Lahore–And After

Lahore–and After¹

(Member, Working Committee of the Congress)

There are distinct advantages in intervening in a debate early. You can anticipate many points and make a brilliant show. The advantages of intervening late are equally numerous. You can sum up everybody's arguments and smash them. In doing so you can be at once brief and telling and you are sure to make yourselves felt. The dailies had to deal with theLahore deliberations even before they matured into decisions. They were in such great haste for being the first in the field that they often erred–and erred egregiously, in their ‘scoops’ and anticipations and intelligent forecasts. A monthly–and more so a bi-monthly, can well afford to wait, sift the grain from the chaff, and garner the life-giving elements in its columns. That is the only justification for reverting to the subject of ‘Lahore–and After’ so late in the New Year.

But delay in dealing with the momentous issues raised in the Congress session of December last has not made the subject stale. On the other hand several doubts have been cleared, –doubts which the Congress and the Press would have paid anything to get cleared during the Christmas week. For instance, what would not have the Congress given–the Congress as a whole, to know the inner workings of the Viceroy’s mind even during the Congress week? It is true that Gandhi got an a inkling into those ‘workings’, and with him Nehru, or they would not have so summarily dismissed the proposal to send representatives to the Round Table Conference. But the following is not always willing to repose trust in the leaders. They want to examine every issue. Their intellects must be satisfied, their doubts must be cleared, and like the Thomases of old, they must put their fingers into the holes of the hands of the resurrected Christ. Now, we are able to judge at first-hand. We need not take our decisions from our leaders, be they Gandhi and Nehru.

There is no mystery as to the question why the Round Table Conference failed. Nor need there be any difficulty about the adoption of Independence as the creed of the Congress. When both of these issues have been settled in the manner the Congress has settled them, the only other issue that arose out of the Lahore decisions, namely civil disobedience, will become an indisputable one. The Round Table Conference failed and therefore there was the change of creed into Independence. There was this demand of Purna Swarajya, and civil disobedience is the only of means securing it. It is fortunate that Gandhi himself has in answering one Mr. Alexander, taken the country into confidence and revealed the secret of his conversations with the Viceroy. Nor is there a difference of opinion in the matter, for Gandhi himself quotes the Viceroy and says -: "This is what was asked for."

"On behalf of the Congress Party the view was expressed that, unless previous assurances were given by His Majesty’s Government that the purpose of the Conference was to draft a scheme for Dominion Status, which His Majesty’s Government would undertake to support, there would be grave difficulty about Congress participation."

Gandhi’s data are clear. The Simon Commission is scraped. The whole problem of the Indian constitution must be approached de novo. India is not concerned with the difficulty of Parliamentary Government in England. If the Viceroy meant what the Delhi Manifesto understood to be the purpose of the Round Table Conference, he had only to say so. But he does not mean it. He has never meant it. He has therefore raised in his speech of the 25th of January the study in contrast between the assertion of the goal and its attainment, the definition of the problem and its solution, between the direction of a journey and its destination. Really, so simple a study of language must more appropriately be the business of a fourth form student than of mature politicians, much less statesmen or masters of language like Gandhi and Irwin.

When once the issue of the Round Table Conference had been decided in the negative, there remained nothing for the Congress but to scrap the Nehru Report and plump for Independence. Even the Moderates have, by this time, undoubtedly seen the hollowness of the offer made by the British Government, though considerations of prestige and timidity forbid their owning the fact or taking the logical steps necessitated by it. The Congress was pulled in two opposite directions when once it decided to reject the Round Table Conference. On one side there were people who advised a wise moderation in conduct, a wise reserve in expression, by not straightway voting for Independence. On the other there were young men who would straightway have parallel Government, –and no damned nonsense. We need not pause at the former suggestion, for, as we shall show, the declaration of Independence as the creed of the Congress has raised India in the estimation of the outside world. Men like Mr. Wilfred Wellock and Mr. Brailsford, and Liberal organs like The Manchester Guardian, now realise that at last India has discovered her own mind. The second view, that a parallel Government should have been forthwith organised, requires examination. Strictly speaking, such a proposal would have been ultra vires of the Congress creed. A parallel Government must rest on force and cannot be brought into existence or sustained by non-violence. For that matter, all Governments rest on force. When a bailiff gives possession of property or a decree is executed or a person arrested, it is the mighty cohorts of Government that come down upon the poor victim ‘like a wolf on the fold’ and threaten to engulf him unless he did or did not been do a certain thing. Of the three great sanctions in life, namely the individual conscience, social public opinion, and law, the last is and the least civilised–the most inhuman and the worst. Yet, the world as an organised unit rests upon the exercise of this force and its organisation in the name of Law and Order, Police, Military, Constitutions, and so on. The parallel Government also must have these organs and appendages. The parallel Government in Ireland had them. Its arbitration courts were jumped upon by the Royal Irish Constabulary, and between it and the Irish Irregulars there was a constant exchange of shots; force was met with force until there was a treaty in 1922. The Congress contemplates no such antagonisation. Within the four corners of the Congress constitution, a parallel Government is out of the question.

There remains the issue of civil disobedience. People ask if the country is ripe for it; whether it has not proved a failure, a sad and dismal failure. Gandhi complains that he has not had ‘a dog’s chance’. The moment he began to mature his scheme of mass disobedience, there was Chauri Chaura and he was made hors de combat and put into jail. Ever since his release, the Councils have held the field, until today by a mandate of the Congress, 166 councils have resigned out of 233, –a magnificent response to the national call. Now for the first time, Gandhi is free to mature a scheme of civil disobedience. Nor is there such a thing as the country being prepared for civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is a war on non-volient lines. Every war requires an army, and the army of men and women engaged in the Constructive Programme is the man-power required by Gandhi. He has truly described the Constructive Programme as the drill required by the non-violent army; for it subdues the passions and soothes the angry mind. It compels people to settle down to honest work in a true spirit of service and sacrifice, and brings them into living touch with the suffering poor. That is the training and discipline that civil disobedience demands. But even otherwise, wars are declared abruptly: they never come with notice any more than epidemics. A long notice paralyses war and defeats its very purpose. Ultmata have never covered more than 24 hours. But which country was prepared for war when war was declared? A long period of peace intervening between wars hardly prepares a country for war. Was England prepared for war on the 4th of August 1914? Did Asquith and Grey take a referendum in the country before they joined the Armageddon? Yet Kitchener came into the field and declared it was a war for three years. That dumb-founded statesmen and citizens alike. But citizens had no alternative except to become soldiers at once and participate in the war. So it is with a non-violent war. It comes like a cataclysm. Man cannot stop it. It is Nature's way of subduing evil in the world. The best that the mass of men can do is, not to hinder the march of civil disobedience.

When all is said and done, it must be owned that hostilities between two nations can only be terminated by a Conference. Supposing, by a play of violence, we have destroyed half the Englishmen in India, what should happen to the other half? Shall they continue to remain in India for ever and be a charge on the Nation? If they do so willingly, and be absorbed in the various communities of India, so much the better. But they won't, nor can you

keep them as prisoners for life. They must be repatriated. Even that requires organisation, consultation, and a Conference. The evacuation of the Rhineland, twelve years after the Armistice, could only be brought about by a Conference. Treaties of peace and rearguard action in war are the most difficult achievements in life. Ireland had such a Conference in 1922, and so must India sooner or later. How soon it will be, and of what character, depends upon our achievements in the near future. The Conference with Ireland was not "a Conference, the object of which was to explore the means of seeking the widest measure of agreement between the various parties and interests concerned in India for proposals, which it will be the duty later of His Majesty's Government to place before Parliament," but the Conference will be, as it must be, a Conference to effect a Treaty between England and India with a view to terminating hostilities, Ireland had such a Conference with England in 1922. Lloyd George sent for De Valera. The latter immediately demanded release of prisoners. All the members of the Dail had to be released at once, including one that had been condemned to death for murdering the Royal Irish Constabulary and the latter were about to arrest him. After some negotiations the Conference met. The terms were, that Ireland was to have Dominion Status, that the English army of occupation should be immediately removed, and that there should be an adjustment of National debts and a compensation for members of the services who would not care to serve the new Government. The form of oath to be taken by Members of Parliament of the Irish Free State was settled, and the rights of Britain to certain harbours and aerodromes were to be guaranteed. It is such a Conference that we want. Whether we can get it or no is on the knees of the gods. But so far as man's effort is concerned, there is little doubt that we will get it, provided we shall make civil disobedience a success and the Nation follows the lead of Gandhi.

1 Written on the 9^th of February.