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Dear Sir
John Simon,
The Indian situation is indeed very complex and baffles all kinds of genius
to find a royal road to India's freedom. It may not be out of place at this
stage when changes in the Constitution are under contemplation to write to
you a few thoughts that occur to me one of the royt. They may be of no
direct help to you but I am sure they would reveal a bit of the mind of an
Indian who is in the thick of all the mental conflictions and naturally
reads more of the minds of his people than any foreigner can.
I see the boycott of your Commission is already getting weak. The most
ardent boycotters have published their proposed Constitution. Thus they have
put their views indirectly before you. It appears to me even if they had
boycotted you completely as they intended, this temporary loss of temper on
their part could have been treated but as trivial. Let me say frankly there
is no ghost of a chance of a successful revolution in India at least at the
call of these intellectuals. If it could come at their call, it is certainly
overdue because in the verity of things, there is nothing like freedom. In
reality, there are many sudden turns in the affairs of men, and your
countrymen are also afraid of a possible revolution, of course till it does
not actually come. An armed revolt being out of question, I know, between
you and them, there will be much of the usual give and take, a lot of
crossing of t's and dotting of i's. This business of writing a lot of
Constitution by Pundit Moti Lal Nehru or yourself is of little interest to
us poor farmers of India. And why?
I. The Witches' Cauldron
When things descend to melancholy, details of daily life and to the carrying
out of these fine Constitutions in the spirit of practical sympathy, there
is very little man material in India which can be singled out truly as
cultured and rightly trained to deserve the title "Indian" which means one
who, like a Japanese or an Englishman, will place before himself the
interest of the country as a whole, first and foremost, and who would burn
with a passion of its service. There are Hindus, Sikhs, Moslems, Christians,
Parsis and Jains in India but very few Indians. And strange as it may sound,
it is quite true that those who have removed those labels are empty bottles,
without having any character of wine, of acid, or of poison. They are of no
account, because, for centuries, in India the formation of character has
been associated, not with the practice of broad minded patriotism, but with
certain racial prejudices and social superstitions. It is, therefore, not
extricable from the so called religious bias and bigotry. Self Government in
India means Government by the very few cunning and aggressive people who,
once put in possession of the authority, would twist all letters of law and
constitutions to their individual wills and make them work on the communal
or the so called religious bias.
The Moslem does not believe in any country as his own. He believes in a
brotherhood which, by its sheer number, must conquer the whole world. To
him, political advancement of the Moslem brotherhood is his real progress.
From a racial point of view, this Moslem outlook is worthy of praise, and
such a community of people, unless forced by compelling circumstances,
forever refuse to live under any alien domination. The Moslem essentially
desires to rule over the world and even his children dream of pan-Islamic
Asiatic Empire.
The interest of Moslem in India cannot be national in the sense that the
national Congress of the Hindu intellectuals so far has been declaring to
mean. Men of exceptional outlooks can be found in the races, and in India's
Moslems also. To get such exceptions together at Lucknow and find agreements
merely on the surface of things in certain wordings of a few formal
resolutions to agree to the Nehru Committee's Draft, is to me a ludicrous
unreality of the so-called history-making announcements.
I was going to say it is indulgence of the Indian intellectuals in happy
phrases when the country is slowly and surely going from bad to worse. For
the reason given, which is in the very constitution of the Moslem mentality,
he can come to no terms with the Hindu but those that give him the
domination and advantage over the Hindu and all other low-lying communities
living in India. Any compromise arrives at would collapse as soon as the
Moslem finds out that it is not to his interest and he would be thereby put
merely in a position of disadvantage. Agreements bought at such a price are
not worth the paper on which they are written. Surely, the Nehru Report is
not founded on true patriotism nor true nationalism in which the individual
community merges into the larger nation with a flaming passion.
Come to the Hindu. He is the implacable but cowardly foe of the Moslem. He
does not trust him and in the heart of his heart, he considers him filthy,
cow eating, treacherous, barbarous, one capable of any tyranny, rapine,
plunder and cruelty. Even the touch of a Moslem pollutes his food! The Hindu
believes his own culture and caste superior to all other human institutions.
He alone is pure. For this very attitude, in him also, there can be no
genuine feeling akin to that noble patriotism which shapes the destinies of
nations to their freedom and progress in the West.
Thus there are two distinct mentalities at dagger's drawn, in spite of
professing friendship and political union and social amities. One is
aggressive, self assertive, revengeful mentality of a united people of one
religion, one-creed, one caste, with a dream of an empire driving them
onward. The other is the self-centered bias of highly conservative,
non-progressive, over-individualized, indifferent, disunited, dollar-loving
people who have consented to be slaves for centuries. The Hindu is still
referring, for orders, to his old scriptures from where no more orders come.
He cannot raise the marriage-able age of the girl. He cannot remarry his
child widow. He cannot give up caste and superstitions. He is hopelessly
bound with the past, somewhat like the Russian peasant tied to the
superstitions of the Roman Catholic Church. This eternal difference between
the Hindu and the Moslem is seen by Dr. James Cousins even up to the method
of wearing the Hindu dhoti and the Moslem trousers.
TANSEN -- It is, your majesty, and it would be a song most pitiful that
Akbar's legs were traitor to his feet, and after those long miles of
journeying flaunted discovery. An hour ago I died to Islam and was born a
Hindu but you are struck halfway from life to life loins downward
shamelessly a Mussalman.
AKBAR -- I have seen Hindu trousered.
TANSEN -- Very true, but there is something deeper than the fact that has
escaped you. Take a pair of trousers from Muslim's legs and put them on a
Hindu's and they will seem alike aliens of the race. Aye, perverts from the
faith. No, no too much hangs from your waist to risk. Here take this cloth
and reincarnate quickly.
AKBAR -- If my limbs could ape the Hindu as glibly as your tongue takes on
his language. I far more would fear to lose myself in that which we assume,
than be unmasked, and so I rather choose to don the Hindu than to slough the
Muslim. And being both be either at the need. (He has put on a Hindu dhoti
or skirt).
TANSEN -- "Well, well the risk at least is covered up."
(The King's Wife.)
Then there are Sikhs, for example, amongst many important newly created
nations. And each of these minorities is pulling in its own way because each
one believes in a new inspiration and a new life that it wishes to save by
cutting itself from the Hindu stock. If the mother-stock shoots up, the
beauty and life of the new graft will go. For example, the Sikh believes in
the inspirations of the Ten Gurus. His past begins from Guru Nanak and his
future lies in the progress of his ideals. His masters did cut off a portion
from the dead stock of Hindus and infuse a new life into it. They isolated
the Sikhs from the disintegrating people called the Hindus who are
self-hypnotized slaves of the peculiar theological tyranny of complex
intrigue of Brahmanism. The Sikh Gurus molded a fine strong nation out of
the terror-stricken masses. All historians admit the worth of this great
experiment of the Gurus and appreciate how Guru Gobind Singh infused a
spirit similar to the Bushido Spirit of the Japanese into his Sikhs. The
Guru isolated them from dead mass around. The Sikh keeps long hair, wears a
sword; However ridiculous these signs may appear to the modern, considered
under the local social conditions of India and the environmental context,
they are fruits of an act of genius which has concealed the new life of a
whole nation under such trivial-things-the knot of hair and beard-as nature
conceals the lightning spark in the soft wool of clouds. Hindus have seen
that this process is against them. The Guru has declared the Hindu dead as
long as he does not join his Khalsa for his emancipation. The Hindu cannot
tolerate such experimental condemnations of his caste and religion as the
Guru makes by the very reactivity of his fresh inspiration on the masses of
the Punjab. The Hindu turned down Buddhism in the past and is thinking of
devouring Sikhism, because both systems condemn the Hindu tyranny of caste
masquerading as religion of love. A few straws show which way the wind
blows. Mahatma Gandhi preaches against keeping of hair. He denounces those
Sikhs shouts of conquests as communal as against national, with which they
battered the Mughal tyranny and became a free nation. The Sikh will die if
he cuts his hair and assumes the Hindu shape. The patronizing attitude which
the Nehru Constitution adopts towards the Sikhs is the policy of the Hindu
Congress to include the Sikhs in the Hindus.
Dear Sir John Simon! There yonder are the witches who have put their
cauldron on fire. And these matters cannot be settled till the witches'
cauldron boils and incantations are murmured. Vapors rise and in them there
are acting and reacting upon each other the communal tensions and
inflammable prejudices.
You might have already seen the scene of the Walpurgis night of Goeth's
Faust in India. There is some fearsome conspiracy against the poor people
who till the soil. What can be done by you or any one to help them? The
Biblical truth that thy enemies shall be of thy own household appears to be
true of the Indian intellectuals, who deceive themselves in imaginings that
they are the saviors of the poor people-Saviors with what? They but organize
an empty handed protest and noise of wayward meeting on the mob against the
British.
II. A Few Imaginings
Let me indulge, while face to face with the witches, in some imaginings, if
perhaps, some stray flight of the flying horse of the Arabian Nights might
take me and you out of this ghostly darkness. Ah! could nature send its bolt
from the blue and break this huge peninsula into small little islands! Ah!
could the Engineer divide it by many a Panama canal. Failing this
geographical division, could India be cut up and divided a new to make more
harmonious Presidencies with the population of the Hindu with his various
castes that in practical life from many small nations is themselves, and the
Moslem, equally balanced in the practical exercise of political power that
the British might give them out of their great mercy for fallen nations !!
I put it down merely for making the impossible possible. Suppose, as one of
the suggestions, Gujrat, Kathiawar, a portion of C.P., the Sind, the Punjab
and the North Western Frontier are made into one Presidency, a portion of
Bombay goes with Madras as a second Presidency and the half of Madras is
lumped up with Bengal as the third, Bihar and U.P. and a portion of C.P.
constitutes the fourth Presidency.
The Hindus in this division of India can be treated as many diverse
communities. Because the differences between the Brahman and Non-Brahman are
as acute as between the Hindu and the Moslem, between the Hindu and the
Sikh. And these new Harmony Presidencies of India could be conveniently
sub-divided into small independent States governed by one Presidency
Legislative council and one Governor. To give the latter to small Provinces
would be ruinously costly. On the other hand to have large Harmony
Presidencies would be too unwieldy for administration of justice, etc., if
they are not cut up into small autonomous States. This administrative
cutting up of India would set in process for the development of India into
the future independent States of Asia. You are asked to hand India over to
us by the Nehru Committee. Failing the redivision of India into New Harmony
Presidencies, it would be a much better feat of far-sighted statesmanship to
hand it over to a benevolent dictatorship of some kind.
Perhaps you will say I am wasting your time; but I assure you, you and your
friends will be equally wasting your time if you, only as constitutional
lawyers, sitting down like Pandit Moti Lal Nehru and the men of his mind,
write Constitutions for this India where the witches' cauldron is boiling
and Walpurgis night is on. Any Constitution coming in here like this
essentially means the domination of one community over all others which must
be kept in a permanent state of suspended animation. All progress under such
Constitutions shall be one-communal and not multi-communal. It would no more
be dyarchy but it would be a form of civil anarchy in administration run by
an autocratic and communal majority. The herd and its vote does not really
matter. The whole District is run by a few officers. They are not chosen by
the people. They are the real autocrats. And if the services are corrupted
by communal bias, it is the more powerful community that shall drive the
others in practical details of administration. The Hindu if he is in the
chair would tease the Moslem mass and if the Moslem is in authority he would
injure the Hindu mass. Votes for electing a truly representative Legislative
body under such conditions of communal tension in securing the monopoly of
authority under any such system as adumbrated by the Nehru Committee shall,
for all times, be wholly impotent and ineffective in maintaining the morale
of the public services. The adult franchise is but a the herd vote.
By giving the Monford Reforms you took away all the noblessee oblige of the
"Steel frame" services which did work like irresponsible autocrats but in a
spirit in which there are some odor of benevolence. After the Reforms, India
has become no one's land, the cost of administration has gone up and the
spirit of the services demoralized. The past cannot be brought back and the
future cannot be assured, neither as you might wish nor as they might
desire. It has become no one's business for example, to look after the costs
of the Government.
You have tried for the last hundred years to teach us and to make us into a
free nation as you say, but, unlike Afghans who are much less civilized than
ourselves, in spite of your intentions, we, as a people, are but a set of
women who can just dangle their bangles on their wrists and pose beautiful.
America threw your tea into the sea and Washington led and then was the
Constitution drafted. One can understand Abraham Lincoln proclaiming from
the housetops his grand political maxim-the Government of the people, by the
people, for the people. That was some culture, some education which grew
restless and effectively restless for its freedom. But a trained statesman
must laugh in his sleeves at the impotence of men like Gandhi and Moti Lal
Nehru, who wish to be Abraham Lincoln of India without the substance which
entitles the people on this earth with human nature as constituted, to
liberty. I have said you have tried a hundred years to educate us and look
at this great and disappointing intellectual disaster. There is not one
Amanullah in this whole country of India, there is not one Kamal Pasha. This
fundamental problem of education which you also have taken into your hands
is such as cannot be solved by systems but by men.
If you really wish to lead India to independence or Dominion status which
practically means independence with an empty and courteous bow to England, I
say, do not give the poor people of India, Constitutions, do not define
their rights. Let all these things come later, but give us say a real
Dictator to train at least one province, say the Punjab, at the cost of the
whole of India and make it really independent and see incidentally with what
sport other provinces bear this wonderful concentration for the sake of the
uplift of their brothers of blood for the Punjab. So far, either you have
not done your best to educate us or you are unfit to organize nations to
freedom. You must confess either unwillingness to make us men, free men, or
the utter incompetence of your system and men as you have so far given us.
The education our Universities are giving is the imitation of that luxurious
academic training which you give to your youths to enable them to run the
Empire and its Embassies. Of what use is it to us? Afghans have arsenals,
aeroplanes, but we are rendered so impotent that our youths cannot earn
their livings !! We get mere crumbs that fall from the Olympian Tables. All,
in India, must overwork to death to have one meal a day or die of
starvation. We the farmers are crushed under steel heels.
III. A Bit of Brutal Frankness
Coming to practical problems which I am afraid the more you think about, the
more theoretical and unpractical they grow, you would see some great minds
become mad while thinking of India. The sign of madness is that they go on
preaching but one fad. You must agree with me that if we were a people and
we had any power or if we were less civilized and more manly with some
ground under our feet, you would not have entered our house and said:
"Now boys be quiet, we run your home for your good." You must admit that
your proclamations are only political speeches which mean very little,
because if you really wanted, you would have by these hundred years and more
made us men fit for self-government. As I have already pointed out, if this
is not correct then you as a nation are hopelessly unfit for organizing
people to their political freedom. Hence we think you only know how to run
the Government and utilize the country in your own ways for your own good.
Whatever may be the case, our suspicion is that you did not and perhaps do
not mean to help us to freedom.
On your side, there are suspicions against us. If you arm us, we may revolt
and be free. Of course if you had meant to give us independence you might
have taken that risk. But you did not and naturally you would not.
The general man strength of this country is getting low every day in various
ways. Defective education, slow and systematic economic drain, and want of
opportunity for our being made armed soldiers for the defense of this
country are a few amongst many. Dadabhai Narojee and William Digby say that
India is being bled white. Lord Curzon supports them in the contention that
India is the poorest country in the world. Imagine, if this country belonged
to you in another sense, you would have secured long ago her economic
independence. That indeed must be your first concern even if for doing it,
you have to make India an English colony like Australia. Why has Australia
grown into a power in such a short time? The Indian thinkers should have
given up their case for her political independence even in their "class
rooms" of these mockeries of Legislative Assemblies, had they not come to
the grim conclusion that because of our being helpless dependents, ground by
your system of drainage of our wealth and consequently of strength, we
cannot possibly secure our economic independence till we get rid of you.
It is the irony of the fate that there may be prosperity in our budgets and
in the trade statistics, but the masses are growing weaker and weaker for
want of food. We the tillers of the soil are famishing. Millions there are
who scarcely get one full meal a day. They are good soil for the growth of
plague germs, malarial parasites, kala bazar and consumption. Man and woman
material is fast decaying. This is the fundamental indictment against your
policy of drift. Closely connected with this policy is the academic
knowledge being imparted to the youths of the country by our Universities.
This knowledge falsely stimulates the intellects. The stimulated intellect
wishes to surround itself with higher standards of life than the productive
capacity of the county can permit or its undeveloped resources can afford.
What is that strange system that does not change for the good of the people,
aye for keeping them alive? As I will show later, this has given birth to an
artificial prosperous middle class in the country mainly made up of the
variety of the Government services. I, therefore, appeal to you to realize
this situation as it is in reality, and do something substantial to avert
this disaster. What use indeed are those ponderous unwieldy Royal
Commissions on Industry and Agriculture that came and went. You will see
that the Agricultural Commission has clearly left the problem as it was.
Their conclusions and suggestions are mere more yawns of an exhausted
listener who has been made to hear so much volume of vague and vaporous
opinions. It was not necessary that they should have come all the way and
gone through all that travail to tell His Excellency the Viceroy of India
that the Economic condition of Indian farmer needs immediate looking after.
The Commission on Industries came to the ridiculous conclusions of two more
Imperial Services! You must admit that this is not how living nations are
doing their business of development now, nor how the Japanese would tackle a
life and death problem like this.
Provision of cheap and good food to the millions of Indian farmers is more
important than the declaration of the rights of the people. Much is being
side shunted for purposes of political show. Allow me to put a little
suggestion here. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, thinks that we men should spin
like women and he repeats the gospels of khaddar, as I have said, like
genius gone mad when thinking on the complex problem of Indian freedom. Thus
he wishes to give useful employment to the farmers to clothe themselves, but
what use is clothing of men who are starving and have no strength for any
extra employment? Why is the dairy industry dying all over? It is a
preeminently agricultural occupation. There are no pastures provided. For
example, Government sells land in Punjab colonies by auction to raise as
much money as possible. This is helping the capitalist and killing the
farmer. No lands have been reserved by the Government as open pastures for
each village. Consequently it has become uneconomical to keep herds of milch
cattle. This had led the farmer to adulterate his ghee with hydrogenized
oils. If people could be helped by grants of large tracts of lands as
pastures all over India, the home industry of ghee making would pay better
than khaddar. They would have plenty of milk to drink. It is better to go
nude but well-fed. When they are well fed, khaddar making certainly can be
additional advantage and the women folk could spin like old Eve, and the
poor masses could again throw up some coppice of life.
The very foundation of the society and the Government, the Indian tiller is
being sapped. The permanent settlement system in Bengal has worked havoc.
The Taluqdars of Oudh and the United Provinces are a kind of ransacking
"permanent settlement of Bengal." The taluqdars are the middle men between
the tillers and the Government. They overtax them and overwork them.
Practically the middle class which should be consisting of the tillers and
the farmers in this most agricultural country in the world, as we happily
yet a little in the Punjab, has practically disappeared in Bengal, in Bihar,
and in the United Provinces. I am afraid it is also fast disappearing from
the Punjab. Consciously or unconsciously the Government has helped the rise
of men of the type of the late Sir Ganga Ram in the Punjab, who are engines
of destruction of the real middle class of wealth-creative laborers who form
the back bone of all nations of the world. And why have such men made
millions? Because the government is so hopelessly devoid of true experts.
The experts of the Government gaped like wax toys in utter astonishment
finding men like Sir Ganga Ram succeeding lift irrigation which they had not
even imagined as profitable.
Thus, when the flood is weeping on the very foundation of the Government and
society, the farmer and the tiller of soil, will you sit to define the
rights of the people or first save them from death?
The economic condition of the Indian farmer can be improved by the future
Indian Constitution siding with the farmers and the tillers of soil and not
with the capitalistic combines and influences working in India or in
England. Real improvements in Indian agriculture would come through the
Constitutions and special Legislations and not through the so called
agricultural experts till the economic condition of the farmer goes up to a
certain standard. The Agricultural expert is of very little use to them. The
application of modern agricultural knowledge which is so far advanced and
has become popular knowledge in other countries is matter of propaganda for
a long time yet in India. This propaganda reaches home through commercial
concerns better than through these huge and luxurious Imperial departments
of the Government of India. The very first thing is to abolish the Imperial
Science Services and reorganize the Scientific Research. The Government
Services should be reduced and expenditure on the remaining few and
essential few must be cut down to very minimum. The Japanese Prime Minister
is getting less pay than that of an ordinary Deputy Commissioner of India!
All salaries of the Government services form a part of the general plunder
of the farmer and tiller on whom the only addition to services, the class of
lawyers, the government contractors and suppliers should be considered
parasites living on the revenues on the country. As said above, the
Government servants and this class of people constitute an artificial middle
class in India who keep up a show of prosperity. They are consumers of
wealth and not the producers thereof. All the fire-work of prosperity is
being displayed at the grim cost of the farmer's body and soul. A contractor
who may not be able to earn by his own power even one hundred a month does
manage by some fluke to make hundreds of thousands from the Government. The
Government muddles up things when they find themselves being looted in broad
daylight. For example, they start stores purchase department, not knowing
that this service would add another middle man to the numerous middle men
between the Government and the manufacturers. So any remedy made out by the
Government is generally worse than the disease. The Government is run on
files are mostly very clean and well-written! All is well with the files,
but the broad day-light waste is rampant.
Again the centralization of all commercial concerns ... the Railways,
forests, store purchase, construction, buildings, and roads ... as Imperial
services and departments is hopelessly costly and inefficient. The bulkiness
of the country and its requirements needed splitting up of work, giving
commercial concerns to commercial people or to public companies. Failing to
find English and Indian experts commercial boards of international experts
of all nations can be asked to come in and run these concerns in a pure
business like way. The policy of not bringing in foreign experts whenever
required apparently either for political reasons or for reasons of jealousy
to provide high billets only to Englishmen, tends to inefficiency that can
never be found out by any Government however well meaning and anxious for
the welfare of the people. But there is something rotten in the State of
Denmark. These very countrymen of yours manage things so well, say in
Australia. One is driven to the conclusion-split up India, reduce the cost
of administration, and increase the efficiency of the men who work in the
systems. Ring out policy of false prestige and waste and ring the Policy of
Honest Work for the uplift and development of the people. The greater the
number of Government services, the more costly and less efficient the
general administration. The hugeness of office work take away the genius of
Government for the efficient management of the State affairs. To use a
military metaphor, the present Government of India with its variety of
Services is like the army in the trenches without the general staff behind.
The Government looks like an emergency Government even in times of peace.
The Government shows huge profits of these departments, but never considers
at what comparative cost. It is wrong to be satisfied with the declared
profits. Can those profits be made still more and at a very much less cost?
Could not the land-tax be decreased and the tillers of soil given relief.
What is the meaning of policy that makes profits and spends on the consuming
and unproductive artificial middle class?
In commercial departments, to lend the security and prestige of the
Government service leads to excessive corruption as in the case of railways
and to neglect of duty and general inefficiency as in the case of the
so-called Research Departments in India. Scientific research should never be
departmental. It should be surrounded by the whole world's critical
atmosphere where no third class mediocres be able to breathe. To make
Imperial Departments of science and scientific inquiry is immoral,
considering that no Government can well criticize its experts. Research
should be handed over to the Universities. The Universities should not be
merely examining bodies as they are at present in India but great cultural
world-centers. They should be not Indian but International in the greatness
of their teachers and in the quality of their work done by their
laboratories and their luminaries. The staff should rise or fall by their
international reputation. The merest tyros are put in charge of the Research
Departments.
My plea is that you should define in the new Constitution the real and
limited function of the Government. Running business concerns as Imperial
Departments should be discouraged. Scientific Research, as said above, of
India should be under the Universities of fame, under the governance of men
whose reputation for honest, scientific work is beyond doubt. What use is
any Scientific Council of Government officials? The great men can bear no
yoke. It is men of true scientific independence and of the unbiased
scientific mind that shall control research. Surely not the mere file-makers
and Imperialistic experts.
IV. The Proposed Remedies
I have pointed out what occurs to me as fundamentally wrong in the
Constitution of the people and the Institutions of the Government of India.
I have drawn your attention to the economic condition of the people who are
the backbone of the Government and how the Government unnecessarily feeds
its huge bulky and inefficient services at the cost of the ryot. There is
the false glitter of an artificial middle class in India, which of
Government servants and parasites.
What are the remedies then? It is for you to find them out and not end as
did the Industrial and Agricultural Commissions.
Let us look at the remedies proposed by more brainy people than myself. The
remedy proposed by Gandhi is "khaddar, non-violent non-co-operation and
eventually civil disobedience." He, too, however has seen the scene of
Walpugris night in India. The witches on the heath are against him. In India
alone you have mob-war on the Sikh-made mutton and the Muslim-made mutton,
on music before the mosque, on the killing of cows! They are the ephemeral
vapors of the witches' cauldron. The impossible condition attached with
Gandhi's remedy is self-sacrifice without an end. All self-sacrifice in
political matters is for the gain of political ends. When these advantages
are never in sight, self-sacrifice in such matters can never become the
religion of the people. Gandhi wishes to make the politics of India some
such religion which can only be the impossible religion of a few Christ-like
men, and of the minds who can never stoop down from those heights.
And the Nehru draft. The Hindu has bowed down to the wind. It is ushering in
of civil anarchy in which the one community wins the head and all others
lose the tail. In fact the Muslim has floored the Hindu by creating a Kohat
and a Lahore for him. Mahatma Gandhi and others all say as India is not
homogeneous for there is the Muslim, this is the best compromise under the
critical local conditions.
Supposing you were to go and leave the country, there would set in an
anarchy, in which all communities will have an equal opportunity to fight to
any fate of freedom or eternal slavery. And the Hindu-Sanskrit culture and
intelligence will be put again to a military test. One Khilji did walk over
from Delhi to Cape Comorin with a few armed soldiers unopposed by the Hindu
millions. He who occupied the Punjab occupied the whole of India with one
pitched battle near Delhi or Agra. This is the history of the Hindu's
defense of his country and himself. The same is the case to-day. He who
governs the Punjab governs the whole of India. In the Nehru Constitution,
the Muslim has completely defeated the Hindu. The great anarchy, creative of
equal opportunities for all and the victory of one community over all
others, is not to come but this incipient consumption-like civil anarchy is
welcomed in the Nehru Constitution by all kinds of men! It shows how in
their zeal for mere tall talks on national work, they are blind to the
practical effects of their proposals on the governed masses. If it is not
the collapse of the Hindu, on what principle like Bombay and, made into a
backward pure Muslim province? And why should the Sindhi merchants, mostly
Sikh and Hindu, who trade all over the world be compelled to agree to it for
the sake of the Nehru draft and an academics agreement? If that principle is
granted why should not the Central Punjab be made into a Sikh Province?
Because the Majha and Malwa Sikhs have so far not created a Kohat and a
Multan, what else? The Nehru Committee has ignored the Sikh because he is
not as many in numbers as the Muslim. But conquerors like Ahmad Shah
acknowledged the Sikh as the only entity in the Punjab. Perhaps it was Nadir
Shah who remarked "from this Nation comes the odor of Sovereignty." The
English commanders, one after the other have spoken in glowing terms of the
outstanding bravery, chivalry, and the upright character of the Sikh
soldier. The present Commander-in-Chief in India once remarked that he would
trust his wife and daughter for their safety to a Sikh soldier. And it is in
the Punjab that the Misals of the Sikhs were formed. A Sikh chief would
throw his saddle in a village or a town and thenceforth it will be his
private estate. The Punjabi Hindu could not oppose the Sikh saddle. Under
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Punjab was never a Muslim province but s Sikh
province. The Muslim ministers of the Maharaja remained faithful to the
last, while the Hindu and the Brahmin ministers proved traitors. It may be
remembered Maharaja Ranjit Singh the Sardar of the Sikh Misals, was invited
by the Muslim choudhries of Lahore to come and be their King. Hari Singh
Nalva struck terror in the den of the lion. The Frontier Pathans still say
to their crying children "Harya Ragla" "Hush, Harya has come!" How can the
Nehru Committee to-day extinguish such a community by a stroke of the pen.
Is this their Hindu fairness? Sindh must be separated because that is the
Muslim demand and the Sikh is but a Hindu, ignore him. The Hindu if he were
a man should have stood up for the Sikh and proposed the separation of the
Central Punjab as the Sikh Province. It is all non-violent civil anarchy
giving all advantages to a powerful and well combined community who shows
the mailed fist. Let me say openly if the Sikh Jats get into their heads
that they can have a province to rule, they will die to a man and create
many Kohats. The Sikh knows how to fight for his rights but why should such
activities at all be inspired by the Nehru report?
Let us take the population basis and the adult suffrage on which the whole
of the theoretical reasonableness of the Nehru Report is being preached,
broadcast.
In this country, where one powerful Zamindar of Bengal has thousands of his
galley slaves to sweat for him for a starving pittance, where even in the
most virile Punjab, the secret of Agricultural prosperity in the most
prosperous irrigated colonies is the perpetual indebtedness of the tiller
who gets but the barest subsistence and works more for keeping his flesh and
blood together than to earn a wage that may make life worth its joys, and is
under the thumb of the moneylender, what an absolutely hypothetical value is
attached in this Report to the voter as if he were an old Athenian peasant
or a Roman citizen!
With the old Roman citizen, as even with the Greek peasant, the political
sense was, as to say, the sixth sense. An illiterate voter would go and ask
a literate citizen to write down for him the name of his chosen candidate.
He behaved as a citizen. Even then, we know how the oratory of the Anthonies
and others swayed the political-minded mob. And exactly similar is the case
in England and other Western countries now.
For ages, the masses of this country have been terror stricken, not only by
the foreign invaders, but by the habitual and slow daily tyranny of the
little Neros of India, the Indian Kings, and Zamindars and the Bankers and
have been driven like the bleating sheep that are led to the slaughter
house. It is simply sickening to find such an uninformed population made as
the basis of an adult vote. And when practical modern administrators of
experience laugh at the school-boy like proposals of the Nehru Committee,
the ill-organized noise of the Congress Camp, utters a hooting shriek.
However able these Hindu lawyers of India may be to make the purely academic
debates hot and saucy in the Assembly chamber, they cut a sorry figure in
practical administration. The Japanese statesman has the same poor opinion
about the quality of this highly intricate Hindu intellect.
It is an open secret how an audacious A.D.C. and some of the Secretaries
made the late Lord Sinha uncomfortable. I dare say a Sikh Sardar or a Moslem
Zamindar of the Punjab would have known better how to sit in that chair.
What is then the significance of the Nehru report when it is vitiated by the
fundamental mistake of determining power to vote by mere population and mere
adult suffrage in this country where it is impossible to get an independent
voter?
Mahatma Gandhi has failed to give a remedy. Pandit Moti Lal Nehru has not
asked you to leave the country, as he should have done, to violent anarchy,
but wishes you to set in that form of consumption which would naturally eat
up the weaker communities. It would be the same thing if you agree with
Nehru's draft or make yourself a similar one with a few modifications, both
will be useless unless you re-divide India into four or five
Harmony-Presidencies with all communal power well nigh equally balanced. If
the wise acres tell you that this re-division is impossible, then no
Democracy can be made to work equitably in India. Better put back the hands
of clock and bring in one efficient, impartial, stern but benevolent
dictatorship.
V. What Should the Englishmen Do?
So there is no remedy as far as thought devoid of fiery imagination can go
penetrating the details of human affairs in India and the details that have
been here for centuries as rigid facts. I now come to what the Englishman
should do under the circumstances. To be brief, if he is a Cromwell, he
should frankly say not only to India but say so in the face of the nations
of the world: "O, Indians! do your damnedest, we will govern you as we like.
Go away. On what grounds and in what way is India more specially yours than
ours? Aryans conquered it, they have gone. We occupied it when you were all
fighting amongst yourselves, we will occupy it as long as we can. Come. We
will die to a man and govern you as best we choose." After this
proclamation, he, the Cromwell, will guide the Government of India on a new
basis of that benevolent and biasless autocracy of his Puritan type. Abolish
all religious superstition, all social inequities, all backward tendencies
of these diseased people by law put into force at the point of the bayonet.
Guru Gobind Singh made a living people out of these willy nilly johnies by a
moral power. Let his idea be now carried out by a military power. The write
of "Mother India" has written scandalously, as Gandhi says like a drain
inspector. But what use is writing "Unhappy India" and "Father India" in
reply? We must frankly admit all those shames are inherent in the
constitution of our society and admit that we are mostly as she says. The
way out of it is not any reply to her but change like the one coming over
Afghanistan and Turkey. Let military law do with us what so far moral law
has not been able to do.
And if he is Bentham, or a Burke, then certainly he shall make no compromise
with miserable political conditions in India as the Nehru Committee has done
in a most miserable way, and as they expect and wish you might follow. It is
an enslaved country from centuries and all these communal conditions have
come about under encouragement of one kind or another from the subtle tone
of administrative machinery. Also, denominational education of Aligarh,
Benares, Lahore and Amritsar have added fuel to the fire. The lure of
coveted Government services and powers of municipal chairs and authority of
District Boards have added to the flame. As a straight forward Englishman,
bent upon doing substantial service to the people of India, in helping them
to Self-Government and Independence, you must discourage all such conditions
that have artificially created partialities shown at different times to one
or the other community are responsible for these miseries.
Due to these partialities shown directly or indirectly the people surmise
that your policy is divide and rule. You must put a stop to all this
nonsense. In the new Constitution, there shall be no compromise of any kind
with one community or the other. Your Constitution must afford equal
opportunities to all who live under it. The truly Democratic Constitution
should not allow one community to get into power and work mischief through
the democratic institutions to crush the other. In the grant of your New
Constitution, the right of all people should be equal in the eye of law.
Public services shall not be demoralized by selection of candidates on any
communal basis. No more shall English servants of the Crown take sides.
Deterring punishments shall be freely meted out to those who might in any
way corrupt the services.
The crux of the introduction of the truly democratic Government in the
country is the question of franchise and such franchise that would
automatically and mechanically make the electorate non-communal. You are
expected by afflicted lovers of the progress of the Indian peoples to
determine it under the Indian conditions. I may just suggest that the
question of franchise cannot be properly settled nor a non-communal general
electorate be made possible and efficiently workable without taking away the
great errors of history which have been made by your countrymen in making
provinces and sub-divisions in India. The Nehru Committee has taken lying
down the arbitrary and imaginary administrative lines that are supposed to
divide one province from the other. Wipe out the provinces as they are for a
universal franchise based on equitable ground by which no one community
should be able to dominate. So far imagination has been lacking in removing
these errors because your nation went on adding one province after another
to their Empire and went on making little bits into separate administrative
units. Under pre-Reform autocracy, such divisions worked fairly well. And
any divisions could work well under a strong Central Government. With the
democratic institutions and the Provincial Autonomies coming in, these
divisions need another casting. And the principle of dividing provinces on
the communal basis is axing the very root of the political progress in the
country. It is simply unstatesman-like to treat Sindh, North-Western
Frontier and Bengal as the Moslem-majority provinces when these provinces
can be either split or lumped up into better working divisions than the
present ones. The real work of genius should be the system of conditioning
the franchise in such a way as to balance power. As long as the military
power and the army are with the Central Government, this balance of power
can be effectively secured in all the new Harmony Presidencies. It goes
without saying that for a real and effective change some hard discipline is
essential for some time to let the new change settle to function properly.
I would suggest not only to make the Constitution impartial and non-communal
but to so divide India administratively that the joint electorate may be
possible on non-communal basis in a fool proof way. The franchise should be
granted under certain limits of revenue-paying capacity, education and the
human substance, also on soldier yielding capacities of different peoples.
With the new division of most harmonious provinces and with the new limits
of franchise, the elected bodies would be coming forth to work the new
constitution in a non-communal manner befitting sensible men and true
citizens. My point is to so redivide the country that there may be a fairly
balanced opportunity for all communities and castes and the franchise may be
so limited and elastic that best representatives of all communities may have
equal chances. Thus, either bring in true Western condition of running the
democratic institutions by completely ignoring the communal differences not
in a theoretical way but in a practical manner, considering the local
conditions of prejudice and ignorance and tenant slavery or go back to
benevolent autocracy of a dictator. The latter is impossible now. It would
be ridiculous in the eyes of the civilized world if you do not grant us
Dominion Status forthwith. Therefore the only possible alternative is to
give a fool-proof franchise to secure the balance of the political power
that manifests itself most acutely and effectively in the selection of the
state servants. If this is done, the various minorities may also be let
alone to take care of themselves.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would request you not to be so small as to be partial in
any way to any community and not to be so large as to give over India into
the hands of one powerful community and thus reduce the other minor
communities to eternal slavery even under democratic Institutions. By
cutting up the country into Muslim provinces and Hindu provinces, you would
be only introducing a slow eating consumption of civil anarchy which could
kill the weaker communities. Where the Hindus prevail, Muslims shall suffer
and where the Muslims prevail, the Hindus shall suffer. And as I have
already said virile communities like that of the Sikhs may risk to fight to
death at ask for a purely Sikh province.
The moment is great and the English people have to show a political
imagination which they have not shown so far.
I pray the Highest in you may help you to rise to your full moral stature
and you may be able to surprise the Indians with your New Constitution. Give
a franchise on the new-India-nation-making basis and let the limits of the
franchise be such as no one community may swamp the majority votes. It is
simply unwise to build the New Constitution on the population basis. It is
the worth that counts. A race horse is worth a million of donkeys. And in
determining these limits, your genius has to come into full play. Wipe out
by your Constitution the Hindu and the Muslim as such and bring in
conditions in which the "Indian" may become possible, who may truly
represent the dumb driven masses of India.
The Nehru Committee has drafted a Compromise Constitution on the crater of
an active volcano.
I, therefore, appeal to you to recommend a Non-communal Constitution. Secure
the economic Independence for us as it is being achieved, say in Australia.
Reduce the bewildering varieties of Government services and the Neroic cost
of administration. Let the tiller of the soil be relieved of excessive
taxation by reducing the overhead charges to a minimum. Only then will the
economic condition of tillers of the soil go up and a real middle class of
the wealth-creative laborers come into being. |
