Khilafat Day 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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Khilafat Day and Mahatma Gandhi

 

The Moslem Conference of Lucknow has proclaimed Friday the 17th instant as a day of fasting and prayer. The preliminaries will be presently arranged. The day is to be called the Khilafat Day. Mr. Andrews’ letter shows clearly what the Khilafat question is and how just is the case of the Mohammedans. He agrees with the suggestion I have ventured to make, viz., that if justice cannot be obtained for Turkey, Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford must resign. But better than resignations, better than protests, are prayers of the just. I therefore welcome the Lucknow resolution. Prayer expresses the soul's longing and fasting sets the soul free for efficacious prayer. In my opinion, a national fast and national prayer should be accompanied by suspension of business. I therefore without hesitation advice suspension of business provided it is carried out with calmness and dignity and provided it is entirely voluntary. Those who are required for necessary work such as hospital, sanitation, off-loading of steamers, etc., should not be entitled to suspend work. And I suggest that to this day of fast there are no processions, no meetings. People should remain indoors and devote themselves entirely to prayer. 1

Several friends have inquired what should be the position regarding the forthcoming peace celebrations. On the Khilafat Day, I know that resolutions were passed at some meetings to the effect that Mohammedans could not participate in the celebrations if the Khilafat question was not satisfactorily settled. There can be no peace in Indian estimation so long as the great question remains unsolved and the Mohammedan sentiment is in danger of being lacerated, and millions of Mohammedans remaining in suspense or grief, it is hardly possible for the Hindus, Parsis, Christians, Jews and others for whom India is the land of their adoption or birth to take part in the forthcoming rejoicing. I venture to think that His Excellency the Viceroy can, if he will, tell His Majesty’s ministers that Indians cannot participate in the celebration, so long as the Khilafat question remains unsettled. And I do hope that His Majesty’s ministers will recognize the necessity of securing and publishing an honourable settlement of the question before asking us to take part in peace celebrations. 2 

Friends have asked me what we should do during the forthcoming Peace Celebrations. I know that, in some of the meetings held on Khilafat Day, a resolution was passed to the effect that, if the Khilafat problem was not solved to their satisfaction, Muslims would not be able to take part in these celebrations since Indians would, in those circumstances, have no peace of mind. So long as this important problem remains unsolved and there is a fear that Muslim sentiment would be hurt, and so long as our Muslim brethren suffer in suspense and are worried, so long Hindus, Parsis, Christians, Jews and all others for whom India is their land of birth or adoption, can hardly take part in the forthcoming Peace Celebrations. I am bold enough even to imagine. His Excellency the Viceroy informing the Ministers of the King-emperor that, while the Khilafat problem remains unsolved, Indians would not be able to take part in the Peace Celebrations, and I am confident that before inviting us to join the celebrations the Ministers would accept the need for finding an honourable solution and announcing it. 3

The Khilafat day has come and gone. It was a great success and a complete triumph of Satyagraha, i.e., not civil disobedience but truth and non-violence. No hartal has been so voluntary as that of the 19th March in that all the canvassing that ever took place was before the 19th. It was an example of wonderful self-restraint on the part of the Committee not to have called out the mill-hands. The Committee deserves the highest praise for its efficient management and for the definite recognition of voluntarism. If the people continue to show the discipline and self-restraint shown on the 19th and add thereto in an equal measure the spirit of self-sacrifice, nothing can prevent the full fruition of our hopes regarding Khilafat. Nobody could have believed a year ago the possibility of peace being observed by the fanatical element among the Mohammedans on a matter of life and death to them and on a day of no business for the idlers. But there can be no idleness when there is prayer. All were enjoined not to quarrel, not to be angry but to pray for the right to be done. It is true that all did not definitely pray, but the spirit of prayer was abroad and it dominated the people rather than the spirit of revenge, anger, excitement, and so we had the amazing spectacle of the hartal day passing off like an ordinary day when everybody expects peace to be observed. The vast meeting of Bombay attended perhaps by thirty thousand men was a sight worth seeing.

There was firmness in the faces of those thousands of people who listened to the speeches, yet without applause or any other effusive demonstration. The organizers deserve the warmest praise for having introduced into our meetings the ancient peacefulness, quiet, determination and orderliness in the place of modern fluster, excitement and disorderliness. The one develops just the qualities that make for Satyagraha; the other inevitably leads to violence. And the message of the great meeting and the very successful hartal is not violence but non-violence. I hope that the authorities will not misread the situation. They will not fail to understand the admirable spirit of the whole demonstration or the equally admirable spirit of the resolution—a resolution to which, in my humble opinion, it is impossible for any honest lover of this country or the Empire to take exception. I hope, too, that they will read the spirit of the movement in the manner in which it is developing. I hope that the exemplary patience, self-restraint and orderliness that are evolving in our midst will have their due weight with them and that they will inform the Imperial Government that whilst there is this admirable peace in the land there is also a grim determination behind it which will not take “no” for an answer.

I hope that Government will not repeat the sin of last April and entertain any false hope of tyranny and unquenchable spirit that has come into being and that will suffer everything but humiliation, dishonor and defeat. It is a matter of deep regret that so respected a body as the Liberal League should have hastily and in advance condemned the hartal. Surely a people so stricken with grief and with disappointment probably staring them in the face must have an outlet for orderly manifestation. It was because not very long ago we were afraid to speak or write what we thought that our sentiments burrowed under and became foul with stench because of the absence of the fierce sun and the open air of public opinion playing upon them. Hence we had a secret revolutionary movement. Today, thank God, we seem to have outlived the evil day. We dare to think, speak and write openly, with- out fear, but under restraint that openness imposes upon mankind. I appeal to the members of the Liberal League and those who think with them to recognize this plain fact and to appreciate the superiority of boldness over timid caution.

If they desire to harness all the innumerable forces that are coming daily into being for the uplift of the nation, if they wish to become privileged participators in the throes of the new birth, let them not ignore the signs of the time, let them not reject the advances of the younger generation, let them not chill their ardent hopes and aspirations, but let them head this growing party of young, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing dare-devil men. Sympathize with them, respond to the heart’s throb, and regulate it, for they are amenable to reason or an appeal to their highsouledness and you has a disciplined party, obedient to the call of the country. But if they feel neglected, if they feel that the older heads will not patiently listen to their wants, will not give them a helping hand, they may despair and despair may lead to desperation resulting in a catastrophic destruction. I can recall no time so magnificently suitable for leading India to the method of Satyagraha not necessarily civil disobedience, but truth and nonviolence in which there is no defeat and in which if there is any error it hurts but those who err. 4 

This meeting records its full sympathy with the movement of the Central Khilafat Committee in order to secure revision of the Turkish Peace Terms consistently with Muslim sentiment and Islamic Law, and approves of non-co-operation adopted by the Central Khilafat Committee to be continued till the Peace Terms are revised. This meeting respectfully urges the Imperial Government, in the interest of the Empire which they are supposed to represent, to secure a just revision of the Terms which have been universally condemned as unjust and manifestly in breach of ministerial declaration. Mr. Gandhi said he read in newspapers Government and others telling him that India was not at one with him in this question of non-co-operation and that the movement of non-co-operation would end in the country’s ruin. Now those who joined in the non-co-operation movement could best refute those assertions not by merely attending such meetings and passing such resolutions but by actually practising non-co-operation. The first thing they could do in this connection was to renounce all titles, medals and honorary posts. He would like to inquire how many of them that attended the meeting had done so.

Perhaps very few of those that were present there were possessors of such titles and posts. But this did not mean that those who possessed no titles or medals themselves had no duty to perform in this connection. For it should be their duty to ask with due respect those, who did hold the titles and honorary posts, to give them up. First of all they should ask Honorary Magistrates to resign their posts; secondly, they should ask their friends to withdraw their children from Government schools and ask teachers to resign their posts. This would have the effect of showing Government that the people were determined to do without their educational institutions. The parents could send their children to schools conducted by non-official agencies and even if they went without the sort of education that they were having at school he did not see how it could harm them so much if they did not go to school for a year or so. Thirdly, he would ask men of the legal profession to give up their practice.

He entirely repudiated the suggestion that legal practitioners would be doing a public service by continuing to practise in courts of law. For he believed they would be doing a greater service to their country if they did the khilafat and other work for the public good instead. Some people had expressed a doubt if they could do altogether without going to courts of law for having their cases decided. He thought they could do without having recourse to the courts if they instituted their own pancha, where they could hope to get much speedier and cheaper justice. Then he would ask them not to accept any civil post in Mesopotamia for they would be acting against the interests of the khilafat if they accepted such posts under a Government which wanted to rule over a country which formed part of the Jazirat-ul-Arab, which was sacred to Islam. Proceeding, Mr. Gandhi said this was the first thing they had to do to achieve their object. The second was a vigorous prosecution of swadeshi. This, as he had said at the Muzaffarabad Hall meeting, was one of the two things essential to the success of their movement. He had said then and would repeat now, that the two conditions which should be rigorously adhered to in their prosecution of non-co-operation were non-violence and swadeshi. Any violence on their part would defeat non-cooperation, and he asked them all to refrain from violence. They should refrain from anger.

Then, they should be prepared to make sacrifice if they wanted their movement to succeed. They could make sacrifice by giving up among other things their predilection for fine clothes. Mr. Hasrat Mohani told him when he advocated swadeshi that the people of northern India could not possibly do without thin clothes made out of fine-spun cotton. Now he (the speaker) could not understand this inability on the part of the people mentioned by Mr. Mohani. Twenty-five years ago the people of India could do very well with the home-spun, coarse cloth, but Manchester cloth had changed their taste and ideas. At the present stage of the industry in India, the cotton mills were not in a position to produce fine cloth and the people must be content with the coarser quality of it. The remedy for the present lay in a revival of the handloom industry. If they had handlooms in every Indian home they could spin a sufficient quantity of cotton for the indigenous weavers to weave into cloth and when these found that their countrymen were prepared to give up foreign clothes and pay good prices for good, thin cloth they would take to producing that quality of cloth. If they practised swadeshi with vigour and enthusiasm they would save crores of rupees to India. The practice of swadeshi undoubtedly involved a sacrifice on their part but they ought to be prepared to make that sacrifice. It would show to the world that they were prepared to undergo all inconveniences and suffer so long as the khilafat question was not satisfactorily settled. In conclusion, Mr. Gandhi said the chief things essential to the success of the non-co-operation movement were, as he had pointed out, non-violence, renouncing of titles and honorary posts, and a vigorous prosecution of swadeshi. If they did this and prayed to God, their cause, being just, was bound to succeed. Dr. Kitchlew, Mr. Shaukat Ali and others supported the resolution, which was carried. 5

 

References:

 

1. Young India, 4-10-1919
2. The Leader, 3-11-1919  
3. Navajivan, 9-11-1919 
4. Young India, 24-3-1920 
5. The Bombay Chronicle, 2-8-1920