The MacDonald Award and Mahatma Gandhi

[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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The MacDonald Award and Mahatma Gandhi

 

It was a communal award imposed by the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald on 16 August, 1932 to grant separate electorate to Minorities communities in India on the basis of divide and rule. It was supported by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar and some other minorities’ leaders. But Mahatma Gandhi opposed it. He wrote many letters to Ramsay MacDonald about his idea. The MacDonald Award and ‘Pakistan’ are nothing but projections of our mental attitude of treating the Harijans and Muslims as separate from us. Remember that the separation is not of their asking. It is what we have chosen to give them, what we forced them to ask for. Thus the unity between the caste Hindus and outcaste Hindus, and that between Hindus and Muslims and khadi represent a revolution in our own lives. And in order to bring about this revolution you should devote all your energies and if necessary you should be prepared to lay down your lives in the manner of Ful singh Bhagat and Amtul Salaam.

My own fasts have always, as I hold, been strictly according to the law of Satyagraha. Fellow satyagrahis too in South Africa fasted partially or wholly. My fasts have been varied. There was the Hindu-Muslim unity fast of 21 days in 1924 started under the late Maulana Mahomed Ali’s roof in Delhi. The indeterminate fast against the MacDonald Award was taken in the Yeravda Prison in 1932. The 21 days’ purificatory fast was begun in the Yeravda Prison and was finished at Lady Thakersey’s, as the Government would not take the burden of my being in the Prison in that condition then followed another fast in the Yeravda Prison in 1933 against the Government refusal to let me carry on anti-untouchability work through Harijan (issued from prison) on the same basis as facilities had been allowed me four months before. They would not yield, but they discharged me when their medical advisers thought I could not live many days if the fast was not given up then followed the ill-fated Rajkot fast in 1939. A false step taken by me thoughtlessly during that fast thwarted the brilliant result that would otherwise certainly have been achieved. In spite of all these fasts, fasting has not been accepted as a recognized part of Satyagraha. It has only been tolerated by the politicians. I have however been driven to the conclusion that fasting unto death is an integral part of Satyagraha programme, and it is the greatest and most effective weapon in its armory under given circumstances. Not everyone is qualified for undertaking it without a proper course of training.

 

References:

1. 1.      DISCUSSION WITH KISHORELAL MASHRUWALA, November 13, 1940 
2. 2.      Harijan, 26-7-1942