Non-Co-Operation means Self-Purification- 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

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Non-Co-Operation means Self-Purification- Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

Satyagraha, as I have endeavoured to explain at several meetings, is essentially a religious movement. It is a process of purification and penance. It seeks to secure reforms or redress of grievances by self-suffering. 1 The Congress resolution has been accepted as a method of self-purification and a form of yajna. If non-co-operation does not mean that, it would certainly be a sin. As there can be no co-operation between virtue and sin, between darkness and light, so there can be none between the people and a government opposed to; their interests; by means of non-co-operation, we are proving that even the most wicked policy cannot survive if the people do not tolerate it, refuse to be a party to it. Foreign cloth can be sold in India because we are attracted by it; the Government can establish control over us by bribing us with titles because we feel tempted by them; we are infatuated with degrees and, therefore, the Government, by controlling our education, tells us that we have not the strength to be free even in regard to education; because we continue to submit to the orders of despotic officers, such officers still rule in the Punjab; the Government earns crores out of liquor simply because we drink it; the Government’s courts function because we quarrel among ourselves.

This means, in effect, that our share in the sins of the Government is not a small one. When public opinion has become pure and the people have decided to get rid of their sins, that very day the Government will lose its crown. It is we who have been supporting it. It is not by their own strength that a hundred thousand Englishmen rule over thirty crores. Large numbers from among us have been, consciously or unconsciously, helping those one hundred thousand in every possible way and crores of us tolerate this situation. The Government means those who are running the administration with our help. When we have withdrawn our help, there will be no Government worth the name. We believe the Government to be a sinful, a satanic one. If we desist from our sins, the Government will drop off like dead leaves, or will repent and be purified. Through what sins, then, are we supporting the Government? We have considered the question in relation to schools, courts, titles and legislatures. Really speaking, these things are not sinful in themselves. They are merely signs of a sinful state of affairs. If the Government is a beneficent one, we may receive our education from it, obtain justice through it and accept honours from it. By renouncing these things, we are obliged to leave off our sinful habits. So the heart of the matter is giving up our sinful ways.

If the people drink liquor, indulge in gambling, commit thefts, are guilty of adultery and envy one another, non-co-operation cannot go on, for the Government maintains its rule by taking advantage of those evil habits. The drink habit is one of no little danger. If we get rid of that habit, the people can save crores of rupees, and many wicked things will cease. I believe that the element of cruelty we find in British policy would not be there if the British did not drink. A man will never lose all sense unless he habitually drinks. However small the quantity of liquor taken, it cannot but have an intoxicating effect, one’s reason is bound to be clouded in consequence, be it ever so little, and in such a state the conscience certainly becomes weak. Therefore, we who have set out to cultivate and teach sacrifice must free the people from the habit of drinking liquor. There can be no resolution to appeal to habitual drinkers, because there are not many such people taking part in public life. But it is certainly necessary to pay attention to that matter. Great efforts were made at many places to induce people to give up the tea habit. In the measure that it remained free from violence, it was a praiseworthy movement.

We do not wish to use violence to force anyone to leave the drink habit; but we should try to make people give it up through moral pressure and by persuasion. Some of us should go to the liquor-vendors in our respective cities and plead with them, request them to take up some other trade, and also work through the communities to which the drink addicts may belong. This is difficult work but nothing is difficult for public opinion to bring about. When public opinion ceases to tolerate drinking, it will stop in a moment. At present we do not bother about our neighbour. To become one people means that the thirty crores must become one family. To be one nation means believing that, when a single Indian dies of starvation, all of us are dying of it and acting accordingly. The best way of doing this is for every person to take under his charge the people in his immediate neighborhood; that is to say, start serving them. If we work along this line, we can abolish every distillery in no time. The reader need not concern himself when the whole of India will give up liquor. If he takes care of his own village in that regard, he will have discharged his duty fully. What is true of liquor is also true of tobacco. We do not deprecate tobacco so much because its evil effects are not obvious. It is an addiction like opium. It makes one forget one’s suffering, but the addiction is so wasteful of money that it must be cast off. Even if people resolved to refrain from this habit till we get swaraj, a great deal of money could be saved thereby and put to other good uses. What should I say about licentiousness?

In comparison with this, I would not think of drinking, smoking, etc., as sins. A drunkard degrades only he, a debauchee drags many others with him. Who can ever keep count of the hypocrisy, the falsehoods, the quarrels and the diseases born of this vice? There are few sins equal to that of casting an evil eye on another’s wife and yet it is a sin that is not rare. There is no easy way, either, to save oneself and others from it. Speaking for myself, I have not been able to find a universally effective way of saving the people from this sin. Who should reason with the prostitutes, and who should entreat their customers? What associations can be established for this purpose? I am holding on to this faith only that those at any rate who are taking part in the national movement will resolutely free themselves from that sin and that, as the awakening among the people grows, others will also free themselves from this vice. It is a vice which has weakened and impoverished the people and made them cowardly.

Why is it that the people of the West, who are no less guilty of this vice, are not cowardly, it will be asked. I have pointed out time and again that there is no manliness in possessing the strength to kill. It is my firm belief that this strength which has been cultivated by the people of the West stems from their addiction to liquor and their indulgence in passion. There are other reasons also but these are among the chief ones. To call the people of the West manly is an exaggeration. Yes, it is true that those people are less afraid of death than we are; but so are the communities which live by robbery. We may regard the people of the West as brave to the extent to which we regard these communities as brave. The very comparison with the West should be regarded as out of place. Everyone should realize that we shall not succeed in establishing dharmarajya in India by imitating the West. The self-control practised in the West is based on expediency on policy. In the East, self-control is an end in itself. It is not the teaching of religion that one should tell the truth because it is profitable to do so. All religions have proclaimed their belief that truth is God Himself. One gets exercise through namaz, but no Muslim offers namaz for exercise; they all do so only as a religious duty. Therefore, if we wish to liberate India by non-co-operation, we shall have to realize the importance of self-purification and shall have to get rid of our infatuation for the West. We shall win swaraj only by giving up Western ways. I consider it impossible to win it by our adopting these ways. 2

As non-co-operation can never lead to rioting or fighting, the question that will have a hand in them is irrelevant. Should rioting or fighting break out, it will no longer be a movement of non-cooperation; it will have ceased to be so. If riots spread in the country, it will mean that the country has abandoned non-co-operation. Rioting and non-co-operation are incompatible things. Should there be trouble; the mischievous elements will believe for a while that they have stood to gain. Things have always happened so. The correspondent who put the two foregoing questions did not remember that this was a holy fight, a movement of self-purification, for learning to fear God and shed fear of men. 3 We must understand thoroughly what self-purification means. Give up drinking alcohol, smoking ganja and eating opium. Give up visiting prostitutes. I am well acquainted with the habits of workers. You cannot live comfortably on your wage of eight or nine rupees a month. You drink in order to forget your misery. But the simplest remedy for misery is that, while you should put up with suffering, you should not put up with any unjust punishment that a tyrant may inflict on you. India has not yet understood this principle fully. The day I am persuaded that India has learnt this, the country can become free. Today India lacks the power for peaceful, civil disobedience of laws. I hope we shall have this power by October. But this power will not come through drinking and debauchery. Therefore give up drinking, give up debauchery. This has a very deep meaning. If you would rather have nothing to do with dirty things, you should become pure yourselves. We do not realize how our country has fallen through foreign trade even more than it has by drinking and opium. We have not looked at the evil and sin there is in it. My brother Andrews asks me why I burn English cloth, while there is a famine in Khulna. We do not realize what a crime it is to wear foreign cloth. For self-purification, and for showing the world what self-purification is, it is necessary to give up foreign cloth. 4

Non-co-operation means self-purification. It is a principle of medical science that disease-carrying germs cannot infect a person whose blood is quite pure. Healthy blood itself destroys such germs. Likewise, if we ourselves become pure and just, how can anyone oppress us? It is a wrong policy to fight the oppressor. The right course is to suffer, to bear his ill-treatment without submitting to his injustice. Once we have stood such an ordeal, nobody can use violence against us. There is, in fact, no limit to self-purification. But the limits we have prescribed for ourselves are so narrow that even a child can reach them. 5 Self-purification is the foundation on which our swaraj is to rest. Securing swaraj is like ascending to heaven. Yudhishthira refused to enter the gate of heaven without his dog. Do we hope to get into the temple of swaraj ourselves, leaving our Bhangi brethren behind and running at top speed towards it? If we cherish any such hope, we are in for a bitter experience. Reaching the gates of the temple, we shall find that they are closed. 6

Even our sympathetic strikes therefore have to be strikes of self purification, i.e., non-co-operation. And so, when we declare a strike to redress a wrong, we really cease to take part in the wrong, and thus leave the wrongdoer to his own resources, in other words enable him to see the folly of continuing the wrong. Such a strike can only succeed when behind it is the fixed determination not to revert to service. 7 Wherever you see the need for efforts to spread knowledge and a desire to undertake such efforts, you should provide the necessary means and should, yourselves, work actively. For this work, it is first necessary to cultivate self-purification, that is, spiritual growth, sisterly regard for others and intellectual humility. There is, thus, an excellent and fruitful field of work for the Bhagini Samaj, if the Samaj would take it up. The field is so large that, if it does solid work, seemingly bigger tasks will count as nothing by comparison and great service will have been rendered to the cause of Home Rule without the phrase being so much as even mentioned. In the past, when there were no printing presses and few facilities for public speeches, when we could cover 24 miles in as many hours instead of a thousand as now, there was only one effective means of propagating ideas, namely, one’s work. Today, we rush from place to place with the speed of air, deliver speeches and write articles, and yet we find it almost impossible to persuade people to act as we want them to. From every direction we hear words of despair. To me it is clear that, as in the past, so in the present too we shall not succeed in impressing the people with speeches and writings as effectively as we can with work. It is my humble prayer to the Bhagini Samaj that it should attach the first importance to quiet work. 8

 

References:

 

1. Letter to The Pres, March 23, 1919
2. Navajivan, 27-1-1921
3. Navajivan, 17-7-1921
4. Hindi Navajivan, 9-9-1921
5. Navajivan, 15-9-192
6. Navajivan, 18-9-1921  
7. Young India, 22-9-1921
8. Navajivan, 6-10-1921