ON this day of joyful liberation from foreign rule, it is no wonder that all minds turn in veneration and gratitude to the little old man of Wardha the one man, who more than any other, has been the author and architect of the freedom that it is our good fortune to celebrate today.
Gandhiji has been the country's trusted pilot and the dictator of its premier political organisation, the Indian National Congress, almost continuously for a period of three decades—but the dictator has been not a tyrant, but a father-the beloved Bapu. His leadership has permeated every phase of the people's life —moral, social and political—and has transformed as it were a nation of timid slaves, grovelling under the foreign heel and beset with a corrupt, anachronistic social order, into a dynamic and disciplined force for self-assertion. He has re-kindled in a torpid generation a passion for freedom and social justice and a sense of self-respect that it had all but lost. The notable contribution that Mahatma Gandhi has made to India's freedom struggle is writ large across the last three decades of our turbulent history. And yet when he came back to this country, on a January morning in 1915, after twenty years of trial and ''Experiments with Truth,'' though many felt that a new kind of leader had arrived on the Indian scene—a man to reckon with—his novel doctrine was prone to be regarded as but the eccentric vision of an impractical person. But his early skirmishes with organised power in South Africa had already given him that steadfastness of purpose and inflexible confidence in the purity and strength of his means to match the justice of his ends. He had already acquired the self-knowledge and conviction necessary to be able to enlarge on his doctrine.
And in less than four years after his arrival in India, he had arrested the nation's attention, captured the leadership of national politics and routed the "old guard'' of Indian nationalism, the Besants and the Pals, who could not see eye to eye with him and •were inclined to regard him as an impractical blunderer on the political arena. His daringly outspoken speeches of those days and the object lesson that he gave India In Individual Civil Disobedience at Champaran and Kaira and the success that attended these as well as his experiment with the hunger-strike as a political weapon of lecturing redress at Ahmedabad, where be led an industrial strike in 1918—all these had won for him a steadfast, if select following. When the Indian National Congress met late in 1919, "under the conflicting shadows of the Montford Reforms and the Jallianwalla Bagh tragedy," Gandhiji seized leadership by the sheer strength of his personality. Of course, a group of dissidents walked out of the Congress, but he had won the allegiance of giants like Mottlal Nehru, C. R. Das and Lajpat Rat.
GANDHIAN ERA
From that to the special session of the Congress at Calcutta in August 1920 was easier sailing. It was perhaps the most significant session of the Indian Congress. For it was here that the Mahatma secured acceptance of his new creed of non-violent Satyagraha to combat Imperialist repression. The gospel of Swadeshi, the khadi programme, non-payment of taxes, surrender of titles,, boycott of law courts, legislative councils, Government schools and functions and all the rest of the Gandhian technique of direct action were accepted and approved. In that session, it may be said, the Gandhian era in Indian history was born. The new creed had earned recognition, but the new weapon had yet many a trial to face. The amorphous Indian masses, that raw material of our history, could not be converted overnight to the mighty discipline that nonviolence in direct action demanded. Gandhiji withdrew his first Civil Disobedience Movement in haste, because violent scenes had broken out at Bombay, when the Prince of Wales landed there. It is one of his greatnesses, that in the face of defeat, lzzat did not prevent him from owning it, nor would he compromise on his principles for reasons of political expediency. It was this basic honesty of the man and his insistence on non-violence as the sine qua non of Satyagraha that also made him call off his next campaign in 1921 in Bardoli taluka in Gujarat. After the incident at Chauri Chaura where an angry mob lost control and burnt a few policemen in their fury Gandhiji confessed to have made "a Himalayan miscalculation." He again owned defeat to the short-sighted exasperation of even his followers—and sought to atone for the violence with a penitential fast.
CONGRESS AND COUNCIL ENTRY
With his historic trial and incarceration for sedition in 1922, Gandhiji apparently passed out of the political scene. When he was released after two years for reasons of health, the Congress was inclined to toy with the so called Swarajist programme of wrecking the constitution from within the legislatures. Gandhiji true to his fundamental creed, retired to his ashram, to meditate upon and perfect his philosophy, followed by his band of 'no changers". They had to bide their time, because the nation was not yet ripe for the super-moral ordeal of Satyagraha. The retirement was not one of quiet seclusion but of dynamic preparation. His influence on public life was all the time there. When he returned to his experiment with the second Bardoli campaign in 1928 and demonstrated by a miracle of organisation and discipline,—with the Sardar as his lieutenant—the efficacy of his creed, the nation was all but ready to take refuge in the Mahatma. Duped and disappointed, the Congress leaders were at their wit's end when the all-white Simon Commission sought to impose the British will on the country. We know how, coming back to leadership, Gandhiji launched the fateful movement of 1931, marked by the Dandi March, he taught a timid people to face repression with a smile and awoke the conscience of humanity itself with his non-violent protest in the face of the armed might of an Empire. The movement was undoubtedly a triumph and succeeded in raising men, women and even youngsters in their teens to heights of heroic sacrifice. The phenomenon of stalwart Pathans meekly taking the lathi blows of the police, without retaliation and without complaint, has few parallels anywhere In the world.
The economic boycott was also telling in the very heart of Britain, in the cotton centre of Lancashire. It was the first big effort of the country under Gandhian auspices to overthrow the foreign yoke and the moral and political pres sure exerted upon the rulers may be gauged by the fact that the Rebel and the Viceroy were closeted together soon after, in friendly negotiation. The resultant Round Table Conference—the second one of its kind—did not fulfil the hopes entertained by the country. But it gave Gandhiji, who went as the Indian Congress's sole delegate to the Conference, an opportunity to present India's case to the average Englishman and to the "world.”
Gandhiji told the Indian story, simply but uncompromisingly. His genial personality, his good humour, outspokenness and obvious friendliness for the English people, as different from the imperial system—all these won for the Indian a new esteem and understanding and focussed the world's attention on the just demands of the Indian people. To seek to assess individually the results of each of the many campaigns that Gandhiji launched would be to miss the cumulative achievement of Gandhism as a whole.
Lord Willingdon, the then Viceroy, apparently crushed the Civil Disobedience Movement that was launched soon after Gandhiji's return from the Round Table talks. Bu in jail or out of it, each succeeding step in his political career was a step forward. In 1934, he again retired from the Congress, after calling off Satyagraha, but though officially out of it, his finger was always on the pulse of the nation and when the short-lived experiment in office-acceptance , came to a fitful end with the outbreak of war, Gandhiji was there to take on the reins. Even while in office, Gandhiji was the mentor and guide of the Congress, who canalised the activities of the ' Provincial Ministries on Gandhian lines. His basic programme of Khadi, Prohibition, rural re construction and above all—the removal of untouchability formed the major concern of the Congress in office.
The end of the popular Ministries with the onset of the war, the Individual Satyagraha of 1940 that he had conceived in characteristic fairness to an opponent in trouble, the Cripps Offer and the subsequent "Quit India" Resolution of August 1942 are recent history. It is common knowledge, how in spite of his endeavours to place negotiations before direct action, the Government plunged the country into an orgy of violence by precipitate repression. And that last battle for freedom was perhaps his most trying experience, for confined in jail and powerless to check the violent outbursts all over the country, he had to be a silent onlooker of all that was most abhorrent to his cherished creed.
The sad bereavements caused by the death of his wife and Mahadev Desal, his faithful Secretary and the agonising 21-day "fast unto capacity" that nearly cost him his life, certainly made it all the more bitter. But the life-long sacrifice and purposeful struggle on the highest plane conceivable, had not gone in vain. If to-day an Empire is being wound up, by almost spontaneous transfer of power by the rulers to the ruled, such conversion can be but the fruit, in a very large measure, of Gandhian strategy and idealism.
MANY-SIDED EFFORT
Thus what looked at first like the caprices of a visionary has come to have its abiding and triumphant place in practical politics. With unswerving faith in his cause and his methods Gandhiji has brought the Indian vessel to the haven of freedom. But in the evaluation of his inestimable services to the country, the political victory is but one aspect of a many-sided effort. With his deep sympathy and compassion for the common man, the poor and the oppressed in society, his restless genius has left the Gandhian touch in many phases of our national life. To-day, the curse of untouchability, that dark blot on our social fabric, has been almost removed. The Gandhian constructive programme which in a measure the Congress Governments in/power are implementing are the main hope of the masses, as the means of translating political liberty into social well-being. The Basic Scheme of education, the Hindustani Talimi Sangh, the Village Industries Association, the All-India Spinners' Association, the Hindi Prachar Sangh and other such organisations are the leader's priceless gifts to the common man In India. It is true that the Gandhian programme has had its defeats and setbacks, which, one hopes, are but temporary.
The leader's unceasing endeavours to promote Hindu-Muslim unity and preserve national solidarity, have for the time, ended in failure. Today, the nation has got driven into two, after months of senseless bloodshed unloosed by the forces of hatred. The critic will no doubt point out, that Gandhiji's methods promised more than they could perform, but if men had never promised more than it was possible for them to perform, the world would be the poorer, for "the achieved reform is the child of unachieved ideal' . "We are fortunate and grateful that fate has bestowed upon us so luminous a contemporary—a beacon for generations to come", wrote Albert Einstein, the scientist, in a birthday tribute to Gandhiji and we in India have indeed greater cause to be grateful to a destiny that gave us such significant leadership in our hour of need. Non-violence in politics is no longer a beautiful dream— a dream too beautiful to be true. The Gandhian doctrine stands to-day as the main hope for a world in mortal peril of the atom bomb.
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Leaf through the pages and experience history in the making as our readers experienced it that day.
On the occassion of the 69th Independence Day, The Hindu presents to you the historic day of India's liberation from imperial rule through our edition dated August 15, 1947. You can leaf through the pages and experience history in the making as our readers experienced it that day. We have extracted select articles by the likes of V.K. Krishna Menon, T.T. Krishnamachari and C.V. Raman for you to read into the thoughts of the great minds of that era. You can click on the red marker on highlighted articles and proceed to the full story.
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