Summer School 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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Summer School and Mahatma Gandhi

 

While I was in Malaya I read a brief report in the papers of the Madras Government’s ban on the Summer School at Kottapatam and the subsequent lathi charge on the students. Such a step would have been surprising and reprehensible even during the course of the civil disobedience movement. At the present moment it came as a shock to me. Since my return I have looked further into the matter and the sense of astonishment and shock has not lessened. This incident has illuminated, as by a flash of lightning, the real nature of the new Constitution and the way the Madras Ministry is functioning, for it is this Ministry that is obviously responsible for the steps taken. We see that this Ministry is as much a police ministry suppressing elementary rights of free speech and association as the previous Government was. We see what the new Act means to the people. The same intolerable state of affairs continues and all the soft words thrown out at us cannot stop the aggressive suppression of civil liberty or the use of the lathi on the bodies of our youth.

The lathi remains still under the new Ministers as it was before the true symbol of Government. Some other important considerations arise. The police reporters tried to force entry into the Summer School. Very rightly this was objected to. We have been giving facilities to police reporters at our public meetings but this does not mean that we admit their right to attend our committee meetings and summer schools and the like. This cannot be agreed to. Summer schools for the study of political and economic problems have been held in many places in India. This is a healthy development which I trust will continue, for only by study and discussions can we understand our problems and find the way to their solution. Another question that arises is the right of an individual or group to refuse to obey an order which it considers objectionable. It is patent that civil disobedience having been suspended disobedience of orders is not desirable.

Where such objectionable orders are made reference should immediately be made to superior committees for advice. But sometimes cases arise when immediate decisions have to be made and the burden of such decision must lie on the individual or group concerned and cannot commit the organization. I can conceive of instances of orders which are so derogatory to the dignity of the individual or of the Congress that the individual prefers to disobey them on his own responsibility. This has nothing to do with civil disobedience. It is the inherent right of an individual. This right however must be exercised with every care and so as not to injure the large purposes we have in view, and the individual must take the risk of being judged by the organization.

 

Reference:

The Indian Annual Register, 1937, Vol. I, p. 229