Economic Reform and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

 

Economic Reform and Mahatma Gandhi 

 

 

We are a nation passing through the valley of humiliation. So long as we have not secured our freedom we have not the least excuse at the annual stock-taking season for amusements, riotous or subdued. It is a week of serious business, introspection and heart-searching; it is a week for evolving national policies and framing programmes for giving battle to a power perhaps the strongest and the most vicious the world has ever seen. I submit that it is impossible to do clear thinking or to evolve programmes political, social, economic and educational in the midst of distraction, noise, rush and a lavish display of boisterous amusements fit enough for a children’s pantomime, entirely out of place as an appendage to a deliberative assembly intent on preparing for a grim life and death struggle. Our annual exhibition ought therefore to be strictly of an educative character and its organization should be entrusted to an expert body like the All-India Spinners’ Association. Indeed, it is the only body fit to handle it, so long as the Congress retains khadi as the centre of its policy of boycott of foreign cloth and of economic reform among the millions of India’s peasantry. 1

In picketing foreign cloth or intoxicating drinks and drugs, let it be remembered, that the aim is to convert the addict or the buyer. Our object is moral and economic reform. The political consequence is but a by-product. If Lancashire ceased to send us its cloth and the Government ceased to use the Abakari revenue for any purpose save that of weaning the drunkard or opium eater from his vice, we should still be engaged in picketing work and allied propaganda. The following rules therefore must be read in that light:

1. In picketing shops your attention must be riveted on the buyer.

2. You should never be rude to the buyer or the seller.

3. You may not attract crowds or form cordons.

4. Yours must be a silent effort.

5. You must seek to win over the buyer or the seller by your gentleness, not by the awe of numbers.

6. You may not obstruct traffic.

7. You may not cry hai hai or use other expressions of shame.

8. You should know every buyer and his address and occupation and penetrate his or her home and heart. This presupposes continuity of same picketers.

9. You should try to understand the difficulties of buyers and sellers, and where you cannot remove them you should report them to your superiors.

10. If you are picketing foreign cloth, you should have some khadi or at least sample book with prices and should know the nearest khadi shop to which you could take the buyer. If the buyer does not wish to buy khadi and insists on mill-cloth, you should direct the buyer to an indigenous mill-cloth seller.

11. You should have relevant literature upon your person for distribution among the buyers.

12. You should join or organize processions, lectures with or without magic lantern, bhajan parties, etc.

13. You should keep an accurate diary of your day’s work.

14. If you find your effort failing do not be disheartened but rely upon the universal law of cause and effect and be assured that no good thought, word or deed goes fruitless. To think well, to speak well is ours; reward is in the hands of God. 2

The work of removal of untouchability is not merely a social or economic reform whose extent can be measured by so much social amenities or economic relief provided in so much time. Its goal is to touch the hearts of the millions of Hindus who honestly believe in the present-day untouchability as a God-made institution, as old as the human race itself. This, it will be admitted, is a task infinitely higher than mere social and economic reform. Its accomplishment undoubtedly includes all these and much more. For it means nothing short of a complete revolution in the Hindu thought and the disappearance of the horrible and terrible doctrine of inborn inequality and highland- lowness, which has poisoned Hinduism and is slowly undermining its very existence. Such a change can only be brought about by an appeal to the highest in man. And I am more than ever convinced that that appeal can be made effective only by self-purification, i.e., by fasting conceived as the deepest prayer coming from a lacerated heart. I believe that the invisible effect of such fasting is far greater and far more extensive than the visible effect. The conviction has, therefore, gone deeper in me that my fast is but the beginning of a chain of true voluntary fasts by men and women who have qualified themselves by previous preparation for them and who believe in prayer as the most effective method of reaching the heart of things. How that chain can be established I do not know as yet. But I am striving after it. If it can be established, I know that it will touch, as nothing else will, the hearts of Hindus, both the opponents of reform and the Harijans. For the Harijans have also to play their part in the movement no less than the reformers and the opponents. And I am glad to be able to inform the reader that the Harijans have not been untouched by the fast. A number of letters received from abroad suggest that even there many hearts have awakened. If an imperfect fast by a man like me could create such awakening, who could then estimate how great and far-reaching the result would be if innocent men and women unassumingly, without any hope of medical or other aid and without one or the other concession, sacrifice their lives in an unbroken chain of fasts? 3

Here we would draw the attention of the members of the State Congress that there are two arms to a non-violent swaraj movement, the remedial and constructive. C. D. is remedial and therefore in its nature temporary. The other is constructive and permanent. We hope that the people will never lose sight of the permanent arm. Indeed our fitness for C. D. increases in the same measure as the intensity of the constructive programme. The constructive activities include hand-spinning, hand-weaving and like productive pursuits, activities promoting heart unity between the different communities composing the subjects of H. E. H. the Nizam, removal of untouchability, total abstinence from intoxicating drinks and drugs and kindred reforms. For a non-violent movement for gaining freedom must necessarily be a process of purification and social and economic reform. No one should run away with the idea that suspension of C. D. is suspension of movement for responsible government. Indeed its constructive nature should be doubly strengthened because suspension of C. D. frees the mind for constructive work. 4

 

References:

 

1. Young India, 10-1-1929
2. Navajivan, 15-3-1931
3. Harijan, 8-7-1933  
4. Draft of Statement for Hyderabad, Before December 26, 1938