The Gandhi-King Community

For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

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

 

 

 

Mahatma Gandhi Talk with a Friend

 

 

 

FRIEND: You have called mine a negative attitude. But I am quite clear in my own mind. I do not mind the Congress High Command carrying on negotiations with the Cabinet Mission. But suppose the negotiations fail. What then? The British Government is prepared with its plan of action in that case. But we are not. It is my belief that we shall have to go through another struggle before freedom can be won. I find that you have a revolutionary mentality. I do not like himsa any more than you do. It is bad. My goal is the same as yours. Show a sure non-violent way of achieving our goal of Independence within a definite period and I shall most willingly follow you. In a way I do believe in ahimsa. A repetition of the 1933-37 pattern of struggle won’t do. The leaders are put behind the bars at the very commencement of the struggle and then all contact between them and the masses ceases. It is not fair that we should sit in jails in comparative comfort and safety and expect the people to face the fire. The leaders should bear the brunt. Let there be, say, a hundred people with your name on the top followed by those of other front-rank Congress leaders to start a chain fast unto death, after giving due notice to the Government, and I am sure before the list is exhausted India will be free.

The interviewer added that he himself would in that event, be prepared to abandon his own programme and join the fast. His complaint was that no top-ranking Congressman with the exception of Jairamdas Doulatram had yet received a bullet, although perhaps hundreds had died in recent years of bullets and lathi charges at the hands of the police and the military.

G. If and when the call comes to fast unto death, I will do so irrespective of others joining or not. Fasting unto death is the last and the most potent weapon in the armory of Satyagraha. It is a sacred thing. But it must be accepted with all its implications. It is not the fast itself but what it implies that matters. Have not even hypocrites been known to make pretence of fasting? Such fasts are a plague and a nuisance. They do not count. If I fast and you send a hundred or even ten men who would undertake it with a pure heart, I shall be happy. But such a fast should not be undertaken inside the prison.

F. What I mean is that mere jail-going is not enough. People should remain outside and face repression. Nine young boys faced the bullets and died before the Secretariat at Patna. Think how it would have electrified the masses if it had been Rajendra Babu instead of these poor boys.

G. I agree with you there. I have said before that merely filling the prisons is not enough. It is only the jail-going of the pure in heart that can bring swaraj. In fact in 1922, my instructions were that no one was to follow me in jail and that all should spin and carry out in full the constructive programme. The eighteen-fold constructive programme, if carried out in its entirety will, in my opinion, render civil disobedience unnecessary. The people of Bardoli in 1922 solemnly promised to carry out the constructive programme, to banish untouchability and liquor from their midst and to make khadi universal to the exclusion of mill cloth, imported or Indian. They have failed to fulfil their pledge up till now.

F. You say jail-going does not end the fight. We wanted to agitate for the abolition of the classification of political prisoners by the upper class prisoners voluntarily reducing themselves to ‘C’ class by refusing to accept privileged treatment. But some said that it was against your ideology. You wanted people to remain in the class in which they were placed.

G. That is hardly correct. In fact I do not want even the distinction between the political and non-political prisoners. I stand for fair and humane treatment of all prisoners. But mine has been a lonely voice. Even when power was in our hands, we failed to abolish classification. I am the originator or jail-going as part of Satyagraha. My jail-going was born out of ahimsa and ahimsa and privilege go ill together. I have fought the Government from inside the jail. As it is, today all sorts of people go to jail. Inside the jail, they behave anyhow, even apologize and come out. Jail-going has become a farce.

 

Reference:

Harijan, 18-8-1946

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