MR. GANDHI'S AIMS
By SIR WILLIAM BARTON N spite of the recent intensity of discussion of the Indian 1 problem, certain points still call for emphasis. There are people, both in this country and America, who still regard Gandhi as a statesman of unimpeachable integrity who holds in his hand the key to the solution of India's difficulties ; he has always been consistent, an eminent English cleric told us the other day. Both he and those who share this view hold that it is only British official obtuseness that stands in the way of a concordat with the Indian leaders. Critics of the British Government, indeed, both American and British, seem to credit British statesmen with the capacity for performing in a few days the miracle of settling a feud of seven centuries by welding Hindus and Muslims into a united nation, able to stand alone, and to set up a government that would not collapse at the first clash of communal interests. How anyone who has made even an elementary study of Indian politics can Imagine such a possibility is hard to conceive.
Consider the meaning of the demand that the British Government should again intervene, and try to bring about a settlement between the rival parties. Congress is in open rebellion. Why? Because the British Government refused to hand over India lock, stock and barrel to a government which, according to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, would have been a Congress Government, responsible to nobody but Gandhi. , The result would have been a Muslim insurrection which, considering that there are half a million or more Muslims in the Army, would have made it almost impossible for the British to hold off a Japanese attack. Conditions in India have deteriorated to some extent since the Mahasabha, the party of orthodox Hinduism, which, while disapproving of Gandhi's non-violent policy, really supports .Congress, has now abandoned its attitude of neutrality and joined Congress in demanding a National Government. It is more bitterly opposed to the Muslims than Congress, and utterly refuses to consider the Muslim claim to a separate country (Pakistan). Muslims must, the party insists, submit to the rule of the Hindu majority. Its main object is to build up the military supremacy of the Hindus, and so counterbalance the predominance of the Muslim element in the army. How this militant party would accommodate itself to a non-violent regime is not clear.
Moderate non-party and Liberal Hindus are at one with Congress and the Mahasabha in looking to Britain to intervene and end the deadlock. They, too, would support a National Government, though, presumably, they would expect it to eschew non-violence, and co-operate with the United Nations. They fail to explain how such a govemnient could be brought into being. It results that there is a more or less united front of political Hinduism against the British Government, the political minorities, and the Indian Princes. The object is unquestionably to seize a commanding position as against the Muslims when the time comes after the war for moulding the future constitution of India. With the control of the army, which they would thus obtain, Hindus would not only overawe the Muslims, they would be in a position to dictate to the Princes. The danger of anarchy and of a Japanese invasion does not deter them, because they feel that Britain and America are so deeply concerned to hold India that they would maintain peace in the country at any cost, even if it meant a clash with the Muslims.
They are up against strong opposition. The 95 million Muslims would fight to the last rather than be ruled by the Hindu majority. Hindus talk of frustration. Who is responsible? Is not much of the existing trouble due to the increasing bitterness of the Hindu- Muslim feud? Can it be denied that India's political problems are mainly due to Congress having in 192o put itself under the leadership of Gandhi, and, as Mr. Rajagopalachari said recently, chosen the path of revolution instead of working on constitutional lines? Is Britain to blame for Congress blunders? A leading Hindu nationalist paper (the Indian Social Reformer) describes as political jugglery an attempt by the pro-Congress Press to make it appear that the people of India were watching with satisfaction the successes of the Japanese army ; might not this lamentation about frustration be described in similar terms? It is no fault of the British Government that Muslims have throughout felt that the Hindu political movement aimed at establishing a Hindu empire under which the Muslims would be in a condition of subjection. It is hardly surprising that Muslims now demand a separate country, with an international status that would enable it to ally itself with the Muslim powers of the West. Muslims have stood firmly by the side of Britain in her terrific ordeal. To meet Con- gress demands at their expense would blacken the British name for ever.
Can Congress politicians ascribe to Britain responsibility for the fact that the so million outcasts implore Britain not to leave the country, not to hand them over to the tyranny of the caste Hindu? The outcasts accuse Gandhi and the Congress of betraying them. It cannot be denied that Gandhi's fast of 1933, which forced them to give up their separate electorates for joint electorates with the Hindus, put them politically at the mercy of the Hindus. A recent editorial in the Tribune, a leading Congress paper of Lahore, throws further light on the Congress attitude. The reason for the demand that the British Government should hand over power immediately without waiting for the leading communities to come to an agree- ment is, the paper says, that an agreement is impossible so long as the minorities rely on Britain for support ; withdraw that sup- port, and they would have to look to their own people for a reasonable settlement. In other words, put them in Congress hands. Britain is to clear the path to a Hindu empire.
Have people who would hand over India to Gandhi ever taken the trouble to examine the credentials of Congress? Is it a strong democratic body thirsting to fight the battle of the poor and oppressed? This is not the view of Pandit Nehru, Gandhi's princi- pal lieutenant, than whom no better authority exists. Congress is, he says, a congeries of Rightists, Leftists, Communists, Socialists, the revolutionary Forward Bloc, and other miscellaneous groups held together solely by the magnetic personalty of Gandhi. Gandhi is Congress ; Congress is of his making, the Pandit tells us. Gandhi completely dominates the party ; if anyone in the High Command dares to oppose him he speedily reduces him, in the Pandit's phrase, to a state of mental pulp. Nehru dislikes intensely Gandhi's re- ligious exploitation of the masses for political ends ; so did the late Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, who especially deplored the mental servitude Gandhi imposed on his followers, and the basing of the home-rule movement on a campaign of hate. Congress is, ac- cording to Nehru, essentially bourgeois ; its policy concerns the interests of the high-caste Hindu. He comments on the anomaly of the harnessing of the masses to the chariot of the industrialists, financiers and high-caste Hindus generally who are concerned to exploit, rather than to succour, the under-dog. Are the detractors of Britain on both sides of the Atlantic really disposed to hand over the Muslims, the outcasts, the peasantry harassed and ex- ploited by the Hindu moneylender, to the high-caste Hindu?
And their leader? Has Gandhi always been consistent? Did he not tell the Hindus that so long as they regarded untouchability as an essential element in their religion, so long would home-rule be unattainable? Yet, after he has dominated the Hindu mind for nearly 25 years, the outcasts accuse him of betraying them. His creed is non-violence, yet he told the British Government to clear out and leave Hindus and Muslims to settle their quarrel by force. The struggle would, he said, be brief and comparatively bloodless because, as this apostle of truth asserted, Britain had emasculated the people by disarming them. Many prominent Hindus look upon bis fasts as moral coercion, worse, if anything than violence ; he himself admitted that his Rajkot fast could be so described. At one time he gave out that only he had acquired sufficient self-control to practise non-violence ; this has not prevented him from letting loose the passions of the mob. He believes in caste and, as Dr. Ambedkar, the outcast leader, says, he stands for the traditional India ; not for democratic freedom, but for a freedom which, says Ambedkar, means India dominated by the Brahmin, who believes the outcasts pollute by their presence. Would the fate of India today, the fate of the Uniied Nations, be safe in the hands of this inscrutable, hypnotic, fanatical Hindu ascetic?
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