“Mahatma Gandhi and other Congressmen have agreed that mass civil disobedience should be called off and this, in our view, imposes on all Congressmen who do not propose to participate in civil disobedience, a clear duty towards the Congress. Without in any way surrendering their opinion of or faith in civil disobedience as they understand it, they should have no hesitation in declaring that as a programme of organised mass action, civil disobedience should now be given up and on that footing they should proceed to restore the Congress to its position of primacy among the political instruments that half a century of nation building has evolved for achieving the goal of the country’s political ambitions.”
AUGUST 19, 1933
The present political situation
IT IS MORE THAN A FORTNIGHT SINCE MAHATMA GANDHI RESTARTED Civil disobedience and courted imprisonment as a sequel to the Viceroy’s refusal of his request for an interview to discuss the situation. Some of his close colleagues have followed his lead and others in larger or smaller numbers will go on doing likewise. We have already pointed out the unwisdom and impropriety of the Government’s decision to refuse the interview. We also took the occasion to regret the Poona decisions as to civil disobedience and to reiterate what we had previously urged viz., that in the circumstances and conditions of the country — now fully admitted by Congressmen themselves and recognised by Mahatma Gandhi – civil disobedience as a mass or organised movement should be called off and that the Congress and Congressmen, without abjuring their principles or faith as to civil disobedience, could revert to normal political activities and in particular strive to achieve that concerted political action which was so fruitful in 1928-1929. We emphasised that such reorientation was all the more urgently needed today in view of the dominance of reactionary counsels in Britain.
Mr. Aney, as acting Congress President, issued after the Viceroy’s refusal to see Gandhiji an official statement embodying his decisions after considering the recommendations of the informal conference and the “advice tendered by Mahatma Gandhi” – which advice he has since amplified in a statement the substance of which has been published in the Press. He has also written to Mr. Satyamurti clearing certain doubts and declining, except upon a proper requisition from the requisite number of members, to convene an A.I.C.C. meeting to consider the position further. The contents of this letter, as well as a statement by Mr. Jairamdas Doulatram as Secretary of the Congress, are published elsewhere; they together with Mahatmaji’s exposition exhibit the civil disobedience campaign and the programme of constructive work in a different light from that in which they have been viewed by many Congressmen. Without the least desire to undervalue the faith and determination of those patriots who have already sought or may hereafter seek imprisonment on the new plan, we think it urgently necessary that those Congressmen who have not gone to jail and who do not propose to participate in the civil disobedience movement, should take stock of the present situation and act in a manner consistent with the best traditions of the Congress and conducive to the achievement of the national political objective – Swaraj. It is wholly in this view that we venture to put before them the definite issues that have arisen from the unfortunate decisions at Poona. We have not had any accurate report of what have been described by Mr. Aney as the “recommendations of the informal conference” or of the “advice tendered by Mahatma Gandhi” and we have no desire to rely upon any one-sided press reports of the same. Taking the statements made by Mahatma Gandhi and Mr. Aney and in conjunction therewith the statements of others who were actual participants in the Poona conference, we feel it our duty to point out that the basic principles upon which Mahatma Gandhi proceeded to tender the advice that has been implicitly accepted by his followers, are such as go beyond what the Congress or Congressmen as a body can be irrevocably committed to.
The fundamental position which the Congress took in the past in relation to non-violence and civil disobedience and which it is entitled to revise and vary from time to time should be understood clearly so that the need for the Congress being perfectly free to carry on its primary political programme without the obsessions of any dogma or creed could be correctly appreciated. Congressmen not participating in the civil disobedience movement have been placed in an extremely anomalous and unsatisfactory position by reason of the Poona decisions. Technically, no doubt, these decisions are but personal directions of the acting President, or dictator as he is sometimes called, and questions as to the authority of the Working Committee or of the All India Congress Committee being needed to confirm or vary them have no doubt been raised and may be discussed from various standpoints. But we do not think that the discussion of these technical aspects is of much consequence, so long as Mahatma Gandhi has formulated or endorsed the decisions which on that account are bound to command support from many Congressmen. What we think is necessary for Congressmen to visualise is not so much the right of the All India Congress Committee to discuss and alter these decision, but the necessity for leading members of the A1CC facing the issues squarely and determining what the Congress ought to do at the present juncture in view of the changed conditions that are upon us.
According to the instructions of Mr. Aney, while the campaign of civil disobedience is not unconditionally withdrawn, mass civil disobedience has been discontinued for the time being, the resultant position being stated to be that the right of individuals who may be ready for every suffering and prepared to act on their own responsibility to continue civil disobedience “is reserved”. If this was all that was implied, the position would, to some extent, be analogous to that taken by Mahatma Gandhi when he suspended the starting of mass civil disobedience at Bardoli in 1922. But when Mr. Aney goes further and says that “all who are able and willing to offer individual civil disobedience on their own responsibility though without expectation of help from the Congress organisations are expected to do so” and when Mahatma Gandhi amplifies this instruction by saying that such people “would be acting on behalf of and in the name of the Congress,” the position becomes extremely confusing and perplexing. The rather vague and misleading terms in which the instructions for the dissolution of Congress organisations were couched have now been explained in a manner which has naturally induced the Government to construe Mahatmaji’s statement as favouring the revival of a campaign of general civil disobedience by successive steps. We do not know whether Mahatmaji intended that his action and that of those who might follow him should be interpreted in this sense; if he had, he could hardly have instructed Congressmen not practising civil disobedience to carry on constructive work – including council entry, later on, if found advisable or possible.
It is plain, however, that Mahatma Gandhi has throughout these several expositions ignored the clear distinction which he once very properly made between his own principles and faith in civil disobedience and the principles which the Congress had accepted for achieving its aims. In his statement of 26th July last he has dwelt chiefly upon his own faith in the creed of non-violence and all that flows from it and not on the policy or programme which under very specific limitations and restrictions the Congress accepted and adopted in 1920. Every one will agree with him – and the Congress and the country will ever be grateful to him in this behalf – on the message of non-violence preached by him in the darkest days of India’s travail. By adopting it as “the right route to our goal in 1920” the country has gained in political stature, momentum and power; we see the evidence of it in the mass consciousness of national self-respect that has made itself felt both by our rulers and by the world at large. But neither the country as a whole nor many leading Congressmen will agree with the views which Gandhiji has put forward of the tenet of non-violence and its scope in practical application or with his implied contention that the country as a whole has actually adopted them or that the Congress committed itself to these views for all time. That the spirit of non-violence should spread throughout the world and Satyagraha should be the basis of the future ordering of the world is what idealists may always hope for. But that India should wait for her freedom until the spirit of non-violence permeates every human being in India in the manner in which Mahatma Gandhi wants it should, so that the rest of the world may follow India’s example and do likewise, is a different proposition. It cannot, at any rate, be contended that the Congress has been irrevocably committed to it. Such a contention would amount to a claim to have changed what has all along been an essentially national political organisation for the achievement of political freedom, as it is ordinarily understood, into an organisation for the achievement of a spiritual or religious ideal. It can hardly appeal to those politically-minded Congressmen who still feel that mankind will have to travel a long, long way before such a lofty goal could be realised. None was better aware of this than Mahatma Gandhi himself in 1920 when he appealed to the Congress to adopt it as a policy in the then conditions of India.
In accepting his lead in 1920, the Congress did nothing more than accept nonviolence, very properly, as the basis of the programme of triple boycott and also of its prospective plan of a no-tax and civil disobedience campaign. Successive resolutions of the Congress have not gone further than the resolution from which Mahatma Gandhi now seems to conclude that the Congress attitude towards nonviolence is identical with his own. In his statement of July 26th he observes:
“It may be objected that the heroic suffering of a few individuals, however praiseworthy in itself, is of no practical value and cannot affect British policy. I differ from such a view. In my opinion, the seemingly long or almost interminable process adumbrated by me will in practice be found to be the shortest. For I hold that true Independence i.e. Independence in terms of and on behalf of the masses can be proved in India’s case to be unattainable by any other method. The method of non-violence which is an integral part of the Congress constitution demands the course suggested by me. If ever we, as a nation, reach that living faith in non-violence and banish violence from our hearts we would not even need resort to civil disobedience. The latter is required whilst we are trying non-violence as a mere policy or expedient. Even as a policy, it is any day far more effective than violence. Under the Dictator’s instructions secret organisations naturally disappear. Every civil resister will be his or her own leader. He or she will carry the burden of the Congress on his or her own shoulders. Such civil resisters will be trustees of national honour.”
We think that the Congress did not, either in 1920 or subsequently, take any such irrevocable step with its incalculable consequences. The resolution of the Congress in 1920 observed that “the only effectual means to vindicate national honour and to prevent a repetition of similar wrongs in the future is the establishment of Swarajya” and it went on to declare that the Congress “is further of opinion that there is no course left open for the people of India but to approve of and adopt the policy of progressive non-violent non-cooperation inaugurated by Mr. Gandhi until the said wrongs are righted and Swarajya is established”. Leaving the Khilafat or other similar wrongs out of account as being no longer live issues, what would constitute the establishment of Swarajya has been declared by the Congress concretely on various occasions -in terms, for instance, of the Nehru constitution at one time or of Independence or “substantial Independence” at another, relegating the question of the British connection to a secondary place. But the Independence which Mahatmaji visualises in his last statement in terms of non-violence and the other principles which he holds as part of his creed, is not comprehended in the Congress resolution. Indeed, in the course of a famous note appended by the late Pandit Motilal Nehru to the Civil Disobedience Committee’s report, he pointed out the exact scope and character of the resolution of the Congress and of the policy followed by it later on. We reproduce extracts therefrom elsewhere to show that, to use Panditji’s words, “there has never been any doubt that by accepting the programme of non-violent noncooperation, the Indian National Congress did not adopt all the views of Mahatma Gandhi expressed by him in Hind Swaraj and from time to time in Young India and elsewhere and that Congressmen are only bound by the principles accepted and formulated by the Congress and not by every word or sentiment which might have found utterance from the lips of Mahatmaji”. Many of his theories, as he points out, have “yet to find favour not only with Congressmen generally, but the country at large and among them is the doctrine of Ahimsa and all that flows from it. The one common ground on which all non-cooperators meet is that violence in any shape or form is completely ruled out by existing conditions and as wholly outside the pale of practical politics”. And the Pandit proceeds to cite the authority of Mahatma Gandhi himself – which will be found in the passages extracted elsewhere – and rightly claims that it was on this and this basis alone that the policy of nonviolent non-cooperation was recommended by him and accepted by the Congress.
It seems to us therefore difficult to contend, either on general principles or with reference to the actual events connected with the movement since 1920, that Congress is committed to the continuation of civil disobedience so long as a single civil resister is available, that every civil resister who goes to jail Non the basis assumed by Mahatma Gandhi or even on more restricted grounds, would “be acting on behalf of and in the name of the Congress” because in this view Purna Swaraj or substantial Swaraj or whatever it may be, has not been and will not be achieved until the entire country becomes non-violent in thought, word and deed. On the other hand, it is clear that the Congress adopted its programme of boycott and civil disobedience entirely as a political-weapon for the achievement of what are essentially political ends, namely the attainment of full self-government-call it Independence, substance of Independence or full Dominion status under the Statute of Westminster or by any other name you like – attained in such a manner that the country as a whole would deem it to be a satisfactory settlement of its political future. That the Congress as an institution could not and ought not to be put on any other basis must be clear from the fact that the Congress is older than the Calcutta Congress session and that the Congress has even subsequently adopted programmes inconsistent with this pragmatic view of non-cooperation and non-violence.
Mahatma Gandhi and other Congressmen have agreed that mass civil disobedience should be called off and this, in our view, imposes on all Congressmen who do not propose to participate in civil disobedience, a clear duty towards the Congress. Without in any way surrendering their opinion of or faith in the principle of civil disobedience as they understand it, they should have no hesitation in declaring that as a programme of organised mass action, civil disobedience should now be given up and on that footing they should proceed to restore the Congress to its position of primacy among the political instruments that half a century of nation-building has evolved for achieving the goal of the country’s political ambitions. The Congress has come to occupy a unique place in the affections of the people because it has symbolised the will to be free, the resolve to work for that freedom by all legitimate and constructive political methods and the alert and resolute opposition to all attempts to encroach on the just rights and liberties of the citizen, from whatever quarter they might originate. Only by restoring the Congress to the position in which it can discharge its primary functions will they be able to strengthen and organise it for the great political and social tasks ahead.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I