Indian Unrest | Page 9

last year's Indian Councils Act:--
You may get a High Court judgeship here, membership of the
Legislative Council there, possibly an Executive Membership of the
Council. Or do you want an expansion of the Legislative Councils? Do

you want that a few Indians shall sit as your representatives in the
House of Commons? Do you want a large number of Indians in the
Civil Service? Let us see whether 50, 100, 200, or 300 civilians will
make the Government our own.... The whole Civil Service might be
Indian, but the Civil servants have to carry out orders--they cannot
direct, they cannot dictate the policy. One swallow does not make the
summer. One civilian, 100 or 1,000 civilians in the service of the
British Government will not make that Government Indian. There are
traditions, there are laws, there are policies to which every civilian, be
he black or brown or white, must submit, and as long as these traditions
have not been altered, as long as these principles have not been
amended, as long as that policy has not been radically changed, the
supplanting of European by Indian agency will not make for
self-government in this country.
Nor is it from the British Government that Mr. Pal looks for, or would
accept, _Swaraj_:--
If the Government were to come and tell me to-day "Take _Swaraj" I
would say thank you for the gift, but I will not have that which I cannot
acquire by my own hand.... Our programme is that we shall so work in
the country, so combine the resources of the people, so organize the
forces of the nation, so develop the instincts of freedom in the
community, that by this means we shall--shall in the
imperative--compel the submission to our will of any power that may
set itself against us.
Equally definite is Mr. Pal as to the methods by which Swaraj is to be
made "imperative." They consist of Swadeshi in the economic domain,
i.e., the encouragement of native industries reinforced by the boycott of
imported goods which will kill British commerce and, in the political
domain, passive resistance reinforced by the boycott of Government
service.
They say:--Can you boycott all the Government offices? Whoever said
that we would? Whoever said that there would not be found a single
Indian to serve the Government or the European community here? But
what we can do is this. We can make the Government impossible

without entirely making it impossible for them to find people to serve
them. The administration may be made impossible in a variety of ways.
It is not actually that every deputy magistrate should say: I won't serve
in it. It is not that when one man resigns nobody will be found to take
his place. But if you create this spirit in the country the Government
service will gradually imbibe this spirit, and a whole office may go on
strike. That does not put an end to the administration, but it creates
endless complications in the work of administration, and if these
complications are created in every part of the country, the
administration will have been brought to a deadlock and made none the
less impossible, for the primary thing is the prestige of the Government
and the boycott strikes at the root of that prestige.... We can reduce
every Indian in Government service to the position of a man who has
fallen from the dignity of Indian citizenship.... No man shall receive
social honours because he is a Hakim or a Munsiff or a Huzur
Sheristadar.... No law can compel one to give a chair to a man who
comes to his house. He may give it to an ordinary shopkeeper; he may
refuse it to the Deputy Magistrate or the Subordinate Judge. He may
give his daughter in marriage to a poor beggar, he may refuse her to the
son of a Deputy Magistrate, because it is absolutely within his rights,
absolutely within legal bounds.
Passive resistance is recognized as legitimate in England. It is
legitimate in theory even in India, and if it is made illegal by new
legislation, these laws will infringe on the primary rights of personal
freedom and will tread on dangerous grounds. Therefore it seems to me
that by means of the boycott we shall be able to do the negative work
that will have to be done for the attainment of Swaraj. Positive work
will have to be done. Without positive training no self-government will
come to the boycotter. It will (come) through the organization of our
village life; of our talukas and districts. Let our programme include the
setting up of machinery for popular administration, and running parallel
to, but independent of, the existing administration of the Government....
In the Providence of God we shall then be