Mahatma Gandhi’s Interview with U.P. Congress Leaders

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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Mahatma Gandhi’s Interview with U.P. Congress Leaders

 

 Mahatma Gandhi said: It is not necessary just yet to start civil disobedience. It is enough to get ourselves enrolled as volunteers regardless of our being arrested or not and to continue the work entrusted to us. My methods of securing swaraj are the very reverse of those advocated by Hasrat Mohani. If I thought we were fit for it I would at once declare complete independence because having made such a declaration it would be a sin to go on using the railway, post and telegraph and so on. If a majority of people join me, complete independence can be secured within just three months. Now if my countrymen desert me, or even my wife deserts me, I am ready to work alone. It is the wish of Sir Harcourt Butler; the Governor of the United Provinces, that there may be a rebellion such as that of 1857 and that then the people may plead for pity. It would be better for the present to halt the work of setting up the national Kotwali. But since the work has begun it is only right that it should be continued. I am sorry that the work of propagating swadeshi in U. P. has not been done as much as was necessary. I am dissatisfied about it. In the offices of Congress Committees the work of enrolling volunteers should be continued. Pandit Motilal Nehru wants that the Independent should be brought out in Hindi and Urdu. Volunteers should extend full help in its publication. We should not entertain violent thoughts even towards thieves and dacoits. Ahimsa should be our sole mode of conduct. So long as people are not ready for jail, so long as we have not got ready to face death and have not mastered anger, the problems of the Punjab atrocities and Khilafat cannot be solved. Swaraj means our full control over the army. Lists of volunteers should be published in newspapers and sent on to the national Kotwali Volunteers should move about and sell khadi. Their dress should be that of a low paid chaprasi. Picketing of shops selling foreign cloth is unnecessary. But picketing of liquor shops should continue. National schools should be turned into hand-spinning and hand-weaving factories. Boys below eighteen years of age should work in them and women should supervise them. Students over eighteen years of age and teachers who refuse to be volunteers should be expelled from schools The Hindi Swarajya published from Allahabad should be handwritten. Those whose properties are attached should renounce them with pleasure, for it is a sin even to own property in such a tyrannical regime. The properties will be given back to the owners as soon as swaraj is attained.

Reference:

Aaj, 1-1-1922