LOOKING BACK AT THE BATTLE OF FREEDOM

COMING OF GANDHIJI

THE CONGRESS BECOMES A DYNAMIC ORGANIZATION

-         Jawaharlal Nehru

When Gandhiji entered the Congress organization for the first time he immediately brought about complete change in its constitution. He made it a democratic and a mass based organization. Democratic it had been previously also but it had so far been limited in franchise and restricted to the upper classes. Now the peasants rolled in and in its new garb, it began to assume the look of a vast agrarian organization with a strong sprinkling of the middle-classes. This agrarian character was to grow. Industrial workers also came in but as individuals and not in their separate organized capacity.

New Technique

            Action was to be the basis and objective of this organization, action based on peaceful methods. Thus far the alternatives had been just talking and passing resolutions, or terroristic activity. Both of these were set aside and terrorism was especially condemned as opposed to the basic policy of the Congress. A new technique of action was evolved which though perfectly peaceful yet involved nonsubmission to what was considered wrong and as a consequence a willing acceptance of the pain and suffering involved in this Gandhi was an odd kind of pacifist for he was an activist full of dynamic energy. There was no submission in him to fate or anything that be considered evil; he was full to resistance, though this was peaceful and courteous.

            The call of action was two fold. There was of course the action involved in challenging and resisting foreign rule; there was also the action which led us to fight our own social evils. Apart from the fundamental objective of the Congress- the freedom of India- and the method of peaceful action, the principal planks of the Congress were national unity, which involved the solution of the minority problems, and the raising of the depressed classes and the ending of the curse of the untouchability.

            Realizing that the main props of British rule were fear, prestige, the co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the people, and contain classes whose vested interests were centered in British rule, Gandhi attacked these foundations. Titles were to be given up and though the title-holders responded to this only in small measure, the popular respect for these British-giving titles disappeared and they became symbols of degradation. New standards and values were set up and the pomp and splendour of the Viceregal court and the Princes, which used to impress so much suddenly appeared supremely ridiculous and vulgar and rather shameful, surrounded as they were by the poverty and misery of the people. Rich men were not so anxious to flaunt their riches; outwardly at least many of them adopted simpler ways and in their dress became almost indistinguishable from the humbler folk.

            The older leaders of the Congress nurtured in a different and more quiescent tradition, did not take easily to these new ways and were disturbed by the upsurge of the masses. Yet so powerful was the wave of feeling and sentiment that swept through the country, that some of that intoxication filled them also. A very few fell away and among them was Mr. M A Jinnah. He left the Congress not because of any difference of opinion on the Hindu Muslim question but because he could not adapt himself to the new and more advanced ideology, and even more so because he disliked the crowds of ill-dressed people, talking in Hindustani, who filled the Congress room. For some years he felt completely out of the picture and even decided to leave India for good. He settled down in England and spent several years there.

Antithesis of Quietism

            It is said, and I think with truth, that the Indian habit of mind is essentially one of quietism. Perhaps old races develop that attitude to life; a long tradition of philosophy also leads to it. And yet Gandhi, a typical product of India represented the very antithesis of quietism. He had been a demon of energy and action, a hustler, and a man who not only drove himself but drove others. He had done more than anyone I knew to fight and change the quietism of the Indian people.

            He sent us to the villages, and the countryside hummed with the activity of innumerable messengers of the new gospel of action. The peasant was shaken up and he began to emerge from his quiescent shell. The effect on us was different but equally far-reaching, for we saw, for the first time as it were, the villager in the intimacy of his mud-hut and with the stark shadow of hunger always pursuing him. We learnt our Indian economics more from these visits than from books and learned discourses. The emotional experience we had already undergone was emphasized and confirmed and henceforward there could be no going back for us to our old life or our old standards, howsoever much our views might change subsequently.

            Gandhi held strong views on economic, social and other matter. He did not try to impose all of these on the Congress, though he continued to develop his ideas, and sometimes in the process varied them, through his writings. But some he tried to push into the Congress. He proceeded cautiously for he wanted to carry the people with him. Sometimes he went too far ahead of the Congress and had to retrace his steps. Not many accepted his views in their entirety; some disagreed with that fundamental outlook. But many accepted them in the modified form they came to the Congress as being suited to the circumstances then existing. In two respects, the background of his thought had a vague but considerable influence, the fundamental test of everything was how far it benefited the masses, and the means were always important and could not be ignored even though the end in view was right, for the means governed the end and varied it.

Belief in Moral Law

            Gandhi was essentially a man of religion, a Hindu to the innermost depths of his being, and yet his conception of religion had nothing to do with any dogma or custom or ritual. It was basically concerned with his form belief in the moral law, which he calls the Law of Truth or Love. Truth and non-violence appeared to him to be the same thing or different aspects of one and the same thing, and used these words almost interchangeably. Claiming to understand the spirit of Hinduism, he rejected every test or practice which did not fit in with his idealist interpretation of what it should be calling it an interpolation or a subsequent accretion. “I decline to be a slave’. He once said to precedents or practice I cannot understand or defend on a moral basis. And so in practice he was singularly free to take the path of his choice, to change and adapt himself, to develop his philosophy of life and action, subject only to the overriding consideration of the moral law as he conceived this to be. Whether that philosophy was right or wrong may be argued. But he insisted on applying the same fundamental yard-stick to everything, and himself specially. In politics, as in other aspects of life, this could creat difficulties for the average person, and often misunderstanding. But no difficulty made him swerve from the straight line of his choosing, though within limits he continually adapted himself to a changing situation. Every reform that he suggested, every advice that he gave to others, the straightway applied to himself. He always began with himself and his words and actions fitted into each other like a glove on the hand. And so, whatever happened, he never lost his integrity and there was always an organic completeness about his life and work. Even in his apparent failures, he seemed to grow in stature.

India of His Dreams

            What was his idea of India which he was setting out to mould according to his own wishes and ideals? I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it their country, in whose making they have an effective voice, and India in which there shall be no high class and low class of people, an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony… There can be no room in such an India for the curse of untouchability or the curse of intoxicating drinks and drugs… Women will enjoy the same rights as men… This is the India of my dreams.

            Proud of his Hindu inheritance as he was, he tried to give Hinduism a kind of universal attire and included all religious within the fold of truth. He refused to narrow his cultural inheritance. Indian culture, he wrote ‘is neither Hindu, Islamic nor any other’ wholly. It is a fusion of all’. Again he said: I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I refuse to live in other peoples’ houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave’. Influenced by modern thought currents, he never let go off his roots and clung to them.

Identification with Masses

            And so he set about to restore the spiritual unity of the people and to break the barrier between the small Westernized group at the top and the masses, to discover the living elements in the old roots and to build them, to waken these masses out of their stupor and static condition and make them dynamic. In his single-track and yet many-sided nature, the dominating impression that one gathered was his identification with the masses, a community of spirit with them, an amazing sense of unity with the dispossessed and poverty-stricken not only of India but of the would. Even religion as everything else, took second place to his passion to raise these submerged people. “A semi-starved nation can have neither religion nor art nor organization. “Whatever can be useful to starving millions in beautiful to my mind. Let us given today first the vital things of life, and all the graces and ornaments of life will follow… I want art and literature that can speak to millions’. These unhappy dispossessed million haunted him and everything seemed to revolve round them. For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance. His ambition, he said, was to wipe every tear from every eye.’

            It is not surprising that this astonishingly vital man, full of self-confidence and an unusual kind of power, standing for equality and freedom for each individual, but measuring all this in terms of the poorest, fascinated the masses of India and attracted them like a magnet. He seemed to them to link up the past with the future and to make the dismal present appear just as a stepping stone to the future of life and hope. And not the masses only but intellectuals and other also, though their minds were often troubled and confused and the change-over for them from the habits of a lifetime was more difficult. Thus he effected a vast psychological revolution not only among those who followed his lead but also among his opponents and those many neutrals we could not make up their minds what to think and what to do.

            Congress was dominated by Gandhi and yet it was a peculiar domination, for the Congress was an active, rebellious, many sided organization, full of variety of opinion, and not easily led this way or that. Often Gandhi tones down his position to meet the wishes of others, sometimes he accepted even an adverse decision. On some vital matters for him, he was adamant, and on more than one occasion there came a break between him and the Congress. But always he was the symbol of India’s independence and militant nationalism, the unyielding opponent of all those who sought to enslave, her, and it was as such a symbol that people gathered to him and accepted his lead, even though they disagreed with him on other matters. They did not always accept that lead when there was no active struggle going on, but when the struggle was inevitable that symbol became all important, and everything else was secondary.

Congress Takes to Gandhian Path

            Thus in 1920 the Indian National Congress, and to a large extent the country, took to his new and unexplored path and came into conflict repeatedly with the British Power. That conflict was inherent both in these methods and the new situation that had arisen yet at the back of all this was not political tactics and maneuvering but the desire to strengthen the Indian people, for by that strength alone could they achieve independence and retain it. Civil disobedience struggles came one after other, involving enormous suffering, but that suffering was self-invited and therefore strength-giving, not the kind which overwhelms the unwilling, leading to despair and defeatism. The unwilling also suffered, caught in the wide net of fierce governmental repression, and even the willing sometimes broke up and collapsed. But many remained true and steadfast, harder for all the experience they had undergone.

            At no time, even when its fortunes were low, did Congress surrender to superior might or submit to foreign authority. It remained the symbol of India’s passionate desire for independence and her will to resist alien domination. It was because of this that vast numbers of the Indian people sympathized with it and looked to it for leadership, even though many of them were too weak and feeble, or so circumstanced as to be unable to do anything themselves. The Congress was a party in some ways; it has also been a joint platform for several parties; but essentially it was something much more, for it represented the innermost desire of the vast numbers of our people.