For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Aruna Asaf Ali and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, 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

Aruna Asaf Ali and Mahatma Gandhi

Aruna Asaf Ali was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. He worked in guidance of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi wrote many letters for guidance. I have been filled with admiration for your courage and heroism. I have sent you messages that you must not die underground. 4 You are reduced to a skeleton. Do come out and surrender yourself and win the prize offered for your arrest. Reserve the prize money for the Harijan cause. 1 My whole heart goes out to you. I consider myself to be incapable of asking anybody, much less you, of doing anything that would hurt your pride. If you surrender yourself, you would do so to raise yourself and the country with you. The surrender won’t be out of your weakness but out of your strength. This struggle has been full of romance and heroism. You are the central figure. I would love to see you since you are so near. Therefore come, if you at all can. Lest you cannot, this is my advice: I do not want you to surrender unless you feel that it is the better course. I have brought myself to regard secrecy as a sin in the application of non-violence. But it cannot be followed mechanically. I am working for and in the name of the dumb and the downtrodden millions. They are strangers to the art of secrecy as I am. You must, therefore, be the best judge of what is proper. And is that not the final message of the Congress in the closing sentence of the great resolution of 8th August, 1942? Every Congressman is the bearer, in his (or her) own person, of the Congress message which he (or she) is to carry out according to his (or her) own will, remaining within truth and non-violence. My being out does not entitle me to issue any instructions. Apart from the technicality I really do not know how to guide you. God be your sole guide and do as He bids you. This I promise: I will not judge you, no matter what you do. More if we meet. 2

You must not discover yourself unless you feel the wrong of secrecy. You must not be displeased if I hold an opinion which does not coincide with yours. I shall not love you the less because I cannot see eye to eye with you. You should be patient with me. Do nothing in a hurry. I have not judged anyone. I have given my opinion about certain acts. You will harm the cause by acting against your judgement. See me when you like. Don’t be in a hurry. Don’t be sad. 3 You cannot hurt me without hurting yourself. I laugh and invite you to share my laughter. “O ye of little faith!” You lose patience quickly because you misread me. Have I not said 1945 is not 1942? Yet I have not changed because you find that I am not covering myself with woolen shawls or even at all. Wait, watch and pray. 4 The distress is of your own imagination. I fear that the Maulana’s letter was of my doing. There was no question of isolating you from the rest or of expecting you to suppress anything. You were represented as being very ill and so there was a mention of your illness and special urgency of your release. Asaf had no hand in it. So far as I know he came to know of the letter after it was dispatched. Will you not give him and to everyone else the liberty of free thought that you claim for yourself? I hope you are well. 5

How I wish I could meet you openly and have you with me for a few days. I love you too early to talk to you through letter-writing. Know that I have been silent not through indifference but by design. I am trying to reach the truth. You are helping me. Go on doing it. You can help me much more by appreciating than following my advice. 6 Why have you written to me in English? Your Hindustani is much better than mine. Will you be a rebel in all matters? I thought of publishing your letter in Harijan, but changed my mind. What is the use of getting into a controversy with you in public? What is the use of defeating you? I would prefer you’re defeating me. So I shall write in public only when I cannot help it. If I can build up poser from out of your letter, then I shall discuss it in Harijan. Now I have no time. Whatever you do, do calmly. During your Assam tour, you observed ahimsa in its true sense. Congratulations. 7

I was not pained so much by your speech that day as by your visit later and the inquiry. You appeared to be putting up an act. You are not a goddess, nor do you want to become one. You should become an instrument of service, pure and simple. You are not an actress either. Beware! This letter is a sigh of sorrow. 8 I should like you to accompany Asaf to America. You will be able to give him much help there, and it would also be a service to the country. I would also say that you will be able to do much independent work in America. I think it is your duty to accompany Asaf. 9 I am glad. What was there to mind in your not accompanying Asaf Ali? Go on doing what you regard as true service. Here I am learning the lesson of absolute non-violence. I do not know how far I shall succeed. Let us see what happens. 10

While we are in a foreign country, we should work to spread our culture spends too much money. The foreigners will not have any regard for us if even our ambassadors behave in this way…. They are very capable and intelligent. But once they go out they behave as they like, thinking that there is no one to question what they do. We have ambassadors in every country. If such a large amount is spent on one ambassador, the rest of them would also spend on a similar scale. How can a poor country like India afford that? You do know that you can make plain chapatis as well as laddoos and other sweets out of wheat flour. But what a great difference there is between the two expenses as well as in digestibility. If we make laddoos every day and eat them, we shall become ill physically as well as financially. On the other hand, rotis are beneficial in both the respects. If you can understand this thing, you can understand about…. When I see such a great reaction among national servants, and that too so soon, I tell myself that those who had dedicated themselves as such, donned khadi, gone to jail, adopted non-violence and participated in the spiritual programme had not done so with knowledge, that it was merely sheep like behaviour. Otherwise, how can one change one’s way of living so soon and to such an extent? 11

God has chastised me severely. I have not known a test more severe than this. What a high standard of morality we had when we were slaves. We are about to suffer the greatest fall from that lofty height in the so-called “priceless freedom” which is approaching. What more is left to be witnessed now? How can I give you any idea of what is going on in my mind? At one time I feel that Bihar is calling me, at another time I hear the call from Noakhali where I succeed to some extent in establishing peace. When I came here from Patna a month ago, I imagined that I would be back at my work in a week. But in the course of this one month so many changes have taken place in the country that a family wouldn’t have seen as many in a generation. I am rotting in Delhi. However, I have not at all given up Noakhali and Bihar work. I am very keen to go to the Punjab also. But I cannot decide where to go. Being in this state of mind, I am following a great thinker who said, “If you cannot see your way, it is better to stay where you are.” So I am here. I cannot go to Sevagram at present. I must either accomplish something or die in the attempt. I will think of something new only when I have reached one of these two places. There is no third way. At the moment I do not feel like giving any advice to the Ashram inmates. In all these years I have said much to them, made them do much work. Now every one of them should do what they think well. Ultimately all service is alike in value. The head is perched high in the body and it has great value but the soles, though at the very bottom and in contact with dirt, are not any lower in value. If the sole is pricked by a thorn and one is unable to walk, how much one feels it! Similarly those who have dedicated themselves to service may render it in any manner they like according to their ability and interest. To me every kind of service is valuable. 12

Is there any alternative to Pakistan, The only alternative to Pakistan in undivided India. There is no via media. Once you accept the principle of partition in respect of any province, you get into a sea of difficulties. By holding fast to the ideal of undivided India, you steer clear of all difficulties. Then why does not Congress give a clear lead because it feels helpless. It is not in favour of division. But it says, and with perfect logic, that if Pakistan is to be conceded, justice should be done to non-Muslim majority areas of Bengal and the Punjab, and to the Sikhs, and these provinces should be partitioned on the same principle on which the Muslim League demands the partition of India. I do not agree with that view. In my opinion, the Congress should in no circumstance be party to partition. We should tell the British to quit unconditionally. If they do not listen and partition the country in spite of us, we shall know what to do. Why should we make ourselves accessory to what we hold to be evil? In other words, you think that the British power need not stay on in India for another thirteen months quite so. If their intention is perfectly honest, they should not bother as to what would happen to the country after them. The country is quite capable of taking care of itself. They can quit with a clear conscience. The Congress leaders have said that the British cannot go away without bringing about a settlement between the Congress and the League. Supposing no agreement can be arrived at between the congress and the League even after thirteen months, would that be a ‘reason’ for them to stay on in India even after that date? I therefore say: Let them quit now, otherwise their going even after thirteen months will be problematical. But if they go to whom are they to hand over power?

They can hand over power either to the Muslim League or to the Congress, I do not mind which. If they hand it over to the Congress, the Congress will come to a just settlement with the League. But even if they make it over to the League, the Congress has nothing to fear. Only, let the transfer of power be complete and unqualified. The way they do it will provide a test of their sincerity and honesty. So far the British have said that they had yielded to Congress nonviolence; it was because of the non-violent struggle launched by the Congress that the Cabinet Mission was sent and the British Government made its famous declaration to withdraw from India. If this is really so, they should have no difficulty in handing over power to the Congress. But so far as I, for one, am concerned, they are free to ignore the Congress and hand over power to the League. They will then have bowed before the power of violence. For that is what the League swears by. We shall then pit our non-violence even against the League’s violence. Non-violence was meant not to give fight to the British only. It is ubiquitous in its application and scope. We shall settle with the League by offering our innocent blood to be spilt without spilling any and we will succeed. Your position is perfectly logical and consistent. You said in 1942 that the British power should withdraw immediately and unconditionally. You have not changed.

We are wholly with you there. But a considerable section among Congressmen today has begun to think in terms of collaboration with the British power. You are right. I have not changed. I would change only if I saw my mistake. But I see none. On the contrary, with every fresh experience I am becoming firmer and firmer in my views. What is your attitude on the States question? Irrespective of the Congress policy, Gandhiji told them, he had hitherto been in favour of the preservation of the States. But his attitude in that regard had stiffened of late. The British had allowed the States to exist on their sufferance. In certain matters they kept them completely under their thumb while they gave them free rein in others to serve their selfish ends. They were in honour bound to settle the question of the States before leaving. It would be a gross betrayal to leave that question to be decided after independence. For instance, could the Nizam be free to follow a policy antagonistic to India, or to set up ordnance factories or factories for the manufacture of heavy armour within his dominion? We do not wish the destruction of the Princes. Let them by all means live, but only as servants of their people, If the British are not insincere, they should withdraw from the whole of India including the States, leaving the map of India unchanged. What is our duty? If you agree with my analysis, you and those over whom you have influence should join me in preparing the atmosphere for nonviolence in the country.

I would love to have you with me in that. The whole country is with you in a sense, yes. But I suppose, “the whole country” includes you also. Now tell me how many of you are with me? Is Aruna with me? Are Ashok and Achyut with me? No, you are not. The Congress is not. So I am left to plough my lonely furrow and I am content to do so. If you decide to launch forth with me, I shall take it to mean that you have pledged yourselves to die without killing, abjured the doctrine that the end justifies the means. I have admiration for what Jayaprakash, Aruna, Achyut and others did in 1942. They thought nothing of playing with their lives. I have paid tribute to their fearlessness and courage. But you will now have to cultivate the higher courage which dying without killing calls for. In that campaign sabotage can have no place. You may not agree but it is my conviction that if the Bihar masses had not had the lesson which they had at your hands in 1942, the excesses which Bihar witnessed last year would never have occurred. To me it is little consolation that those who sponsored the sabotage programme did not themselves directly participates in violence. They should have known that once the evil spirit of violence is unleashed, by its inherent nature it cannot be checked or even kept within any prescribed limits. All violence inevitably tends to run to excess. Therefore, I repeat, and I shall continue to repeat with my last breath, that it is for us to inculcate amongst the people the spirit of innocent suffering and self-sacrifice only without any evasion into or truck with its opposite. I am proceeding to Calcutta. Some people are trying to dissuade me from going there. They say things there are worse even than in Noakhali, that there I shall be faced by ruffians who understand nothing. I tell them, that is the very reason why I want to go there. If in the course of it death comes, I shall welcome it.

What better use can there be for this body that has already weathered seventy-eight winters? My death will immediately stop the fratricide. If you cast in your lot with me, I shall call every one of you, top-rankers, to defy death with me. I own no party. But you will then be my party. Long before you were born I was a socialist. You are arm-chair Socialists. Your ideal is to provide a motor-car and a bungalow to everybody in India. Till that happens, you will continue to live as at present, without sacrificing any of your comforts. I, on the other hand, believe in putting myself on a level with the poorest and the least here and now. My socialism is not of today. I began to live socialism while I was still in South Africa. Even then many laborite socialists, so called, used to come to me with their bedraggled ties of dirty red to invite me to join their ranks. But they remained to join mine instead for they saw that true socialism can be based only on non-violence. If you tell me that non-violence is your ultimate goal, but in order to realize it you have to make use of violent means, because in this matter-of-fact world there is no other way, I shall say you are labouring under a great delusion. Cannot even Jinnah, that way, claim to be a votary of non-violence, for in Islam it is clearly laid down that anyone who oppresses the weak is no Muslim? But see where this has taken historical Islam.

Once you open the flood-gates of violence, you cannot control it. You will be borne away before its onrushing tide. I have, therefore, one and only one thing to say to you: Carry to its ultimate conclusion the fearlessness which characterized you in 1942. Now are the time and the hour. If you let it slip away, it may never return. By learning the art of dying without killing you can mould India’s destiny. There is no other way. Can we sum up your position by saying that the British should quite immediately and unconditionally leaving India to God? You may put it that way. And if in the result there is chaos that should not frighten us. We shall emerge from the ordeal all the stronger. 13

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