C. Sankaran Nair

Note.—Individual civil disobedience is disobedience of orders or laws by a single individual or an ascertained number or group of individuals. Therefore, a prohibited public meeting where admission is regulated by tickets and to which no unauthorised admission is allowed, is an instance of individual civil disobedience whereas a prohibited meeting to which the general public is admitted without any restriction, is an instance of mass civil disobedience.

Such civil disobedience is defensive, when a prohibited public meeting is held for conducting a normal activity although it may result in arrest. It would be aggressive, if it is held, not for any activity, but merely for the purpose of courting arrest and imprisonment.

This shows that there is practically no change in the situation. This may be read with the resolution of the congress 28th Dec. 1921 (App. XX). Gandhi's agitation continues revolutionary.

For more than thirty years the constitutional Reform party have been fighting for various indispensable reforms in the administration of the country with but moderate success. At last however, in 1919 they obtained a Reform scheme which brought India directly on to the path leading to Home Rule. In fact the Reform Act made Home Rule inevitable within a comparatively short time, and indicated the nature of the constitutional methods of its early attainment. Mr. Gandhi was in India for some years before that date. He scarcely lent any assistance to the Reform party. Considering his principles he could not. After having obtained the Act, the Reform party proceeded to work it, to carry out the administrative reforms needed, to educate the masses to enable them to claim and exercise larger political powers, in order to claim at as early a date as possible that further instalment of Reform provided for and contemplated in the act itself. Mr. Gandhi is standing right athwart their path, thus preventing or at least retarding and dangerously imperilling the indispensable reforms, regardless of the sufferings of the people entailed thereby, in order to carry out his own wild principles which have not the slightest chance of acceptance provided they are understood by the people of the country for what they are, emotional speculations without any considered relation to existing conditions. Mr. Gandhi, to take him at his best is indifferent to facts. Facts must submit to the dictates of his theories. The only difficulty in his way is that they don't. Will o'the wisp politics are not of use to a people who have to live in a world which, from long and bitter experience, has at last come to realise that dreams of distorted brains are not the stuff of which contented Nations are made. Gandhi in fact is seeking not only to destroy the fruits of the long endeavour of the constitutional reformers, but blast for ever any hopes of Indian regeneration.

To push forward the working of the Act has been the work before the Reform party which he is thus so perniciously thwarting. They had to take up in the Legislative Councils the question of the redress of the grievances under which the people suffered, not only to agitate for their removal, but to show the people that by constitutional agitation sooner or later they can get what they want. The most important question with which the constitutional Reformers had to deal was one concerning the great poverty of the country. For this it is necessary to consider the question of the Land Tax—its nature, incidents, relation to other taxes, its necessity, the distribution of the land produce between the Government and the classes that own the land. This is a question in which the landholding classes are very much interested. They would have understood the arguments addressed to them and therefore it would have served as a means of political and social education. The Councils have already been dealing with it, and, considering the conditions, satisfactorily. The Government have been meeting them in a sympathetic spirit and are trying to give effect to their proposals as much as possible. What is Mr. Gandhi's advice? He does not seek to co-operate to make the tax less oppressive. He would have the people pay no land tax to Government. Only the dreadful consequences that would ensue prevent him in this case, from giving full effect to his intentions. In any case, it is not the oppressive nature of the tax that he relies on, nor is it alleged that it is an innovation of the British Government, which of course it is not. He objects to the tax, not for itself, but because it is another weapon with which to destroy the Government.

A cognate question is that which arises between the landlords and tenants. In this also all the landholding classes are deeply interested, and a discussion of the nature of the distribution of the produce between the landlord, farmer and agricultural labourer would have been of great educative value. The Legislative Councils are dealing with the question. Government in this matter also are showing the greatest possible consideration for the feelings of the people of the country. Yet Mr. Gandhi and his friends would not only take no part in the deliberations of the council but would prevent an amicable settlement by steps which have produced riots between the classes interested in the land, with the object of discrediting the Reform Scheme and paralysing the Government of the country.

Closely connected with this is the question of Indian manufactures, industries and the development of mineral resources, which, besides, conferring other benefits, will relieve undue pressure on the land. Our industries have been destroyed by English competition and constitutional reformers are determined to take all the steps necessary to enter into healthy competition with English industries in Indian interests and to develop their own mineral and other resources. In so doing they have to take care that the conditions which accompanied the rise of industrial prosperity in the West are not reproduced in India. They have to see that wage earners received adequate protection. What are the tactics of Mr. Gandhi and his friends? All these industries are to him the devil's-own agency to destroy the soul. He says they cannot add an inch to India's moral stature. Starvation due to the absence of industries may destroy the body and certainly hinders the development of the soul. But to him this does not matter. He and his followers would taboo machinery, without which competition or development is hopeless. Without attempting to promote an amicable settlement between English capitalists and Indian labourers they have on the contrary been responsible for a deliberate widening of the chasm between the races.

The administration of justice is another matter in which all are interested; and already the Legislative Councils are dealing with the question of the separation of Judicial and Executive functions. The Government again are not only not standing in their way but are rendering every assistance towards the solution of the problem. This is also the case with reference to the removal of discriminations between Europeans and Indians in the administration of justice. The people of the country understand this question well as they are deeply interested in it. Mr. Gandhi is asking the people of the country to avoid all courts and thus not to interest themselves in the improvement of judicial administration.

I might take many other questions relating to finances, army, etc., and show the baneful influence of his propaganda. In all these Mr. Gandhi's campaign against Government has hampered the reformers who would otherwise have made the redress of these grievances a more effective plank in their platform; these questions would have been more widely discussed throughout the country. But such discussion is now almost impossible with the result that these questions are not settled as satisfactorily as they might otherwise be. But it is as regards education that the reformers have most felt the want of that popular support necessary to carry out the reforms needed.

Mr. Gandhi will never be forgiven by all true lovers of sound National Education for India for the campaign he has carried on against real education. The education that has been hitherto imparted had been as everybody, including Mr. Gandhi also recognised, lamentably defective. The reformers had to insist on the imparting of suitable primary education to the masses, to the workers, to the labouring men and others, to enable them to improve their condition, because no class can generally rise except under the ultimate stress of its own will and ability. They had to demand suitable higher education, which was required not only in the interests of the culture but also for the industrial regeneration of the country and for the development of India's natural resources. In the laboratories of Europe, America and Japan students are devoting themselves to discover means for the alleviation of misery and pain. Nay, higher claims are advanced, for it has been declared by scientists that we are on the eve of discovery of means for a practically indefinite prolongation of life under certain conditions which make us intensely expectant to know whether they are the same as described in our ancient books as efficacious for that purpose, descriptions which have hitherto been contemptuously discarded as worthless. Archaeologists are almost every day unveiling to us ancient remains and writings which give us a different and a startling conception of ancient History and Civilisation. Indian History is being rewritten. When we hear of the Marconi wireless, our young men turn to our own ancient descriptions of the training of human body and mind which make these fit to receive and convey messages regardless of space and distance and they show eagerness to take part in experiment and research. When we find rays penetrating solid matter, our young scientists wonder whether after all the stories of great seers whose vision, not of the material eye, is not bounded by time or space or distance, may not be true and wonder whether we should not now take up the training prescribed to attain those results. Researches are made in the laboratories to control the forces of nature, to increase human comforts and happiness, to increase productivity in all directions. Researches have already attained brilliant results. The lessons of the survey of the regions above by the telescope, of all below by the microscope, and generally speaking all these marvels of science which lend fresh light and new significance to the lesson of ancients as to the all pervading of the universe are all anathema to Mr. Gandhi.