DANGER OF EXTINCTION

[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]

 

 

DANGER OF EXTINCTION

 

 

It is very difficult to understand the reported proceedings of the Congress at Bombay. Wading through the sea of words, contradiction after contradiction serves to make the darkness more and more visible. One tangible point seems to be Mr. Gandhi’s statement that, if the Viceroy will assure him that the Congressmen will be allowed publicly to advocate non-co-operation in the war-effort stressing the fact that such non-co-operation must be non-violent there will be no satyagraha of any kind on his part and that, in any case, there will be no mass civil disobedience. Our first reaction to this was to wonder why the Congress must always be asking for difficult statements and cannot leave well alone. The Government has never prohibited the conscientious teaching of pacifism in India any more than the British Government has interfered with it in Britain.

The Quaker and the conscientious objector are not penalized in war unless they take action obviously calculated to help the enemy. Those who attempt to convert soldiers, sailors and airmen, and suborn these or others engaged in direct war work, are clearly helping the enemy. When a whole people are legally conscripted, as is the case in Britain now, the line is still more difficult to draw. Every worker is, in a sense, a war worker. Nevertheless, conversion to the view that it is wrong to be a combatant even in the most righteous cause is not likely to interfere with the output of the ordinary man who is doing civilian work. This is the point of view which is tolerated in Britain and has hitherto been tolerated in India. Mr. Gandhi’s own astounding proposal that Britain should abjectly surrender to Hitler was even, at his own request, put before the War Cabinet which treated it with respect as a sincere opinion and sent a polite reply. Why then, if you have got what you want, ask the Viceroy for a difficult statement which many will seek to twist and turn into a cloak for their efforts to help the enemy to conquer India? Other passages in Mr. Gandhi’s speech throw light on this. What is in his mind is the wholesale arrests of Congress officials and workers which are now continually recorded in the Press, especially in the United Provinces. Details are not given, but the arrests are generally made under the Defence Regulations and appear to be because of speeches in connation with the war. Mr. Gandhi says he wishes to point out to the Viceroy that the Congress is in danger of “extinction” during the war because of its creed of non-violent non-co-operation, and he wants liberty for Congressmen to preach their doctrine.

We have often expressed our view about the fundamental immorality and contradictory character of the doctrine. Non-co-operation is a method of war and not of peace. For otherwise unarmed or defenseless people it is quite a reasonable method of making war or defending themselves, but it has no more spiritual value than war and probably much less; for it carries with it a pretentious claim to spiritual value which involves sanctimonious insincerities and mass hypocrisy, making intensified hatreds and accompanied by an extraordinary development of violence of language to compensate for the absence of real manliness in defending what must be defended if life is to be worth living. A nation which accepted this doctrine would doom itself to slavery and would breed generations of sycophantic hypocrites crawling before masters who despised them. It is no doctrine for India and, if the Congress persists in it, the Congress will certainly be “extinguished”, either because India will have none of it, or because the Congress will so poison the country that Britain cannot save it from three or four totalitarian Powers determined to carve it up, in which case the Congress as an organization will never be heard of again. Lust of conquest in one country and pacifism in an unaggressive country are twin poisons working together to produce war.

The English pacifists have much to answer for. They preached the doctrine of surrender to a country innocent of any desire for war and had not the courage to stand on street corners in Berlin and Rome and go to prison. The non-co-operator has a better case. He was at war against the Government of India and he did go to prison, but he spoilt his case by pretending to be a pacifist. We have no quarrel with the Quaker or with any other quietist. He acts according to his conscience, but he seeks no converts, interferes with no one, and does positive good work in war time refusing true help and sympathy to no man whatever his nationality. But the man who preaches non-resistance and surrender in war time, whatever his motives, is weakening a nation’s will to survive and is helping to destroy it and to deliver it to the enemy. Under this leadership, the Congress has nothing to offer India. At the same time, there is not sufficient assurance that the authorities everywhere and the doubt is perhaps strongest in regard to the United Provinces are acting intelligently in regard to the arrests of the Congressmen. It is not yet the accepted practice either in Britain or in India to arrest a man merely expressing pacifist views, though we do not ourselves see how in a war for survival a nation can tolerate aggressive pacifism, which must plainly be one of the enemy’s assets.

Having, however, recently seen people who were trying to help the war effort, arrested when they tried to organize an Anti-Fascists Day, we cannot help having some doubts whether sufficient care is always taken to prevent injustice. It is necessary to arrest men who preach revolution or violence or any form of action to impede war effort. But it is not yet the business of the authorities to prevent sincere expression of personal conviction of a non-violent character, still less to attempt the extinction of Congress in the name of the war. The Congress is in danger of extinguishing itself and needs no interference. So are the Pakistanis and the vested interests, some of them British, in the services or in business which stand in the way of the war effort. To survive, we have all to shed many prejudices yet and develop new attitudes and new leadership.