Makers of Modern India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Unreal issues are therefore raised to divert the growing consciousness of the masses into futile channels, and by this deflection dissipate their mounting strength. The ‘Two-Nation’ theory so ardently pressed by the League is meant therefore to confuse the Muslim masses and camouflage the real social issues. These people are led into believing that all their miseries spring from only one source, a Hindu-dominated country, and if only they could get ‘their territory’ separated from the Hindu tyranny, all their troubles would instantly disappear. In the absence of any real political or economic education, they are inclined to swallow this sop and lend themselves to working up frenzied agitations in support of what is known as Pakistan …

  The incitement to organized violence through mass frenzy by a reactionary leadership, marks a significant phase in our political history—as always and everywhere it has sought to camouflage its real character under the guise of religion. The Christian crusader fought no more for the Christian holy land than do the Muslim masses for their sacred Pakistan. As the challenge of a growing, conscious people becomes more pronounced, its assertive qualities more determined, the traditional citadels of economic and social power must strive to deal the rising new order a death blow. The core of all religious wars has been economic and political domination. If religion be faith, then it is outside its very nature to lend itself to fratricidal orgies. For faith is a stream that springs from within and is neither protected nor destroyed from without. The very act of coercion is a complete negation of all that religion has stood for or meant emotionally for people …

  It is obvious that the waves of violence which are rocking the country cannot be abated by either hitting back with greater violence or by a mere appeal to cold reason. The old order has been set adrift from its old moorings. We have now to fall back with greater earnestness and effort on all the available social and cultural material out of which more positive structures can be raised, and new avenues cut, which time and patience can convert into abiding channels like new veins in a system through which continued streams of creative and invigorating activities can be made to flow until the organism heaves up anew and functions as a normal, healthy mechanism. Every nerve must be bent to foster scientific thinking and rational analysis through every resource available, administrative or public or private. Activities of a national character must be encouraged on a nation-wide basis with all the emphasis on its universal character, especially so with organisations of the masses, which must be converted from their present local units coloured aggressively by the emotions of local environments into large national bodies with national objectives. Very intensive education of the masses must be undertaken where the conflagration has not spread, and the real nature of their political and social problems explained …

  History, reason and commonsense are with us. For the very violence is but the sign of desperation; it shows the gathering pressure of social forces which can neither be abated nor overcome. The fact also remains that the basic economic problem of India, even as its political problem, is one and indivisible. The measures that can solve poverty and ignorance in one province, can solve them in another. The class that oppresses one section of the community can also oppress another. Religion, community nor even caste identity is a safeguard against class exploitation, much less artificial frontiers. Neither the Muslim landlords of Sind nor the Muslim capitalists of Bengal will cease to exploit the Muslim masses the moment Pakistan walls them off from ‘Hindu’ India. But it is when these Muslim masses peep over that wall apprehensively and shyly and see what is happening on the other side that they will determine whether the wall is to continue to stand or go. The onus of that responsibility rests on us … There are not two nations—there are only two forces, those that create and those that destroy—the former have a future, the latter none.

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  Chapter Thirteen

  The Renewed Agendas of

  M.K. Gandhi

  The volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi run chronologically, from the 1880s to the 1940s. On many subjects, a later statement of Gandhi appears to diverge from or even contradict an earlier statement. He himself urged that in these cases the reader should take his most recent pronouncement as reflecting his correct view of the question.

  As noted in the prologue to this book, Gandhi was rare among modern politicians in his readiness to engage in argument and in his willingness to change or modify his opinions in the light of criticism. His critics were sometimes fanatics and cranks, whose angry and abusive letters were often reprinted in his journals Young India and Harijan, alongside Gandhi’s good-tempered replies. At other times these critics were thinkers and actors of more substance. These too he responded to, at greater length, and perhaps more substantively.

  This chapter presents Gandhi’s considered views on three important subjects—nationalism, caste and Hindu—Muslim relations. Here, he is responding to criticisms we have encountered in previous chapters. We end with two short statements which outline Gandhi’s hopes for a free India.

  Revisiting Nationalism

  In this first excerpt, Gandhi responds to Rabindranath Tagore’s worry, printed in Chapter Eight, that non-cooperation would foster an unreasoning hostility against the foreigner and foreign culture.1

  The Poet of Asia, as Lord Hardinge2 called Dr. Tagore, is fast becoming, if he has not already become, the Poet of the World. Increasing prestige has brought to him increasing responsibility. His greatest service to India must be his poetic interpretation of India’s message to the world. The Poet is, therefore, sincerely anxious that India should deliver no false or feeble message in her name. He is naturally jealous of his country’s reputation. He says he has striven hard to find himself in tune with the present movement. He confesses that he is baffled. He can find nothing for his lyre in the din and the bustle of Non-cooperation. In three forceful letters, he has endeavoured to give expression to his misgivings, and he has come to the conclusion that Non-cooperation is not dignified enough for the India of his vision, that it is a doctrine of negation and despair. He fears that it is a doctrine of separation, exclusiveness, narrowness and negation.

  No Indian can feel anything but pride in the Poet’s exquisite jealousy of India’s honour. It is good that he should have sent to us his misgivings in language at once beautiful and clear.

  In all humility, I shall endeavour to answer the Poet’s doubts. I may fail to convince him or the reader who may have been touched by his eloquence, but I would like to assure him and India that Non-cooperation in conception is not any of the things he fears, and he need have no cause to be ashamed of his country for having adopted Non-cooperation. If, in actual application, it appears in the end to have failed, it will be no more the fault of the doctrine, than it would be of Truth, if those who claim to apply it in practice do not appear to succeed. Non-cooperation may have come in advance of its time. India and the world must then wait, but there is no choice for India save between violence and Non-cooperation.

  Nor need the Poet fear that Non-cooperation is intended to erect a Chinese wall between India and the West. On the contrary, Non-cooperation is intended to pave the way to real, honourable and voluntary cooperation based on mutual respect and trust. The present struggle is being waged against compulsory cooperation, against one-sided combination, against the armed imposition of modern methods of exploitation, masquerading under the name of civilization.

  Non-cooperation is a protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil.

  The Poet’s concern is largely about the students. He is of the opinion that they should not have been called upon to give up Government schools before they had other schools to go to. Here I must differ from him. I have never been able to make a fetish of literary training. My experience has proved to my satisfaction that literary training by itself adds not an inch to one’s moral height and that character-building is independent of literary training. I am firmly of the opinion that the Gov
ernment schools have unmanned us; rendered us helpless and Godless. They have filled us with discontent, and providing no remedy for the discontent, have made us despondent. They have made us what we were intended to become—clerks and interpreters. A Government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed. And if it was wrong to cooperate with the Government in keeping us slaves, we were bound to begin with those institutions in which our association appeared to be most voluntary. The youth of a nation are its hope. I hold that as soon as we discovered that the system of Government was wholly, or mainly evil, it became sinful for us to associate our children with it . . .

  I, therefore, think that the Poet has been unnecessarily alarmed at the negative aspect of Non-cooperation. We had lost the power of saying ‘no’. It had become disloyal, almost sacrilegious to say ‘no’ to the Government. This deliberate refusal to cooperate is like the necessary weeding process that a cultivator has to resort to before he sows. Weeding is as necessary to agriculture as sowing. Indeed, even whilst the crops are growing, the weeding fork, as every husbandman knows, is an instrument almost of daily use. The nation’s Non-cooperation is an invitation to the Government to cooperate with it on its own terms as is every nation’s right and every good government’s duty. Non-cooperation is the nation’s notice that it is no longer satisfied to be in tutelage. The nation had taken to the harmless (for it), natural and religious doctrine of Non-cooperation in the place of the unnatural and irreligious doctrine of violence. And if India is ever to attain the swaraj of the Poet’s dream, she will do so only by Non-violent Non-cooperation. Let him deliver his message of peace of the world, and feel confident that India, through her Non-cooperation, if she remains true to her pledge, will have exemplified his message. Non-cooperation is intended to give the very meaning to patriotism that the Poet is yearning after. An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity. An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to a groaning world. Non-cooperation is designed to supply her with a platform from which she will preach the message.

  Revisiting Caste

  In Chapter Nine, we printed excerpts from a pamphlet by B.R. Ambedkar called ‘The Annihilation of Caste’. Ambedkar’s frontal attack on the organizing principles of Hindu society prompted a rejoinder by Gandhi, which he printed in his journal, Harijan. Ambedkar’s indictment, thought Gandhi, was a challenge to Hindus to put their house in order.3

  . . . Dr Ambedkar was to have presided last May at the annual conference of the Jat-Pat-Torak Mandal of Lahore. But the conference itself was cancelled because Dr. Ambedkar’s address was found by the Reception Committee to be unacceptable. How far a Reception Committee is justified in rejecting a President of its choice because of his address that may be objectionable to it is open to question. The Committee know Dr. Ambedkar’s views on caste and the Hindu scriptures. They knew also that he had in unequivocal terms decided to give up Hinduism. Nothing less than the address that Dr. Ambedkar had prepared was to be expected from him. The Committee appears to have deprived the public of an opportunity of listening to the original views of a man who has carved out for himself a unique position in society. Whatever label he wears in future, Dr. Ambedkar is not the man to allow himself to be forgotten.

  Dr. Ambedkar was not going to be beaten by the Reception Committee. He has answered their rejection of him by publishing the address at his own expense . . .

  No reformer can ignore the address. The orthodox will gain by reading it. This is not to say that the address is not open to objection. It has to be read if only because it is open to serious objection. Dr. Ambedkar is a challenge to Hinduism. Brought up as a Hindu, educated by a Hindu potentate, he has become so disgusted with the so-called savarna Hindus for the treatment that he and his have received at their hands that he proposes to leave not only them but the very religion that is his and their common heritage. He has transferred to that religion his disgust against a part of its professors.

  But this is not to be wondered at. After all one can only judge a system or an institution by the conduct of its representatives. What is more, Dr. Ambedkar found that the vast majority of savarna Hindus had not only conducted themselves inhumanly against those of their fellow religionists whom they classed as untouchables, but they had based their conduct on the authority of their scriptures, and when he began to search them he had found ample warrant for their belief in untouchability and all its implications. The author of the address has quoted chapter and verse in proof of his threefold indictment—inhuman conduct itself, the unabashed justification for it on the part of the perpetrators, and the subsequent discovery that the justification was warranted by their scriptures.

  No Hindu who prizes his faith above life itself can afford to underrate the importance of this indictment. Dr. Ambedkar is not alone in his disgust. He is its most uncompromising exponent and one of the ablest among them. He is certainly the most irreconcilable among them. Thank God, in the front rank of the leaders he is singularly alone and as yet but a representative of a very small minority. But what he says is voiced with more or less vehemence by many leaders belonging to the depressed classes. Only the latter, for instance Rao Bahadur M.C. Rajah and Dewan Bahadur Srinivasan, not only do not threaten to give up Hinduism but find enough warmth in it to compensate for the shameful persecution to which the vast mass of Harijans are exposed.

  But the fact of many leaders remaining in the Hindu fold is no warrant for disregarding what Dr. Ambedkar has to say. The savarnas have to correct their belief and their conduct. Above all, those who are by their learning and influence among the savarnas have to give an authoritative interpretation of the scriptures. The questions that Dr. Ambedkar’s indictment suggests are:

  What are the scriptures?

  Are all the printed texts to be regarded as an integral part of them or is any part of them to be rejected as unauthorized interpolations?

  What is the answer of such accepted and expurgated scriptures on the question of untouchability, caste, equality of status, inter-dining and intermarriages?

  . . . The Vedas, Upanishads, Smritis and Puranas including Ramayana and Mahabharata are the Hindu scriptures. Nor is this a finite list. Every age or even generation has added to the list. It follows, therefore, that everything printed or even found handwritten is not scripture. The Smritis, for instance, contain much that can never be accepted as the word of God. Thus many of the texts that Dr. Ambedkar quotes from the Smritis cannot be accepted as authentic. The scriptures properly so called can only be concerned with eternal verities and must appeal to any conscience, i.e., any heart whose eyes of understanding are opened. Nothing can be accepted as the word of God which cannot be tested by reason or is not capable of being spiritually experienced. And even when you have an expurgated edition of the scriptures, you will need their interpretation. Who is the best interpreter? Not learned men surely. Learning there must be. But religion does not live by it. It lives in the experiences of its saints and seers, in their lives and sayings. When all the most learned commentators of the scriptures are utterly forgotten, the accumulated experience of the sages and saints will abide and be an inspiration for ages to come.

  Caste has nothing to do with religion. It is a custom whose origin I do not know and do not need to know for the satisfaction of my spiritual hunger. But I do know that it is harmful both to spiritual and national growth . . . The law of varna teaches us that we have each one of us to earn our bread by following the ancestral calling. It defines not our rights but our duties. It necessarily has reference to callings that are conducive to the welfare of humanity and to no other. It also follows that there is no calling too low and none too high. All are good, lawful, and absolutely equal in status. The callings of a Brahmin—spiritual teacher—and a scavenger are equal, and their due performance carries equal merit before God and at one time seems to have carried identical reward before man. Both were entitled to their livelihood and no more. Indeed one traces even n
ow in the villages the faint lines of this healthy operation of the law. Living in Segaon with its population of 600, I do not find a great disparity between the earnings of different tradesmen including Brahmins. I find too that real Brahmins are to be found even in these degenerate days who are living on alms freely given to them and are giving freely of what they have of spiritual treasures. It would be wrong and improper to judge the law of varna by its caricature in the lives of men who profess to belong to a varna whilst they openly commit a breach of its only operative rule. Arrogation of a superior status by any of the varnas over another is a denial of the law. And there is nothing in the law of varna to warrant a belief in untouchability. (The essence of Hinduism is contained in its enunciation of one and only God as Truth and its bold acceptance of ahimsa as the law of the human family.)

  I am aware that my interpretation of Hinduism will be disputed by many besides Dr. Ambedkar. That does not affect my position. It is an interpretation by which I have lived for nearly half a century and according to which I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to regulate my life.

  In my opinion the profound mistake that Dr. Ambedkar has made in his address is to pick out the texts of doubtful authenticity and value and the state of degraded Hindus who are no fit specimens of the faith they so woefully misrepresent. Judged by the standard applied by Dr. Ambedkar, every known living faith will probably fail.

  In his able address, the learned Doctor has over-proved his case. Can a religion that was professed by Chaitanya, Jnanadeya, Tukaram, Tiruvalluvar, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, Vivekanand and a host of others who might be easily mentioned, be so utterly devoid of merit as is made out in Dr. Ambedkar’s address? A religion has to be judged not by its worst specimens but by the best it might have produced. For that and that alone can be used as the standard to aspire to, if not to improve upon.