The Great Speeches of Modern India

by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

  If we are thinking of voluntary action in terms of celebrating the Gandhian spirit then we must understand how Gandhiji himself looked upon voluntarism and voluntary organizations, and how he wanted that all these voluntary activities and the force, the spirit and strength created by them must converge on the point where there is mass action. If Gandhiji had thought from the very beginning that the kind of community he wanted to create should be evolved by the traditional methods of democratic politics and if he had thought of it consistently, nobody would have been able to prevent him from becoming the Prime Minister. The country would have given him support in full measure.

  What I am trying to drive at is this: whether we are doing our work as Gandhian constructive workers or as other social workers, we are all voluntary workers. We are leaving to the politicians, to the state and to the government, the main task of building up this country and of changing it. It is there that we go wrong. I have almost come to the conclusion that it is not possible to bring about a social revolution changing society from its roots—by democratic means. The democratic socialists have been in power in some countries in the West for quite some years. The longest period that they have been in power is in Sweden. Yet in spite of the fact that the socialists have been in power continuously for years and years, basically Swedish society continues to be a capitalist society and will remain so.

  What are the revolutionary changes that have taken place in India since independence? Only two changes have seeped down to the roots of the Indian society. One is the abolition of princedom and the other the abolition of the zamindari system. Zamindari has been destroyed from the roots. But for the rest, feudalism has firmly entrenched itself especially in ex-zamindari areas and a capitalist society has come into being, in spite of all the talk of socialism and communism. Though the roots of feudalism have been destroyed with the destruction of the princely order and the zamindari order, no socialist society has come into being during the past twenty-two years. Feudalism is entrenched in the rural society. It is everywhere—in U.P., in Bihar—except, perhaps, in the ryotwari areas where it takes a different form. But it does exist there too, though not in the same virulent form or elsewhere. Even if you nationalize, capitalism is there. In nationalizing, what do we do? Is there any basic fundamental change in the public sector except the change in ownership and, therefore, in the distribution of surplus or profit? Except for that, what is the status of labour? What about industrial relations? This is not socialism. This is bureaucratism. There is no fundamental change. I have begun to doubt very seriously whether any government is going to bring about a radical social revolution in India through democratic means. When the first non-Congress Government came to power in Bihar, I made some proposals to those people. During those ten months, not an inch of progress was made towards any of these things.

  And let me give you just one little example to show how this democratic method is defeated. A law was passed by the Bihar Legislative Assembly and later on by the Council in 1950. That law was called the Privileged Person Homestead Tenancy Act. This Act created a new kind of tenancy—homestead tenancy. If a Harijan had his little hut, mud-hut or even leaf-hut or straw-hut on a plot of land, then this legislation gave him occupancy rights in that little plot of land and a little area around it. If he was paying his landowner any rent he continued to pay rent. He would not become the proprietor, but would become a homestead tenant and would be secure in the enjoyment of that little hut of his.

  Now you go to Bihar. Everyday evictions are taking place. If the landowner becomes angry with his labourer, the first thing he does is to drive him out of his hut. It takes him no time to destroy the hut and then he has the field ploughed over so that there is no sign of the hut left on the field. This is happening every day in Bihar though the law has existed for the last twenty years. During the tenure of the non-Congress Government, I told them: ‘Please do something about this, for heaven’s sake.’ Formerly, the law required that the man occupying the hut would have to make an application. Later, the rules were amended and did not have to apply. The officer concerned could suo motu put on record that plot so and so with its particular measurements was in the name of such and such a man. Once it is in the revenue records it would be secure. Many people are not aware of this. If this kind of injustice has not been corrected in twenty years in spite of this legislation, what do you expect to happen?

  Take the case of share-croppers. We hear about the Naxalites. I have every sympathy with the Naxalbari people. They are violent people. But I have every sympathy with them because they are doing something for the poor. There is some limit to the patience of the people. Why cannot the question of sharecroppers be settled? The law gives them certain rights. After they cultivate a piece of land for so many years, they get occupancy rights and they cannot be evicted. But in Bihar and Bengal the landowner is free to evict them, and he does evict them. What do you think is happening in Purnea and other areas? Thousands of share-croppers are being evicted because the landowners have the right to resume the land; because these poor people do not have even a chit to prove that the land was in their cultivating possession. They cannot prove it in a court of law. These things are happening today and the law is absolutely impotent to help these poor people.

  If the law is unable to give to the people a modicum of social and economic justice, if even whatever is on paper is not implemented, what do you think will happen if not violence erupting all over? Do you think that mere mantras of shanti are going to save the situation of the political parties which are responsible for this legislation? The very people who pass these laws have seen to it that the laws are not implemented.

  In the Bihar ministry (1967), in the first place, there was the Jan Sangh which, apart from other aspects of its politics, is conservative in social and economic matters. I was Chairman of a Committee set up by the Bihar Government to implement the things which I had suggested to them. In that Committee, both the Jan Sangh and Raja Bahadur Kamakhya Narain Singh said: ‘The contract between the share-croppers and the others sometimes is a private contract; it is a sacred contract and the state has no right to interfere.’ This is the plea they put forth in that Committee. There are all kinds of laws regarding contracts. I don’t know from where these people got this idea about a contract between an elephant and a mouse. Is it such a sacred contract that the community has no right to protect the mouse? The Congress party is in power in many states. The Congress also swears by some kind of socialism. I have not been able to understand the socialism of the Congress yet. But, whatever it is, it has to be shown at the ground level; some result has to be shown.

  In Bihar, the Gandhi Centenary Seminar recommended only two programmes. One programme was that homestead land should be made secure during the Gandhi Centenary Year, by 31 March 1970. The other was that drinking water facilities should be created where they do not exist.

  Is this asking for the moon? I find that the people are losing hope and they feel that nothing will come out of any government. When I see the situation of Bihar I also begin to share their feelings. One after the other changes in the government have taken place but nothing has changed. With all the programmes and activities in this Gandhi Centenary Year, if the problems of the people are not solved democratically, what other recourse will the people have except violence? Therefore I say, what India needs today on her political agenda is non-violent social revolution. Not only from the moral point of view but also from the practical point of view, this is one of the essential items on the political agenda of India today. Otherwise, violence will grow. I don’t care about the Naxalite movement. This is going to grow. If Gandhiji had not been born, then perhaps we might not know how else we could do this. My Sarvodaya friends and my Gandhian friends will be surprised to read what I publicly say now. I say with a due sense of responsibility that if convinced that there is no deliverance for the people except through violence, Jayaprakash Narayan will also take to violence. If the problems of the people cannot
be solved democratically I will also take to violence. I am raising these fundamental questions because, otherwise observation of Gandhi Centenary is meaningless. I am not interested in it unless we do something to change the social order. All the work that we are doing now should be looked upon as preparatory work.

  I have been a student of revolutions because I was a Marxist myself. My interest in the history of revolutions is as keen today as it ever was. My conclusion after a study of violent revolution is that a violent revolution does bring about a revolution in the sense that it uproots the old social order and destroys it from its foundation. Therefore it is looked upon as a successful revolution. But it fails in achieving the objectives for which the revolution is made. The French Revolution was a great revolution. After that many revolutions have taken place. There was the American Revolution. Undoubtedly the feudal system was destroyed from its roots.

  But what came out of these revolutions? After the revolutions, the power still was not with the people. The power did not go to the people; to the dispossessed. In Russia the revolution took place on November 7, 1917. Undoubtedly the foundation of Czarist feudalism was destroyed, Lenin said: ‘All power to the people, to the Soviets, to the workers, to the soldiers and peasants.’ Soviet Russia is a great power, but there power is not in the hands of the Soviets. The power is in the hands of a small number of people. The Chinese Revolution took place in 1949. I think Mao Tse-tung did not want to bluff anybody. He openly said that power grows out of the barrel of the gun. It is absolutely true. But in China who holds the gun today? The people do not.

  I find man is enslaved everywhere in society wherever violent revolution has taken place. Last year in Paris (1968) a revolution took place and it was led by the students and some teachers, and later joined by some of the working class. What did they seek? All of them were students and they were not tools of any organized political parties. They said: ‘We have been completely disillusioned with every kind of delegated authority. We have no faith in any deputy. We have no faith in any of the institutions which are supposed to govern in the name of the people.’ Then, what did they want? They said: ‘We want power at the work place (an echo of Gandhism); in the universities, power with the students and faculty; in the factories, power with the workers, the technicians, the engineers, the managers and the rest of them; in the villages power with the people in the farms.’ They want power at the work place. If these French revolutionaries use the means of violence, they will never be able to establish power at the work place. They will only be able to destroy the power structure that exists today in the field of economics, politics, etc. If they use violence, in France or elsewhere, something else will take its place, which will not be power at the work place. This is my fear.

  Now, why do I say all this? As a result of the experience of democratic societies in other parts of the world and of democratic government in our own country, I have begun to doubt on the one hand whether social revolution can be brought about by democratic means and, on the other, I reject violence as only half the revolution. The more important half of it is the betrayal of the people.

  I don’t want power for myself; I want power for the people. Therefore, I cannot support the Naxalites and I hope to persuade them at some point of time or the other. If they want power for themselves and/or the Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist, then it is all right and let them do what they wish. But I would not agree with this. Shri Jyoti Basu said at a recent workers’ meeting in Calcutta: ‘I want factories to be given to the workers.’ I would like to know in which Communist country the factories belong to the workers. Not a single factory belongs to the workers in any Communist country except, in some respects, in Yugoslavia which the other Communists do not accept as a proper Communist country. The factories belong to the state. They dupe the workers. They say, ‘the state belongs to you’, as if the workers can do anything with the state. This is the kind of dictatorial set-up that we find in the Communist countries. Where do we go? It is here that Gandhi had something to say.

  Nowadays in India there is a conscious effort to denigrate Gandhiji and his ideals. There is an organized effort to say, ‘What is all this talk of Satyagraha, what is Gandhiji’s contribution in bringing freedom to India, how is he responsible for that’, etc. As one who had participated in the struggle, I make bold to say that if Gandhiji had not created a mass awakening and sustained it over a period of twenty-seven years, I don’t think it would have been possible to raise the Azad Hind Fauj under the leadership of Netaji. Today, we hear that in Ludhiana or somewhere a statue of Gandhiji was blackened. After all, Gandhi was murdered in this capital of India.

  Gandhiji was asked: ‘You do this constructive social work. You take up a programme and make a countrywide propaganda and campaign for the purpose of converting the people to your scheme. If some people refuse to be converted what will you do? Will you go on trying to convert everyone till doomsday?’ Gandhiji said: ‘Certainly not.’ He explained: ‘If I am convinced that I have done enough and there are still some people who refuse to be persuaded then I will use my unfailing weapon of non-violent non-cooperation.’ This Brahmastra is to be used as a part of the strategy of a vast movement of change and reconstruction. Therefore, I say that we should give some thought to this—how all of us can join hands together in fashioning one simple programme like the Salt Satyagraha?

  There should be one simple programme of mass action which we can place before the people from today and then go on converting and persuading the people to launch a mass movement of change in a non-violent way. A non-violent revolution, unlike a violent revolution, cannot take place just in ten days. John Reed wrote a famous book: Ten Days That Shook the World. It is not like that. A non-violent movement develops step by step and it, therefore, takes time.

  I think it was given to Vinobaji’s genius to find out that the constructive organizations in the field were losing the spirit and losing their perspective and were slowly getting tied to the chariot wheels of this big Juggernaut, the State of India, because one has to go for this subsidy or that grant-in-aid. In that case, we will end up by merely becoming good people who perform some kind of service without being able to change society. I do not think that any political party can do it by winning elections alone. Vinobaji, instead, laid emphasis on constructive work organizations already in the field set up by Gandhiji. He also launched a programme of Bhoodan to which people responded. In a country like India redistribution of land is absolutely essential as a measure of social and economic justice. The problem of fragmentation is not difficult to solve. It could be solved by consolidation of holdings. It could be solved by cooperative agriculture. When you have a society in which there is scarcity of land and many people, with 85 or 90 percent of the people living in the villages and depending on agriculture; if you have a situation where a few people own hundreds of thousands of acres and the rest, millions of them, are landless, then truly it is an explosive situation. You have an unjust situation. Many people laughed at Bhoodan and said it was a failure. I do not think you are aware of the programme in all its aspects. You may not have taken the trouble to find out the facts about Bhoodan. It has been a failure in the sense that it has failed to solve the problem of landlessness. But let me tell you frankly that the problem of landlessness is insoluble in India. Nobody can solve it because our population is too vast. Therefore, along with khadi and village industries, there should be a widespread network of small rural industries. But to the extent to which land redistribution has been effected in India, many times more acreage of land has been redistributed by Bhoodan than by legislation. This is true of almost every state except West Bengal from whose Secretariat I do not have the figures.

  Jawaharlal Nehru always laid emphasis on questions of land reform, redistribution of land and security for tenants. These three things always figured in his letters to chief ministers and also in his speeches. In spite of that, in my state (Bihar), even though the ceiling law was passed, not one acre of land
was redistributed as a result of surplus being declared over the ceiling. Not one acre was redistributed, whereas we have been able to distribute 3,65,000 acres of land which are fit for cultivation. We have rejected as unfit for cultivation about sixteen lakhs of acres in Bihar. In UP not more than 10,000 to 12,000 acres of land have been redistributed through legislation; but 3,10,000 acres through Bhoodan. Recently I went to Bombay. This is a ryotwari area and I wanted to know the position. I got the figures from the Secretariat. The Revenue Department wrote to me a letter saying that as a result of the Ceiling Act they were expected to get surplus land totalling 1,29,000 acres. But in Maharashtra we have redistributed 1,06,000 acres of land. This is the social and economic change brought about by Bhoodan. No amount of khadi work, no amount of work among the delinquent or among handicapped children or nutrition programmes is going to bring about social change.

  Now we have launched Gramdan. We should look upon ourselves as a voluntary organization, and Gandhiji was an incarnation of voluntarism. But this is where he wanted his voluntarism to begin. You see now the French Revolutionaries are talking of decentralization. But when a Gandhian talks of decentralization, immediately our learned people in Delhi University, in the Planning Commission and in the Government of India turn round and say: ‘In this age of technology, Mr Jayaprakash Narayan, do you think that decentralization is possible?’ France is one of the two most highly technologically-developed countries of western Europe, next only to West Germany. Yet the French are talking of decentralization. If the dimensions of our social, economic and political institutions are beyond human scope, then man is going to be crushed under the Juggernaut organizations, under over-mechanization. The students in western Europe are revolting against exactly this very corruption of civilization in which the autonomy of the individual is being completely suppressed. Gandhiji has said that man is the supreme consideration for him. He wanted the highest possible moral, material and physical development of the individual human being. He begins from there. If we don’t believe in the machine, if we don’t believe in organization, but if we believe in man and in the dignity of man, then let us take a second look at Gandhiji and during the Gandhi Centenary Year let us take up projects for understanding man better. In this Centenary Year, we have to snatch the initiative from the hands of politicians, from the Parliament and the legislatures and give it back to the people. This is our job.