The Essential Gandhi (24 page)

 … It was unbearable for me to find that the laborers amongst whom I had spent a good deal of my time, whom I had served and from whom I had expected better things, had taken part in the riots, and I felt I was a sharer in their guilt.

[I] made up my mind to suspend Satyagraha so long as people had not learnt the lesson of peace.…

[Friends] were unhappy over the decision. They felt that if I expected peace everywhere, and regarded it as a condition precedent to launching Satyagraha, mass Satyagraha would be an impossibility. I was sorry to disagree with them. If those amongst whom I worked and whom I expected to be prepared for nonviolence and self-suffering could not be non-violent, Satyagraha was certainly impossible. I was firmly of the opinion that those who wanted to lead the people to Satyagraha ought to be able to keep the people within the limited non-violence expected of them. I hold the same opinion even today.
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 … A Satyagrahi obeys the laws of society intelligently and of his own free will because he considers it to be his sacred duty to do so. It is only when a person has thus obeyed the laws … that he is in a position to judge as to which particular rules are good and just,
and which are unjust and iniquitous.… My error lay in my failure to observe this necessary limitation. I had called on the people to launch upon civil disobedience before they had thus qualified themselves for it, and this mistake seemed to me of Himalayan magnitude.… I realized that before a people could be fit for offering civil disobedience they should thoroughly understand its deeper implications. That being so, before re-starting civil disobedience on a mass scale, it would be necessary to create a band of well-tried, pure-hearted volunteers who thoroughly understood the strict conditions of Satyagraha. They could explain these to the people, and by sleepless vigilance, keep them on the right path.
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[Whilst] this movement for the preservation of non-violence was making steady though slow progress on the one hand, the Government’s policy of lawless repression was in full career on the other.…
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[The] press laws in force in India at that time were such that, if I wanted to express my views untrammelled, the existing printing presses, which were naturally run for business, would have hesitated to publish them.…
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 … I was anxious to expound the inner meaning of Satyagraha to the public.…
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[Gandhi therefore agreed to accept editorship of the English-language weekly
Young India
, and its Gujarati companion,
Navajivan
.]

[These] journals helped me … to some extent, to remain at peace with myself, for whilst immediate resort to civil disobedience was out of the question, they enabled me freely to ventilate my views and to put heart into the people.…
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 … I am proud to think that I have numerous readers among farmers and workers. They make India. Their poverty is India’s curse and crime. Their prosperity alone can make India a fit country to live in.…
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[The two hartals in Amritsar, a city of 150,000 in the Punjab, were successful, stopping the business of the city without collision with the police and with no resort to violence. Five days later, Brigadier-General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer of the British Army arrived. He issued a proclamation on April 12, 1919 prohibiting processions and meetings. The Hunter Committee, an official board of inquiry into what happened later stated, “From an examination of the map showing the different places where the proclamation was read, it is evident that in many parts of the city the proclamation was not read.”

The Hunter Report then tells the story of the massacre of April 13: “About one o’clock, General Dyer heard that the people intended to hold a big meeting about four-thirty
P.M
. On being asked why he did not take measures to prevent its being held, he replied: ‘I went there as soon as I could. I had to think the matter out.’ ”

The meeting took place at Jallianwalla Bagh. Bagh means garden. “… It is a rectangular piece of unused ground … almost entirely surrounded by walls of buildings. The entrances and exits to it are few and imperfect.… At the end at which General Dyer entered there is a raised ground on each side of the entrance. A large crowd had gathered at the opposite end … and were being addressed by a man on a raised platform about one hundred and fifty yards from where General Dyer stationed his troops, [twenty-five Gurkhas—soldiers from Nepal; twenty-five Baluchis from Baluchistan armed with rifles; forty Gurkhas armed only with knives, and two armored cars).… Without giving the crowd any warning to disperse … he ordered his troops to fire and the firing continued for about ten minutes.… None [of the members of the audience] was provided with firearms, although some of them may have been carrying sticks.

“As soon as the firing commenced the crowd began to disperse.… The firing was individual and not volley firing.…” The Report estimated that there were three times as many wounded as dead. This adds up to 379 dead plus 1137 wounded, or 1516 casualties with the 1650 rounds fired. The crowd, penned in the low-lying garden, was a perfect target.

“… 
It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd
, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of
view, not only on those who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity,” stated General Dyer’s dispatch to his superior, quoted in the Hunter Report, with his italics.
¹¹

Dyer’s unnecessary massacre was the child of the British mentality then dominating India. Jallianwalla Bagh quickened India’s political life and drew Gandhi into politics.]

[Earlier, Gandhi had explained.] The method of Passive Resistance is the clearest and safest because, if the cause is not true, it is the resisters, and they alone, who suffer.
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[Testifying before the Hunter Committee, he was asked to elaborate his principle.]

Q. [Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, an official of the Hunter Committee] Who … is to determine the truth?

A. [Gandhi] The individual himself would determine that.

Q. Different individuals would have different views as to Truth. Would that not lead to confusion?

A. I do not think so.

Q. Honest striving after Truth is different in every case.

A. That is why the non-violence … was … necessary.… Without that there would be confusion and worse.
¹³

[All] terrorism is bad whether put up in a good cause or bad. [Every] cause is good in the estimation of its champion. General Dyer (and he had thousands of Englishmen and women who honestly thought with him) enacted Jallianwala Bagh for a cause which he undoubtedly believed to be good. He thought that by that one act he had saved English lives and the Empire. That it was all a figment of his imagination cannot affect the valuation of the intensity of his conviction.… In other words, pure motives can never justify impure or violent action.…
¹⁴

[Mahatma Gandhi always resisted politics. After his return to India he attended annual sessions of the Congress, but his public activity at such assemblies was usually limited to moving a resolution in support of the Indians in South Africa.]

I do not regard the force of numbers as necessary in a just cause, and in such a just cause every man, be he high or low, can have his remedy.
¹

 … There are moments in your life when you must act even though you cannot carry your best friends with you. The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.
²

 … All may not take part in the program of self-sacrifice but all must recognize the necessity of non-violence in word or deed.
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[Yet in 1920 Gandhi joined the All-India Home Rule League and became its president.]

 … I believe that it is possible to introduce uncompromising truth and honesty in the political life of the country.… I would strain every nerve to make Truth and Non-violence accepted in all our national activities. Then we should cease to fear or distrust our governments and their measures.…
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 … It is a mockery to ask India not to hate when … India’s most sacred feelings are contemptuously brushed aside. India feels weak and helpless and so expresses her helplessness in hating the tyrant who despises her and … compels her tender children to acknowledge his power by saluting his flag.… Non-coöperation
addresses itself to the task of making the people strong and self-reliant. It is an attempt to transform hatred into pity.

A strong and self-reliant India will cease to hate … for she will have the power to punish … and therefore the power also to pity and forgive.… Today she can neither punish nor forgive and therefore helplessly nurses hatred.
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[As] party formation progresses, we suppose it would be considered quite the proper thing for party leaders to use others as tools so long as there are any to be used. Care will therefore have to be taken rather to purify our politics than for fear of being used as tools. L. Tilak [a Brahmin mathematician and scholar, one of the leaders of the nationalist movement] considers that everything is fair in politics. We have joined issue with him in that conception.… We consider that the political life of the country will become thoroughly corrupt if we import western tactics and methods. We believe that nothing but the strictest adherence to honesty, fair play and charity can advance the true interests of the country.…
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I do not blame the British. If we were weak in numbers as the British are we would perhaps have resorted to the same methods as they are employing. Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak. The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers. The result is that each is dragging the other down. It is common experience that Englishmen lose in character after residence in India and that Indians lose in courage and manliness by contact with Englishmen. This process of weakening is good neither for us two nations nor for the world.

But if we Indians take care of ourselves the English and the rest of the world would take care of themselves. Our contribution to the progress of the world must, therefore, consist in setting our own house in order.
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Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed which … is often forcibly procured.… Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, the power is gone.
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 … We must voluntarily put up with the losses and inconveniences that arise from having to withdraw our support from a government that is ruling against our will. “Possession of power and riches is a crime under an unjust government, poverty in that case is a virtue,” says Thoreau. It may be that in the transition state we may make mistakes; there may be avoidable suffering. These things are preferable to national emasculation.

We must refuse to wait for the wrong to be righted till the wrong-doer has been roused to a sense of his iniquity. We must not, for fear of ourselves or others having to suffer, remain participators in it.…

If a father does injustice it is the duty of his children to leave the parental roof. If the headmaster of a school conducts his institution on an immoral basis the pupils must leave the school. If the chairman of a corporation is corrupt the members thereof must wash their hands clean of his corruption by withdrawing from it, even so if a government does a grave injustice the subject must withdraw coöperation wholly or partially, sufficiently to wean the ruler from wickedness. In each case conceived of by me there is an element of suffering whether mental or physical. Without such suffering it is not possible to attain freedom.
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