How Democracy Works
A valued correspondent has written to me two letters, one issuing a timely warning about the ill effects of hasty decontrol and the other about the possibility of an outbreak of Hindu-Muslim riots. I have dealt with both the letters in a letter which has become unexpectedly argumentative and gives my view of democracy which can only come out of nonviolent mass action. I, therefore, reproduce the letter below without giving at the same time the letters to which it is in answer. There is enough in the answer to enable the reader to know the purport of the two letters. I have purposely refrained from giving the name of my correspondent and the scene of action, not because the letters are confidential; but because nothing is to be gained from disclosing either:
"You still write as if you had a slave mind, though the slavery of us all is abolished. If decontrol has produced the effect you attribute to it, you should raise your voice, even though you may be alone in doing so and your voice may be feeble. As a matter of fact you have many companions and your voice is by no means feeble unless intoxication of power has enfeebled it. Personally, the bogey of the shooting up of prices by reason of decontrol does not frighten me. If we have many Sharks and we do not know how to combat them, we shall deserve to be eaten up by them. Then we shall know how to carry ourselves in the teeth of adversity. Real democracy people learn not from books, not from the government who are in name and in reality their servants. Hard experience is the most efficient teacher in democracy. The days of appeals to me are gone. The cloak of non-violence which we had put on during the British regime is no longer now necessary. Therefore, violence faces us in its terrible nakedness. Have you also succumbed or you too never had non-violence? This letter is not to warn you against writing to me and giving me your view of the picture, but it is intended to tell you why I would swear by decontrol even if mine was a solitary voice.
'Your second letter about Hindu-Muslim tension is more to the point than the first. Here too you should raise your voice openly against any soft handling of the situation or smug satisfaction. I shall do my part but I am painfully conscious of my limitations. Formerly I could afford to be monarch of all I surveyed. Today I have many fellow monarchs, if I may still count myself as such. If I can, I am the least among them. The first days of democracy are discordant notes which jar on the ear and give you many headaches. If democracy is to live in spite of these killing notes, sweet concord has to rise out of this seemingly discordant necessary lesson. How I wish that you would be one of the masters who would contribute to the production of concord out of discord!
"You will not make the mistake of thinking that your duty is finished when you have apprised me of the situation in your part of the country."
Civil Liberty
Gurudev has given the poetry of Civil liberty. It bears reproduction in a weekly journal like HARIJAN, although the statement has gone round the world. The reader will find it in another column. It is a paraphrase of "Work out trine own salvation", or "Man is his own enemy and his own friend".
Civil Liberty is not Criminal Liberty. When Law and Order are under popular control the Ministers in charge of the Department cannot hold the portfolio for a day, it they act against the popular will. It is true that the Assemblies are not sufficiently representative of the whole people. Nevertheless the suffrage is wide enough to make it representative of the Nation in matters of Law and Order. In seven Provinces the Congress rules. It seems to be assumed by some persons that, in these Provinces at least, individuals can say and do what they like. But so far as I know the Congress mind, it will not tolerate any such licence. Civil Liberty means the fullest liberty to say and do what one likes within the ordinary law of the land. The word 'ordinary' has been purposely used here. The Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, not to speak of the Special Powers Legislation, contain provisions which the foreign rulers have enacted for their own safety. These provisions can be easily identified, and must be ruled out of operation. The real test, however, is the interpretation by the Working Committee of the power of the Ministers of law and Order. Subject, therefore, to the general instructions laid down by the Working Committee for the guidance of Congress Ministers, the Statutory Powers limited in the manner indicated by me, must be exercised by the Ministers against those who, in the name of Civil liberty, preach lawlessness in the popular sense of the term.
It has been suggested that Congress Ministers who are pledged to nonviolence cannot resort to legal processes involving punishments. Such is not my view of the nonviolence accepted by the Congress. I have, personally, not found a way out of punishments and punitive restrictions in all conceivable cases. No doubt punishments have to be nonviolent, if such an expression is permissible in this connection. Just as violence has its own technique, known by the military science, which has invented means of destruction unheard of before, nonviolence has its own science and technique. Nonviolence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution. Its vast possibilities are, yet unexplored. The exploration can take place only if it is practised on a big scale-and in various fields. Congress Ministers, if they have faith in nonviolence, Will undertake the explorations. But whilst they are doing this, or whether they do so or not, there is no doubt that they cannot ignore incitements to violence and manifestly violent speech, even though they may themselves run the risk of being styled violent. When they are not wanted, the public will only have to signify its disapproval through its representatives in the absence of definite instructions from the Congress. It would proper for the Ministers to report what they consider is a violent behaviour of any member of the public to their own Provincial Congress Committee or the working committee, and seek instructions. If the superior authority does not approve of their recommendations, they may offer to resign. They may not allow things to drill so far s to have to summon the aid of the military. In my opinion, it would mount to Political bankruptcy, when any Minister is obliged to fall back in the military, which does not belong to the people, and which, in any scheme of nonviolence, must be ruled out of count for the observance of internal peace.
One interpretation I put upon the India Act is that it is an unconscious challenge to Congressmen to demonstrate the virtue of nonviolence and the sincerity of their conviction about it. If the Congress can give such a demonstration, most of the safeguards fall into desuetude, and the Congress can achieve its goal without a violent struggle, and also without iii disobedience. If the Congress has not impregnated the people with the nonviolent spirit, it has to become a minority, and remain in opposition, unless it will alter its creed.
Rights or Duties?
"I want to deal with one great evil that is afflicting society today. The capitalist and the Zamindar talk of their rights, the labour or the other hand, the prince of his divine right to rule, the ryot of his right to resist it. If all simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos.
"If instead of insisting on rights everyone does his duty, there will immediately be the rule of order established among mankind. There is no such a thing as the divine right of kings to rule and the humble duty of the ryots to pay respectful obedience to their masters. Whilst it is true that these hereditary inequalities must go as being injurious to the well-being of society, the unabashed assertion of rights of the hitherto down-trodden millions is equally injurious, if not more so to the same well-being. The latter behaviour is probably calculated to injure the millions rather than the few claimants of divine or other rights. They could but die a brave or cowardly death but those few dead would not bring in the orderly life of blissful contentment. It is therefore. necessary to understand the correlation of rights and duties. I venture to suggest that rights that do not directly from duty well performed are not worth having. They will be nations sooner discarded the better. A wretched parent who claims obedience from his children without first doing his duly by them excites nothing but contempt. It is distortion of religious precept for a dissolute husband and to expect compliance in every respect from his dutiful wife. But children who flout their parent who is, ever ready to do his duty towards them would be considered ungrateful and would harm themselves more than their parent. The same can be said about husband and wife. If you apply this simple and universal rule to employers and labourers, landlords and tenants, the princes and their subjects or the Hindus and the Muslims, you will find that the happiest relations can be established in all walks of life without creating disturbance in and dislocation of life and business which you see in India as in the other parts of the world. What I call the law of satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation of duties and rights flowing there from."
Taking the relations between the Hindus and the Muslims for his illustration, Gandhiji, resuming his remarks on rights and duties.
"What is the duty of the Hindu towards his Muslim neighbour? His duty is to befriend him as man, to share his joys and sorrows and help him in distress. He will then have the right to expect similar treatment from his Muslim neighbour and will probably get the expected response. Supposing the Hindus are in a majority in a village with a sprinkling of Muslims in their midst, the duty of the majority towards the few Muslim neighbours is increased manifold, so much so that the few will not feel that their religion makes any difference in the behaviour of the Hindus towards them. The Hindus will then earn the right, not before, that the Muslims will be natural friends with them and in times of danger both the communities will act as one man, but suppose that the few Muslims do not reciprocate the correct behaviour of the many Hindus and show fight in every action, it will be a sign of unmanliness. What is then the duty of the many Hindus? Certainly not to over-power them by the brute strength of the many., that will be usurpation of an unearned right. Their duty will be to check their unmanly behaviour as they would that of their blood brothers. It is unnecessary for me to dilate further upon the illustration. I will close it by saying that the application will be exactly the same if the position is reversed. From what I have said it is easy enough to extend the application with profit to the whole of the present state which has become baffling because people do not apply in practice the doctrine of deriving every right from a prior duty well performed.
"The same rule applies to the Princes and the ryots. The former's duty is to act as true servants of the people. They will rule not by right granted by some outside authority, never by the right of the sword. They will rule by right of service, of greater wisdom. They will then have the right to collect taxes voluntarily paid and expect certain services equally voluntarily rendered, not for themselves but for the sake of the people under their care. If they fail to perform this simple and primary duty, the ryots not only owe no return duty but the duty devolves on them of resisting the princely usurpation. It may be otherwise said that the ryots earn the right of resisting the usurpation or misrule. But the resistance will become a crime against man in terms of duty if it takes the form of murder, rapine and plunder. Force that performance of duty naturally generates is the non-violent and invincible force that satyagraha brings into being."