Evidence before Disorders Inquiry - II

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Evidence before Disorders Inquiry - II

 

I fully understood that and no man can more fully appreciate Mr. Ambalal’s difficulty than I can. And I wish to finish this part of my statement by saying that I think that the action of the Government in connection with the Nadiad and Barejadi case was totally unjustified, and I would ask the Committee to read the correspondence between Government and the Collector of Nadiad and you will find their arguments urged for inflicting that fine totally irrelevant to the scope. It is a question really of the laws of India, but is it not in accordance with those laws that, if an additional police force has to be got for any particular district, that district has to pay for it? Surely, Sir, it is not obligatory upon the Government to do that. It is open to the Government to make the people pay; it is open to the Government to single out a class of people for that treatment, but it is nowhere, according to my reading of that law, giving such wide discretion to the Government, obligatory upon the Government to take that expense from the people. How are they to recoup themselves? Recoup from the general revenue. If they consider a particular district is insufficiently policed, surely they do that. They get it from the general revenue. And I certainly hold very strong opinions, knowing as I do the people of Nadiad and the people of Barejadi, that there was no occasion whatsoever for posting a single additional policeman. The people of Nadiad under the most difficult circumstances acted with the greatest self-restraint, and I have investigated that matter as fully as I was capable of doing in conjunction with Mr. Ker, the Collector, and I am here to tell the Committee that it is my deliberate opinion that the people of Nadiad were not in league with those who went there to derail, but that they exercised all the powers that were at their disposal in order to restrain them, and they got a handsome tribute from the Collector and a compliment for their assistance. And I would say the same thing for the people of Barejadi. That I think deals with the points you wish to bring before our notice? I think so, Sir. By the Hon’ble Mr. Justice Rankin: Mr. Gandhi, you have given us your views about civil disobedience and I do not want in the least to make you argue the point over again with me. But I want to get some facts and dates roughly from you if I can. I think the Satyagraha vow was settled somewhere about the third week in February? I think that is very nearly right. I think what has been called your hukm was dated somewhere about the 23rd of February? Yes. At that time the Rowlett Bill No. 2 had not yet been passed, it was passed later on in March? Possibly. The vow as printed, which is before us, shows that it was known that the Bill would be passed, but it had not yet been passed? Yes. And for some time before the 23rd of February I think the Press in India, not that it was any part of my duty to know this at that time, but from the papers put before us, the Press in India, seems to have been ringing with proposals about the way in which to protest against those Acts if they were passed. And I daresay you had to consider a great many suggestions before you made up your mind about the form of your protest, and among the suggestions you had to consider was there a suggestion, widely spread throughout India, that it would be a good method of protest if people were to refuse to pay their land revenue and taxes? I think you had a good many forms of protest suggested to you by irresponsible people, and the Satyagraha vow which you settled in the third week of February was what you thought the best method of protest at that time? Yes. Now did you have to consider I ask you this because of a speech of yours which I think I have read » were you asked to consider whether it should be laid down that orders passed by local magistrates under the Criminal Procedure Code should be disobeyed? Of course that was placed before me. You never committed yourself to that? You thought it might be inadvisable? Not only I never committed myself, but I opposed it strenuously. Had you expressed, by the 8th of April let us say, a view on that subject one way or the other? By the 8th of April I had sufficiently expressed that view, because it was urged upon me by friends that we should commit a breach of the laws governing processions and so on, and I had suggested that we could not possibly do that, we ought not to do it. I had even issued instructions that all police orders should be scrupulously obeyed and carried out. Can you give me the date of my instructions that were issued publicly, either by yourself or the Bombay Sabha on that point? I can only say it was between the 6th and the actual civil disobedience. I can only offer to the Committee to send all the papers that I can trace. I do not want to put you to any undue trouble, but speaking for myself, if you can give me some document which shows that you have repudiated the notion that there was to be any disobedience against local magistrates, I shall be very glad. I shall, if it is there, do that. I am rather anxious, Mr. Gandhi, to find out from you exactly what made you start upon your journey to Delhi, which was interrupted. Will you tell me shortly in your own way the facts that led up to that act and what exactly you intended to do when you got to Delhi? I think it was about the 1st of April, or even a little before, I had received a letter from Dr. Satyapal from Amritsar saying he had been trying to follow the satyagraha movement, that he appreciated the thing and he liked it immensely, but that he himself did not fully understand it, nor did the people. Would I not go over to Amritsar, be his guest, and deliver a few speeches explaining the doctrine of Satyagraha, as they were, on a superficial observation of it, enamored of the thing? As I happened to know from information given to me by the police officers that this letter was intercepted, copied by them and then given to me, I told Dr. Satyapal that I should do so at the very first opportunity that I had. Meanwhile I received a letter from Swami Shraddhanand saying that I shall go to Delhi. The people of Delhi were becoming nameable to the control of the leaders. Really all these people never responded in Delhi, least of all the big cities of India, that is my impression and that is the information they have given me. He said if you only come here, even if it is for a day, I should be pleased, and he sent not only one telegram but he sent two or three, at least two I know. About what date? Was it after the events of the 30th in Delhi? Yes, after the events of the 30th of March and before the hartal of the 6th, and so I think I sent a telegram to him saying I would do so, but I would come immediately after the hartal. I was most anxious for the thing to pass off nicely in Bombay and so it did. I was most anxious we should start our civil disobedience while the whole thing was arranged, so we did that for one day, and on the 8th I took the train. But I got his first wire between the 30th of March and the 6th of April. Again, I do not want to put you to any trouble about it, but do you happen to have these wires or copies to them? If I have them, I shall certainly let you have them. My general routine is to destroy all these documents, simply because I do not want to burden myself. But it is likely that I may have those telegrams. If I have them, I will furnish them. As I gather, the attitude the Swami adopted in writing to you was that, in order that the satyagraha movement might have the benefit of a further extension of influence through your going to Delhi, he wished you to go there? Certainly. He was not inviting you to go to Delhi for the express purpose of pacifying the crowds that had got riotous and out of hand, but in the ordinary course of the Satyagraha propaganda? Not in the same manner that it was arranged for me to be in Amritsar. He definitely mentioned that “we may not be able to restrain the crowd”. He said, “I have tried my utmost up to now, but I may fail and so I would like you to come up. Your presence will have a pacifying influence.” If I can get those letters, I shall be pleased to give them to you. Am I right in supposing that, so far as you are concerned, it was no part of your intention in going to Delhi for the first time in order to have a collision with the authorities in the interests of the Satyagraha movement? None at all. You knew, I think, at that time, that the Swamiji was having difficulty in getting the crowds in Delhi to do what he wanted and that the police authorities were having an anxious time of it? Yes. You say you had no intention of proceeding to Delhi to make the position worse but to make it better? I was proceeding to Delhi to help the authorities. There is just one or two things that I would like to ask you about. I do not believe in quoting speeches, Mr. Gandhi, I have some reports before me and I cannot read through the whole, but I will read a few lines from your speeches at Ahmadabad on the 13th April On the 13th or 14^th, On the 14th. You were speaking in Gujarati and it is a speech which you began by saying that what had happened in Ahmadabad during the past 4 or 5 days had disgraced the city. What you appeared to have said according to this report is, “he told them that these disturbances had done no good to Ahmadabad, that they had done considerable harm to the passive resistance if after his arrest people had preserved peace, the Rowlett Bill would have been cancelled or on the verge of being cancelled. It would not be a matter of wonder now if there was delay in the cancellation of the Bill. When he got free on Friday, he intended to start again for Delhi on Sunday to try and get himself re-arrested as the cause of passive resistance would have been greatly strengthened. Now instead of going to Delhi he had to carry on passive resistance against them.” Was that simply a passing thought in your mind or had you in a cooler moment formed the determination really to go back to get yourself re-arrested? I had done that. I had told Mr. Griffith, the Commissioner of Police, that it was my intention to do so unless I found something serious. Do you mean Mr. Jeffries? Mr. Griffith, the Commissioner of Police in Bombay. I mentioned that fact to Mr. Pratt also. I have not heard of him yet. He is new to us. Now let us take it that you had been unjustly turned back from Delhi, but what was the object of going back to get yourself re-arrested? As a satyagrahi having once been arrested and set free, it is our duty to seek re-arrest and seek imprisonment again and again. That was the object and nothing else. I do not know » of course you know better than I do » it is not the object of a satyagrahi to go and get himself imprisoned always, is it? No, it is not always. What is the particular reason from your point of view to get yourself rearrested? To invite self-suffering. If I embark upon a campaign of civil breach that is the only way by which I can make good that campaign. Was it your idea that if you went back to Delhi and you were arrested, that that would inflame the country or parts of it and have a greater effect in stopping the Rowlett Bill? Not at all. If that was so, I would have proceeded straight, without the slightest hesitation or consideration. Here I just want to supplement my information by saying that, at that time; I had no idea to what had occurred in Amritsar or elsewhere. The events at Amritsar occurred on the 10th which was when you were travelling back in the train. At what time did you actually arrive back in Bombay? On the 11th. At that time I take it that there were urgent messages for you to come to Ahmadabad? Yes. Did they meet you immediately on your arrival at home? No. I was not met by any friend so far as I am aware. Did you get a message to come to Ahmadabad the moment you arrived in Bombay? I got the message the next day. I arrived on the 11th. I got the message on the 12th. Your facilities for keeping abreast of what was happening all over the country during those days were very bad, and you were not fully posted up with what was happening? No. That point about going back to Delhi I put it to you again, because it was only a few days after you had been arrested and turned back. What I understood you to say was for the first time when you went to Delhi it was not part of your object to get into collision with the police but you went there to make the position better? Yes. I don’t think I have before me in an authoritative form the facts as to the action you took to bring to an end the practice of what is called civil disobedience. I think you did feel yourself compelled to advise the temporary suspension of civil disobedience, and according to the document before me, that was done about the 18th April? Yes. And that was done after you got back from Ahmadabad, and you addressed a letter to the Secretaries of the Sabha in which you said that “it is not without sorrow that I feel compelled to advise the temporary suspension of civil disobedience. I give this advice not because I have less faith now in its efficacy, but because, I have, if possible, greater faith than before. It is my perception of the law of Satyagraha movement that impels me to suggest suspension. I am sorry that when I embarked upon a mass movement, I understand the forces of evil, and I must now pause and consider how best to meet the situation.” Now, you seem to have stated there very frankly that, when on the 23rd of February you embarked upon satyagraha and civil disobedience as a mass movement, you had underrated the forces of evil, and I suppose that the experiences through which India had passed during the intervening period led you to think that it was doing more harm than good in that form? Yes. After that date, the 18th April, I think from time to time you were requested for instructions whether it was going to be restarted again; was it ever in fact restarted again? No. You have kept it in suspension since that date? And then a notice was issued that it will be started, I think, on the 1st of August or the 1st of July. I forgot now the exact month, when I saw there was a fair control over the situation, but yielding to the better knowledge and the better information of the Government of India, it was Lord Chelmsford’s desire conveyed to me through His Excellency the Governor of Bombay and supplemented by the advice of the Governor of Bombay also, I felt that, in order to make good my claim as a satyagrahi, I should yield and I yielded. I think there is a letter over your signature in which you put the matter thus: “As long as we practice truth and ask others to do so, satyagraha can never be said to have ceased. And if all practice truth, and refrain from violence to person and property, we would immediately get what we want but when all are not prepared to do so, when satyagrahis are only a handful, then we have to devise other methods deducible from Satyagraha. One such method is civil disobedience. I have already explained the reason why this civil disobedience has been for the time being suspended. As long as we know that there is every likelihood, burdening on certainty, of rioting and violence following civil disobedience, so long disobedience of laws cannot be regarded as civil disobedience, but it is disobedience that is thoughtless, uncivil and devoid of truth.” And for those reasons you suspended it after experience had shown you that the line between civil disobedience and other disobedience was more difficult to draw for other people than you had thought? Yes. I want to ask you, Mr. Gandhi. You have been taking an interest in politics all over India, and I want you to speak, so far as you can, for the whole of India as regards this point. Looking back upon what happened in the Punjab and Delhi and other places, do you think that, by a misinterpretation of the principles of Satyagraha, there has been a tendency all over India in April and May of last year to have an undue sympathy with lawlessness and an inadequate perception of the necessity of obedience to law? So far as I have been able to gauge the public feeling, I do not think that would be a correct statement. Do you feel guilty yourself of having done anything to damage the law-abiding instinct of the Indian people by the satyagraha movement? I feel guilty of having temporarily damaged that instinct in some people. I do feel that. But I do not feel for one moment that there has been a spirit of lawlessness amongst the people as a whole. Of course in some parts of India there was greater reason than in others for being in a state of excitement. The Punjab is an instance, and there are other instances which I need not mention, but I understand it, or rather put it, that where people got more excited, there they were more liable to misinterpret what you wanted? I think where the people did not understand the doctrine there they were liable to misinterpret it. I found to my most agreeable surprise that, for the first time people from the Punjab came to me voluntarily and said, “Oh, if only we had understood the doctrine, how differently we would have acted.” And it is the case, is it not, that before you started this particular movement in the third week of February, a campaign had been going on for a substantial time in which the disobedience of law had played a prominent part in the papers all over India? Oh, yes, certainly. Your view was to appoint a committee which should decide what laws to disobey . . .? This is so, and we often discussed it at our meetings, and I made it as plain as it was possible for me to do so. Your intention was to have a committee in Bombay both for Bombay and Ahmadabad? That is all. And, of course, your intention was that this civil disobedience should be practiced in parts of India where they would have such subhas. Did you intend that each place should have its own Sabha to prescribe particular laws to be disobeyed? That was done, but I think it was only nominally done, because the sabhas, in each place where it was actually done, appointed me as the President, because they felt, and very naturally too, they felt in that respect they should be guided by me. There was a local committee formed in Madras and they made me President, and I rather like the idea, and that was the same thing in the United Provinces, so that we should have the same policy all over. Did you contemplate that different laws should be prescribed for different areas for the purposes of being broken? I contemplated that if the necessity arose, but not otherwise. I see in your speeches that your movement is referred to sometimes by the phrase “civil disobedience” which comes apparently from Thoreau, and sometimes by the phrase, which is more familiar to an Englishman, “passive resistance”. Now if an order comes to a man from Government or from anybody else, and if his conscience says that it is not right, it may be up to him simply to do nothing if not to obey, but civil disobedience goes further than that. Does it not? Certainly. First of all, civil disobedience as propaganda was a means, as you put it speaking of South Africa, of bending the Government to the will of the people? Certainly. Secondly, the disobedience may be active as well as passive, but still be civil according to your Satyagraha doctrine? Yes. And thirdly, the Committee may fail to prescribe the law to be broken which is against one’s conscience or prescribe a law which is not against one’s conscience to be broken? Certainly. Those differences as I understood you to say you perceived from your former propaganda and this is your way of putting the passive resistance doctrine into force? That is why I have not called it a passive doctrine, because there is nothing passive about this thing. It is active, but not in the physical sense. For instance, if there is a law which says that you must not publish a newspaper unless you register it, and you publish it, is it not passive resistance? It is active and intensely active. In the same way you go and get yourself arrested when you are told not to go to Delhi and that would be active resistance? Certainly. What I want to know is whether you appreciate the fact, as it appears to me is the case, the civil disobedience as understood by you and what is called passive resistance are really two very different things? I accept that. There is a fundamental distinction. You said it was an extension of the domestic law on the political field, that what is repugnant to one’s conscience he has a right to refuse? That is true. By Sir C. H. Setalvad: You were asked about the Rowlett Bills and you were told that the Rowlett Act that was passed really re-enacted the provisions of the Defence of India Act to a certain extent. The Defence of India Act provisions were submitted to merely as an emergency for the period of the War, but that would not justify keeping all those provisions after the War was over. That was one of the objections to the Bill? Yes. Then it was pointed out that the extension of the Rowlett Act as passed to any particular province or locality could only be if the Government of India extended it. Have you found that similar extensions under other Acts that were made were based on what the people considered to be very insufficient grounds? Yes. And the main objection to the Rowlett Bills was not this, but that it attempted to place a considerable power in the hands of the executive uncontrolled by the judiciary? Yes. And also the manner in which the Act was passed in the Legislative Council in the teeth of all combined non-official opposition and that too on the eve of a substantial measure of self-government being granted created the greatest resentment throughout the country? Yes. With regard to your Satyagraha doctrine, as far as I am able to understand it, it involves a pursuit of truth? Yes and in the pursuit of truth to invite suffering on oneself and not to cause violence to anybody else? Yes. That I understand is the main principle underlying? That is so. Now in that doctrine, who is to determine the truth, that individual himself? Yes, that individual himself. So each one that adopts this doctrine has to determine for himself what is the truth that he will pursue? Most decidedly. And in doing that different individuals will take very different views as to what is the truth to be pursued? Certainly. It might, on that footing, cause considerable confusion? I won’t accept that. It need not lead to any confusion if you accept the proposition that a man is honestly in search after truth and that he will never inflict violence upon him who holds to truth. Then there is no possibility of confusion. A man may honestly strive after truth, but however honestly a man may strive, his notions of truth will be quite different from the notions of truth of some other people or his intellectual equipment may be of such a character that his conclusion as regards truth may be entirely opposite to the conclusion of somebody else? That was precisely the reason why in answer to Lord Hunter I suggested that non-violence was the necessary corollary to the acceptance of Satyagraha doctrine. I quite see that non-violence is a common factor to all but what truth a particular person should pursue, on that there will be immense difference of opinion? Certainly. You recognize, I suppose, Mr. Gandhi, that in order properly to follow in the right spirit in which you conceive the doctrine of Satyagraha, pursuit after truth, in the manner you describe, the person must be equipped with high moral and intellectual equipment? Certainly, a man who wants to pursue truth independently has to be equipped with high moral and intellectual equipment. Now do you expect that standard of moral and intellectual equipment in the ordinary man? It is not necessary for me to have that standard from all who accept the thing. If, for instance, A has evolved a conception of truth which B, C and 50 others accepted implicitly from him, then, I need not expect from them that high standard which I would expect from A, but the others will follow that. They will know that they are not to inflict any violence, and you create a large body. It comes to this, that the person or persons with high moral and intellectual equipment that I have spoken of would come to a particular conclusion. Then, a large number of other people have to blindly follow him? Not blindly, I would not say blindly, but I would not expect the same standard of intellectual or moral equipment from them as I would expect from A. I thought you agreed with me that, in order to practice in the right spirit your doctrine of satyagraha, a person should be fitted with high moral and intellectual equipment, but you say it is not necessary to exact that standard from all people because all that they need do is to follow what a person of that high intellectual and moral equipment has decided? You may put it that way if you wish to. But all I wish to urge is that each individual, unless he wants to carry on his pursuit independently, does not need to do so. I simply say that if one man conceives a plan of life, it is not necessary for all the others, before they can follow that, to have the same intellectual and moral equipment. If you have appreciated that from what I have said, I have nothing more to say. I take it that your scheme, as you conceive it, involves the determination of what is the right path and the true path by people who are capable of high intellectual and moral equipment and a large number of other people following them without themselves being able to arrive at similar conclusions by reason of their lower moral and intellectual equipment? I cannot subscribe to that, because I have not said that I do not say that they are not to exercise their judgment, but I simply say that, in order that they may exercise their judgment, the same mental and moral equipment is not necessary. Because they are to accept the judgment of people who are capable of exercising better judgment and equipped with better moral and intellectual standard? Naturally, but I think that is in human nature, but I exact nothing more than I would exact from an ordinary human being. I will put it in another way. The success of your propaganda must depend upon a large number of people accepting the conclusion of people in whom they have faith and who are fortunate enough to have that high moral and intellectual equipment. If everybody without that moral and intellectual equipment begins to think out for himself what the right path is, you will end in confusion. So the success of your scheme implies and must involve this, that a certain number of people endowed with that high moral and intellectual equipment will pursue the truth and determine what it is, then, a large number not so endowed will accept their conclusion and follow them? I do not accept that as a natural conclusion that the success of the movement depends upon that. In Satyagraha the success of the movement depends upon the existence of one full satyagrahi. One satyagrahi can achieve success in the manner and in the sense that in the plan of violence numbers of people cannot do. The first part of it, I understood, Mr. Gandhi, is that it is a doctrine of pursuit of truth in the sense that you have suggested and it can only be rightly worked out by a person fitted with high moral and intellectual equipment which the ordinary masses do not possess? Of making an independent search, that is how I would like to put it. Therefore, so far as they are concerned, they have to accept the conclusions of people who are capable of doing it? Not without sufficiently exercising their judgment. They can only exercise such judgment as they have? Certainly. And as you have said, the real pursuit of truth in the manner you have described requires such high moral and intellectual equipment that it is beyond the ordinary individual? That is true with reference to any original thing. I am not pointing this as a reproach against the movement. I only understand the position. Perhaps, I am reading actually more in your words than I am entitled to. You need not view my questions with undue suspicion? It is not suspicion, Sir Chimanlal, but I simply do not want the Committee or you, for that matter, to misunderstand my position. That is all. I understand you to say, Mr. Gandhi; you do not consider yourself a perfect satyagrahi yet? No. If that is so, Mr. Gandhi, it is almost impossible for ordinary people to ever hope to be that? I do not by any means consider myself to be an extraordinary man. You may not consider yourself, but looking to your life and your habits the people know that you are an extraordinary man and can pursue a doctrine such as the Satyagraha perfectly. But are there not many people for whom it is almost impossible to hope to pursue it correctly? They perhaps in that case would not have understood the scope of Satyagraha at all. It would mean that they had felt quite disgusted. Now, take for instance, the 40,000 Indians in South Africa who are totally uncultured and illiterate, and these people never come to that conclusion. I may be wrong. But when you speak of the 40,000 in South Africa, I think they simply followed your lead? Yes, followed my lead after having examined the position. If I take you through the streets of South Africa, and should you have the time to do it, you will find that your countrymen were capable of doing it because they did not follow me blindly. True, but there in South Africa you had a broad simple issue? Yes. And it was an issue with regard to which the sympathy of the civilized world was with the people who were following Satyagraha and that very much differentiates the situation from the situation that you have here? Not on the concrete instance of satyagrahi control. I have had to consolidate more information here on my side than I had in South Africa. They were divided in two forces of hostile camps there. That may be, but still you had a clean-out issue? So also here. Here you say you had on this particular occasion the Rowlett Bill agitation, but once you start this doctrine of Satyagraha and introduce it into political campaigns and activities in a country like India, situated as we are, it is not one cleanout issue that we arrive at. There would be varied and complicated situations to which you would have to apply this doctrine? I do not apply the doctrine to every situation in life. I simply present Satyagraha as an instrument of infinitely greater power and infinitely purer than violence. Then I take it, you will agree that it is not a doctrine that you would apply to every grievance or every situation that may arise? Most certainly not. Not if only because of the automatic limits of the doctrine imposed, because everyone is not ready to suffer. Everyone is ready to strike a blow if he would receive one in return. You say that an ordinary man is quite ready to strike a blow, so your doctrine involves eschewing that altogether and, on the contrary, the suffering ones go on suffering. Now, does not that require very extraordinary control over ordinary human passions? Not to my experience. It does not really require that extraordinary control for sufferings that you imagine. Every mother suffers and she is not exceptionally gifted with any great virtue. Now, take a case in ordinary life. If you get a blow and you determine to suffer it according to your doctrine, surely that does require extraordinary control over ordinary human passions? Then, your countrymen have got that extraordinary control. Do you think they have exercised it or exhibited it in all these places? Yes, they have exhibited that in a very large measure. Take Ahmadabad. Do you think they exhibited that control over their passions when on hearing of your arrest they burst forth and committed all these atrocities which you clearly denounced? Do you think they exhibited this self-control and self-restraint? All I say is that throughout India where you find these isolated instances, you find innumerable instances where the people exercise the most exemplary self-restraint and hence we have earned the title of the “mild Hindu”. I daresay many people did not take part in these disturbances and in that sense it is self-restraint. But you see the point is how, on hearing of your arrest, which was the first provocation to them, they burst into ebullitions, and these atrocities in Ahmadabad followed almost at once. To me it just shows that even we have not gone far enough I moved 7 lakhs of people in Kaira, they are high-spirited people, and yet they acted with the greatest self-restraint in the face of very grave provocation at the time of the Kaira trouble, which was not for one day but continued for six months. So you consider these many manifestations of violence in different parts as merely an accidental or a passing phase which is not likely to recur? I do not say so, but it will certainly be rare and rarer still from a clear conception that the country has now got of Satyagraha. I have no doubt in my mind about it. Do you think that the country has now realized the high ideals that you have placed before them? Not in its full sense, but the country has sufficiently realized the high ideal to enable a man like myself to try it again and, I would not hesitate to try it again if a situation warranting such control faced me, but as I have said, it is not every day that you want to break laws. Do you feel sure that if you started it again, similar disturbances would not result in any place? It is very difficult to say beforehand when such a situation faces me, but I do feel sure that the country is all the purer and better for having gone through the fire of Satyagraha. Now, as I understand you from your statement, the Satyagraha doctrine is used in the political sphere to oppose unjust laws? Yes. And that is to be done by inviting penalties under that law, by breaking that law. And you say your doctrine inculcates this with regard to such laws in connection with which the rendering of obedience be a dishonor, and you go so far as to say that in order to register your protest against any such law one would be entitled to withdraw co-operation altogether from the State? I have not said that there, i.e., “to withdraw co-operation”. But I would accept that proposition also when a situation may be reached in which case it would be a proper thing to withdraw complete cooperation from the State. Now ordinarily I take it that your doctrine is co-operation with Government? Yes. I mean to say, in the very interest of the country for its ordered development, for which there ought to be co-operation? Yes. And there ought to be elimination as far as possible of any race hatred or race feeling or bitterness of that kind? Yes. Tested in this way, when your doctrine says with regard to any particular law or laws to invite suffering and go to jail by breaking them, you hope thereby ultimately to excite the sympathy of the people in authority and to make them see the correct view of it? I should eliminate the hope. That hope is not a necessary ingredient. If I remember, I think, in your statement you mention it? When I place the doctrine before the people I place that also before them, but it is not an essential part of the doctrine. The essential part is not to accept and obey a law to obey which is a dishonor, therefore, it becomes a necessity of the situation for us to do that, but that by itself is the register of a protest by honest action, which brings about the sympathy of the world and the repeal of that legislation. It is one of the conditions of that act. A man may say, “No, the whole world will rise against me”, but he must still make good his protest. It is true the result may also be that, though it may not be the strict ideal of Satyagraha. According to you one should not do it for achieving that result, but the hope may be that, if you can get a number of people going to jail and suffering, then, the authorities may be moved by sympathy and may realize the correct point of view as you consider it. Now, if that is done on any particular occasion and if several people went to jail in this way and suffered, will it not also create to a certain extent a feeling of hatred against the Government in the minds of people who would naturally feel that they were so helpless before this Government that the only thing they could do was to go to jail. Would it not naturally create, in these circumstances, although you may restrain yourself and not proceed to violence, in your mind, a certain feeling against the authority with regard to whom you have to take this action of inviting suffering on yourself? It is totally contrary to my 30 years’ experience. I myself, and all those who have been associated with me, have not by reason of suffering been filled, at least, with any greater ill will than is professed to be, but I know of scores of instances in which they have got rid of the ill will, because this is a doctrine in which you get rid of that kind of passion and ill will in the quickest manner possible. See what is happening today in South Africa after the close of such a bitter struggle causing the suffering of innocent men. The Governors and the Indians have gone on the best of terms and even when they were labouring under very serious disabilities at the time of the War, the Indians offered their services absolutely voluntarily and there you had no recruitment or anything of that kind. It was all optional, and those who cared to go did so and they served under the very gentle men who, in their opinion, had subjected them to the greatest hardship; and General Smuts, when he returned, was the recipient of an address from the people who voluntarily voted that address to him, and whom he had, in their estimation, oppressed during the passive resistance struggle. Then when the Rowlett Bills were passed, you decided to present the satyagraha doctrine to the country? Yes. And you wanted the masses to be satyagrahis in that sense to take part in the movement without pledging themselves to the Satyagraha vow. True, they may or may not take the vow, but you wanted them to be satyagrahis in spirit, to follow the doctrines of the Satyagraha movement? That part of the movement not devoted to civil disobedience, that is to say, I would warn them and invite them to take part in meetings to be organized, but I would not invite them to take part in the civil breach of the laws, and I would not make them to force others who do not wish to take part. You never intended that the masses should take part in the civil disobedience part of the movement unless they definitely took the pledge. I would then take the masses also with me. But you did want them to follow the Satyagraha doctrine? Certainly. You may perhaps recall I framed another statement of pledge to be signed by all after this violence which omitted mention of civil resistance but simply mentioned the following of truth at all costs and asking others also to do that. I omitted from that even the taking of self-suffering. By whom was this statement to be signed? It was a pledge to be signed by a large number of people who are not in my circle and who are not civil resisters. Your idea is this that the masses or a large number of people should not be asked to subscribe to civil disobedience? I do not say that. I simply say that, in opposition of the violent movement, I issued another pledge which was intended to be signed by everybody who cared to do so, which simply bound him to observe the truth in all his dealings and not to inflict violence, i.e., to omit civil disobedience and, therefore, the inviting of suffering. Because you considered civil disobedience in consequence of the suffering following on that, to be not quite suited to the ordinary masses? No. I had suspended the movement at the time and yet I wanted to place something before the country. Naturally, a leader would sometimes emphasize one part of his propaganda and sometimes another. At this time when I saw that the civil disobedience part was misunderstood by the people, I suspended that, but I wanted to emphasize the principle a part of it the non-violence part of it, and so I eliminated civil disobedience, not because it was unsuited to the masses, but because it was unsuited to the season, in other words, it was not in season to preach it. Because of your experience of the occurrences that took place in April, you came to the conclusion that civil disobedience propaganda was unsuited to the occasion? For that season, I have not come to any such conclusion as you postulate. I do not suggest that but you came to the conclusion that looking to the circumstances then existing Satyagraha was unsuited? Yes. And therefore you suspended it? Yes. And you came to that conclusion because the events showed you that the people had not really understood what you meant by civil disobedience? Yes. And they had thereby misled themselves? Yes. When you first decided about civil disobedience I suppose it was in connection with the Rowlett Act? No, when the pledge was first signed, the whole thing was contemplated at the very first sitting in Ahmadabad at the Ashram The disobedience of the Rowlett Act as well as other laws? Yes. You see, I just want to correct my impression. Yes, many have really thought that the other laws came in after. That is not so. If I remember aright, Mrs. Besant first took the vow? Well, there are two versions to it. She took the vow and she did not. I was told that she had really taken the vow in toto less the Committee clause. She did not want to be dominated by a committee. As you have now seen it was a question of limitation, but she misunderstood that. Was it not like this, viz., that she pointed out that it was not possible to disobey the Rowlett Act, unless you brought yourself under the provisions of the Act by becoming a seditionist or an anarchist? I remember to have read it in the papers, but that was previous to the telegram and conversation of hers, so far as I recollect. She did point that out? Of course, there she misread the law, but she did say that. What I want to be clear about is whether it was on her pointing out what I have stated that the determination was arrived at to disobey other laws? Not at all. It was some days at least after the pledge was published that Mrs. Besant wrote what you have stated. Mrs. Besant knew nothing of the pledge then at the time it was signed at Ahmadabad. I simply want to know whether my recollection is correct. She pointed out that the very nature of the Act did not lend itself to such disobedience, but as regards disobedience of any other laws, she refused to join that because she said that it would lead to chaos? Yes, I know she advanced that argument and she refuted the movement so far as it related to the disobedience of other laws, but I do not know on what grounds ultimately she refused to join the movement. The ground was put forward by her in her paper? Certainly, she wrote an article to that effect in her New India. That is, that disobedience of laws in that manner must inevitably lead to chaos? Yes. Now with regard to civil disobedience of various laws, was the idea underlying it thus to a certain extent, that if you disobeyed various laws the result would be to embarrass the Government or to make ordered Government impossible, that Government would be obliged to yield to the demand of the people with regard to the Rowlett Bill and, thus, would be effected what you yourself described as bending the Government to the will of the people? Was that the idea underlying it? It is not embarrassment of the Government, but the idea is the exercise of your right to withdraw your co-operation from Government that has forfeited all confidence and esteem, and it will all depend upon the measure of forfeiture of confidence. Take this particular case we are dealing with the Rowlett Act. By the passing of the Rowlett Act, did you and your co-workers come to the conclusion that in doing that the Government had so acted that they had forfeited their confidence and, therefore, all claim for co-operation? Oh, no. Not at all. I want to be clear.

 

Reference:

Evidence before Disorders Inquiry Committee Vol. II, pp. 107-32