By
Mahatma Gandhi
BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
This morning when I was observing silence, Shri Purushottamdas Tandon paid me a visit. I have told you how I was pained by Tandonji’s statement that every man and woman should carry arms. A correspondent had asked me how I, a votary of the Gita, could feel hurt. The letter also said that Tandonji believed in the principle of tit for tat. I asked Tandonji about it. Tandonji explained that although he did not believe in the principle of tit for tat, he certainly believed that everyone should carry arms for self-defence. This he said was also the teaching of the Gita.
I told Tandonji that he should at least write to the friend and explain that he did not believe in the principle of tit for tat so that he should not labour under a misapprehension. I do not believe that the Gita advocates violence for self-defence. I understand the Gita differently. If the Gita or some other Sanskrit work advocates this I am not prepared to accept it as Shastra. An utterance does not become scriptural merely because it is couched in Sanskrit. Tandonji reminded me that I had advised the killing of the monkeys which ravaged fields or otherwise caused harm. I do not like to kill any living thing, not even an ant. But the question of fields is a different question and people differ.
Tandonji said we might not adopt the principle of tit for tat or a tooth for a tooth and a slap for a slap. But if we did not take up arms and show our strength how were we to defend ourselves?
My answer is that self-defence is necessary; but how does one defend oneself? If someone comes to me and says, ’Will you or will you not utter Ramanama? If you do not, look at this sword.’ Then I shall say that although I am uttering Ramanama every moment I will not do so at the point of the sword. Thus I shall risk my life in self-defence. Now if I recite the Kalma I do not lose my religion. What does it matter if I say in Arabic that Allah is one and that Mohammed is His only Prophet! There is no sin in saying this and if by my merely saying this they accept me as a Muslim, I shall consider it a matter of pride. But if someone comes to me and wants to make me recite the Kalma at the point of the sword I will never do so. I will defend myself with my life. I want to stay alive to prove this paradox. I do not wish to stay alive in any other way.
I have said that geographically our land may very well be divided but that our hearts should not be divided. But who will listen to me? The day was when everyone listened to Gandhi because Gandhi showed the way to fight the British. And how many Britishers were here? Only seventy-five thousand. But they had such resources, such might, that, as Annie Besant said, they answered brickbats with bullets and our violence was wholly ineffective. Ahimsa promised to be more efficacious, so Gandhi was looked up to, but today they say that Gandhi cannot show the path and therefore arms should be taken up for self-defence. One can then only say that all these past thirty years that we spent in non-violent struggle had been wasted. We should have thrown out the British through violence.
But I do not think that the thirty years were wasted. It was good that under the severest oppression we remained nonviolent. They used their arms against us. But we were not cowed down and the message of the Congress spread throughout the length and breadth of India. Only it did not penetrate the seven lakh villages of India because our ahimsa was the ahimsa of the impotent. No one at the time showed us how to make an atom bomb. Had we known how to make it we would have considered annihilating the English with it. But there having been no alternative my advice was accepted. But today people say that nobody now cares for me.
But all of you who come here to the prayer meeting every day, why do you do so? How do I force you? You come bound by the string of love and quietly listen to me. If I can thus make myself heard by even the Hindus alone, you will see that India holds her head high in the world. I say nothing of the Muslims. They think I am their enemy but the Hindus and the Sikhs do not consider me their enemy. If the Hindus will heed my advice regarding the non-violence of the brave I shall tell them to throw their arms into the sea; I shall show them how the brave can rely on non-violence.
The Congress Working Committee consists of only a handful of men. I have seen that some of them are narrowminded, as I could gather from one or two speeches. But I have information from all over India. They say, ’Where will the Muslims now go? What the Muslims can do we can do, for we are in a majority. After the British leave we shall rule over them. We consider ourselves rightful rulers because we went to jail and submitted to beatings and whippings.’ It does not become us to talk in this way. This is violence. If you do not wish to listen to any talk of non-violence, if you are predisposed towards violence it is a matter of shame. If you go by the principle of tit for tat, you can take it that both the faiths will be destroyed. Islam will be finished, as also Hinduism.
If we practise the non-violence of the strong, the Pakistan that they have secured will only remain a plaything. We shall lose nothing through non-violence.
I do not consider Pakistan and India as two different countries. If I have to go to the Punjab, I am not going to ask for a passport. And I shall go to Sind also without a passport and I shall go walking. Nobody can stop me. They might say I am their enemy but if I went I would go not to become a member of some Assembly but to serve and it would not be for the first time in my life. I went to Noakhali and let no one imagine that, because it is now to be included in Pakistan, I would not go there again. A part of me lies there. I shall tell the Hindus there that if they are true Hindus they should not fear anyone even if they are surrounded by murderers.
I shall consider myself brave if I am killed and if I still pray to God for my assassin and I shall utter the name of God not with my lips alone but seeing Him in my heart. I shall not go to temples and mosques looking for God.
Today Badshah Khan, who has been so brave, is not able to show bravery. For years he has been instructing the Pathans in ahimsa. But today he says he cannot declare allegiance to India. If he did that there would be a carnage ten times as bad as in Bihar. What is he to do? Ahimsa is not a commodity which can be bought in the market. If we could display true ahimsa, the Frontier Province alone could save the whole of India.
The Muslims cannot drive a bargain with us. They cannot have all that they were given under the British regime. They cannot be given separate electorates if they ask for them. Separate electorates were a poisonous weed planted by the British but we shall be just to them. Their children will have as much opportunity of education as other children. In fact if they happen to be poor, they will have even more facilities. If we show such justice the people of India will have proved their courage¹.
The A. I. C. C. passed its resolution only yesterday. But Gandhiji received two newspaper cuttings, one from a Nagpur paper purporting to report a speech by the Premier of the Central Province and the other criticism of the speech. The speech makes the Premier say as follows: It was Mr. Jinnah’s claim that the Muslims had a separate culture and that in Pakistan only Islamic law would prevail. It would be difficult for non-Muslims to live in Pakistan in such conditions. Pandit Shukla pointed out that while there were 1,85,00,000 Hindus in the Muslim areas of British India, there were 30 million Muslims in the Hindu areas of British India, and these have lived in these parts for generations. What would be the condition of these, Pandit Shukla asked. They would be treated as aliens. They would have no citizenship rights. The grants that were being given today for their education would be withdrawn and they would have to depend on their own resources.
The report went on to say: Pointing to Minister² Hasan who was sitting next to him, Pandit Shukla jocularly observed that Dr. Hasan would not only have to quit the Cabinet, but that he would not be allowed to live in Wardha. He would have to seek shelter in Pakistan. Even though religious and cultural freedom might be conceded to the Muslims living in Hindustan, they would have no representation in the legislatures or in the services. They would have to maintain their own institutions and they would be entitled to no Government grants.
If the report was fairly accurate, Mahatma Gandhi observed, the speech was unfortunate, although it might have been made in lighter vein. Surely the Union Provinces were not going to be caught in the trap prepared for them. They had to show by their action that the Muslim members in the Provincial Cabinets were just as welcome as they were before and that no matter what was done in the so-called Pakistan provinces, the Union Provinces would be strictly just and fair in their treatment of their Muslim brethren. Pakistan should make no difference in their regard for the Muslims as well as the other minorities. This had no reference to the apples of discord which the foreign power had thrown in their midst such as separate electorates.
[From Hindi]
Prarthana Pravachan—I, pp. 166-70; and The Hindu, 17-6-1947
Notes
- 1. What follows is from The Hindu.
- 2. For Health
Notes
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