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SIX
Its Limits
THE
three canons of the doctrine of passive
resistance are in reality three necessities which must, whether we like it or
not, be accepted in theory and executed in practice, if passive resistance is to
have any chance of success. Passive resisters, both as individuals and in the
mass, must always be prepared to break an unjust coercive law and take the legal
consequence; for if they shrink from this obligation, the bureaucracy can at
once make passive resistance impossible simply by adding a few more enactments
to their book of statutes. A resistance which can so easily be snuffed out of
being is not worth making. For the same reason they must be prepared to disobey
an unjust and coercive executive order whether general or particular; for
nothing would be simpler than to put down by a few months' coercion a resistance
too weak to face the consequences of refusing submission to Government by ukase.
They must be prepared to boycott persons guilty of deliberate disobedience to
the national will in vital matters because, if they do not, the example of
unpunished treason will tend to be repeated and destroy by a kind of dry rot the
enthusiastic unity and universality which we have seen to be necessary to the
success of passive resistance of the kind we have inaugurated in India. Men in
the mass are strong and capable of wonder-working enthusiasms and irresistible
movements; but the individual average man is apt to be weak or selfish and,
unless he sees that the mass are in deadly earnest and will not tolerate
individual treachery, he will usually, after the first enthusiasm, indulge his
weakness or selfishness to the detriment of the community. We have seen this
happening almost everywhere where the boycott of foreign goods was not enforced
by the boycott of persons buying foreign goods. This is one important reason why
the boycott which has maintained itself
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in
East Bengal, is in the West becoming more and more of a failure.
The moment these three unavoidable obligations are put into force, the
passive resistance movement will lose its character of inoffensive legality and
we shall be in the thick of a struggle which may lead us anywhere. Passive
resistance, when it is confined
— as at
present — to lawful abstention from actions which it
lies within our choice as subjects to do or not to do, is of the nature of the
strategical movements and large manoeuvrings previous to the meeting of armies
in the field; but the enforcement of our three canons brings us to the actual
shock of battle. Nevertheless our resistance still retains an essential
character of passivity. If the right of public meeting is suspended by
Magisterial ukase, we confine ourselves to the practical assertion of the right
in defiance of the ukase and, so long as the executive also confines itself to
the dispersal of the meeting by the arrest of its conveners and other peaceful
and legal measures, we offer no active resistance. We submit to the arrest,
though not necessarily to the dispersal, and quietly take the legal
consequences. Similarly, if the law forbids us to speak or write the truth as we
conceive it our duty to speak it, we persist in doing our duty and submit
quietly to whatever punishment the law of sedition or any other law coercive
ingenuity may devise, can find to inflict on us. In a peaceful way we act
against the law or the executive, but we passively accept the legal
consequences.
There is a limit however to passive resistance. So long as the action of
the executive is peaceful and within the rules of the fight, the passive
resister scrupulously maintains his attitude of passivity, but he is not bound
to do so a moment beyond. To submit to illegal or violent methods of coercion,
to accept out-rage and hooliganism as part of the legal procedure of the country
is to be guilty of cowardice, and, by dwarfing national manhood, to sin against
the divinity within ourselves and the divinity in our motherland. The moment
coercion of this kind is attempted, passive resistance ceases and active
resistance becomes a duty. If the instruments of the executive choose to
disperse our meeting by breaking the heads of those present, the right of
self-defence entitles us not merely to defend our heads but to retaliate on
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those
of the head-breakers. For the myrmidons of the law have ceased then to be
guardians of the peace and become breakers of the peace, rioters and not
instruments of authority, and their uniform is no longer a bar to the right of
self-defence. Nor does it make any difference if the instruments of coercion
happen to be the recognised and usual instruments or are unofficial hooligans in
alliance or sympathy with the forces of coercion. In both cases active
resistance becomes a duty and passive resistance is, for that occasion,
suspended. But though no longer passive, it is still a defensive resistance. Nor
does resistance pass into the aggressive stage so long as it resists coercive
violence in its own kind and confines itself to repelling attack. Even if it
takes the offensive, it does not by that mere fact become aggressive resistance,
unless the amount of aggression exceeds what is necessary to make defence
effective. The students of Mymensingh, charged by the police while picketing,
kept well within the right of self-defence when they drove the rioters off the
field of operations; the gentlemen of Comilla kept well within the rights of
self-defence if they attacked either rioters or inciters of riot who either
offered, or threatened, or tried to provoke assault. Even the famous shot which
woke the authorities from their waking dreams, need not have been an act of
aggression if it was fired to save life or a woman's honour or under
circumstances of desperation when no other means of defence would have been
effective. With the doubtful exception of this shot, supposing it to have been
fired unnecessarily, and that other revolver shot which killed Mr. Rand, there
has been no instance of aggressive resistance in modern Indian politics.
The new politics, therefore, while it favours passive resistance, does
not include meek submission to illegal outrage under that term; it has no
intention of overstressing the passivity at the expense of the resistance. Nor
is it inclined to be hysterical over a few dozen of broken heads or exalt so
simple a matter as a bloody coxcomb into the crown of martyrdom. This sort of
hysterical exaggeration was too common in the early days of the movement when
everyone who got his crown cracked in a street affray with the police was
encouraged to lift up his broken head before the world and cry out, "This
is the head of a martyr."
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The
new politics is a serious doctrine and not, like the old, a thing of shows and
political theatricals; it demands real sufferings from its adherents, —
imprisonment, worldly ruin, death itself, before it can allow him to assume the
rank of a martyr for his country. Passive resistance cannot build up a strong
and great nation unless it is masculine, bold and ardent in its spirit and ready
at any moment and at the slightest notice to supplement itself with active
resistance. We do not want to develop a nation of women who know only how to
suffer and not how to strike.
Morever, the new politics must recognise the fact that beyond a certain
point passive resistance puts a strain on human endurance which our natures
cannot endure. This may come in particular instances where an outrage is too
great or the stress of tyranny too unendurable for anyone to stand purely on the
defensive; to hit back, to assail and crush the assailant, to vindicate one's
manhood becomes an imperious necessity to outraged humanity. Or it may come in
the mass when the strain of oppression a whole nation has to meet in its unarmed
struggle for liberty, overpasses its powers of endurance. It then becomes the
sole choice either to break under the strain and go under or to throw it off
with violence. The Spartan soldiers at Plataea endured for some time the
missiles of the enemy and saw their comrades falling at their side without any
reply because their general had not yet declared it to be the auspicious time
for attack; but if the demand on their passive endurance had been too long
continued, they must either have broken in disastrous defeat or flung themselves
on the enemy in disregard of their leader's orders. The school of politics which
we advocate is not based upon abstractions, formulas and dogmas, but on
practical necessities and the teaching of political experience, common sense and
the world's history. We have not the slightest wish to put forward passive
resistance as an inelastic dogma. We preach defensive resistance mainly passive
in its methods at present, but active whenever active resistance is needed; but
defensive resistance within the limits imposed by human nature and by the
demands of self-respect and the militant spirit of true manhood. If at any time
the laws obtaining in India or the executive action
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of
the bureaucracy were to become so oppressive as to render a struggle for liberty
on the lines we have indicated, impossible; if after a fair trial given to this
method, the object with which we undertook it, proved to be as far off as ever; or if passive resistance should turn out either not feasible or necessarily
ineffectual under the conditions of this country, we should be the first to
recognise that everything must be reconsidered and that the time for new men and
new methods had arrived. We recognise no political object of worship except the
divinity in our Motherland, no present object of political endeavour except
liberty, and no method or action as politically good or evil except as it truly
helps or hinders our progress towards national emancipation.
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