That the "Non-co-operation" programme was reaffirmed at Nagpur except in regard to the propaganda amongst schoolboys as differentiated from students, and that threats were uttered of extending passive resistance to the non-payment of taxes and more especially of the land tax, were not matters to cause much surprise to those who had measured the sharply inclined plane down which "Non-co-operation" was moving. But one hardly sees how Mr. Gandhi can reconcile the racial hatred which was the key-note of all the proceedings with his favourite doctrine of Ahimsa. He has, however, himself, on one occasion, openly referred to a time when legions of Indians may be ready to leap to the sword for Swaraj, and though his appeal is to an inner moral force which he declares to be unconquerable, he does not always disguise from himself or from his followers the bloodshed which the exercise of that moral force may involve. In an article in support of the "Non-co-operation" movement in his organ Young India the following pregnant passage occurs:
For me, I say with Cardinal Newman: "I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me." The movement is essentially religious. The business of every God-fearing man is to dissociate himself from evil in total disregard of consequences. He must have faith in a good deed producing only a good result; that, in my opinion, is the Ghita doctrine of work without attachment. God does not permit man to peep into the future. He follows truth, although the following of it may endanger life. He knows that it is better to die in the way of God than to live in the way of Satan. Therefore, whoever is satisfied that this Government represents the activity of Satan has no choice left to him but to dissociate himself from it.
Are there any limits to the disastrous lengths to which a people may not be carried away by one who combines to such ends and in such fashion religious and political leadership?
CHAPTER X
SIDE-LIGHTS ON THE ELECTIONS
On probably the last of seventeen visits to India spread over some forty years, I landed after three years' absence in Bombay early in November 1920, on the eve of the first elections for the new popular assemblies created by the Act of 1919.
Municipal elections there had been in India for a long time past, and elections for the Councils since 1909, but on a very restricted franchise or by indirect processes. To provide a real measure of popular representation, and even to secure the usefulness of the reforms as a means of political education for the Indian people, the franchise was now placed on as broad a basis as possible, whilst in mapping out the constituencies the principle of separate representation for particular races and creeds and special interests had to be taken into account. The territorial basis prevailed largely, and rural and urban constituencies corresponded roughly to county and borough constituencies in this country, but besides the "general constituencies" for all qualified electors indiscriminately, "special constituencies" had to be created wherever required for "community" representation, whether of Mahomedans, or, in the Punjab, of Sikhs, or, in Madras, of non-Brahmans, or, in the large cities, of Europeans and of Eurasians, besides still more specialised constituencies for the representation of land-holders, universities, commerce, and industries. There was no female suffrage, and no plural vote. No elector could vote both in a "general constituency" and in a "special" one. The qualifications laid down for the franchise were of a very modest character. Illiteracy was no bar, as to have made it so in a country where barely 10 per cent of the adult males attain to the slender standard of literacy adopted for census purposes would have reduced the electorate to very insignificant proportions, and many Indians who cannot read or write have often quite as shrewd a knowledge of affairs as those who can. The franchise varied in slight details from province to province, but generally speaking was based on a property qualification measured by payment of land revenue or of income-tax or of municipal rates. Military service counted as a special qualification. Under these regulations about 6,200,000 electors were registered, or nearly 2-3/4 per cent of the total population throughout India under direct British administration, excluding the areas to which the Act of 1919 was not to apply.
The regulations, however, merely supplied the rough framework; the task of compiling the lists of qualified electors devolved upon the Government officers and special election commissions appointed ad hoc throughout the country, and to the much-abused Civil Service mainly belongs the credit of having made it possible to hold the elections within less than a year of the passing of the Act. In the Bombay Presidency, for instance, where I had my first opportunity of seeing the new electoral system at work, the electoral rolls finally included some 550,000 electors out of a population of about 20,000,000 of widely different races and creeds, speaking three absolutely different languages. Even more laborious than the compiling of voters' lists was the task of explaining to the vast majority of voters what the vote meant, why they ought to use it, and how they had to record it. At many polling stations ballot-boxes were provided of different colours or showing different symbols—a horse, a flag, a cart, a lion, etc.—adopted by candidates to enable the voter who could not read their names to drop his ballot ticket into the right box without asking questions apt to jeopardise the secrecy of the ballot.
Many voters instinctively distrusted the privilege suddenly thrust on them, and scented in it some trap laid by Government, perhaps for extracting fresh taxation, or worse. Many more remained wholly indifferent and saw no reason for putting themselves to the slightest trouble in a matter with which they could not see that they had any personal concern. Except in large centres, the candidates themselves often did very little to disarm distrust or to combat indifference. There was little or no electioneering of the kind with which we are familiar; and when once "Non-co-operation" led to the withdrawal of Extremist candidates, there was generally no serious line of political cleavage between the others, who, especially in the rural districts, where their neighbours already knew all about them, were content to rely on their local influence and personal reputation to carry them through.