Freedom Through Disobedience E-Book

Chitta Ranjan Das

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 82

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Sisters and Brothers: As I stand before you today, a sense of overwhelming loss overtakes me, and I can scarce give expression to what is uppermost in the minds of all and everyone of us. After a memorable battle which he gave to the Bureaucracy, Mahatma Gandhi has been seized and cast into prison; and we shall not have his guidance in the proceedings of the Congress this year. But there is inspiration for all of us in the last stand which he made in the citadel of the enemy, in the last defiance which he hurled at the agents of the Bureaucracy. To read a story equal in pathos, in dignity, and in sublimity you have to go back over two thousand years, when Jesus of Nazareth, "as one that perverted the people" stood to take his trial before a foreign tribunal.

Leseprobe

Freedom Through Disobedience

Freedom Through Disobedience FREEDOM THROUGH DISOBEDIENCE“LAW AND ORDER”NATIONALISM: THE IDEALNON-VIOLENT NON-CO-OPERATIONFORCE AND VIOLENCETHE FRENCH REVOLUTIONREVOLUTIONS IN ENGLANDREVOLUTIONS IN ITALY AND RUSSIANON-VIOLENT NON-CO-OPERATION: THE ONLY METHODSUCCESS OF NON-VIOLENT NON-CO-OPERATIONCHARGE OF CORRUPTING THE YOUTHSCHARGE OF HYPOCRISYHOW TO APPLY THE NON-VIOLENT N. C. O. METHODDECLARATION OF RIGHTSFOREIGN PROPAGANDATHE GREAT ASIATIC FEDERATIONDEMANDS FOR PUNJAB WRONGS, KHILAFAT AND SWARAJSCHEME OF A GOVERNMENTBOYCOTT OF COUNCILSLABOUR ORGANISATIONWORK ALREADY TAKEN UPBOYCOTT OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGESBOYCOTT OF LAW COURTS AND LAWYERSHINDU-MUSLIM UNITYKHADDARCONCLUSIONCopyright

Freedom Through Disobedience

Chitta Ranjan Das

FREEDOM THROUGH DISOBEDIENCE

The following is the full text of the Presidential Address of Desabhandhu C. R. Das at the thirty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress held at Gaya on 26th December 1922:—Sisters and Brothers,—As I stand before you to-day, a sense of overwhelming loss overtakes me, and I can scarce give expression to what is uppermost in the minds of all and everyone of us. After a memorable battle which he gave to the Bureaucracy, Mahatma Gandhi has been seized and cast into prison; and we shall not have his guidance in the proceedings of the Congress this year. But there is inspiration for all of us in the last stand which he made in the citadel of the enemy, in the last defiance which he hurled at the agents of the Bureaucracy. To read a story equal in pathos, in dignity, and in sublimity you have to go back over two thousand years, when Jesus of Nazareth, “as one that perverted the people” stood to take his trial before a foreign tribunal. “ And Jesus stood before the Governor: and the Governor asked him saying, Art thou the king of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayëst. “ And when he has accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. “ Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? “ And he answered him too never a word; insomuch that the Governor marvelled greatly.”Mahatma Gandhi took a different course. He admitted that he was guilty, and he pointed out to the public Prosecutor, that his guilt was greater than he, the Prosecutor, had alleged; but he maintained that if he had offended against the law of Bureaucracy in so offending, he had obeyed the law of God. If I may hazard a guess, the Judge who tried him and who passed a sentence of imprisonment on him was filled with the same feeling of marvel as Pontius Pilate had been.Great in taking decisions, great in executing them, Mahatma Gandhi was incomparably great in the last stand which he made on behalf of his country. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest men that the world has ever seen. The world hath need of him and if he is mocked and jeered at by “the people of importance,” the “people with a stake in the country”—Scribes and Pharisees of the days of Christ he will be gratefully remembered now and always by a nation which he led from victory to victory.

“LAW AND ORDER”

Gentlemen, the time is a critical one and it is important to seize upon the real issue which divides the people from the Bureaucracy and its Indian allies. During the period of repression which began about this time last year, it was this issue which pressed itself on our attention. This policy of repression was supported and in some cases instigated by the Moderate Leaders who are in the Executive Government. I do not charge those who supported the Government with dishonesty or want of patriotism. I say they were led away by the battle cry of Law and Order. And it is because I believe that there is a fundamental confusion of thought behind this attitude of mind that I propose to discuss this plea of Law and Order. “Law and Order” has indeed been the last refuge of Bureaucracies all over the world.

It has been gravely asserted not only by the Bureaucracy but also by its apologists, the Moderate Party, that a settled Government is the first necessity of any people and that the subject has no right to present his grievances except in a constitutional way, by which I understand in some way recognised by the constitution. If you cannot actively co-operate in the maintenance of “the law of the land” they say, “it is your duty as a responsible citizen to obey it passively. Non-resistance is the least that the Government is entitled to expect from you.”

This is the whole political philosophy of the Bureaucracy—the maintenance of law and order on the part of the Government, and an attitude of passive obedience and non-resistance on the part of the subject. But was not that the political philosophy of every English King from William the Conqueror to James II? And was not that the political philosophy of the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns and of the Bourbons? And yet freedom has come, where it has come, by disobedience of the very laws which were proclaimed in the name of law and order. Where the Government is arbitrary and despotic and the fundamental rights of the people are not recognised, it is idle to talk of law and order.

The doctrine has apparently made its way to this country from England. I shall, therefore, refer to English history to find out the truth about this doctrine. That history has recorded that most of the despots in England who exercised arbitrary sway over the people proposed to act for the good of the people and for the maintenance of law and order. English absolutism from the Normans down to the Stuarts tried to put itself on a constitutional basis through the process of this very law and order. The pathetic speech delivered by Charles I. just before his execution puts the whole doctrine in a nutshell. “For the people,” he said, “truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whatsoever, but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consist in having Government, those laws by which their lives and their goods may be their own. It is not their having a share in the Government, that is nothing appertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clear different things.” The doctrine of law and order could not be stated with more admirable clearness. But though the English kings acted constitutionally in the sense that their acts were in accordance with the letter of law and were covered by precedents, the subjects always claimed that they were free to assert their fundamental rights and to wrest them from the king by force or insurrections. The doctrine of law and order received a rude shock when King John was obliged to put his signature to the Magna Charta on the 15th of June, 1215. The 61st clause of the Charter is important for our purpose securing as it did to the subject the liberty of rebellion as a means for enforcing the due observance of the Charter by the Crown. Adams, a celebrated writer of English Constitutional History, says that the conditional right to rebel is as much at the foundation of the English Constitution to-day as it was in 1215. But though the doctrine of law and order had received a rude shock it did not altogether die; for in the intervening period the Crown claimed and asserted the right to raise money, not only by indirect taxes but also by forced loans and benevolences; and frequently exercised large legislative functions not only by applying what are known as suspending and dispensing powers but also by issuing proclamations. The Crown claimed, as Hallam says, “not only a kind of supplemental right of legislation to perfect and carry out what the spirit of existing laws might require but also a paramount supremacy, called sometimes the king’s absolute or sovereign power which sanctioned commands beyond the legal prerogative, for the sake of public safety whenever the Council might judge that to be in hazard.” By the time of the Stuarts the powers claimed by the Crown were recognised by the courts of law as well founded, and, to quote the words of Adams, “the forms of law became the engines for the perpetration of judicial murders.” It is necessary to remember that it was the process of law and order that helped to consolidate the powers of the Crown; for it was again and again laid down by the Court of Exchequer that the power of taxation was vested in the Crown, where it was “for the general benefit of the people.” As Adams says, “the Stuarts asserted a legal justification for everything done by them,” and, “on the whole, history was with the king.”