Structuring Hind Swaraj Mahatma Gandhi In Action (1932 - 1940) - Dharampal

 

Structuring Hind Swaraj

Mahatma Gandhi In Action

(1932 - 1940)

The year 1933 began a new phase in the life of Mahatma Gandhi the implications and lessons of which, perhaps, have yet to be fully appreciated.  While the years 1919 to 1931 may be seen as the years which, by the gathering of the Indian people, made it certain, not only to themselves but to the British, as well as the world at large that the struggles which they had launched against British rule under the leadership and guidance of Mahatma Gandhi were distinctly leading towards political independence; the phase beginning with 1933 and continuing in full vigour till 1940, may be taken as Gandhiji's attempt to provide the content and structure (basically on the premises visualized by him in Hind Swaraj in 1909) of such political independence.  That for various complex reasons this attempt largely got aborted  makes it even more imperative that more is known and understood (through research and study, as well as reflection) about it.

 In August 1933 Gandhiji formally dissolved the Sabarmati Ashram, created by him in 1915 on the bank of the river Sabarmati near Ahmedabad, and donated its premises and assets to the newly created Harijan Sevak Sangh.  Some weeks later, at the age of sixty-four, he began his months long whirlwind Harijan tour of India to convince the people of India that the depressed groups in India had to be treated as equals and that all their civic rights including entry to Hindu temples must be restored to them.  At the end of this tour in mid-1934, Gandhiji made Wardha his new, and last center, moving six miles away to Sevagram a year later.   About the same time Gandhiji took the momentous decision of formally resigning his membership of the Indian National Congress whose supreme leader and guide he had been since 1920.  Before his resignation was accepted, Gandhiji assured the Congress that his advice and guidance should still be available to it; moreover, it was on Gandhiji's advice that the Congress at this time decided to make itself more truly representative of India by making it a rule that henceforth three-quarters of the members of its National Committee were to be from rural India and only one-quarter from the urban areas.¹   Further, the Congress resolved that, as village “reorganization and reconstruction necessarily implies the revival and encouragement of dead or dying village industries”, an All-India Village Industries Association should be set-up under the advice and guidance of Gandhiji.  Incidentally, within weeks of its formation, this Village Industries Association was to be termed as highly dangerous and seditious by the British Government of India, as also by its Viceroy personally.²

 In a sense, however, this new phase had begun in 1932 itself when Gandhiji decided to undertake his ‘epic’ fast in protest against the British contemplated statutory separation of those termed as ‘depressed classes’ from the rest of the Hindus. The announcement of the fast, while it perplexed many, especially, the progressive and the intellectual amongst the Indian Nationalists, galvanized all India as never before in living memory, and within a few days of the beginning of the fast,  matters were so resolved amongst the representatives of the 'depressed classes' and the rest of the Hindus (and this accepted by the British) that Gandhiji's fast could end successfully.  At this time, an historic assemblage of the Hindus meeting in Bombay on September 25, 1932 further resolved:

 

"That henceforth, amongst Hindus, no one shall be regarded as an untouchable by reason of his birth, and that those who have been so regarded hitherto will have the same right as other Hindus in regards to the use of public wells, public schools, public roads and all other public institutions".

And

"that it shall be the duty of all Hindu leaders to secure, by every legitimate and peaceful means, an early removal of all social disabilities now imposed by custom upon  the so-called untouchable classes, including the bar in respect of admission to temples”.³

 A  few months later, even the Sanatana Dharma Mahasabha (of the Hindus) meeting at Varanasi, and consisting of orthodox learned pundits expressed the opinion, "that as the depressed classes are  followers of the Sanatana Dharma, it is the duty of the other  followers of the said Dharma to help them enjoy the full benefits of following that Dharma”.⁴  The consequences of Gandhiji's fast, and the steps taken by him, were thus momentous and, despite  present day clashes and animosities between sections of the 'depressed' and the other Hindus, have continued to be so ever since. Not surprisingly therefore, that when in December 1942, the British Secretary of State for India felt that there were "politically very considerable advantages" in having the 'depressed classes' as another substantial minority to checkmate Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress, his own office thought differently and felt "it is a weaker card than the Moslem one, naturally so in view of Gandhi's work on the untouchables".⁵

 By the time he formally resigned from the Indian National Congress in October 1934, possibly even two or three years earlier, Gandhiji seems to have felt assured that the political independence of India from Britain had by then become a certainty, and the waiting and struggle for it was no longer a question of generations. Feeling such assurance from then on, he began to be far more concerned about the content and structure of the forthcoming independence. Realizing, however, that "I seem to be going in a direction just opposite to what many of the most intellectual Congressmen would gladly and enthusiastically take, if they were not hampered by their unexampled loyalty to me", he decided that, "For me any more to draw upon this loyalty and devotion is to put undue strain upon them". He also stated that “a very large body of Congress intelligentsia were tired of my method and views, they felt that I was a hindrance rather than a help to the natural growth of the Congress", and his remaining in it made them think that, "there was no free play of reason". According to Gandhiji, the most intellectual of them differed with him on hand-spinning, which was to him "the hand-maid of agriculture," and the "nation's second lung"; on his concerning himself with the elimination of untouchability; on the occasions and mode of civil disobedience; on non-violence; in fact on the content of democracy itself. For, according to Gandhiji, "corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy as they undoubtedly are today". On the other hand, he prayed that India may “evolve the true science of democracy by giving a visible demonstration of it”.⁶

To Mahatma Gandhi, Swaraj (independence, self-rule) was not like a straight rod.  In January 1933 he had asked a correspondent "why do you believe that Swaraj is something apart from the eradication of untouchabi1ity ?” Swaraj to Gandhiji was "rather like a Banyan tree". Like the banyan, it had "innumerable branches, each of which is as important for the tree as the original trunk.  Feeding any of these means feeding the tree. Nobody can lay down a rule as to which of the branches should be fed when; circumstances determine that". ⁷

 It is such ideas of Swaraj and democracy which made Gandhiji formally resign from the Congress.  And it seems that from 1934 onwards till his last day, and much more so during the years 1934 to 1940, when he did not need to lead any civil disobedience movements against British rule, every moment of his life was devoted to provide content and structure to his concepts of Swaraj and democracy.  In July 1946 he visualized the Swaraj democracy to be "an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their approach but ever humble sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units”.⁸  According to him,  "In this structure, composed of innumerable villages (and obviously towns and cities), there will be ever widening, never ascending circles"; and, "the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from them.”⁹

 His 1932 fast against untouchability seems to have given Gandhiji a new insight.  For, as he said in 1934, to him, "the campaign against untouchabi1ity has begun to imply ever so much more than the eradication of the ceremonial untou­chabi1ity of those who are labeled untouchables.  For the city dweller, the villagers have become untouchable".¹⁰   And it was to overcome such wider  untouchabi1ity that the reviving of village industries became even more urgent.

 The difficulty and complexity of the task of revival was expressed by Mahatma Gandhi to a conference of the newly widened Gandhi Seva Sangh, in Nov 1934.  He then observed:-

 

"But this reinstating the villager in what was once his natural position is no easy task.  I had thought that I should be able to frame a constitution and set the association going within a short time. But the more I dive into it, the more I find myself out of my depth.  In a sense, the work is much more difficult than Khadi which  does not in any way offer a complicated problem. You have simply to exclude all foreign and machine-made cloth, and you have established Khadi on a secure foundation. But here the field is so vast, there is such an infinite variety of industries to handle and organize, that it will tax all of our business talent, expert knowledge and scientific training.  It cannot be achieved without hard toil, incessant endeavour and application of all our business and scientific abilities to this supreme purpose.  Thus I sent a questionnaire to several of our well known doctors and chemists, asking them to enlighten me on the chemical analysis and different food values of polished and unpolished rice, jaggery and sugar etc. Many friends, I am thankful to say, have immediately responded but only to confess that there has been no research in some of the directions I had inquired about.   Is it not a tragedy that  no scientist should be able to give me the chemical analysis of such a simple article as gur?  The reason is that we have not thought of the villager.  Take the case of honey.  I am told that in foreign  countries such a careful analysis of honey is made that no sample which fails to satisfy a particular test is bottled for the market. In India,  we have got vast resources for production of the finest honey but we have not much expert knowledge in the matter.  An esteemed Doctor friend writes to say that in his hospital polished rice is taboo and that it is proved after experiments on rats and other animals that polished rice is harmful.  But why have  not all medical men published results of their investigation and joined in declaring the use of such rice as positively harmful?”

 

"I have, just by one or two instances, indicated my difficulty.  What sort of organization should I have? What kind of laboratory research shall we have to go in for?  We shall need a number of scientists and chemists prepared to lay not only their expert knowledge at our disposal, but to sit down in our laboratories and to devote hours of time free of charge, to experiments in the directions I have indicated.  We shall have not only to publish the results from time to time, but we shall have to inspect and certify various products.  Also we shall have to find out whether the villager who produces an article of foodstuff rests content with exporting it and with using a cheap substitute imported from outside.  We shall have to see that the villagers become  first of all self-contained and then cater for the needs of the city-dwellers.”

 

"For this purpose we shall have to form district organizations,  and where districts are too big to handle, we may have to divide the districts into sub-districts.  Each of these - some 250 - should have an agent who will carry out a survey  and submit a report in  terms of the instructions issued  to him from head office.  These agents shall have to be full-timers and whole-hoggers with a live faith in the programmes and prepared immediately to make the necessary adjustment in their daily life.  This work will certainly need money but more than money this work will need men of strong faith and willing hands".¹¹

 

Attempts to eradicate untouchability, reducing the gulf between village and city, reviving village industries, led to even greater realization of the uselessness, in fact destructive nature of the prevailing British-structured education system and its replacement by what was more appropriate at all levels.  This as a first step, was to lead to what is known as Gandhiji's 'basic education'. About the same time, thought was also devoted to many other questions including the organization of labour in such a manner that there would be 'no strikes' and 'no class war'.  A leading Indian newspaper even made this latter idea its lead story of the day with banner head lines adding that the new labour organization's "Workers (were) to be trained by Gandhi Seva Sangh".¹²

 The initiation, deliberation, and projection of such ideas required a forum, a group of like-minded persons themselves engaged in a variety of pursuits.  This function was performed by the Gandhi Seva Sangh, initially created in 1923 to promote the programmes placed before the country by Gandhiji, and reconstituted and widened to a membership of hundreds when Gandhiji made Wardha his new center.¹³ Gandhiji then wrote: "The Gandhi Seva Sangh is framing a new constitution.  It has decided to increase no  fresh obligations.  It will enlist workers who hold common ideals without needing to have a common purse".¹⁴  These workers included writers, educationists, scientists, technologists, medical men, social workers, sanyasis and scholars, and those actively engaged in the Indian national movement against foreign rule.

 Thus from 1934 till the beginning of 1940, Gandhiji seems to have applied himself, along with members of the Gandhi Seva Sangh, and countless others, to thoughts concerning the approaches, institutions and structure which seemed to them requisite in the functioning of the new India.  Further, as this was no isolated task, the members of the Sangh were permitted not only to be members of the Indian Congress but also, with the Sangh's specific permission, a member was allowed to stand for election to the new legislatures, whenever locally necessary.  For, as Gandhiji said to them in 1936, "there was no absolute division between the so-called political and the so-called constructive programmes.  In our method of work there are no water-tight compartments".¹⁵

 The beginning of the war in Europe in September 1939 also affected the Indian political situation dramatically.  Soon a clash between Indian nationalism and British authority seemed imminent.  Additionally, a complex of other reasons led Gandhiji, in February 1940, to advise the Gandhi Seva Sangh to restrict itself to a holding committee¹⁶ hoping at the same time that it may, without participating in politics, "become a post-graduate school or research organization" to deliberate upon and work on the kind of structures, relationship and polity with which he himself, and the Gandhi Seva Sangh as a body, had been concerned in the previous six years.¹⁷ Soon, however, circumstances pushed all such ideas into the background; and subsequently he asked the British to 'quit India'.  This led to an aftermath of nationwide repression, imprisonments, etc., followed by indications of the possible division of India.

 Gandhiji's political and economic ideas are generally considered impractical, or more gently put, utopian.  In the world of the 20th century they may possibly be so.  Yet, even this latter view cannot be affirmed with any certitude till his ideas are examined on the basis of adequate information, knowledge and understanding.  Unfortunately this has not happened.   To an extent it did not happen because India itself opted for a different road.   Partly till recently the material relevant to this period - The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, the British government archives, the private papers of this period - was just not available.  Now that most such material has become accessible, a search by the interested in gaining such understanding may in itself be a valuable and rewarding task.

 London,

February 14, 1982.                                                                                            

 

References:

 

1.     D.G.Tendulkar: Mahatma, Vol. 39 p.371  (1952)

2.     IOR:L/P&J/7/663: Government of India, Home Dept to all local Governments, dated 23.11.1934 (F/3/16/34, 7 pp, 23 paras) on "Situation arising out of the decisions of the recent Bombay Congress".  Also Viceroy Willingdon to Samuel Hoars, Secretary of State for India. On Nov 11, 1934 Willingdon wrote, "I am inclined to think that his (Gandhiji's) real purpose in this village uplift scheme of his is to get the Congress ideas into the minds of all the agriculturists of the country and then he can restart again with redoubled vigour. ...I think this is going to increase our difficulties in the future because with Congress fairly strong in the Assembly and Gandhi doing his propaganda work outside he will have a dual policy with which to upset us in the future." Again on 19.11.34 Willingdon wrote," Let me add that there is no doubt that the whole thing has been a great triumph for little Gandhi. He has gone out of the Congress, but he keeps control. He is now anxious to start_, what he is pleased to call, his social uplift campaign in the districts and we are all quite clear that his one purpose is to instruct in the next year or two the agricultural population politically through this means, so that he may be able to come back at us with redoubled strength in the future. We are taking all steps now to make the Provinces alive to the real danger of this new propaganda.". The step taken was the abovementioned confidential letter of 23.11.1934. However, the letter somehow leaked out and the Government was forced to a debate on it in the Central Legislative Assembly. Referring to it Willingdon wrote to Hoare on 21.1.1935, " We are going to have a very troublesome time too in the Assembly. The Congress have got hold of that memorandum which we issued from the Home Department with regard to Gandhi's village uplift scheme, and they hope to make much capital out of it." (IOR:MSS Eur E 240/8).

3.     Harijan, published at the top of front page of most issues in 1933.

4.     Harijan, 18.2.33, mentioned in letter of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya dated 8.2.1933 to Gandhiji.

5.     IOR:L/ P&J./8/685:Depressed classes: General Papers, p.101, office noting dated 3l.l2.l942.  Earlier, on 16.12.1942 Secretary of State Amery had written to the Viceroy Linlithgow, "I read Ambedkar's letter and memorandum about the grievances of the scheduled castes enclosed in your letter of November 21st. It does seem to me as if it would be well worthwhile giving them a substantial leg up and assimilating their position increasingly to that of the Moslems. There are, after all, politically very considerable advantages in having two substantial minorities to whom consider­ation has to be paid, and not to be put in the position of being merely labelled pro-Moslem and anti-Hindu".

6.     Tendulkar: Mahatma, vol 3, pp. 361-69.

7.     CWMG vol. 52, p.399-400, letter dated 8.1.1933 to Parmananda K. Kapadia.

8.     Harijan, 28.7.1946, pp.236-7, article titled "Independence".

9.     ibid.

10.  Tendulkar: Mahatma, vol 4, p.2.

11.  ibid, p. 7-8.

12.  Hindustan Times, 30.3.1938, p.1.

13.  After Gandhiji settled down in Wardha in 1934 (and then moved to Sevagram in the summer of 1936) the Gandhi Seva Sangh began to function more actively and with a much broader base. After such reorganisation the first major conference of the Sangh was held in Wardha in November 1934. The second conference was held at Savli (Feb-March 1936), the third at Hudli (16-20.4.1937), the fourth at Delang, Orissa (March 1938) the fifth at Brindavan, Bihar (3-7.5.1939), and the sixth, when it was decided to reduce the Sangh to a small holding committee, at Malikanda, Bengal (Feb 1940). The proceedings of the conferences were published by the Sangh, and the conferences as such, especially from 1937 onwards, were prominently covered in the newspapers. The later conferences were also noticed in the fortnightly (Government) intelligence reports from the provinces, and may have been more extensively covered by intelligence agencies of the Government of India.

14.  CWMG, vol 59, p.424-5, letter dated 5.12.1934 to N.R.Malkani.

15.  Tendulkar: Mahatma, vol 4, p. 66.

16.  It was not only the British authorities who looked askance at the post-1934 functioning of the Gandhi Seva Sangh. Within the Sangh itself there seem to have been several tangential views about its role. Outside also it did not find favour with men like Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and Shri Subhash Chandra Bose. Nehru expressed his unhappiness about the Sangh interesting itself in politics perhaps many times.  On 28.4.1938 he also expressed his great distress about it in a letter to Gandhiji. Gandhiji then (7.5.1938) asked him, "What is it in the new orientation of the Gandhi Seva Sangh that has disturbed you? I must own that I am responsible for it. I should like you to tell me unhesitatingly what has disturbed you.  If I have erred, you know that I shall retrace my steps as soon as I discover the error." While it is not known what happened about Pandit Nehru's distress thereafter, the Sangh a year later again reaffirmed the stance which the Times of India (8.5.1939) head-lined as "Gandhi Seva Sangh to take part in politics", and the Hindustan times (7.5.1939) as "Seva Sangh Members may Enter Politics, But Gandhian principIes Must be Adhered to".  Shri Subash Bose was even more direct in his opposition to the political role of the Sangh. The Times of India (4.5.1939) reported him as saying, " It may be argued by our critics that the formation of a Forward Bloc will cause a split in the Congress and destroy national unity. Did the formation of the Gandhi Seva Sangh create a split and destroy national unity? If it did not, then why should the formation of the Forward Block do so? …It is no exaggeration to say that the Gandhi Seva Sangh is the only well organised and disciplined political party among Indian nationalists."

17.  Tendulkar: Mahatma, vol. 5, p.303. That for Gandhiji the Sangh was still very much alive is indicated by his letter of March 12, 1940 (within a few weeks of his advising the Sangh to reduce itself to a holding committee)   to Shrikrishnadas Jaju. He still felt that the auspices of the Gandhi Seva Sangh were the proper one to deliberate on basic issues. The four issues which he then thought required research were: "(1) The problem of how to popularise khadi, etc, is there, no doubt.(2) Is there any necessary connection between village crafts like spinning etc., and ahimsa? If there is, what is the nature of that connection? (3) What are the crafts which cannot be carried on without ahimsa? And what are the ones in which violence is unavoidable? or is there no such distinction? (4)   Does India have any special gift in regard to ahimsa?"