J. M. Merriman and Mahatma Gandhi

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

 

 

J. M. Merriman and Mahatma Gandhi

 

J. M. Merriman was a British Officer. He was appointed in Bihar. During Champaran Satyagraha, Mahatma Gandhi met with him and wrote many letters to him about the condition of peasants. I think that I ought to keep you informed of my doings. Having received an offer of a ready-made school building and an invitation to open a school in a Kham village, I opened one today in Barharva Lakhamsen near Daka. I have put there the best volunteer teachers from among those who have offered their assistance. They are Mr. and Mrs. Gokhale from Bombay. They have their independent means, and Mrs. Gokhale was doing educational work in Bombay. The nature of the work they will do I have already described to you. I am hoping, with the assistance, if possible, of the heads of the respective concerns to open similar schools, one in the Peeprah Dehat and another in the Tarkaulia Dehat, and I hope to open one in the Belwa Dehat, As this attempt is in the nature of an experiment, I do not want to open more than four or five schools, until some definite result is obtained. I hope that I shall have the co-operation of the local officials in an experiment which, I know, is full of difficulty, but which is fraught with important consequences if it becomes successful. 1

I visited Koeri yesterday and met Shivratan and other people. As, however, the result of the inquiry ordered by you is, I understand, to be announced to Shivratan on the 23rd instant, I postpone submitting my observations till the result is known. Raiyats from the Siraha Dehat inform me that thumb marks are being taken on some contracts by that factory. I am unable to advise them as to the action they should take until I see the draft. I have, therefore, told them that if they wish to follow my advice they ought not to sign any document until I have seen it, as I consider myself entirely unfit to give advice otherwise. I thought that I ought to pass this information on to you. I would like to add that it would tend to smoothness of relations between the landlords and the Raiyats if the former showed you the contracts they wish to enter into with the Raiyats. As you may be aware, it has been a frequent complaint on the part of the Raiyats that they are often made or called upon to sign documents which they do not understand. 2 

In the schools I am opening, children under the age of 12 only are admitted. The idea is to get hold of as many children as possible and to give them an all-round education, i.e., knowledge of Hindi or Urdu and, through that medium, of Arithmetic, rudiments of History and Geography, knowledge of simple scientific principles and some industrial training. No cut and dried syllabus has been yet prepared, because I am going along an unbeaten track. I look upon our own present system with horror and distrust. Instead of developing the moral and the mental faculties of the little children, it dwarfs them. In my experiment, whilst I shall draw upon what is good in it, I shall endeavour to avoid the defects of the present system. The chief thing aimed at is contact of the children with men and women of culture and unimpeachable moral character. That to me is education. Literary training is to be used merely as a means to that end. The industrial training is designed to give the boys and girls who may come to us, an additional means of livelihood. It is not intended that on completing their education, they should leave their hereditary occupation, viz., agriculture, but make use of the knowledge gained in the school to refine agriculture and agricultural life. Our teachers will also touch the lives of the grown-up people and, if at all possible, penetrate the purdah. Instructions will, therefore, be given to grownup people in hygiene and about the advantages of joint action for the promotion of communal welfare, such as the making of village roads proper, the sinking of wells, etc. And as no school will be manned by teachers who are not men or women of good training, we propose to give free medical aid, so far as is possible. In Badharwa for instance, Mrs. Avantikabai Gokhale who is a trained nurse and midwife and who, assisted by her husband, is in charge of the school, has already dispensed castor oil and quinine to scores of patients during the four days that she has been at work and visited several female patients. If you desire any further information, I shall be only too glad to supply you with it. My hope is that I shall be able to enlist in my work full co-operation of the local authority. I am opening another school tomorrow near Shrirampur, about two miles from Amolwa. Regarding the Raiyats, complaints about documents, evidently the point I wished to make was not made by me. I know that the Raiyats can go to court about compulsion. The difficulty is that they are neither trained nor organized enough for orderly work. What is morally compulsion may not be compulsion in law. My experience of the Champaran Raiyats is that he is extremely unintelligent and is easily made to assent mentally to any proposition. I hold, therefore, that the Government, as the guardian of such people, has to save them from their own ignorance. I do not say that in the Saraiya case brought to your notice, any compulsion has been used. I simply suggested that, in order that there might be no allegation of compulsion after such documents as I have referred to in my previous letter are signed, you might, if you deemed it proper, inquire about the contracts now offered to the Raiyats for their signatures. 3 

I went over to Bhitiharva on Tuesday last and opened a school there. Mr. Soman, a public worker from Belgaum, and a B.A. LL.B., has been left in charge, and he will be assisted by Mr. Balkrishna, a young man from Gujarat. Mrs. Gandhi will join them on the 24th. Her work will be chiefly confined to moving among the women. I was in Badharwa yesterday, and Mrs. Gokhale and my son were just returning from a visit to a dying man. They told me that the people in the District were woefully neglectful of the patients, and they believed that many preventable deaths must occur in the District for want of a simple observance of the rudimentary principles of hygiene. I know that this will not come to you as news, because it is not a peculiar condition of the District in which Mrs. Gokhale is working, or of Champaran, but it is a chronic condition among the peasantry of India. I simply mentioned the incidents in order that, as soon as I have advanced a little more in my experiment, I may enlist your active sympathy and help in a Department in which all can meet without reserve. Dr. Dev, who is a qualified and experienced surgeon and physician, and Secretary of the Servants of India Society, came on Tuesday. His services have been lent for this work by the Society. He has come with three more volunteers including a lady from Prof. Karwe’s Widows’ Home. Dr. Dev will chiefly supervise the Medical Branch of the work. I may state that I shall be away from Champaran for over a fortnight. Babu Brijkishore Prasad will represent me in my absence. 4

I returned from my tours early this morning, and found a letter lying for me. I enclose copy of same herewith. Dr. Deva tells me that in Mitiharva and the surrounding villages; nearly 50 p.c. of the population am suffering from a fever which often proves fatal. Our workers are rendering all the assistance they can. 5

 

References: 

 

1. Letter to J. L. Merriman, November 14, 191
2. Letter to J. L. Merriman, November 17, 1917
3. Letter to J. L. Merriman, November 19, 1917
4. Letter to J. L. Merriman, November 22, 1917
5. Letter to J. L. Merriman, December 10, 1917