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FIVE Its Obligations
IN THE early days of the new movement it was declared, in a very catching phrase, by a politician who has now turned his back on the doctrine which made him famous, that a subject nation has no politics. And it was commonly said that we as a subject nation should altogether ignore the Government and turn our attention to emancipation by self-help and self-development. This was the self-development principle carried to its extreme conclusions, and it is not surprising that phrases so trenchant and absolute should have given rise to some misunderstanding. It was even charged against us by Sir Pherozshah Mehta and other robust exponents of the opposition-cum-cooperation theory that we were advocating non-resistance and submission to political wrong and injustice! Much water has flowed under the bridges since then, and now we are being charged, in deputations to the Viceroy and elsewhere, with the opposite offence of inflaming and fomenting disturbance and rebellion. Yet our policy remains essentially the same, — not to ignore such a patent and very troublesome fact as the alien bureaucracy, for that was never our policy, — but to have nothing to do with it, in the way either of assistance or acquiescence. Far from preaching non-resistance, it has now become abundantly clear that our determination not to submit to political wrong and injustice was far deeper and sterner than that of our critics. The method of opposition differed, of course. The Moderate method of resistance was verbal only — prayer, petition and protest; the method we proposed was practical, — boycott. But, as we have pointed out, our new method, though more concrete, was in itself quite as legal and peaceful as the old. It is no offence by law to abstain from Government schools or Government courts of justice or the help and protection of the fatherly executive or the use of
Page-107 British goods; nor is it illegal to persuade others to join in our abstention.
At the same time this legality is neither in itself an essential
condition of passive resistance generally, nor can we count upon its continuance
as an actual condition of passive resistance as it is to be understood and
practised in
Page-108 press upon the people the hopelessness of appealing to the bureaucracy to reform itself and the uselessness of any partial measures. No publicist of the new school holding such views ought to mar his reputation for candour and honesty by the pretence of drawing the attention of the Government with a view to redress the grievance. If the alien laws have declared it illegal for him to do his duty, unless he lowers himself by covering it with a futile and obvious lie, he must still do his duty, however illegal, in the strength of his manhood; and if the bureaucracy decide to send him to prison for the breach of law, to prison he must willingly and, if he is worth his salt, rejoicingly go. The new spirit will not suffer any individual aspiring to speak or act on behalf of the people to palter with the obligation of high truthfulness and unflinching courage without which no one has a claim to lead or instruct his fellow-countrymen.
If this penalty of sedition is at present the chief danger which the
adherent or exponent of passive resistance runs under the law, yet there is no
surety that it will continue to be unaccompanied by similar or more serious
perils. The making of the laws is at present in the hands of our political
adversaries and there is nothing to prevent them from using this power in any way
they like, however iniquitous or tyrannical,
—
nothing except
their fear of public reprobation outside and national resistance within
Page-109 so throughout the whole range of action covered by the new politics. A law imposed by a people on itself has a binding force which cannot be ignored except under extreme necessity: a law imposed from outside has no such moral sanction; its claim to obedience must rest on coercive force or on its own equitable and beneficial character and not on the source from which it proceeds. If it is unjust and oppressive, it may become a duty to disobey it and quietly endure the punishment which the law has provided for its violation. For passive resistance aims at making a law unworkable by general and organised disobedience and so procuring its recall; it does not try, like aggressive resistance, to destroy the law by destroying the power which made and supports the law. It is therefore the first canon of passive resistance that to break an unjust coercive law is not only justifiable but, under given circumstances, a duty. Legislation, however, is not the only weapon in the hands of the bureaucracy. They may try, without legislation, by executive action, to bring opposition under the terms of the law and the lash of its penalties. This may be done either by twisting a perfectly legal act into a criminal offence or misdemeanour with the aid of the ready perjuries of the police or by executive order or ukase making illegal an action which had previously been allowed. We have had plenty of experience of both these contrivances during the course of the Swadeshi movement. To persuade an intending purchaser not to buy British cloth is no offence; but if, between a police employed to put down Swadeshi and a shopkeeper injured by it, enough evidence can be concocted to twist persuasion into compulsion, the boycotter can easily be punished without having committed any offence. Executive orders are an even more easily-handled weapon. The issuing of an ukase asks for no more trouble than the penning of a few lines by a clerk and the more or less illegible signature of a. District Magistrate; and hey-presto! that brief magical abracadabra of despotism has turned an action, which five minutes ago was legitimate and inoffensive into a crime or misdemeanour punishable in property or person. Whether it is the simple utterance of 'Bande Mataram' in the streets or an august assemblage of all that is most distinguished, able and respected in the country, one stroke of a mere
Page-110 District
Magistrate's omnipotent pen is enough to make them illegalities and turn the
elect of the nation into disorderly and riotous Budmashes to be dispersed by
police cudgels. To hope for any legal redress is futile; for the power of the
executive to issue ukases is perfectly vague and therefore practically
illimitable, and wherever there is a doubt, it can be brought within the one
all-sufficient formula,
— "It was done by the Magistrate in exercise of the
discretion given him for preserving the peace." The formula can cover any
ukase or any action, however arbitrary; and what British Judge can refuse his
support to a British Magistrate in that preservation of peace which is as
necessary to the authority and safety of the Judge as to that of the Magistrate?
But equally is it impossible for the representatives of popular aspirations to
submit to such paralysing exercise of an irresponsible and unlimited authority.
This has been universally recognised in Finally, we must be prepared for opposition not only from our natural but from unnatural adversaries, — not only from bureaucrat and Anglo-Indian, but from the more self-seeking and treacherous of our own countrymen. In a rebellion such treachery is of small importance, since in the end it is the superior fate or the superior force which triumphs; but in a campaign of passive resistance the evil example, if unpunished, may be disastrous and eat fatally into the enthusiastic passion and serried unity indispensable to such a movement. It is therefore necessary to mete out the heaviest penalty open to us in such cases — the penalty
Page-111
of social excommunication. We are not in favour of this weapon being lightly used;
but its employment, where the national will in a vital matter is deliberately
disregarded, becomes essential. Such disregard amounts to siding in matters of
life and death against your own country and people and helping in their
destruction or enslavement, — a crime which in
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