'The Triple Stream'

‘Triveni’ is devoted to Art, Literature and History. Its main function is to interpret the Indian Renaissance in its manifold aspects.

‘Triveni’ seeks to draw together cultured men and women in all lands and establish a fellowship of the elect. All movements that make for Idealism in India as well as elsewhere, receive particular attention in these columns. We count upon the willing and joyous co-operation of all lovers of the Beautiful and the True.

May this votive offering prove acceptable to Him who is the source of the ‘Triveni’–the Triple Stream of Love, Wisdom and power!

...he that laboureth right for love of Me
Shall finally attain! But, if in this
Thy faint heart fails, bring Me thy failure!

–The Song Celestial.

BY K. RAMAKOTISWARA RAU ^l

AFTER RAMGARH

While preparations for Satyagraha are proceeding apace in all Provinces, it is becoming increasingly clear that no struggle on a mass scale is contemplated by Gandhiji, with whom rests the final decision. Individual civil disobedience by well-trained and thoroughly dependable persons, with a view merely to lowering the moral prestige of the British Government, is likely to be launched after June or July. Gandhiji’s main contention is that a mass struggle may precipitate anarchical conditions; another reason which weighs with him is that it is unchivalrous to embarrass Britain while she is engaged in a life and death struggle in Europe. He would give anything to be able to avoid Satyagraha in any form, but he sees no way out of the present impasse except a Constituent Assembly, freely elected and empowered to frame a constitution. Even a declaration that such an Assembly will be convened after the termination of the present war might suffice. But there is no indication that this demand will be conceded, though feelers are being thrown out through non-official and semi-official channels regarding a small committee of Indian leaders to resolve the deadlock.

Of the forces arrayed against the Congress, easily the most formidable is the Muslim League. But for its insistence that the Congress should recognise it as the sole representative of the Indian Muslims, an understanding on the communal issue would have been reached even prior to the war. While talking vaguely of safeguards, the League failed to indicate the exact nature of the safeguards it considered necessary for the protection of Muslim interests. It was more keen on Gandhiji accepting the position of a mere Hindu leader, negotiating on behalf of the Hindus with Mr. Jinnah, the Muslim leader. When the stunt about the oppression of Muslims in the Congress-governed Provinces failed to move any one, and the ‘Deliverance Day’ proved a damp squib, the League, under Mr. Jinnah’s leadership, made a last desperate throw, and answered the Ramgarh resolution of the Congress with the fantastic demand for the partition of India into Hindu and Muslim zones! The manner in which this outrageous suggestion has been received by all Indians outside the Muslim League, has served to show up the reactionary and anti-national character of the League. The Sikhs, the Indian Christians, and, more than all others, the Nationalist Muslims, have declared themselves definitely against the scheme. Even British statesmen have discountenanced it. Instead of composing differences, the League seeks to accentuate them; instead of recognising the bonds of a common nationhood, it seeks to sunder them. Setting up independent, exclusive Muslim States in the East and the North-West, with a predominantly Hindu State over a stretch of a thousand miles in between, is hardly likely to serve the interests of the Muslim minorities over the greater part of India. The Sikhs are demanding that part of the Punjab should be carved into a Sikhastan, –a buffer State between Pakistan and Hindustan.

Now that the conference of Independent Muslims is preparing, through its Board, to place definite proposals before the Congress, with intent to settle the communal problem, Muslim Leaguers like Mr. Fazlul Huq are questioning the credentials of that conference. The only way to set at rest the warring claims of these two sections of Muslim opinion in India is to accept the principle of election to the Constituent Assembly through separate Muslim electorates. The result will show whether Mr. Jinnah and Mr. Huq are entitled to pose as the sole spokesmen of Islam in India. The opinion is even gaining ground that, in any future constitution, the principle of joint electorates, with reservation of seats for the minorities, should be recognised. Parties based on political and economic issues, and cutting across religious distinctions, must function in a free India, and establish that nationhood which the League is seeking to destroy.

With civil disobedience postponed for some time, and Nationalist Muslims asserting themselves, hopes are naturally revived that a last-minute settlement with Britain may yet be achieved. Bodies like the National Liberal Federation are genuinely distressed at the prospect of a grim struggle between the Congress and the Government. Eminent individuals like Sir S. Radhakrishnan are trying to find a ‘middle path’ through which the Indian question may be solved partly by self-determination by Indians, and partly by negotiation between Britain and India. Questions like Defence and the Indian States might form the subject-matter of a treaty, while all other matters may be left to the Constituent Assembly or its equivalent.

No settlement however is possible without a yearning for it on both sides. Even before the Ramgarh Congress, the Government started the battle with the arrest of Sri Jai Prakash Narain, and the internment of hundreds of leftist Congressmen. Whenever a gesture of goodwill is made in some quarter, British or Indian, out comes the Secretary of State for India with a most unhelpful statement. A committee of Indian leaders, elected on some acceptable basis, has been welcomed by Gandhiji; even Mr. Huq is in favour of a conference of Premiers and ex-Premiers. But what can such a committee or conference achieve in the absence of a prior undertaking by the British Government that the committee’s recommendations will be accepted as the prelude to a final settlement? Where the will to part with power is lacking, one obstacle after another can be thrown in the path of Nationalist India, till sheer desperation may drive Gandhiji to launch Satyagraha.

UNDER SUSPENSION

One-man rule will continue in seven Indian Provinces for another year. It is ridiculous to talk of democracy and self-determination for the nations of Europe, while Britain perpetuates Imperialism here. It is easy enough to retaliate that the Congress, by its intransigence, left no alternative to the British Parliament. In the speeches in both Houses, the entire blame was sought to be foisted on the Congress. "If only the Congress could come to terms with the Muslims!" was the burden of every utterance. Everyone realised, however, that the scheme of partition sponsored by the Muslim League was unacceptable. And yet, the Congress was blamed for not reconciling the irreconcilables. The debate was apparently a pre-arranged affair, meant for consumption in America and other neutral countries. With an air of injured innocence, the representatives of all parties asked why the Viceroy’s offer of Dominion Status was refused by the Congress. When Gandhiji met the Viceroy after the famous Orient Club speech, negotiations had to be broken off, for it was realised on both sides that the imagined basis of agreement simply did not exist. Dominion Status or any other status, to be acceptable to India, must be the result of deliberations amongst Indians themselves, subject to formal ratification by the British Parliament. The communal as well as the constitutional problem must be solved on Indian soil, and by vote of the sovereign people and their elected representatives. There is neither ambiguity nor equivocation in this demand. While Britain is unwilling to concede this position, it is wrong to blame the Congress for failure to accept the other position,–that Britain shall have a determining voice in framing a constitution for India.

Without Ministers and without popular Legislatures, with Civilian officers issuing orders instead of taking them, and with schemes of national development held up or delayed, the nation as a taste of that undiluted autocracy,–which it has been striving, for over half a century, to overcome.

INDIA’S FOLK-SONGS

When the mind is troubled and life seems a puzzle, some song of childhood days recurs to memory. One thinks of the quietness and peace of dusk in a far-away village home,

"...when the lamps are lit,
And the cows and the calves return home,
And the brothers, elder and younger, come from work

of the rustic lovers who dream,

"If our hearts become one,
We can build a raft of jasmine flowers,
And on that raft we shall float away."

Even to the sophisticated dwellers in cities, these songs are somehow dearer than the more elegant poetry of the classics. They are of the soil; they enshrine the genius of the people. Every part of India and every language has its own treasure-house of folk-songs. Women, especially, are its custodians. Cradle songs, wedding songs, songs of the harvest and of the chase,–what a bewildering variety of theme and sentiment! Beneath all outer differences of language and culture, the essential unity of India may be sensed through these songs.

Prof. Devendra Satyarthi of Lahore, whose article on folk-songs was published in Triveni last month, has made it his life’s mission to collect the songs from all Indian languages and render them into English and Hindi. For years, he has been traveling from end to end of India, listening to the songs of the common people, writing them down, translating them, and giving them to the public through journals like ‘Asia’ and ‘The Modern Review,’ his latest being a rendering of the well-known Telugu song-story, ‘Urmila’s Sleep.’ A decade ago, I met this bearded gypsy at Berhampore and wondered whether any single individual could do the work which he had chosen. Since then, I have been reading his exceedingly valuable contributions to the Press. Now I have met him again in Madras and I recognise with joy that the spirit can triumph over time and circumstance. Simple as a child, and with a smile which at once wins your affection, Devendra Satyarthi seems to incarnate in himself the soul of rural India. His work is great, but I have a feeling that the man is even greater than his work. As a lover of folk-songs, I am grateful to him for his unending quest after beauty, as revealed in the songs of a people.

SIR M. V. SUBBA RAO ON HINDU-MUSLIM UNITY

The speech delivered by Sir M. Venkatasubba Rao at the banquet given in his honour by the Governor of the C. P. and Berar is a pronouncement of outstanding value. The following extracts on the Hindu-Muslim problem will be read with interest:

"There has been a reference to my being the first Agent and I am deeply sensible of the honour it implies and even proud of the post I hold. I say so, as there is a profound significance in a great Muslim Potentate choosing, in these anxious times, a Hindu as his first Representative. It is striking evidence of the tradition of communal harmony for which Hyderabad was famous. That harmony is of the highest value in the conditions that obtain today."

***

"Till a few years ago, this premier State was the home of Hindu-Muslim unity–the ideal of all lovers of India. If the objective has suffered a set-of late, I venture to think that this is a passing phase; for, how can a thing of yesterday wipe out an ancient tradition? Not only did harmonious relations prevail, but there was a happy blending of the two cultures, each retaining its distinctive genius. Hindus and Muslims were, through centuries, good neighbours; tolerance, not bigotry, being their guiding principle. There is no reason why this inversion of the tradition should be allowed, creating suspicion and hatred where goodwill and trust should reign. Violent storms of Hindu-Muslim tension are no doubt sweeping every part of India; but may not Hyderabad, I suggest, imbued with her tradition of harmony, break away and give an example to the rest of the country? I am not indulging, let me remark, in an idle conceit; for, this is the exhortation of the august Ruler himself."

***

"Hindu-Muslim unity is the bedrock of political integrity of India, and if Hyderabad can show that differences and conflicts would melt away in the face of loyalty to the common homeland, she would point the way to national unity. This, Hyderabad can achieve, as I have said, with the advantage she possesses of inherited tradition."

* * *

"The two problems today, which are baffling British and Indian statesmen alike, are, how to achieve inter-communal harmony and how to maintain inviolate India’s political integrity. Both these problems Hyderabad is in the enviable position of being able to solve. Need I say then why I am proud of being the Representative of the sovereign of Hyderabad and Berar?"

l 30th April.