ACTION IN INACTION

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

 

ACTION IN INACTION

 

 

 Nothing would have pleased me better than to have do so. The signatories are mistaken in thinking that I have gone into retirement. I have imposed upon myself a year’s abstention from all avoidable public engagements. The year is fast drawing to a close. The reasons for abstention were fully stated at the time. My health and the requirements of the Ashram necessitated rest from toilsome travelling and taxing public engagements. If I have not interfered in the Council matters, it is because I have, perhaps, no aptitude for them certainly, I have no faith in the Councils giving us swaraj. I have ceased to meddle in Hindu-Muslim quarrels because my meddling at this juncture, I am convinced, can only do harm. Then there remain untouchability, national educational institutions and the spinning-wheel. To these I am giving all the attention I am capable of giving. Therefore, I venture to suggest to the friends that what to them appears to be my inaction is really concentrated action. I do not in the least share their pessimism. The Hindu-Muslim quarrels are in a way, unknown to us, a fight for swaraj. Each party is conscious of its impending coming. Each wants to be found ready and fit for swaraj when it comes. Hindus think that they are physically weaker than the Mussalmans. The latter consider them-selves to be weak in educational and earthly equipment. They are now doing what all weak bodies have done hitherto.

This fighting therefore, however unfortunate it may be, is a sign of growth. It is like the Wars of the Roses. Out of it will raise a mighty nation. A better than the bloody way was opened out to us in 1920, but we could not assimilate it. But even a bloody way is better than utter helplessness and unmanliness. Even the ugly duel between Motilalji and Lalaji is part of the same struggle. Let the enemies of India’s freedom gloat over their differences. These patriots will be working under the same flag long before the gloating is over. They are both lovers of their country. Lalaji sees no escape from communalism. Panditji cannot brook even the thought of it. Who shall say that only one is right? Both attitudes are a response to the prevailing atmosphere. Lalaji who was born to public life with swaraj on his lips is no hater of it now. He proposes to mount to it through communalism which he considers to be an inevitable stage in our evolution. Panditji thinks that communalism blocks the way and he therefore proposes to ignore it even as auto suggestionists ignore disease seeing that health, not ‘illth’, is the law of life. The nation can ill afford to do without Sir Abdur Rahim as without Hakim Saheb Ajmal Khan. Sir Abdur Rahim, who wrote the weighty minute with Gokhale on the Islington Commission, is no enemy of his country.

Who shall blame him if he thinks that the country cannot progress without the Mussalmans competing with the Hindus on equal terms? He may be wrong in his methods. But he is none-the-less a lover of freedom. Whilst, therefore, I can make room in my mind for all these various schools of thought, for me there is only one way. I have no faith in communalism even as a stage, or perhaps, better still, I have no fitness for work on that stage. I must, therefore, hold myself in reserve till the storm is over and the work of rebuilding has commenced. I can but watch from a safe distance the struggle that goes on in the Councils. I honour those who have faith in them for prosecuting the programme with zeal. It is educated India which is split up into parties. I confess my incompetence to bring these parties together. Their method is not my method. I am trying to work from bottom upward. To an onlooker, it is exasperatingly slow work. They are working from top downward—a process more difficult and complicated than the former. The millions for whom the signatories have claimed to write are uninterested in the party complications which are above their heads. For them there is only the spinning-wheel. To paraphrase a celebrated proverb the wheels of God spin slowly but most effectively. I am engaged in attending to these tiny wheels of God. Let the signatories and the others who care note that they are ceaselessly moving.

Their efficiency is daily and visibly growing. And when the storm is blown over, the parties are united, Hindus, Mussalmans, Brahmins, non-Brahmins, the suppressors and the suppressed have joined hands, they will find that the country has been prepared by silent hands for effecting not a punitive and violent boycott But a health-giving, non-violent, constructive boycott of foreign cloth. The nation must exhibit some universal strength and power, be they ever so little. That is this boycott of foreign cloth. The signatories regard themselves as my followers. I invite them to follow the lead of the charkha. I have not ceased to lead that little, simple wheel which daily hums to me the distress of the masses. For better or for worse, I have staked my all on the charkha, for it represents to me Daridranarayana, God of and in the poor and in the downtrodden.