IF I AM ARRESTED

[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]

 

 

 

IF I AM ARRESTED

 

 

The rumour has been revived that my arrest is imminent. It is said to be regarded as a mistake by some officials that I was not arrested when I was to be, i.e., on the 11th or 12th of February and that the Bardoli decision ought not to have been allowed to affect the Government’s programme. It is said, too, that it is now no longer possible for the Government to withstand the ever-rising agitation in London for my arrest and deportation. I myself cannot see how the Government can avoid arresting me if they want a permanent abandonment of civil disobedience, whether individual or mass. I advised the Working Committee to suspend mass civil disobedience at Bardoli because that disobedience would not have been civil, and if I am now advising all provincial workers to suspend even individual civil disobedience, it is because I know that any disobedience at the present stage will be not civil but criminal. A tranquil atmosphere is an indispensable condition of civil disobedience. It is humiliating for me to discover that there is a spirit of violence abroad and that the Government of the United Provinces has been obliged to enlist additional police for avoiding a repetition of Chauri Chaura. I do not say that all that is claimed to have happened has happened, but it is impossible to ignore all the testimony that is given in proof of the growing spirit of violence in some parts of those provinces.

In spite of my political differences with Pandit Hridayanath Kunzru, I regard him to be above willful perversion of truth. I consider him to be one of the most capable among public workers. He is not a man to be easily carried away. When, therefore, he gives an opinion upon anything, it immediately arrests my attention. Making due allowance for the coloring of his judgement by reason of his pro-Government attitude, I am unable to dismiss his report of the Chauri Chaura tragedy as unworthy of consideration. Nor is it possible to ignore letters received from zemindars and others informing me of the violent temperament and ignorant lawlessness in the United Provinces. I have before me the Bareilly report signed by the Congress Secretary. Whilst the authorities behaved like madmen and forgot themselves in their fit of anger, we are not, if that report is to be believed, without fault. The volunteer procession was not a civil demonstration. It was insisted upon in spite of sharp division of opinion in our own ranks. Though the crowds that gathered were not violent, the spirit of the demonstration was undoubtedly violent. It was an impotent show of force wholly unnecessary for our purpose and hardly a prelude to civil disobedience. That the authorities could have handled the procession in a better spirit, that they ought not to have interfered with swaraj flag, that they ought not to have objected to the use of the Town Hall, which was town property, as Congress offices in view of the fact that it had been so used for some months with the permission of the Town Council, is all very true. But we have ceased to give credit to the authorities for common or reasonable sense.

On the contrary, we have set ourselves against them because we expect nothing but unreason and violence from them, and knowing that the authorities would act on better than they did, we should have refrained from all the previous irritating demonstrations. That the UP Government is making a mountain out of mole-hill that they are discounting their own provocation and the provocation given by the murdered men at Chauri Chaura is nothing new. All that I am concerned with is that it is not possible for us to claim that we have given them no handle whatsoever. It is therefore as a penance that civil disobedience has been suspended. But if the atmosphere clears up, the people realize the full value of the adjective “civil” and become in reality non-violent both in spirit and indeed, and if I find that the Government still do not yield to the people’s will, I shall certainly be the first person to advocate individual or mass civil disobedience as the case may be. There is no escape from that duty without the people wishing to surrender their birthright. I doubt the sincerity of Englishmen who are born fighters when they declaim against civil disobedience as if it was a diabolical crime to be punished with exemplary severity.

If they have glorified armed rebellions and resorted to them on due occasions. Why are many of them up in arms against the very idea of civil resistance? I can understand their saying that the attainment of a non-violent atmosphere is a virtual impossibility in India. I do not believe it, but I can appreciate such an objection. What, however is beyond my comprehension is the deadest made against the very theory of civil disobedience as if it was something immoral. To expect me to give up the preaching of civil disobedience is to ask me to give up preaching peace, which would be tantamount to asking me to commit suicide. I have now been told that Government is compassing the destruction of the three weeklies which I am conducting, viz., Young India, Gujarati Navajivan and Hindi Navajivan. I hope that the rumour has no foundation. I claim that these three journals are insistently preaching nothing but peace and goodwill. Extraordinary care is taken to give nothing but truth, as I find it, to the readers.

Every inadvertent inaccuracy is admitted and corrected. The circulation of all the weeklies is daily growing. The conductors are voluntary workers, in some cases, taking no salary whatsoever and in the others receiving mere maintenance money. Profits are all returned to the subscribers in some shape or other, or are utilized for some constructive public activity or other. I cannot say that I shall not feel a pang if these journals cease to exist. But it is the easiest thing for the Government to put them out. The publishers and printers are all friends and co-workers. My compact with them is that the moment Government asks for security, that moment the newspapers must stop. I am conducting them upon the assumption that, whatever view the Government may take of my activities, they at least give me credit for preaching through these newspapers nothing but the purest nonviolence and truth according to my lights. I hope, however, that whether the Government arrests me or whether they stop by direct or indirect means the publication of the three journals, the public will remain unmoved. It is a matter of no pride or pleasure to me but one of humiliation that the Government refrains from arresting me for fear of an outbreak of universal violence and awful slaughter that any such outbreak must involve. It would be a sad commentary upon my preaching of, and upon the Congress and Khilafat pledge of, non-violence, if my incarceration was to be a signal for a storm all over the country. Surely, it would be a demonstration of India’s uneasiness for a peaceful rebellion. It would be a triumph for the bureaucracy, and it would be almost a final proof of the correctness of the position taken up by the Moderate friends, viz., that India can never be prepared for non-violent disobedience. I hope, therefore, that the Congress and Khilafat workers will strain every nerve and show that all the fears entertained by the Government and their supporters were totally wrong. I promise that such act of self-restraint will take us many a mile towards our triple goal. There should therefore be no hartals, no noisy demonstrations, and no processions.

I would regard the observance of perfect peace on my arrest as a mark of high honour paid to me by my countrymen. What I would love to see, however, is the constructive work of the Congress going on with clockwork regularity and the speed of the Punjab Express. I would love to see people who have hitherto kept back, voluntarily discarding all their foreign cloth and making a bonfire of it. Let them fulfil the whole of the constructive programme framed at Bardoli, and they will not only release me and other prisoners, but they will also inaugurate swaraj and secure redress of the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs. Let them remember the four pillars of swaraj: non-violence, Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Parsi-Christian-Jew unity, total removal of untouchability and manufacture of hand-spun and hand-woven khaddar completely displacing foreign cloth. I do not know that my removal from their midst will not be a benefit to the people. In the first instance, the superstition about the possession of supernatural powers by me will be demolished. Secondly, the belief that people have accepted the non-co-operation programme only under my influence and that they have no independent faith in it will be disproved. Thirdly, our capacity for swaraj will be proved by our ability to conduct our activities in spite of the withdrawal even of the originator of the current programme. Fourthly and selfishly, it will give me a quiet and physical rest, which perhaps I deserve.