CHAPTER XV
THE INCLINED PLANE OF GANDHIISM
Those who have persistently derided the "Non-co-operation" movement and announced its imminent collapse have been scarcely less wide of the mark than Mr. Gandhi himself when he began to predict that it would bring Swaraj to India by a date, not always quite the same, but always less than a year distant. The original programme of "Non-co-operation" has hitherto failed egregiously. Only very few lawyers have abandoned their practice in "Satanic" law-courts at his behest, still fewer Indians have surrendered the distinctions conferred on them by Government. A mischievous ferment has been introduced once more into Indian schools and colleges. Some youths have foolishly wrecked their own future, or seen it wrecked for them, by attempts to boycott and obstruct the examinations on which their career so often depends. But neither have Mr. Gandhi and his followers destroyed the schools and colleges against which they have waged war, nor created in anything more than embryo, and in extremely few places, the "national" schools and colleges that were to take their place. Even Rabindranath Tagore, whose poetic imagination was at first fired by Mr. Gandhi's appeal to renounce the title of knighthood awarded to him in recognition of his literary genius, has had enough practical experience of education, as he himself has conceived and carried it into execution on his own quite original lines, to be driven at last to admit that Indian youths are asked to bring their patriotic offering of sacrifice, "not to a fuller education, but to non-education." With his craving for metaphysical accuracy of expression, he has even denounced the "no" of "Non-co-operation" as "in its passive moral form asceticism, and in its active moral form violence." The conclusion wrung from his reluctant idealism is one at which the large majority of sober-minded Indians arrived long before the poet. They gave effect to it as voters at the elections in defiance of Mr. Gandhi's boycott, and their representatives gave effect to it in the legislatures which Mr. Gandhi no less vainly boycotted.
Yet in spite of Mr. Gandhi's repeated failures "Non-co-operation" is not dead. It has a widespread organisation, with committees in every town and emissaries particularly active in the large villages and in many rural districts. It had the enthusiastic support at Nagpur of the large assemblage that still retains the name, but little else, of the old Indian National Congress. It does not lack funds, for Mr. Gandhi professes to have gathered in the crore of rupees which he asked for within the appointed twelvemonth. It controls a large part of the Indian Press, though mostly of the less reputable type, more vituperative and mendacious, in spite of all Indian Press laws, than anything conceived of in this country where there are no Press laws. Mr. Gandhi himself goes on preaching "Non-co-operation" with unabated conviction and unresting energy, the same picture always of physical frailty and unconquerable spirit, travelling all over the country in crowded third-class carriages, worshipped by huge crowds that hang on his sainted lips—and pausing only in his feverish campaign to spend a short week at Simla in daily conference with Lord Reading. That the new Viceroy should have thought it advisable almost immediately after his arrival in India to hold such prolonged intercourse with Mr. Gandhi is the best proof that the Mahatma is no mere dreamer whose influence is evanescent, but a power to be reckoned with. The Simla interviews did not seem to have been entirely fruitless when Mr. Gandhi extracted from his chief Mahomedan lieutenants, the brothers Ali, a disavowal, however half-hearted, of any intention to incite to violence in certain speeches delivered by them for which they would otherwise have had to be prosecuted. It looked as if he had made a more effective stand than on other occasions against the importation of violence into "Non-co-operation," and proved the reality of the influence which he is believed to have all along exercised to curb his Mahomedan followers who do not share his disbelief in violence. But Simla only deflected him for a short time from his dangerous course.
In the whole of this strange movement nothing is more mysterious than the hold which Mr. Gandhi has over Mahomedans as well as Hindus, though the wrongs of Turkey, which are ever in his mouth, touch only very remotely the great mass of Indian Mahomedans, whilst the old antagonism of the two communities is still simmering and bubbling and apt to boil over on the slightest provocation. Collisions are most frequent during religious festivals, especially if they happen to be held by both communities at the same time. The chief stone of offence for Hindus is the sacrifice of cows, the most sacred to them of all animals, without which the Mahomedans consider their great annual festival of Bakar-Id cannot be complete. Mahomedans, on the other hand, to whom musical instruments as an accompaniment to religious worship are abhorrent, are often driven wild when Hindu processions pass with their bands playing in front of a mosque. Only four years ago, when the compact between the National Congress and the Moslem League was still quite fresh, riots broke out simultaneously during the Bakar-Id over a great part of the Patna district, which were only suppressed after a large tract of some forty miles square had passed into the hands of the Hindu mobs, when a considerable military force reached the scenes of turmoil and disorder, for the like of which, according to the Government Resolution, it was necessary to go back over a period of sixty years to the days of the great Mutiny. It would be of little purpose to enumerate many other instances of disorders on a lesser scale that have occurred since then in connection with cow-killing. When staying for a few days last winter in Nellore, a small town in the Madras Presidency, i.e. in a part of India noted for its quietude, I had a pertinent illustration of the often trivial but none the less dangerous forms that the persistent animosity between Hindus and Mahomedans can assume. In Nellore, itself a very sleepy hollow, the Mahomedans are not quite in such a hopelessly small minority as they generally are in Southern India, for they number about 6000 out of 30,000 inhabitants. The few "Non-co-operationists" in the place, Hindu and Mahomedan, professed to have formed a "Reconciliation Committee" to prevent their co-religionists from flying at each other's throats. Their efforts were not, however, sufficient to relieve the local authorities from the necessity of putting some of the police on special service for the protection of respectable Hindu traders of the same caste as Mr. Gandhi himself in their daily comings and goings through certain quarters of the city against the more unruly of their Mahomedan fellow-citizens. The usual bad feeling had been exacerbated by an affray, already the best part of a year old, when one of the Hindu processions from the four great temples of the city perversely altered its accustomed route and passed down the streets leading to the chief mosque with bands defiantly playing, and a party of Mahomedans lying in wait for them rushed out and assaulted them with brick-bats, until they were dispersed by a few rifle-shots from the police. Apart from such major provocation, each side indulges in minor pin-pricks that keep up a constant irritation. It is an old custom at both Hindu and Mahomedan festivals for youths to dress up as tigers and lions, who add an element of terror to the pageant by roaring to order. Of late years each community has tried to deny to the other the right to introduce this element of frightfulness into its processions, and these harmless wild beasts have frequently been made to repent of their disguise with bruised bodies and broken heads. In one large village in the Nellore district serious trouble arose over an attempt on the part of the Mahomedans to halt their procession for the purpose of distributing "jaggery" water in close proximity to an enclosure set apart by the Hindus for the nuptials of their god and goddess at an annual marriage festival, and the Taluk magistrate had to issue a formal order, enforced by policemen on special duty, forbidding the Mahomedans to place the objectionable pot of water within twenty feet of the wedding enclosure. In all such cases both sides appeal promptly for help to the authorities, and one of the chief and not least wearisome of the British administrator's tasks is to be for ever on the watch in order if possible to avert, by timely suasion and measures of precaution, the serious trouble that may at any moment arise out of trifles which to the European mind must seem grotesquely insignificant. Indians themselves admit that it is an even more difficult task for them, as Indian-born officials must almost always belong to one or other of the two communities, and their impartiality be therefore congenitally suspect to one side or the other.
There can be no worthier purpose for either government or public men or private individuals to pursue than a real reconciliation between two great communities estranged, not only by fundamentally different religious beliefs and traditions, but by enduring memories of century-long conflicts and of the very often oppressive domination of Mahomedan rulers over conquered Hindu peoples held down in spite of their numerical superiority by the sheer weight of superior force. There may have been Englishmen who, believing in the shallow maxim Divide ut imperes, have relied on that estrangement to fortify British rule; but such has never been the principle of British policy. It has constantly sought, on the contrary, to prevent and suppress as far as possible disorders which, whenever they break out afresh, inevitably revive and quicken the ancient antagonism, and to attenuate it, slowly but steadily, by the exercise of even-handed justice and the pacifying influences of education and the rule of law.
Has the alliance between Mr. Gandhi and the Ali brothers or the fusion between the Congress and League Extremists, Hindu and Mahomedan, proved more effective? How far down has this Hindu and Mahomedan fraternisation really reached that is based above all on common hatred of a "Satanic" Government? How far has it even temporarily checked the instinctive tendency of the masses in both communities to break away from their allies and go for each other rather than for that common enemy against whom "Non-co-operation" bids them combine? Frequent outbreaks continue to reveal from time to time the ignes cineri suppositos doloso. They mostly follow the same course. Khilafat agitators terrorise the law-abiding population, extorting subscriptions for Khilafat funds, compelling shopkeepers to close their shops for Khilafat demonstrations, and so forth, until they are driven to appeal to the authorities for protection. Then an attempt is made to arrest some of the ringleaders or to disarm the Khilafat "volunteers," who, when they have no more modern weapons, know how to use their lathis or heavy iron-tipped staves with often deadly effect. Rioting starts on a large scale to the cry of "Religion! Religion!" the small local police force is helpless, and very soon the whole fury of the Mahomedan mob turns against the Hindus, as at Malegaon, in the Bombay Presidency, where they set a Hindu temple on fire and threw into the flames the body of an unfortunate Hindu sub-inspector of police who had been vainly attempting to save a Hindu quarter from arson. Troops are hurried up from the nearest military station, and usually as soon as they appear order is restored with the employment of a minimum amount of force. Numerous arrests are made, and a few of the local firebrands are ultimately prosecuted and convicted. But at "Non-co-operation" headquarters the Khilafat propaganda goes on undisturbed, and all the appearances of Hindu-Mahomedan unity are ostentatiously kept up. Mr. Mahomed Ali preaches to Hindus as well as to Mahomedans that it will be their duty to give the Ameer of Afghanistan every assistance in their power when he descends with his armies to rescue India from her foreign oppressors. An All-India Khilafat Conference announces that, if the British Government fights openly or secretly against the Turkish Nationalists at Angora, the Indian National Congress will proclaim the Republic of India at its next session, and meanwhile declares it unlawful for any Mahomedan to serve in the Indian army, since a "Satanic" Government may at any moment use it to fight against Mustafa Kemal's forces at Angora. It is impossible to believe that on such lines "Non-co-operation" can bring Mahomedans and Hindus permanently together, or can drag the bulk of the sober and conservative Mahomedan community away from its solid moorings, but the effect of such appeals to the turbulent and fanatical elements, more numerous and more easily roused amongst Mahomedans than amongst Hindus, spreads and grows with the impunity conceded to them.
If, on the other hand, the Hindus may be on the whole less prone to violence than the Mahomedans, with whom the sword is still the symbol of their faith, the grave agrarian disturbances which have twice this year resulted from the "Non-co-operation" campaign in the United Provinces, and other disorders of a similar kind on a less serious scale in other provinces, show that Hindus too are not proof against temptations to violence. Mr. Gandhi may go on preaching non-violence, and he may himself still disapprove of violence and refuse to believe that his teachings, as interpreted at least by many of his followers, are as certain to produce violence as the night is to produce darkness; but that "Non-co-operation" more and more frequently spells violence is beyond dispute, and more and more faint-hearted—to put it very mildly—are his reprobations of violence.
The most threatening feature of the "Non-co-operation" movement, now that it has failed so completely in its appeal to the better and more educated classes, is that it is concentrating all its energies on the ignorant and excitable masses. If one takes a long view of India's progress under the new dispensation, it may well be a source of satisfaction and encouragement that the insane lengths to which "Non-co-operation" has gone have served at least to drive in a deep wedge between the Moderates and the Extremists. But in the immediate future "Non-co-operation" may prove not less but more formidable because, except with a few eccentrics, it has lost whatever hold it may have had for a time on the politically minded intelligentsia, and feels, therefore, no longer under any restraint in addressing itself to hungry appetites and primitive passions amongst the backward Hindu masses as well as amongst Mahomedans. That it has not appealed to them in vain there are increasingly ominous indications in such wanton destruction as the firing of immense areas of forest in the Kumoon district of the United Provinces. For the gods to be worshipped in fear and trembling are the gods that revel in, and can only be placated by, destruction. Wherever there are local discontents—and such there must always be in a vast country and amongst vast populations that too often have a hard struggle for bare existence—"Non-co-operation" is at once on the spot to envenom the sores. Economic conditions aggravated by the great rise in prices for all the necessaries of life since the Great War press heavily on the most helpless classes. The vitality of the whole population has been depressed for years past by the ravages of the plague, now fortunately much abated, which have carried off about eight million lives within the last two decades, and by the still more appalling ravages of two epidemics of influenza which in 1918 within one twelvemonth carried off some six or seven millions of lives, mostly in their very best years, and left many more millions of lives either older or younger wretchedly enfeebled. Add to all this the many direct and indirect reactions of the general unrest which in so many different forms has spread over the whole face of the globe, and of the particular forms of political unrest which have kept India in periodical ferment since 1905, constantly fed by violent speeches and by a still more violent vernacular press. All these discontents "Non-co-operation" has set itself to link up to a common purpose by inflaming racial hatred, stirred as never since the Mutiny by the story, bad enough in itself and unscrupulously distorted and exaggerated, of the events in the Punjab which has been for two years the trump card of the Extremists, with an additional appeal to the religious fanaticism of the Mahomedans in the alleged wrong done to their faith by the Turkish peace terms. Consciously and unconsciously Mr. Gandhi has lent his saintly countenance to all these menacing features of the "Non-co-operation" movement, and given them a religious sanction which captures many who would not have succumbed but for their faith in a Mahatma who can do and say no wrong.