The Gandhi-King Community

For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

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

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com                                    

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

 

National service and Mahatma Gandhi 

Meanwhile I shall also be continuing the institution which was being conducted in South Africa and which has for its object the training of young men for life-long national service. As is well known, I have already charge of several young men and boys who have followed me from South Africa and have been either passive resisters or are sons of passive resisters. 1 Pupils are to receive education which will incline them to do nothing but national service when their studies are over. If, on growing up, they leave the Ashram, the education will have failed to that extent. Should any occasion of the kind arise, the student will be free to follow his inclination. It is not the aim, however, that the students should return to their parents and get lost in the sea of practical affairs.  Those who want to perform national service, or those who want to have a glimpse of the real religious life, must lead a celibate life, no matter if married or unmarried. Marriage but brings a woman closer together with the man, and they become friends in a special sense, never to be parted either in this life or in the lives that are to come. But I do not think that, in our conception of marriage, our lusts should necessarily enter. Be that as it may, this is what is placed before those who come to the Ashram. I do not deal with that at any length. 2 

Most of you like showing that you are educated and that you have some patriotism in you. If you use your patriotism in doing good to the illiterate and poor passengers with whom you come into contact, you will be doing national service without having to search for an occasion. 3 My motive is national service and that, too, so long as it is consistent with humanitarian dictates. I understand, because my South African work was considered to be humanitarian that I was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal. So long as my humanitarian motive is questioned, so long must I remain undeserving of holding the medal. I am therefore asking my people to return the medal to you, and I shall feel honoured to receive it back if it is returned to me when my motive is no longer questioned. 4

Pupils are taught to look up to these as a means of livelihood and the knowledge of letters as a training for the head and the heart and as a means of national service. The curriculum has been mapped so as to cover all the essentials of the graduate course in the existing institutions within a period of 13 years. The experiment is in the hands of Professor Shah, late of the Gujarat College. Mr. Shah was associated with Professor Gajjar for 10 years. He is assisted by Mr. Narahari, B.A., LL.B., Mr. Fulchand Shah, B.A., Mr. Dattatreya Kalelkar, B.A., Mr. Chhaganlal Gandhi and Mr. Kishorelal Mashruwala, B.A., LL.B. All but the last named have pledged themselves exclusively to he work for life on a pittance enough to support them and their families. Mr. Kishorelal has given his services free for one year, having means of his own, and will if he finds the work congenial at the end of the year cast in his lot with the rest. The experiment is confined to about 12 lads including two girls belonging to the Ashram or being children of the teachers. It is being supervised by Professor Anandshankar Dhruva, Vice-Principal of the Gujarat College. I build the highest hopes upon it. My faith in it is unquenchable. It may fail but if it does, the fault must not be in the system but with us the workers. If it succeeds, voluntary institutions after its model can be multiplied and the Government called upon to adopt it. 5

Anyone who looks at Gokhale’s life, the whole of it, will see that he had made it synonymous with national service. He left this world of sorrow before he was fifty, and the only reason for this is that all the twenty-four hours of the day he laboured indefatigably, using up his mental and physical energies in the service of the nation. Never did he allow the petty concern for himself and his family to enter his mind. The only thing that concerned him was what he could do for the country. 6 The greatest service we can render society is to free ourselves and it from the superstitious regard we have learnt to pay to the learning of the English language. It is the medium of instruction in our schools and colleges. It is becoming the lingua franca of the country. Our best thoughts are expressed in it. Lord Chelmsford hopes that it will soon take the place of the mother tongue in high families. This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has unfitted us for true national service. Were it not for force of habit, we could not fail to see that, by reason of English being the medium of instruction, our intellect has been segregated, we have been isolated from the masses, the best mind of the nation has become gagged and the masses have not received the benefit of the new ideas we have received. We have been engaged these past sixty years in memorizing strange words and their pronunciation instead of assimilating facts. In the place of building upon the foundation, training received from our parents, we have almost unlearnt it. There is no parallel to this in history. It is a national tragedy. The first and the greatest social service we can render is to revert to our vernaculars, to restore Hindi to its natural place as the national language and begin carrying on all our provincial proceedings in our respective vernaculars and national proceedings in Hindi. 7

The Reforms are undoubtedly incomplete; they do not give us enough; we were entitled to more, we could have managed more. But the Reforms are not such as we may reject. On the contrary they are such as to enable us to expand. Our duty, therefore, is not to subject them to carping criticism, but to settle down quietly to work so as to make them a thorough success and thus anticipate the time for a full measure of responsibility. Our work, therefore, may now well consist in agitation turned inward. Let us concentrate on riding ourselves of social abuses, on producing a strong electorate and on sending to the council’s men who would seek election not for self-advertisement but for national service. 8 I consider it impossible for a man without character to do higher national service so that if I were a voter, from among the list I would first select men of character and then I would understand their views. 9

And is it such an impracticable proposition to expect parents to withdraw their children from schools and colleges and establish their own institutions or to ask lawyers to suspend their practice and devote their whole time and attention to national service against payment, where necessary, of their maintenance, or to ask candidates for councils not to enter councils and lend their passive or active assistance to the legislative machinery through which all control is exercised? The movement of non-co-operation is nothing but an attempt to isolate the brute force of the British from all the trappings under which it is hidden and to show that brute force by itself cannot for one single moment hold India. 10 The immediate cause of the famine may have been excessive or insufficient rains; but the fact remains that the people of Orissa had no money and hence they could not buy food. They are poor because they have no work. I have, therefore, been insisting that, if we expect national service even from children, we should train their hands and feet as much as we should teach them to read and write and chant the name of God. This alone will provide education of the heart, the mind and the body. The spinning-wheel today provides the most useful training for the hand. Besides, it will enable us to win freedom, for it will teach us to save 60 crores of rupees. 11

You do not need to increase the stock of English words in order to gain swaraj and so I have suggested to the young men of Gujarat that they should suspend their literary training in English for these nine or twelve months and devote their time and their leisure to learning spinning and to learning Hindustani and then place themselves at the disposal of India and join the National Service that is going to be formed. You are not going to respond to the great constitution that the Congress has given unless we have got an army of workers penetrating the seven and a half lakhs of villages with which India is studded, if we are going to set up a rival organization in every village of India, if we are going to have a representative of the Congress in every village of India, we cannot do so until and unless the young men of India respond to the Motherland. The privilege to pay is yours. The call today has come to the young men of Bengal and the rest of India. I hope I have every confidence that all the young men and all the young girls of India will respond to this sacred call. I promise before the year is out you will not have regretted the day that you set your heart upon these two things, and you will find at the end of the chapter that what I am saying to you tonight has come true, that you have vindicated the honour of India, you have vindicated the honour of Islam, you have vindicated the honour of the whole nation and established swaraj. May God grant you, the young men and the young girls of Bengal, the necessary courage, the necessary hope, the necessary confidence to go through the sacred period of purification and sacrifice? May God help you? 12

The natural answer is for the use stated in the Congress resolution, i.e., for the attainment of swaraj through non-violent non-co-operation. The only activity involving financial obligations is that of spinning, organizing national service, in some cases supporting lawyers, who might have suspended practice and cannot be included in the national service, and for supporting national educational institutions. The latter three, however, really bear again on spinning. For all the workers and all the schools and colleges must be mainly occupied in promoting hand-spinning and hand-weaving if we are to achieve a complete boycott of foreign goods before the end of the year. These are the only uses that I can conceive in connection with the All-India Tilak Memorial Swaraj Fund. Seventy-five per cent of the funds are to be controlled by the provinces collecting them. And subject to the instructions framed by the All-India Congress Committee, the provinces have unfettered discretion as to their use for the attainment of swaraj. 13 

I commend this wire to the attention of every student. These young men have shown themselves self-respecting by wearing khadi caps and bravely suffering for the sake of self-respect and patriotic by devoting their time to national service. This country is suffering from the chronic disease of slavery. Those who spend themselves in finding and applying the true remedy for that disease become true surgeons and physicians, and when that universal disease is cured, most of the other diseases will disappear without further application, and the country will be better prepared to train medical men and women in order to treat the rest. 14 Those who get enrolled as volunteers will have to provide their own maintenance. They should not expect the Congress committee concerned to provide it. A person who desires to serve the country but cannot find a single friend to finance his needs at such a juncture cannot, in my view, be fit for national service. A volunteer’s expenses cannot be heavy and surely they cannot be a burden on anyone. 15

But there never was the slightest intention that they should be branded out of public service. On the contrary, I endeavoured to harness every lawyer even a practising lawyer with national service, but, if he cannot fulfil the conditions, he cannot very well work officially in Non-co-operation Committees and so on. But, the question undoubtedly arises that if lawyers may not do so and that was the question which was hotly discussed at Nagpur what about others who do not fulfil the terms, as for instance the merchants. This was pressed home by Mr. Kelkar and he once challenged me in a public meeting, and even suggested that I was partial to the merchants, which of course was wrong. But, as I said in my address, we expected more from the lawyers, because they were leaders. We expected less from the merchants, because they never aspired for leadership. We have taken their money and no more. Therefore, so much could not possibly be expected from the merchants. There is no question of dispute between lawyers and merchants. But that is one thing, and to say that lawyers should be hunted out of our circles is totally another even if we do not remove from our midst merchants who do not fulfil the terms. If we have in our midst people who do not fulfil the terms, let us at least be charitable to the lawyers, and in a becoming manner, in a dignified manner, receive the benefit of their knowledge and of their service.

So I would ask you to see whether you can get the assistance of every lawyer in the manner, in the limited manner, I have suggested. I do not want you to take lawyers as chairmen of your committees. I have no doubt that it will be dangerous because today the most important thing is fearlessness, bordering upon recklessness, and unless we are prepared to take the boldest risk consistent with the pledge of non-violence, we cannot possibly finish our programme within the limited time at our disposal. Therefore, I ask you to take service from the lawyers in every other department but in leadership, and for leadership, take an untouchable if he has got iron courage, a brave heart, and if he is so reckless as to sacrifice all the things of the earth that are nearest and dearest to him, including his nearest relatives, his children, if he is prepared to leave all these and follow this path, then I would say that an untouchable is any day an infinitely superior chairman to a lawyer who is a finished gentleman, a brilliant member of his profession with a record of unique success, but he is absolutely no good for us. So, I would certainly ask you not to install anybody but honest and bravest men in your chairs. But, apart from that I would ask you to seek their co-operation. Go out of your way and get the co-operation of lawyers. But, that is again a smaller thing than the one which I have mentioned to you. Be charitable to all. Remember that we want to take them with us in our programme of swaraj. We do not estrange our countrymen from that. And, if we cannot possibly enlist their sympathy and their co-operation, there is something wrong in us. We have certainly not fulfilled to the letter and spirit the pledge of non-violence. So I would ask you really to think of these things, and remember them. I do not know if I have anything more to say.  16

I do not consider myself worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the race of prophets. I am a humble seeker after truth. I am impatient to realize myself, to attain moksha in this very existence. My national service is part of my training for freeing my soul from the bondage of flesh. Thus considered, my service may be regarded as purely selfish. I have no desire for the perishable kingdom of earth. I am striving for the Kingdom of Heaven which is moksha. To attain my end it is not necessary for me to seek the shelter of a cave. I carry one about me, if I would but know it. A cave-dweller can build castles in the air, whereas a dweller in a palace like Janak has no castles to build. The cave-dweller in who hovers round the world on the wings of thought has no peace A Janak, though living in the midst of ‘pomp and circumstance’, may have peace that passed understanding. For me the road to salvation lies through incessant toil in the service of my country and there through of humanity. I want to identify myself with everything that lives. In the language of the Gita I want to live at peace with both friend and foe. Though, therefore, A Mussalman or a Christian or a Hindu may despise me and hate me, I want to love him and serve him even as I would love my wife or son though they hate me. So my patriotism is for me a stage in my journey to the land of eternal freedom and peace. Thus it will be seen that for me there are no politics devoid of religion. They subserve religion. Politics bereft of religion are a death-trap because they kill the soul. 17

Whereas it has been discovered that many otherwise deserving men are unobtainable for national service because of the reluctance to accept remuneration for service, the Congress places on record its opinion that there is not only nothing derogatory to one’s dignity in accepting remuneration for national service, but the Congress hopes that patriotic young men and women will regard it as an honour to accept maintenance for service faithfully rendered and that those needing or those willing to service will prefer national to any other service. 18 Thus writes a correspondent it is evident that he is not a constant reader of Young India, or else he would have noticed that I have said repeatedly that I would deem it an honour to belong to paid national service. My travelling and other such expenses stand on a different footing. I cannot charge them against the Congress without a vote. I do not travel in virtue of any resolution of the Congress or at its instance. I travel at the call of different provinces. It would be quite wrong for me to charge these expenses against the Congress or to ask the Congress to vote them. The correspondent does not know that even members of the A.I.C.C., when they attend in answer to summon from the Congress, make no charge against it. The Congress funds would be soon exhausted if such a charge was made. But, if I became a whole-time Congress worker in the technical sense of the term, and if we had a paid national service, I should be the first to put myself on the pay list for the sake of encouraging others. Such a service we have not yet established and I have found many practical difficulties in evolving a scheme, whether for the whole of India or even for Gujarat. More than once I have been obliged to drop it no sooner than I had conceived it. The correspondent, therefore, need have no qualms of conscience in drawing pay from the Khilafat Office for work honestly done. If it be any consolation to him, let him know that the Ali Brothers did charge the Khilafat Committee travelling expenses when they travelled at its instance. Let him have the further consolation of knowing that the Khilafat Committee bore my travelling expenses twice or thrice, when I travelled with the Ali Brothers on what was regarded as mainly Khilafat work. I could even then have fallen back upon friends, but I deemed it an honour to call myself of the Khilafat Party. If Ali Brothers do not and did not charge their personal expenses against the Khilafat Committee, it was because their obligations were larger than they could legitimately ask the Khilafat Committee to discharge. If they had, it would have been a bad precedent. 19

National Service is the only dharma today, for unless we follow that we can follow no other. The power of the State has penetrated every aspect of national life. In countries where the power of the State is the power of the people, the subjects are happy on the whole, and where the State is hostile to the people, the latter are miserable and utterly weak. In such countries the people lead a sinful life and call it good, for those who live in fear are incapable of goodness. To free we from this paralyzing fear, i.e., to learn the first lesson in self-realization, is what we call the dharma of national service. What have our patriotic leaders been teaching us? That we should not fear even a king, that we are men and men need fear God alone. Neither King George V nor his representatives can inspire fear in them. The Lokamanya had abandoned all fear of the State’s machinery of law and order and, therefore, he was the adored of the people, even of learned men, for he inspired them with courage. Deshbandhu had also completely shed fear of the Government. To his mind, the Viceroy and the gate-keeper were equal. He had seen with his inner eye that, everything considered, there was no difference between the two. If it is unmanly to fear the Viceroy, so is it to try to overcome the gatekeeper. There is a profound spiritual vision behind this attitude, and that is the meaning of the dharma of national service. For this reason, consciously or unconsciously and even against their will, people look with reverence upon those who follow this dharma. The Lokamanya was a Brahmin. His knowledge of the scriptures was such as humbled the pride of pundits. But he was not adored for that knowledge of his. Deshbandhu was not a Brahmin. He was a Vaisya. But people never thought about what caste he belonged to. Deshbandhu did not know Sanskrit and had not studied the scriptures. He merely followed the dharma of national service.

He had made himself completely fearless. That is why even learned men bowed to him and, on that unforgettable day, they mingled their tears with the people. The dharma of national service means all-embracing love. It is not universal love, but it is an important facet of it. It is not the Dhavalgiri of love, but it’s Darjeeling. From Darjeeling, the visitor has a golden vision of Dhavalgiri and thinks to himself: ‘If the Darjeeling of love is as beautiful as this, how much more beautiful must be its Dhavalgiri, which shines in the distance before me.’ Love of one’s country is not opposed to love of mankind, but is a concrete instance of it. It ultimately lifts one to the highest peak of universal love. That is why people shower blessings on those who are filled with patriotic love. People know love of family, and are not, therefore, moved to admiration by it. To some extent they also understand love of the village. But love of the country only a Deshbandhu or a Lokamanya understands. People adore such men because they themselves want to be like them. 20             

All the other reasons are more or less imaginary. Indeed, when the Congress acquires real prestige, which it has not at present—its popularity is merely comparative and not absolute—even a peon will consider it to be an honour to belong to this national service and to take less than the market wage. Meanwhile, I would urge all honest paid workers in the Congress organization, whether at the centre or in the educational, khaddar or the Swarajists branches, to make the service and the institution popular and attractive by strictest integrity, devotion, and ceaseless application. Those who are conscious that they are giving all the time and attention that they bargained for to the paid national service need feel no compunction about belonging to it. The more progress we make in the work of construction, the more paid workers we shall need. We are too poor as a nation to afford a large number of whole-time honorary workers. We will have to fall back more and more upon paid workers. The sooner, therefore, the idea of humiliation about accepting payment, when it is a necessity, is given up the better it will be for the nation. 21 

Children, you should realize that you came to this school to learn national service. Most of what you study here should therefore be dedicated to the country. This is the significance of the charkha. Those of you, who spin, do so for the country and it’s poor. Thus you learn the lesson of service from your childhood. Never forsake the charkha. 22 There are some ailments for which time it provides remedies. In the meantime, we should be at peace with ourselves. If your decision is unalterable and if you are determined not to marry until you have chosen your field of work and made arrangements for earning your living, you should politely and firmly inform your elders of your decision. They will be pleased. If your mind is not made up to that extent and deep within you there is a desire to get married, it is good to listen to your elders. There is no doubt that it is difficult for a widower of a wealthy family to avoid remarriage. He alone can avoid it to which remarriage is like a blow on the head. Hence my advice is that you should sit in a solitary place and think with a calm mind, and thereafter act in accordance with the response you get from your heart. I can merely point out the way. When taking a decision, you should fearlessly follow the dictates of your conscience regardless of the advice given by me or by others. 23 

I know that there is a school of philosophy which teaches complete inaction and futility of all effort. I have not been able to appreciate that teaching unless, in order to secure verbal agreement, I was to put my own interpretation on it. In my humble opinion, effort is necessary for one’s own growth. It has to be irrespective of results. Ramanama or some equivalent is necessary not for the sake of repetition but for the sake of purification, as an aid to effort, for direct guidance from above. It is, therefore, never a substitute for effort. It is meant for intensifying and guiding it in proper channel, if all effort is vain, why family cares or an occasional help to the poor? In this very effort is contained the germ of national service. And national service, to me, means service of humanity, even as disinterested service of the family means the same thing. Disinterested service of the family necessarily leads one to national service. Ramanama gives one detachment and ballast and never throws one off one’s balance at critical moments. Self-realization I hold to be impossible without service of and identification with the poorest. 24 It is not enough that stray lawyers and doctors spin and weave, or stray barbers and tailors do national service, but thousands of professional men, artisans and agriculturists should, whilst following their callings, render national service by qualifying themselves, the literary professions by realizing the dignity of labour and the labouring professions by realizing the dignity of literature, and all doing everything to uplift the nation and refraining from doing anything that would degrade it. 25

It was a happy idea of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru during my recent tour to ask for funds for forming a national service for the province. Rs. 12,036-15-9 were collected for the purpose. Though the sum is not adequate for the purpose intended, it is a goodly sum as a nucleus. The idea of having a national service is not new. Ever since 1920 it has been before the country. But Pandit Jawaharlal has given it a shape and a habitation. National work must suffer so long as we have to depend upon volunteers who give only a part of their time and that too by fits and starts. Permanent work requires permanent whole time workers. This can best be done by each province establishing its service in accordance with its needs and out of funds collected locally. Feeling hampered at every step for want of trained and tried permanent workers; Pandit Jawaharlal seized the opportunity that the tour gave him of getting funds. I hope now that no time will be lost in framing rules and inviting applications. Untouchability, Hindu-Muslim unity, boycott of foreign cloth, total prohibition, national education, etc., can absorb a large number of permanent workers. Indeed our ideal should be to have at least one worker to every one of the seven hundred thousand villages. But apart from the A.I.S.A. we have hardly a worker even for every district. All the provinces will naturally watch the coming U.P. national service organization. Experience teaches that any such service to be truly national and permanent, though a creation of the Congress must stand outside of its varying politics and must enjoy complete responsible self-government. We must be able to give an absolute assurance to our workers that they will not be subject to dismissal with the annual change in the elected office-bearers of the Congress. This assurance is possible only under an autonomous board with well devised constitution. 26

There has been greater concentration on impressing women in the national service and, therefore, regarding them as valued co-workers on a par with men. The widening and working of the constructive programme is the only way in which active non-violence can express itself. Civil disobedience comes, if it must, at the end of the constructive programme, never in the beginning. We saw through experience that we had to retrace our steps in 1919 as civil resistance had been resorted to without preparation through constructive service. Disobedience of laws can never be civil unless the resisters have learnt the art of voluntary obedience. This is impossible without tangible co-operative work requiring exact discipline and voluntary and wholehearted obedience to rules and regulations. 27

A question is asked whether the enthusiasm for learning both the styles and the scripts should be among both the Hindus and Muslims or only in one of them. A misunderstanding lurks behind this question. Those who make progress in the knowledge of languages will stand to gain: those who do not will be the losers. Moreover, he who cherishes unity will take special pains to know both the styles and the scripts. It should also be remembered that, in provinces like the Punjab, the Hindus, Muslims and all others know only Urdu. To know at least this much is the duty of every patriot. In a vast country like India, the more languages we strive to learn the better equipped shall we become for national service. 28

 

References:

 

  1. The Bengalee, 24-4-1915
  2. Letter to Ranchhodlal Patwari, June 10, 1915
  3. Mahatma Gandhini Vicharsrishti
  4. Letter to Private Secretary to Viceroy, April 16, 1917
  5. Circular letter for funds for Ashram, On or after July 3, 1917
  6. Dharmatma Gokhale
  7. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 2-1-1918
  8. Young India, 31-12-1919
  9. Navajivan, 16-5-1920
  10. Young India, 22-9-1920
  11. Navajivan, 23-1-1921
  12. Young India, 2-2-1921
  13. Young India, 13-4-1921
  14. Young India, 17-11-1921
  15. Navajivan, 18-12-1921
  16. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 14-1-1922
  17. Young India, 3-4-1924 
  18. Report of the Thirty-ninth Indian National Congress, 1924, pp. 115-6 & 118
  19. Young India, 28-5-1925 
  20. Navajivan, 28-6-1925 
  21. Young India, 15-10-1925 
  22. Navajivan, 13-12-1925
  23. Navajivan, 21-3-1926 
  24. Young India, 21-10-1926
  25. Young India, 10-10-1929 
  26. Young India, 12-12-1929 
  27. The Bombay Chronicle, 22-3-1941
  28. The Hindu, 15-1-1945

  

 

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