DIVIDE AND RULE

[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]

 

 

 

DIVIDE AND RULE

 

 

Sir William Vincent’s speech before the Legislative Assembly makes painful reading. I shall hope that he has been kept in utter darkness by his informants and that the speech is ignorant, not unscrupulous. It is a plausible defence of the Government’s policy of repression. It is a distortion or concoction of facts. It is an appeal to our cupidity and a misinterpretation of the motives of non-co-operationists. He says that the declared object of non-co-operationists is paralysis of the Government and that “in their effort to achieve the object there is no source of discontent which they have not used”. Now both these statements are half-truths. The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification. Its direct result must be paralysis of a Government which lives on our vices and weaknesses. Similarly, it is a dangerous half-truth to say that we have left no source of discontent unused. We could not help using sources of legitimate discontent. But non-co-operationists have rigidly refrained from using any and every discontent, if only because we would weaken our cause if we did.

The illustration of what I mean will be best seen from the refutation of the very next sentence which Sir William has spoken in support of his contention: “Wherever they find discord between employer and employee, there some agent of emissary of non-cooperation party proceeds at once to foster discontent and promote ill feeling.” This is not only untrue, but it is an incitement to the two to oppose non-co-operation. The avowed policy of non-co-operation has been not to make political use of disputes between labour and capital. They have endeavoured to hold the balance evenly between the two we would be fools if we wantonly set labour against capital. It would be just the way to play into the hands of a Government which would greatly strengthen its hold on the country by setting capitalists against labourers and vice versa. In Jharia, for instance, it was a non-co-operator who prevented an extending strike. The moderating influence in Calcutta was that of non-co-operators. The latter will not hesitate to advance the cause of strikers where they have a just grievance. They have ever refused to lend their assistance to unjust strikes. “Where there is a racial ill-feeling”, declares Sir William Vincent, “These emissaries hurry on their evil errand.” He must know that this is a false statement. There is a racial feeling between English-men and Indians. There is the memory of Jallianwala—an evergreen. But “these emissaries” have been veritable messengers of peace. They have everywhere restrained the fury of the unthinking. And I make bold to say that but for the existence of the spirit of non-violence, there would have been more innocent blood spilt in spite of the threat of Dyerism and O’Dwyerism. Our fault has lain in refusing to lick the boot that has kicked, in withdrawing co-operation until there was frank repentance. Non-co-operators are to be blessed for turning the fury of an outraged people from Englishmen to the system they are called upon to administer.

But Sir William is nothing if he is not thorough in his attempt to divide and rule. He declaims: “Where there are quarrels between landlord and tenant, have we not seen this in the United Provinces there again precede these emissaries of evil to propagate unrest, and stir up disorder.” Sir William should know that the tenant movement is under the control of Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru whose one purpose regarding the tenants has been to educate them to be patient and calm. Sir William has simply attempted to set the landlords against the non-cooperation movement. Fortunately the landlords know as well as the tenants that, so long as they are just, they have nothing to fear from non-co-operators. The movement, says Sir William, “is purely destructive, and so far as I have been able to ascertain contains no element of constructive ability”. It is undoubtedly destructive in the sense that a surgeon who applies the knife to a diseased part may be said to make a destructive movement. This destructive movement bears in it the surest seed of construction as the surgeon’s knife contains the seed of health. Is temperance destructive? Are national schools springing up everywhere destructive? Are the thousands of spinning-wheels destructive of a nation’s prosperity?

They will destroy foreign domination whether it hails from Lancashire or is threatened from Japan. Having attempted to set classes against masses, Sir William proceeds to paralyze both with the feeling of helplessness and the fear of internal strife and aggression from without. Is Hindu-Muslim unity such flimsy stuff that we shall begin to quarrel as soon as the British guns are withdrawn from our shores? Were we sixty years ago less able to protect ourselves than we are now? Or is it not a fact that, judged by the Western standard, we were never as helpless as we now are? Self-government, as I have said before, connotes the power of sell-protection, and a country which cannot protect itself is not prepared for immediate and complete self-government. In this one sentence Sir William has unwittingly condemned British rule and proved the necessity of immediate mending or ending of that rule. According to my method the method of suffering or soul-force, the country is today prepared for self-protection.

According to Sir William’s standard, the reforms have nothing in them to enable India even in a hundred years to arm her for defence against a combination of world powers. Judged by that standard, the reforms do forge stronger the chains that bind India and make her feel helpless. The speaker talks glibly of impending destruction of every vested interest. He needs to be reminded that the greatest vested interest of India her self-sufficiency was destroyed by this foreign domination and the speaker’s plan will still further deepen India’s poverty. Even as Sir William has misrepresented non-co-operators’ motives, so has he misconstrued their methods. We have not failed in our effort regarding the educated classes. I admit that the response in practice might have been greater from them. But I make bold to say that the vast majority of them are with us in spirit, though the flesh being weak, they are not able to make what from their point of view is a sacrifice. We have been trying to act on the masses from the commencement.

We regard them as our mainstay, for it is they who have to attain swaraj. It is neither the sole concern of the monied men nor that of the educated class. Both must subserve their interest in any scheme of swaraj, and as soon as the masses have attained sufficient self-control and learnt mass discipline, we shall not hesitate, if necessary, to advise them to suspend payment of taxes to a Government that has never truly looked after their welfare and that has exploited and terrorized them every time they have shown the least symptom of rising against their exploitation. Sir William has been extremely disingenuous in describing the Government’s methods of dealing with non-co-operation. Defence of India Act, he will not use against men who have hurt nobody and who are restraining people from committing violence. But he is using ordinary statutes against them in an extraordinary manner under a licence given to him by non-co-operators who will not challenge orders in a court of law. He will not conciliate the malcontents by granting swaraj, for that would lead to anarchy.

He does not bother his head about the two things which have caused all the unrest and which have acted like two active and corroding poisons in the Indian body the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs. He does not tell us what catastrophe is likely to befall India if the Khilafat promises were redeemed and the Punjab wound healed. He has ornamented his extraordinary speech with an ungentlemanly and insinuating attack upon the Ali Brothers who are putting up a noble fight for Islam and India, and a still more ungentlemanly attack on a ‘gentleman of the name of Yakub Hasan’, and an ungracious reference to his Turkish wife. As I have said it was painful for me to read the speech, still more painful to have to criticize it. I assure the reader that, self-restrained as I am in language; the speech has been a severe strain upon my capacity for restraint. I have scored out many an adjective which I believe would accurately describe Sir William’s performance. I am sorry.