Chitta Ranjan

by Sukumar Ranjan Das

(12) Necessary laws will have to be passed to place the primary and district assemblies on a legal basis.

This out-line of work is very closely connected with Indian socialism. This is what we now call Swaraj or self-government of the villages. These institutions did actually exist in our country from very ancient times; they grew and developed with our growth, and they have a peculiar harmony with the genius of our national character. Chitta Ranjan has therefore proposed only reversion to our older social institutions. But life among us now is not so simple as it was before; it has become complex, difficult and intricate. Hence what was inchoate requires to be put into a system. The panchayet was a natural out-growth of our ancient village community! It consisted of those five persons who naturally and easily emerged into prominence by their qualities of character and intellect. The authority of the panchayet lasted only so long as the community at large tacitly accepted their authority. Now the question arises, "Will the Government entrust so much power to us?" Again there are the Anglo-Indian papers crying themselves hoarse, "No no, there is so much of anarchism in the land, it will lead to fearful abuses if the people are entrusted with any large share of power." But the real fact is just the opposite, if the people are given opportunities of serving their country on a larger scale, the so-called anarchism will die out of itself. Of this Chitta Ranjan says in his address:—

"Since the days of the swadeshi movement our young men have been possessed with the ardent desire to serve their country. At the time of the Ardhodoy yoga (the most auspicious moment for taking a bath in the Ganges), and again at the time of the Damodar floods of 1913, this desire for service found noble vent in action; and the help rendered by our young men on these two occasions has been repeatedly acknowledged even by high officials of the Government. But unfortunately much of this noble energy and zeal goes utterly to waste; there is no permanent channel through which it can be made to flow; there is no work of durable utility to which we have been able to apply it. Hence a feeling of impatience and despair has arisen in the minds of our young men; and sedition is the outer manifestation of this feeling of impatience and despair."

It will be the part of wise statesmanship not simply to check the symptom but to cure the disease—not simply punish sedition but to root out the deep seated cause which gives rise to it. Our young men labour under the impression that the bureaucracy will give them no opportunity of doing real service to their country. This impression must be removed and they must be given opportunities for larger co-operation in the affairs of administration of the country. These young men have hearts to feel and a burning zeal for service; they think that instead of being utterly suppressed the activities of these young enthusiasts ought to be given proper field and scope. The English have no doubt done us immense deal of good and we are grateful to them for that. By holding before our eyes the ideal of an alien culture and civilization, the English have roused us from the stupor, torpidity and lethargy of spirit into which we had gradually come to sink. They have helped to awaken our national consciousness and to re-establish our national vitality. We are no doubt grateful for these manifold services. But are there no reasons for the English to be grateful to India? Are they not in honour bound in return of the many benefits they have derived from us to give us every scope of shaping our national life? Chitta Ranjan has also harped upon this point in his address at the Provincial Conference:—

"I am confident that the praise and gratitude which are their due for these manifold services will flow forth in an abundant measure from our hearts. But let us look to another aspect of the question. What was England before her advent to India? What was her position in the hierarchy of world powers? Can it be denied that the sovereignty of India increased the power and prestige of England a hundred-fold and more? If then India has reason to be grateful to England, is not England also under a corresponding debt of immense gratitude to India? Of the gratitude of India, proofs have been forth-coming again and again. Of the gratitude of England, the proof is now to come; and if you refuse to grant our legitimate prayer, we shall take it that your gratitude is an empty and meaningless phrase."

To a patriot when he goes to take a survey of the present condition of India, the first thing that presents itself is the deplorable state of the agriculturists; and that at once reminds us of our poverty. We all know that in the absence of trade and commerce agriculture is the chief means of our subsistence. In his address at the Bengal Provincial Conference Chitta Ranjan has presented before us a pitiable picture of our peasantry. The annual income of a peasant of our country ranges from sixteen to twenty rupees. This amount is certainly insufficient for a peasant even to keep his body and soul together. A prisoner in a Government Jail in India gets Rs. 48 annually for his subsistence. The comparison clearly shows that for bare subsistence the peasants have to incur debts. There is not one single village in Bengal where at least 75% of the inhabitants are not in debt; and there are villages where this frightful indebtedness extends to the whole of the population. Thus it appears, first, that the peasant by tilling his land does not earn enough to give him an adequate livelihood; and secondly, that out of the little that he earns a portion finds its way into the pocket of the "Mahajan". And poverty is the source of all corruption, in the case of the peasants poverty grinds them in two ways. In the first place, it makes them weak, feeble, spiritless, and in the second place it has become a frightful source of theft and robbery. Thus from whatever point of view we consider the matter, the removal of poverty seems to be one of our chief and foremost problems.

In order to fight out poverty agriculture will not be sufficient for us. Without industry and commerce our poverty will never be removed. We had commerce though not on European lines. Time was when we earned our own bread and wove our own clothes. We had corn in our granaries; our cattle gave us milk; our tanks supplied us with fish; and the eye was smoothed and refreshed by the limpid blue of the sky and the green foliage of the trees. All day long the peasant toiled in the fields; and at eve returning to his lamp-lit home, he sang the song of his heart. For six months the peasant toiled in the field: and for the remaining six months of the year he worked at the spinning wheel and distaff as was most consonant with the natural genius of his being. To-day that peasant is gone—his very breed extinct; gone too is that house-hold with its ordered and peaceful economy of life. The granaries are empty of their golden wealth; the kine are dry and give no milk; and the fields once so green are dry and parched with thirst. The evening lamp is no more lighted; the house-hold gods are no longer worshipped; even the plough cattle have to be sold in order to give us some poor and meagre sustenance. The tanks have dried up; their water has become unwholesome; and the peasant has lost his natural freshness and gaiety of temperament. What will remedy this? Chitta Ranjan has thus said in his address—

"Agriculture is not sufficient to give us our subsistence. Trade and commerce we must adopt; only our road must not be the road of Industrialism. In the days of old when our life was natural, normal, we had our own fashion and method of trade—a fashion dictated by the law of our being, by the genius of our soul. There we find that when the season of agriculture was over, our peasants would weave their clothes and prepare other articles of domestic use. They had not to look forward to Manchester to clothe them. Our cottage industries have perished; and the muslin-industry of Dacca and other parts of Bengal, once so famous and prosperous—has practically vanished. So also has vanished cotton cultivation—once conducted on an extensive scale but the secret of which now seems to have died out. Why should we not take to the spinning wheel as before and weave our own clothes? The brass ware industry of Bengal—that also has practically disappeared, chiefly for lack of patronage; for economic prudence aside, even our æsthetic taste has grown so coarse and vile that we prefer false and tawdry imitations to genuine and durable articles of value. Thus all our national industries have vanished and with these have vanished our wealth and prosperity."

How to reconstruct these industries and restore a portion of our ancient affluence? We must have no traffic with industrialism, for our simple industries are powerless to cope with the dynamic force of western industrialism. In the first place we have to give up our luxury and licence. They have filtered down even to the cottage of the cultivator. We must give them up if we wish to awaken the powers of our latent self and so invigorate the whole of our social and national life. Home-spun and coarse clothes should not prickle us. The temperance and restraint which will be necessary in order to sacrifice our luxury will be healthful and beneficent for our soul. Curtailment of luxuries which means non-importation of foreign articles will conserve our wealth and give a chance of new life to our dying industries and starved handicrafts.

As a true patriot Chitta Ranjan foresaw as early as the year 1917 that our national regeneration lay in the curtailment of our luxuries. To get rid of the materialism of Europe we must turn to our home industries. He advised his countrymen to fall back upon the spinning wheel and to weave their own clothes, be they coarse or fine. He has often said that until we, as a nation, are purged of the impurities consequent upon western license, all our healthy growth must become impossible. For it is certain, that