TRIUMPH OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

 

TRIUMPH OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

 

 

Pundit Malaviyaji’s triumph is a national victory. Disrupted and demoralized though we are at the present moment, Panditji has shown that there is still courage left in us to defy the might of the mightiest empire. To have issued notice light-heartedly against one of the oldest and most respected and best-known of India’s public servants was an insolent exhibition of power. Let us assume for the moment that the Government had sufficient grounds for fearing Pundit Malaviyaji’s presence in Calcutta at a time when they were trying to bring about peace. It was still wrong to have dealt summarily with a man of Panditji’s position in the Indian world. It would not have derogated from the Acting Governor’s dignity if he had written a private note to Panditji or if he had invited him for a conference and placed before him the evidence in his possession and told him to absent himself in the interests of peace which Panditji claimed to desire as much as the Governor himself. In every one of his public speeches Panditji has put emphasis upon the desirability of peace. But the Government is too disdainful of public opinion even to think of any such courteous action. It expected Panditji and Dr. Moonje to take the order with due and humble submission.

The Government evidently expected that non-co-operation was dead, that civil disobedience died even before non-co-operation and was decently buried at Bardoli, and that the Congress resolutions on civil disobedience were all idle threats. The Bengal Government has now discovered its mistake. Panditji’s letter is a lesson in self-restraint combined with firmness. His following up the letter with action, his refusal to see the Magistrate and his triumphant entry into Calcutta, his advice to the people not to lose their heads, not to demonstrate, and his quiet continuance of his programme as if nothing had happened, furnish an object lesson in perfect civil disobedience. It is to be hoped that the Government will understand that civil disobedience has come to stay and when occasion demands it, there will be more than one person in the country to adopt it. Both Hindus and Mussalmans will commit a serious blunder if we consider that the serving of notice on Panditji and Dr. Moonje was an anti-Hindu and pro-Mahomedans act. With the Government all is grist that comes to its mill. If today it is a distinguished Hindu who has been served with a notice, it will be tomorrow an equally distinguished Mussalman to receive the same attention if the Government desires it for its own end. Nobody is deceived by the declaration that the Government sincerely wants peace between the communities.

I venture to suggest that a real desire for peace between Hindus and Mussalmans is wholly inconsistent with the desire to retain British rule in India by force of arms. When British officials begin the work of peace between these two branches of the Indian family, they will have begun to live in India on sufferance. After all, the discovery that India is governed by the ‘divide and rule’ policy was made, in the first instance, not by an Indian but, if I am not mistaken, by an Englishman. It was either the late Allen Octavius Hume or George Yule who taught us to believe that the Empire was based upon a policy of divide and rule. Nor need we be surprised at or resent it. Imperial Rome did no otherwise. British did no otherwise with the Boers. By a system of favoritism it sought to divide the Boer ranks. The Government of India is based upon distrust. Distrust involves favoritism and favoritism must breed division. There are frank Englishmen enough who have owned this fact. No serious student of Indian history can help rejecting the recent declarations about peace on the part of the Viceroy or the Governors. I am prepared to believe that His Excellency the Viceroy is sincere in his declaration. It is not necessary for one to impute dishonesty to the high officials, if one is to ascribe the policy of ‘divide and rule’ to the Government. The division policy need not be always conscious and deliberate.

Mussalmans against Hindus, non-Brahmins against Brahmins, Sikhs against both, Gurkhas against all the three, this game of permutation and combination has gone on ever since the advent of British rule, and will continue so long as the Government considers its interests so be antagonistic to those of the people or its existence to be against the desire of the people. Hence it is that swaraj is a vital necessity for national growth. Hence it is that Mrs. Besant has stated not without much force that Hindu-Muslim unity is almost impossibility without swaraj. And unfortunately we are having it demonstrated to us daily that swaraj is an equal impossibility without Hindu-Muslim unity. I am however optimistic enough to believe that the unity will come in spite of ourselves because, I implicitly believe in Lokamanya motto” Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.” Where man’s effort may fail, God’s will succeed, and His Government is not based upon ‘divide and rule’ policy.