It is hardly within the province of this address to deal with any detail
scheme of any such Government. I cannot, however, allow this opportunity
to pass without giving you an expression of my opinion as to the character
of that system of Government. No system of Government which is not for the
people and by the people can even be regarded as the true foundation of
Swaraj. I am firmly convinced that a parliamentary Government is not a
government by the people and for the people. Many of us believe that the
middle class must win Swaraj for the masses. I do not believe in the
possibility of any class movement being ever converted into a movement
for Swaraj. If to-day the British Parliament grants Provincial autonomy in
the provinces with responsibility in the Central Government, I for one,
will protest against, because that will inevitably lead to the
concentration of the power in the hands of the middle class. I do not
believe that the middle class will then part with their power. How will it
profit India, if in place of the White Bureaucracy that now rules over
her, there is substituted an Indian Bureaucracy of the middle classes.
Bureaucracy is Bureaucracy and I believe that the very idea of Swaraj is
inconsistent with the existence of a Bureaucracy. My ideal of Swaraj will
never be satisfied unless the people co-operate with us in its attainment.
Any other attempt will inevitably lead to what European Socialists call
the "Bourgeoise" Government. In France and in other European countries it
is the middle class who fought the battle of freedom and the result is
that power is still in the hands of this class. Having usurped the power
they are unwilling to face with it. If to-day the whole Europe is engaged
in a battle of real freedom it is because the nations of Europe are
gathering their strength to wrest this power from the hands of the middle
classes. I desire to avoid repetition of that chapter of European history.
It is for India to show the light to the world, Swaraj by Non-violence and
Swaraj by the people.
To me the organisation of village life and the practical autonomy of small
local centres are more important than either provincial autonomy or
central responsibility; and if the choice lay between the two, I would
unhesitatingly accept the autonomy of the local centres. I must not be
understood as implying that the village centres will he disconnected
units. They must be held together by a system of co-operation and
integration. For the present, there must be power in the hands of the
provincial and the Indian Government; but the ideal should be accepted
once for all, that the proper function of the central authority, whether
in the provincial or in the Indian Government is to advise, having a
residuary power of control only in case of need and to be exercised under
proper safeguard. I maintain that real Swaraj can only be attained by
vesting the power of Government in these local centres, and I suggest that
the Congress should appoint a Committee to draw up a scheme of Government
which would be acceptable to the Nation.
The most advanced thought of Europe is turning from the false
individualism on which European culture and institutions are based to what
I know to be the ideal of the ancient village organisation of India.
According to this thought modern democracy of the ballot box and large
crowds has failed, but real democracy has not yet been tried. What is the
real democracy of modern European thought?
The foundation of real democracy must be laid in small centres--not
gradual decentralisation which implies a previous centralisation--but a
gradual integration of the practically autonomous small centres into one
living harmonious whole. What is wanted is a human state, not a mechanical
contrivance. We want the growth of institutions and organisations which
are really dynamic in their nature and not the mere static stability of a
centralised state.
This strain of European thought found some expression in the philosophy of
Hegel according to whom "human institutions belong to the region not of
inert externality, but of mind and purpose and are therefore dynamic and
self-developing."
Modern European thought has made it clear that from the individual to the
"unified state," it is one continuous process of real and natural growth.
Sovereignity (Swaraj) is a relative notion. "The individual is sovereign
over himself"--attains his Swaraj "in so far as he can develop control and
unify his manifold nature." From the individual we come to the integrated
neighbourhood which is the real foundation of the unified State, which
again in its turn gives us the true ideal of the world-state. This
integrated neighbourhood is a great deal more than the mere physical
contiguity of the people who live in the neighbourhood area. It requires
the coalition of what has been called "neighbourhood consciousness." In
other words, the question is "how can the force generated by the
neighbourhood life become part of our whole critic and national life?" It
is this question which now democracy takes upon itself to solve.
The process prescribed is the generation of the collective will. The
democracy which obtains to-day rests on an attempt of securing a common
will by a process of addition. This really means a war of wills, the issue
being left to be decided by a mere superiority of numbers. New democracy
discountenances this process of addition, and insists on the discovery of
detailed means and methods by which the different wills of a neighbourhood
entity may grow into one common collective will. This process is not a
process addition but of integration and the consciousness of the
neighbourhood thus awakened must express the common collective will of
that neighbourhood entity. The collective will of several neighbourhood
centres, must by a similar process of integration be allowed to evolve the
Common collective will of the whole nation. It is only thus, by a similar
process of integration that any league of nations may be real and the
vision of a world state may be realized. The whole of this philosophy is
based on the idea of the evolution of the individual. The idea is to
"release the powers of the individual." Ordinary notions of state have
little to do with true individualism, (_i. e._) with the individual as
consciously responsible for the life from which he draws his breath and to
which he contributes his all. According to this school of thought
'Representative government, party organisation, majority rule, with all
their excrescences in their stead must appear the organisation of
non-partisan groups for the begetting, the bringing into being of common
ideas, a common purpose and the collective will.' This means the true
development and extension of the individual self. The institutions that
exist to-day have made machines of men. No Government will be successful,
no true Government is possible which does not rest on the individual. "Up
to the present moment," says the gifted authoress of the New State, "we
have never seen the individual yet. The search for him has been the whole
long striving of our Anglo-Saxon history. We sought to improve the method
of representation and failed to find him. We sought to reach him by
extending the suffrage to every man and then to every woman and yet he
eludes us. Direct Government now seeks the individual." In another place
the same writer says; "Thus group organisation releases us from the
domination of mere numbers, thus democracy transcends time and space. It
can never be understood except as a spiritual force. Majority rule rests
on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society
is not a collection of units, but a network of human relations. Democracy
is not worked out at the polling booths, it is the bringing forth of a
genuine collective will, one to which every single being must contribute
the whole of his complex life, as one which every single being must
express the whole of it at one point. Thus the essence of democracy is
creating. The technique of democracy is group organization." According to
this school of thought no living state is possible without the development
and the extension of the individual self. The State itself is no static
unit. Nor is it an arbitrary creation. "It is a process; a continual
self-modification to express its different stages of growth in which each
and all must be so flexible that continual change of form is twin fellow
of continual growth." This can only be realised when there is a clear
perception that individuals and groups and the nation stand in no
antithesis. The integration of all these into one conscious whole means
and must necessarily mean the integration of the wills of individuals into
the common and collective will of the entire nation.
The general trend of European thought has not accepted the ideal of this
new democracy. But the present problems which are agitating Europe seem
to offer no other solution. I have very little doubt that this ideal which
appears to many practical politicians as impracticable will be accepted as
the real ideal at no distant future. "There is little yet," I again quote
from the same author, "that is practical in practical politics."
The fact is that all the progressive movements in Europe have suffered
because of the want of a really spiritual basis and it is refreshing to
find that this writer has seized upon it. So to those who think that the
neighbourhood group is puny to serve as a real foundation of
self-Government, she says, "is our daily life profane and only so far as
we rise out of it do we approach the sacred life? Then no wonder politics
are what they have become. But this is not the creed of men to-day; we
believe in the sacredness of life; we believe that divinity is for ever
incarnating in humanity, and so we believe in Humanity and the common
daily life of all men."
There is thus a great deal of correspondence between this view of life and
the view which I have been endeavouring to place before my countrymen for
the last 15 years. For the truth of all truths, is that the outer Leela of
God reveals itself in history. Individual Society, Nation, and Humanity
are the different aspects of that very Leela and no scheme of
self-Government which is practically true and which is really practical
can be based on any other philosophy of life. It is the realisation of
this truth which is the supreme necessity of the hour. This is the soul of
Indian thought, and this is the ideal towards which the recent thought of
Europe is slowly, but surely, advancing.