Question Box and Mahatma Gandhi-XXVI

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Question Box and Mahatma Gandhi-XXVI

 

Q. In your proposed solution of the Hindu-Muslim puzzle, do you expect all the Hindus to abstain from the legislatures or only a part? If only a part, will not the most reactionary Hindus get in and make things worse than now? And if you expect Congressmen to affect the Muslim mind from outside, why can’t you do the same and perhaps more effectively by being inside?

A. I do not expect all the Hindus to abstain. I know that all Hindu seats will be filled by non-Congress Hindus. Congress Hindus, if they go in, will be ground down between the two stones of the communal chakki without doing any good to anybody. I do not approach the question as a Hindu. I approach it as a Congressman seeking to represent equally all communities. But for the artificial system introduced in the composition of the Indian legislatures, all the members would be representing not communities but their parties grouped according to their non-communal shibboleths. As one representing all communities I would expect not only Hindus but Congress- minded Muslims and others too to avoid the legislatures and elective bodies. These abstainers will hold the scales evenly between all communities and seek to affect the legislatures from outside. Whether they are many or only a few, they will play the role of wise men. If all listened to me, the communal question would disappear from our midst. By entering the legislatures the Congress Hindus become interlopers, and act weakly for fear of offending one party or the other. This I know, that at the present moment the legislatures are, and must become, part of the war machinery. They have no choice. They will not be allowed to function, if they obstruct the war effort. How could the rulers whose sole occupation is to prosecute the war do otherwise?

Q. Why not advise Congressmen to withdraw from the provincial legislatures too where the Hindus are in a majority?

A. Because I do not want the non-Muslim minority parties to act as if they were the majority and carry on the government in these provinces. It would be a false position to which the Congress would be a willing party, if the Congress members withdrew. In these provinces, therefore, abstention cannot solve the communal tangle, and will bring about an unintended and undesirable state of things.

Q. Surely you are torturing the language when you use the world “unitary” in the place of ‘unilateral’. For that is obviously what you mean.

A. I must plead not guilty. ‘Unilateral’ has a definite legal meaning which does not fit in with what I am struggling to convey. It is not one-sidedness. It is no-sidedness. It has impartiality implied in it. But it is not the method of impartiality. It is something more. I represent a party, say, the Congress. For the solution of the problem I apply a method whereby I seek to affect those who are estranged from me. I am not merely impartial, because I may or may not please them. Impartiality has to be felt by the aggrieved party. I go the utmost length to placate the offended party, and trust my out-and-out pure conduct to affect them. I may not succeed at once. But if there is a real sense of justice in the method, it must succeed. For want of a better word I have called the method “unitary”. The dictionary meaning satisfies my test which I have imperfectly described here.

Reference:

Harijan, 15-2-1942