THE INCLINED PLANE OF GANDHIISM
Those who have persistently derided the "Non-co-operation" movement and
announced its imminent collapse have been scarcely less wide of the mark
than Mr. Gandhi himself when he began to predict that it would bring
_Swaraj_ to India by a date, not always quite the same, but always less
than a year distant. The original programme of "Non-co-operation" has
hitherto failed egregiously. Only very few lawyers have abandoned their
practice in "Satanic" law-courts at his behest, still fewer Indians have
surrendered the distinctions conferred on them by Government. A
mischievous ferment has been introduced once more into Indian schools
and colleges. Some youths have foolishly wrecked their own future, or
seen it wrecked for them, by attempts to boycott and obstruct the
examinations on which their career so often depends. But neither have
Mr. Gandhi and his followers destroyed the schools and colleges against
which they have waged war, nor created in anything more than embryo, and
in extremely few places, the "national" schools and colleges that were
to take their place. Even Rabindranath Tagore, whose poetic imagination
was at first fired by Mr. Gandhi's appeal to renounce the title of
knighthood awarded to him in recognition of his literary genius, has had
enough practical experience of education, as he himself has conceived
and carried it into execution on his own quite original lines, to be
driven at last to admit that Indian youths are asked to bring their
patriotic offering of sacrifice, "not to a fuller education, but to
non-education." With his craving for metaphysical accuracy of
expression, he has even denounced the "no" of "Non-co-operation" as "in
its passive moral form asceticism, and in its active moral form
violence." The conclusion wrung from his reluctant idealism is one at
which the large majority of sober-minded Indians arrived long before the
poet. They gave effect to it as voters at the elections in defiance of
Mr. Gandhi's boycott, and their representatives gave effect to it in the
legislatures which Mr. Gandhi no less vainly boycotted.
Yet in spite of Mr. Gandhi's repeated failures "Non-co-operation" is not
dead. It has a widespread organisation, with committees in every town
and emissaries particularly active in the large villages and in many
rural districts. It had the enthusiastic support at Nagpur of the large
assemblage that still retains the name, but little else, of the old
Indian National Congress. It does not lack funds, for Mr. Gandhi
professes to have gathered in the crore of rupees which he asked for
within the appointed twelvemonth. It controls a large part of the Indian
Press, though mostly of the less reputable type, more vituperative and
mendacious, in spite of all Indian Press laws, than anything conceived
of in this country where there are no Press laws. Mr. Gandhi himself
goes on preaching "Non-co-operation" with unabated conviction and
unresting energy, the same picture always of physical frailty and
unconquerable spirit, travelling all over the country in crowded
third-class carriages, worshipped by huge crowds that hang on his
sainted lips--and pausing only in his feverish campaign to spend a short
week at Simla in daily conference with Lord Reading. That the new
Viceroy should have thought it advisable almost immediately after his
arrival in India to hold such prolonged intercourse with Mr. Gandhi is
the best proof that the Mahatma is no mere dreamer whose influence is
evanescent, but a power to be reckoned with. The Simla interviews did
not seem to have been entirely fruitless when Mr. Gandhi extracted from
his chief Mahomedan lieutenants, the brothers Ali, a disavowal, however
half-hearted, of any intention to incite to violence in certain speeches
delivered by them for which they would otherwise have had to be
prosecuted. It looked as if he had made a more effective stand than on
other occasions against the importation of violence into
"Non-co-operation," and proved the reality of the influence which he is
believed to have all along exercised to curb his Mahomedan followers who
do not share his disbelief in violence. But Simla only deflected him for
a short time from his dangerous course.
In the whole of this strange movement nothing is more mysterious than
the hold which Mr. Gandhi has over Mahomedans as well as Hindus, though
the wrongs of Turkey, which are ever in his mouth, touch only very
remotely the great mass of Indian Mahomedans, whilst the old antagonism
of the two communities is still simmering and bubbling and apt to boil
over on the slightest provocation. Collisions are most frequent during
religious festivals, especially if they happen to be held by both
communities at the same time. The chief stone of offence for Hindus is
the sacrifice of cows, the most sacred to them of all animals, without
which the Mahomedans consider their great annual festival of _Bakar-Id_
cannot be complete. Mahomedans, on the other hand, to whom musical
instruments as an accompaniment to religious worship are abhorrent, are
often driven wild when Hindu processions pass with their bands playing
in front of a mosque. Only four years ago, when the compact between the
National Congress and the Moslem League was still quite fresh, riots
broke out simultaneously during the _Bakar-Id_ over a great part of the
Patna district, which were only suppressed after a large tract of some
forty miles square had passed into the hands of the Hindu mobs, when a
considerable military force reached the scenes of turmoil and disorder,
for the like of which, according to the Government Resolution, it was
necessary to go back over a period of sixty years to the days of the
great Mutiny. It would be of little purpose to enumerate many other
instances of disorders on a lesser scale that have occurred since then
in connection with cow-killing. When staying for a few days last winter
in Nellore, a small town in the Madras Presidency, _i.e._ in a part of
India noted for its quietude, I had a pertinent illustration of the
often trivial but none the less dangerous forms that the persistent
animosity between Hindus and Mahomedans can assume. In Nellore, itself a
very sleepy hollow, the Mahomedans are not quite in such a hopelessly
small minority as they generally are in Southern India, for they number
about 6000 out of 30,000 inhabitants. The few "Non-co-operationists" in
the place, Hindu and Mahomedan, professed to have formed a
"Reconciliation Committee" to prevent their co-religionists from flying
at each other's throats. Their efforts were not, however, sufficient to
relieve the local authorities from the necessity of putting some of the
police on special service for the protection of respectable Hindu
traders of the same caste as Mr. Gandhi himself in their daily comings
and goings through certain quarters of the city against the more unruly
of their Mahomedan fellow-citizens. The usual bad feeling had been
exacerbated by an affray, already the best part of a year old, when one
of the Hindu processions from the four great temples of the city
perversely altered its accustomed route and passed down the streets
leading to the chief mosque with bands defiantly playing, and a party of
Mahomedans lying in wait for them rushed out and assaulted them with
brick-bats, until they were dispersed by a few rifle-shots from the
police. Apart from such major provocation, each side indulges in minor
pin-pricks that keep up a constant irritation. It is an old custom at
both Hindu and Mahomedan festivals for youths to dress up as tigers and
lions, who add an element of terror to the pageant by roaring to order.
Of late years each community has tried to deny to the other the right
to introduce this element of frightfulness into its processions, and
these harmless wild beasts have frequently been made to repent of their
disguise with bruised bodies and broken heads. In one large village in
the Nellore district serious trouble arose over an attempt on the part
of the Mahomedans to halt their procession for the purpose of
distributing "jaggery" water in close proximity to an enclosure set
apart by the Hindus for the nuptials of their god and goddess at an
annual marriage festival, and the _Taluk_ magistrate had to issue a
formal order, enforced by policemen on special duty, forbidding the
Mahomedans to place the objectionable pot of water within twenty feet of
the wedding enclosure. In all such cases both sides appeal promptly for
help to the authorities, and one of the chief and not least wearisome of
the British administrator's tasks is to be for ever on the watch in
order if possible to avert, by timely suasion and measures of
precaution, the serious trouble that may at any moment arise out of
trifles which to the European mind must seem grotesquely insignificant.
Indians themselves admit that it is an even more difficult task for
them, as Indian-born officials must almost always belong to one or other
of the two communities, and their impartiality be therefore congenitally
suspect to one side or the other.
There can be no worthier purpose for either government or public men or
private individuals to pursue than a real reconciliation between two
great communities estranged, not only by fundamentally different
religious beliefs and traditions, but by enduring memories of
century-long conflicts and of the very often oppressive domination of
Mahomedan rulers over conquered Hindu peoples held down in spite of
their numerical superiority by the sheer weight of superior force. There
may have been Englishmen who, believing in the shallow maxim _Divide ut
imperes_, have relied on that estrangement to fortify British rule; but
such has never been the principle of British policy. It has constantly
sought, on the contrary, to prevent and suppress as far as possible
disorders which, whenever they break out afresh, inevitably revive and
quicken the ancient antagonism, and to attenuate it, slowly but
steadily, by the exercise of even-handed justice and the pacifying
influences of education and the rule of law.
Has the alliance between Mr. Gandhi and the Ali brothers or the fusion
between the Congress and League Extremists, Hindu and Mahomedan, proved
more effective? How far down has this Hindu and Mahomedan fraternisation
really reached that is based above all on common hatred of a "Satanic"
Government? How far has it even temporarily checked the instinctive
tendency of the masses in both communities to break away from their
allies and go for each other rather than for that common enemy against
whom "Non-co-operation" bids them combine? Frequent outbreaks continue
to reveal from time to time the _ignes cineri suppositos doloso_. They
mostly follow the same course. _Khilafat_ agitators terrorise the
law-abiding population, extorting subscriptions for _Khilafat_ funds,
compelling shopkeepers to close their shops for _Khilafat_
demonstrations, and so forth, until they are driven to appeal to the
authorities for protection. Then an attempt is made to arrest some of
the ringleaders or to disarm the _Khilafat_ "volunteers," who, when they
have no more modern weapons, know how to use their _lathis_ or heavy
iron-tipped staves with often deadly effect. Rioting starts on a large
scale to the cry of "Religion! Religion!" the small local police force
is helpless, and very soon the whole fury of the Mahomedan mob turns
against the Hindus, as at Malegaon, in the Bombay Presidency, where they
set a Hindu temple on fire and threw into the flames the body of an
unfortunate Hindu sub-inspector of police who had been vainly attempting
to save a Hindu quarter from arson. Troops are hurried up from the
nearest military station, and usually as soon as they appear order is
restored with the employment of a minimum amount of force. Numerous
arrests are made, and a few of the local firebrands are ultimately
prosecuted and convicted. But at "Non-co-operation" headquarters the
_Khilafat_ propaganda goes on undisturbed, and all the appearances of
Hindu-Mahomedan unity are ostentatiously kept up. Mr. Mahomed Ali
preaches to Hindus as well as to Mahomedans that it will be their duty
to give the Ameer of Afghanistan every assistance in their power when he
descends with his armies to rescue India from her foreign oppressors. An
All-India _Khilafat_ Conference announces that, if the British
Government fights openly or secretly against the Turkish Nationalists at
Angora, the Indian National Congress will proclaim the Republic of India
at its next session, and meanwhile declares it unlawful for any
Mahomedan to serve in the Indian army, since a "Satanic" Government may
at any moment use it to fight against Mustafa Kemal's forces at Angora.
It is impossible to believe that on such lines "Non-co-operation" can
bring Mahomedans and Hindus permanently together, or can drag the bulk
of the sober and conservative Mahomedan community away from its solid
moorings, but the effect of such appeals to the turbulent and fanatical
elements, more numerous and more easily roused amongst Mahomedans than
amongst Hindus, spreads and grows with the impunity conceded to them.
If, on the other hand, the Hindus may be on the whole less prone to
violence than the Mahomedans, with whom the sword is still the symbol of
their faith, the grave agrarian disturbances which have twice this year
resulted from the "Non-co-operation" campaign in the United Provinces,
and other disorders of a similar kind on a less serious scale in other
provinces, show that Hindus too are not proof against temptations to
violence. Mr. Gandhi may go on preaching non-violence, and he may
himself still disapprove of violence and refuse to believe that his
teachings, as interpreted at least by many of his followers, are as
certain to produce violence as the night is to produce darkness; but
that "Non-co-operation" more and more frequently spells violence is
beyond dispute, and more and more faint-hearted--to put it very
mildly--are his reprobations of violence.
The most threatening feature of the "Non-co-operation" movement, now
that it has failed so completely in its appeal to the better and more
educated classes, is that it is concentrating all its energies on the
ignorant and excitable masses. If one takes a long view of India's
progress under the new dispensation, it may well be a source of
satisfaction and encouragement that the insane lengths to which
"Non-co-operation" has gone have served at least to drive in a deep
wedge between the Moderates and the Extremists. But in the immediate
future "Non-co-operation" may prove not less but more formidable
because, except with a few eccentrics, it has lost whatever hold it may
have had for a time on the politically minded _intelligentsia_, and
feels, therefore, no longer under any restraint in addressing itself to
hungry appetites and primitive passions amongst the backward Hindu
masses as well as amongst Mahomedans. That it has not appealed to them
in vain there are increasingly ominous indications in such wanton
destruction as the firing of immense areas of forest in the Kumoon
district of the United Provinces. For the gods to be worshipped in fear
and trembling are the gods that revel in, and can only be placated by,
destruction. Wherever there are local discontents--and such there must
always be in a vast country and amongst vast populations that too often
have a hard struggle for bare existence--"Non-co-operation" is at once
on the spot to envenom the sores. Economic conditions aggravated by the
great rise in prices for all the necessaries of life since the Great War
press heavily on the most helpless classes. The vitality of the whole
population has been depressed for years past by the ravages of the
plague, now fortunately much abated, which have carried off about eight
million lives within the last two decades, and by the still more
appalling ravages of two epidemics of influenza which in 1918 within
one twelvemonth carried off some six or seven millions of lives, mostly
in their very best years, and left many more millions of lives either
older or younger wretchedly enfeebled. Add to all this the many direct
and indirect reactions of the general unrest which in so many different
forms has spread over the whole face of the globe, and of the particular
forms of political unrest which have kept India in periodical ferment
since 1905, constantly fed by violent speeches and by a still more
violent vernacular press. All these discontents "Non-co-operation" has
set itself to link up to a common purpose by inflaming racial hatred,
stirred as never since the Mutiny by the story, bad enough in itself and
unscrupulously distorted and exaggerated, of the events in the Punjab
which has been for two years the trump card of the Extremists, with an
additional appeal to the religious fanaticism of the Mahomedans in the
alleged wrong done to their faith by the Turkish peace terms.
Consciously and unconsciously Mr. Gandhi has lent his saintly
countenance to all these menacing features of the "Non-co-operation"
movement, and given them a religious sanction which captures many who
would not have succumbed but for their faith in a Mahatma who can do and
say no wrong.
One of the weapons of "Non-co-operation" which Mr. Gandhi has lately
sharpened up is the boycott of British imported goods, now reiterated
and clearly defined in relation first of all to British textiles. Not
only must the Indian wear nothing but home-spun cotton cloth, but the
Indian importer must cease to do any business with British firms, and
Indian mills must forgo their profits in order to help the boycott. Mr.
Gandhi has inaugurated the boycott by presiding over huge sacrificial
bonfires of imported cloth on the seashore at Bombay, amidst the
acclamations of vast crowds all wearing the little "Gandhi" white cap
which is the badge of "Non-co-operation." This is the same mad form of
_Swadeshi_ that Mr. Tilak preached over twenty years ago in the Deccan,
and the Anti-Partition agitators over fifteen years ago in Bengal. It
failed in both cases. Is it less likely to fail to-day when post-war
economic conditions both in England and in India militate still more
strongly against its success, however much it may for a time appeal to
Indian sentiment and to the disgust of Indian traders with Government's
currency and exchange policy? Mr. Gandhi admitted it was impracticable
unless carried out in the spirit of religious self-sacrifice for the
Motherland, which impelled him even to veto the suggestion made by some
of his own followers that the existing stocks of imported cloth, instead
of being burnt, should be given away in charity to the poor. He may
himself really dream of an India from whose face the busy cities built
up by European enterprise, and the railways, the telegraphs, and every
other symbol of a Satanic civilisation shall have disappeared, and
Indians shall all be content to lead in their own primitive villages the
simplest of simple lives clad only in the produce of their handlooms,
fed only on the fruits of their own fields, and governed only by their
own _panchayats_ in accordance with Vedic precepts and under the
protection of their favourite gods. But how many Extremists who shelter
behind his name are not already speculating on the failure of the
_Swadeshi_ movement to which their dupes are committed, in order that
when disillusionment comes it shall add to the area of popular
discontent in which racial hatred is most easily sown? Non-payment of
taxes is another of the weapons which "Non-co-operation" has threatened
to use, and it includes non-payment of the land-tax which would directly
incite the whole agricultural population to lawlessness, and an attack
upon excise revenue which in the shape of a temperance movement, in
itself perfectly commendable, has already led to many cases of
indefensible violence, chiefly in the urban industrial centres. He has
not yet committed himself openly to "civil disobedience" on the scale
for which many Extremists are already clamouring, but he has started on
an inclined plane along which he may not have the power, or even the
will, to arrest his descent. Much will depend on this year's monsoon. If
the rains are good and the harvests abundant, the peasants, relieved for
the time from the pressure of the economic struggle, will be less
inclined to take--even at his behest--the risk of refusing payment of
taxes. Should there unfortunately be another bad season following on
last year's partial failure,[5] the temptation may prove irresistible if
reinforced by the religious exaltation which Mr. Gandhi knows so well
how to call forth. Deep down, too, there is always the latent antagonism
of all the irreconcilable elements in an ancient civilisation of which
British rule no more than Mahomedan domination, and in still earlier
times the spiritual revolt of Buddhism, has shaken the hold upon the
Hindu masses.
By a strange fatality the confidence of the inarticulate millions upon
which we have hitherto prided ourselves has been turned into bitterness
and hatred hitherto unknown amongst large sections of them at the very
moment when we have for the first time regained in a large measure the
confidence of the _intelligentsia_, and we have to reckon with the
possibility of popular disturbances which may call for strong action
just when on broad grounds of policy any resort to force must be
specially undesirable. One of the retributions which always overtake
such mistakes in the manner of employing force as were made two years
ago in the Punjab is that the actual employment of force, however
legitimate, becomes discredited. The Government of India realises--and
no one probably more fully than Lord Reading after his visit to
Amritsar--that with the Punjab fresh in their memories, even Indian
Moderates must require very strong evidence before they give any willing
support to the employment of force, even if circumstances arise to make
it inevitable for the mere maintenance of public order which no
government can allow to be wantonly imperilled. Such evidence is
accumulating only too fast. When the time comes for action, the
existence of a responsible body of Indian opinion, constitutionally
organised, and constitutionally represented in the new Legislatures,
will give Government the moral backing and the moral courage which
failed it with disastrous results in 1919.
It is sad to see a man of Mr. Gandhi's immense power for good drifting
into such deep waters. Mr. Gokhale, who had given him his enthusiastic
support in South Africa, warned him on his return to India that methods
of agitation and passive resistance which were permissible there under
great provocation, and had been used by him with considerable success,
would be quite unwarranted in India where they would only lead to
disaster. Mr. Gokhale died soon afterwards and Mr. Gandhi has
disregarded his advice. At times he has given signs of profound
discouragement and talked of retiring to the Himalayas to spend the rest
of his days in meditation, as pious Hindus not infrequently do. At times
in a more worldly mood he seems to be playing for a crown of martyrdom,
and he was perhaps bidding for it when soon after a series of interviews
with the Viceroy, conducted on both sides with perfect courtesy, he
replied to the official announcement of the impending visit of the
Prince of Wales to India by proclaiming it to be the duty of Indians to
boycott the heir to the Throne in the same way in which he had exhorted
them last winter to boycott the Duke of Connaught. He must certainly
have been bidding for it when in the course of a raging and tearing
temperance campaign in Bombay he declared, it seems, that liquor shops
must be closed even if it cost rivers of blood. Government has so far
wisely shrunk from adding to his halo as a saint that of a "confessor
and martyr." But he may yet force Government's hands.[6] For there must
be limits to the impunity granted even to a Mahatma who professes and
preaches the doctrine of _Ahimsa_, but whose footsteps are dogged by
violence which is the negation of _Ahimsa_.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Later reports promise a far better monsoon than was at first
indicated.
[6] Whilst these pages are going through the press, reports are coming
in of a Moplah rising on the Malabar coast, far more ominous than any
of the disturbances already referred to in this chapter. The Moplahs
are an extremely backward and unruly race, with an infusion of Arab
blood, always notorious for their fierce Mahomedan fanaticism, wrought
up to a white heat by a recent visit from the two Mahomedan firebrands
of "Non-co-operation." The murder of Europeans, the burning and
looting of Government buildings, the tearing up of railways and
telegraphs, recall the worst excesses committed by Indian mobs two
years ago in the Punjab. But on this occasion there has been no
Mahomedan-Hindu fraternisation. The Moplahs have vented their
_Khilafat_ fury equally upon the helpless Hindu populations of the
whole district, who have been slaughtered and plundered or forcibly
converted to Islam as in the earliest days of Mahomedan domination.
Hindu members of the Legislative Assembly, realising that their
co-religionists owe their safety only to the military forces which are
being rushed up by a Satanic Government to arrest a campaign of sheer
murder and rapine, may well ask, as Mr. Jamnadas Dwarkadas has just
done, how long such men as Mahomed and Shaukat Ali are to be allowed
to go on preaching the doctrines which the Moplahs have so effectively
carried into practice. However local this outbreak may remain, it is
only another and a more sinister symptom of the widespread upheaval
against all constituted authority into which "Non-co-operation" has
degenerated under the leadership of Mr. Gandhi and his Mahomedan
allies.