Mahatma Gandhi
Page 6
This is the core of Gandhi’s idea of freedom. He was above all concerned with right obedience to one’s self. Thirteen years after writing Hind Swaraj he declared, “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within.”41 For Gandhi, such tyranny was a necessary element of swaraj. It came never from a political system, but only from self-discovery: “Swaraj is to be found by searching inward, not by vainly expecting others, even our fellow-workers, to secure it for us.”42
Several components of Gandhi’s theory of swaraj were noted earlier, in the introduction: the connections between swaraj and satyagraha, the relationship drawn in the theory between the personal and the political, and the emphasis placed on specific social reforms. Now and in the next chapter, the analysis turns to Gandhi’s development and implementation of the theory after his return to India in 1915. The movement in South Africa was small and restricted compared to the broad canvas of the Indian nationalist movement. Gandhi’s theory now confronted possibilities for political and social change on a huge scale; his ideas would now be tested and refined in a demanding crucible of practice. Some of the modifications of Hind Swaraj were just noted, but in India a substantial development of his thought occurred as he quickly acquired more power in the freedom movement.
Gandhi’s shaping of his idea of swaraj now took form in India in three main areas. First, he emphasized individual civil liberty as inherent to swaraj as he had not done before in South Africa, arguing that freedom must be viewed first as an individual and not a collective value. “Swaraj of a people,” Gandhi affirmed, “means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals.”43 He stressed the necessity of individual political and social freedom. “If the individual ceases to count what is left of society? Individual freedom alone can make a man voluntarily surrender himself completely to the services of society. If it is wrested from him, he becomes an automaton and society is ruined. No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man.”44
As Gandhi’s thought matured, he placed increasing emphasis upon nonviolence, and saw its observance as closely linked with the preservation of liberty. He argued that “Civil Liberty consistent with the observance of nonviolence is the first step towards swaraj.”45 Yet Gandhi would not allow even this commitment to nonviolence to jeopardize free speech and action: “even those who believe in violence…will have the right to preach and even practise violence after we secure swaraj through non-violence.”46 He summed up his belief in the elementary importance of individual liberty near the end of his life, when he said that it is better to “be free and make mistakes than to be unfree and avoid them [for] the mind of a man who is good under compulsion cannot improve, in fact it gets worse. And when compulsion is removed, all the defects well up to the surface with even greater force.”47
Second, although Gandhi carefully specified the conventional civil liberties of the press, speech, association, and religion as fundamental to swaraj, he held that the essence of freedom must constitute more than social, political or economic liberty.
Let there be no mistake about my conception of Swaraj. It is complete independence of alien control and complete economic independence. So, at one end you have political independence; at the other, economic. It has two other ends. One of them is moral and social, the corresponding end is dharma, i.e., religion in the highest sense of the term. It includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc., but is superior to them all. You may recognize it by the name of Truth, not the honesty of experience, but the living Truth that pervades everything and will survive all destruction and all transformation. Moral and social uplift may be recognized by the term we are used to, i.e., non-violence. Let us call this the square of swaraj, which will be out of shape if any of its angles is untrue. We cannot achieve this political and economic freedom without truth and non-violence, in concrete terms without a living faith in God, and hence moral and social elevation.48
These were the four points on Gandhi’s compass of swaraj: truth, nonviolence, political and economic freedom; swaraj remained incomplete without the realization of each since each was interwoven with all.
As we have seen, Gandhi’s conception of swaraj made a key distinction between “inner” and “outer” forms of freedom; this distinction involved a relegation of political freedom and national independence to a subsidiary position. But as the struggle for political independence quickened it became increasingly difficult for India’s leaders to appreciate the advantages of “inner” freedom. Gandhi consistently emphasized the supreme value of a supra-political form of freedom but few other Indian political leaders shared his views on this issue. His difficulties are well expressed in this “Message to the Ceylon National Congress,” delivered in 1927:
It is, I know, a pleasurable pastime (and I have indulged in it sufficiently as you know), to strive against the powers that be, and to wrestle with the Government of the day, especially when that government happens to be a foreign government and a government under which we rightly feel we have not that scope which we should have, and which we desire, for expansion and fullest self-expression. But I have also come to the conclusion that self-expression and self-government are not things which may be either taken from us by anybody or which can be given us by anybody. It is quite true that if those who happen to hold our destinies, or seem to hold our destinies in their hands, are favorably disposed, are sympathetic, understand our aspirations, no doubt it is then easier for us to expand. But after all self-government depends entirely upon our own internal strength, upon our ability to fight against the heaviest odds. Indeed, self-government which does not require that continuous striving to attain it and to sustain it is not worth the name. I have therefore endeavored to show both in word and in deed, that political self-government, that is self-government for a large number of men and women, is no better than individual self-government, and therefore it is to be attained by precisely the same means that are required for individual self-government or self-rule, and so as you know also, I have striven in India to place this ideal before the people in season and out of season, very often much to the disgust of those who are merely politically minded.49
Gandhi argued, until the end of his life—not only before Indian independence but also in the months after—that swaraj must remain hollow and meaningless without the acquisition of “inward freedom,” and for this a course of action should be followed through which Indians might gain sovereignty over themselves as well as over their nation. The example of the Calcutta fast, to be examined in chapter 5, provides a key case in point. Three weeks after India attained independence, Gandhi fasted for Hindu-Muslim harmony in the midst of civil war. India had still not achieved swaraj.
The origins of satyagraha in Gandhi’s South African experience were traced above. A closer consideration may now be made of the relationship between satyagraha and swaraj. This primarily involves an examination of the various forms which satyagraha assumes in its development from an elementary method of civil disobedience to an all-embracing approach to moral, social, and political reform. Since Gandhi believed in the inseparable relationship of swaraj to satyagraha, a development in one was always paralleled, in his thought, by a similar development in the other: as a reformer he sought to keep his goal of swaraj firmly tied to his method of satyagraha.
The basic premise underlying the relationship between these two concepts is set forth in Hind Swaraj. There swaraj is defined as self-rule and satyagraha represents the way that individuals, through voluntary self-sacrifice, may gain control over themselves. The special function of satyagraha, when extended to the political realm, is to strengthen individuals’ “soul-force” as they offer civil disobedience against the government. Satyagraha, remarks the Editor in Hind Swaraj,
is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force. For instance, the Government of th
e day has passed a law which is applicable to me. I do not like it. If by using violence I force the Government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self.50
When one’s spiritual power, or soul-force, becomes fully developed through self-sacrifice, one has mastered the technique and has attained swaraj. “Control over the mind is alone necessary [for the satyagrahi] and when that is attained, man is free.”51 The belief in achieving self-realization through voluntary self-sacrifice and suffering is embedded in the Indian tradition. Gandhi’s innovation emerged with his relation of this ancient belief to the modern Indian call for social and political change. The government came to serve as the object on which the satyagrahi sharpened his horns of self-discipline. The aim of self-realization became inseparably linked with the political demand of independence. And, finally, because “there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree,”52 the only way to swaraj is through the power of satyagraha.53 The fundamental correspondence between the goal of swaraj and the method of satyagraha was thus drawn before Gandhi left South Africa and rested upon the premises set forth in Hind Swaraj.
Return to India: First Test of Ideas
The development in Gandhi’s thinking of the concepts of satyagraha and swaraj after his arrival in Bombay in January 1915 may be examined by a comparison of two of his writings. One of these was written in July 1914, immediately before his departure from South Africa; the other was delivered as a Presidential Address before the First Gujarat Political Conference in November 1917. The earlier writing was published in Gandhi’s South African paper Indian Opinion, under the title “Theory and Practice of Passive Resistance.” The discussion of satyagraha in this article remains substantially unchanged from that presented five years earlier in Hind Swaraj. Gandhi still uses the phrase “passive resistance” instead of satyagraha, even though he had coined the latter term seven years earlier. This suggests that at this point he continued to conceive of satyagraha in the limited sense of civil disobedience. He speaks of the method, in this writing, as “based upon the immutable maxim that government of the people is possible only so long as they consent either consciously or unconsciously to be governed.”54 Examples follow of the technique’s efficacy in South Africa and all are instances of civil disobedience against the government.
A strikingly different note appears in the Gujarat Address and this difference may be attributed to the problems that confronted Gandhi after his return to India. He had known of these problems in South Africa but he does not seem to have worked out a method of approach there or fully anticipated their seriousness in India. Gandhi chose to abstain for one year after his arrival from the expression of political views and from all political activity. He wanted to learn of India’s political and social problems and consider means of reform. When the period of abstinence ended he seems to have formed conclusions that guided his immediate efforts. The great single goal remained the achievement of swaraj. As before, it was seen in the Gujarat Address as a task that must begin with the acquisition of self-rule by the individual. “The first step to swaraj lies in the individual. The great truth, ‘As with the individual so with the universe,’ is applicable here as elsewhere. If we are ever torn by conflict from within, if we are ever going astray, and if instead of ruling our passions we allow them to rule us, swaraj can have no meaning for us. Government of self, then, is the first step.”55
From this point, however, the meaning of swaraj expands. It embraces the moral and social aims that eventually form the basis of Gandhi’s “Constructive Program,” or agenda of social reforms. These were the aims that swaraj must encompass through the use of satyagraha: the abolition of untouchability, improved health and hygiene in the cities and villages, temperance reform, Hindu-Muslim unity, Swadeshi (use of India-made products), advancement of women, and establishment of closer contact between the educated elite and the villagers.56 Many of these issues had been championed before by social reformers. Gandhi’s contribution was, as a national political leader, to insist that these reforms were integral components of swaraj itself. No argument was to become more central than this to Gandhi’s idea of freedom, and he now set it forth in the Gujarat Address:
We may petition the government, we may agitate in the Imperial Council for our rights; but for a real awakening of the people, the more important thing is activities directed inwards….
One sometimes hears it said: “Let us get the government of India in our own hands; everything will be all right afterwards.” There could be no greater superstition than this. No nation has gained its independence in this matter. The splendor of the spring is reflected in every tree, the whole earth is then filled with the freshness of youth. Similarly, when the spring of Swaraj is on us, a stranger suddenly arriving in our midst will observe the freshness of youth in every walk of life and will find servants of the people engaged, each according to his own abilities, in all manner of public activities.57
One instance of the “internal activity” to which Gandhi refers had occurred in Champaran. Gandhi had gone there, to the northwestern corner of Bihar, in April 1917, at the request of indigo sharecroppers to investigate their grievances with the planters. He began his inquiry but the local government intervened and ordered him to leave Champaran immediately. He elected to offer civil disobedience. The Lieutenant-Governor of the province yielded by dismissing the case against him. Gandhi proceeded with his investigation and compiled a long indictment of the planters. A commission was eventually formed of planters and government officials; Gandhi represented the peasants. The result was a successful settlement that moved Gandhi toward a position of national leadership.58
From the time of Gandhi’s arrival in Champaran, however, he concerned himself with more than the legal aspects of the problem. The poverty of the area was immense and he soon launched his social reform program. Swaraj itself, he remarked on his arrival, depended upon the uplift of these villagers.59 A series of schools was constructed, village industries established, sanitation and personal hygiene programs begun, medical relief offered, and volunteers organized for the construction of wells and roads. Later he wrote with some regret of his efforts in Champaran, “It was my desire to continue the constructive work for some years, to establish more schools and to penetrate the villages more effectively.”60 This hope was not to be fulfilled. But Champaran had taught Gandhi valuable lessons: here, the manifold nature of satyagraha opened to him and he came to know the essential connection between social reform and the political aims of the nation. So he could conclude in his Autobiography-. “The Champaran struggle was a proof of the fact that disinterested service of the people in any sphere ultimately helps the country politically.”61
Gandhi came to the Gujarat Conference, then, fresh from his Champaran success and it is not surprising that his Presidential Address concludes with a development of his concept of satyagraha, as well as an expression of confidence in its powerful potential. He advocates satyagraha for the resolution of India’s major social and religious problems as well as for political reform:
On reflection we find that we can employ satyagraha even for social reform. We can rid ourselves of the many defects of our caste system. We can resolve Hindu-Muslim differences, and we can solve political problems. It is all right that, for the sake of convenience we speak of these things as separate subjects. But it should never be forgotten that they are all closely interrelated.
This satyagraha is India’s distinctive weapon. It has had others but satyagraha has been in greater use. It is an unfailing source of strength, and is capable of being used at all times and under all circumstances. It requires no stamp of approval from Congress. He who knows its power cannot but use it. Even as the eye-lashes automatically protect the eyes, so does satyagraha, when kindled, automatically protect the freedom of the soul.62
The significance of the 1917 Gujarat Address lies in the development which it signals of Gandhi’s earlier ideas: a series of advances made in response to the political and social problems he encountered after his arrival in India. With this address, social reform found a permanent place alongside noncooperation. The fulfillment of swaraj is seen to rely upon “internal activity” or social reform. Satyagraha is recognized as a prime source of power for pursuing a wide range of reforms, the sovereign corrective of India’s social as well as political ills. Henceforth the term “passive resistance,” with its non-Indian and nonreligious associations, disappears because satyagraha has outgrown it. The theme of “swaraj through satyagraha” now dominates Gandhi’s political thought, growing in theory as well as in religious symbolism. These ideas merge together into an inseparable relationship.
In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi had stressed the essential relationship of the means to the end. Twenty years later, asked to define his national goal, he placed even greater emphasis upon a method of right action: “After all, the real definition [of swaraj] will be determined by our action, the means we adopt to achieve the goal. If we would but concentrate upon the means, swaraj will take care of itself.”63
By the time these thoughts were recorded in 1927, Gandhi had learned some hard lessons through his experiments with means. The next twenty years were to prove no easier, but only to test with increasing rigor this satyagrahi in search of swaraj.