Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian States
BY COL. K. N. HAKSAR.
THE Indian Princes have declared unequivocally that they stand for India's connexion with Britain. Their loyalty is based on their devotion to the person of the King Emperor. If in these communistic days such a sentiment is held to be unenlightened, the Princes have every intention of remaining unenlightened. They do not consider, however, that the British Connexion postu- lates the direct control of India's internal affairs by Britain.
Such an attitude must be disappointing to their would-be pastors and masters, English or Indian, who for years have preached the doctrine that the removal of British control from India must sound the death-knell of the States. To such a. doctrine of self-interest the Indian Princes have displayed an obtuseness for many a year ; to-day they display a similar obtuseness towards its clumsy variant which would hold up to them as a portentous bugbear Mahatma Gandhi.
They may not accept one-half of his theories (his economic theories in particular) or one-quarter of his policy as adumbrated at the recent Karachi Congress ; but they cannot feel that he means ill to them or to their States. Many of them, sometimes at considerable per- sonal inconvenience, have made a point of discussing intimate matters with him intimately. Even if they did not remain to pray, they did not go to scoff. Perhaps none of them felt that his talk with Gandhi was a waste of time.
But is Gandhi a genuine well-wisher of the States ? By sentiment, he should be. He was born in a State of which his father was at the time Diwan (Chief Minister). His grandfather had held the same post, and Gandhi's youthful ambition was to follow in their footsteps. His application for service in a State where his family had almost established a hereditary claim to the Diwanship was countered by the order that he should first take a degree. It is interesting to speculate how different the course of recent Indian history might have proved had the youngster obtained the employment he then sought.
Distrusting his powers of passing the B.A. examination, Gandhi decided on the then easier option of being called to the Bar, and so journeyed across the black water and came into touch with London and the West. Amid new interests and new tribulations the idea of service in an Indian State faded, but not so the affection for Indian India. This can be seen by anyone who chooses to read between the lines in that extraordinary effort at self- revelation, My Experiments with Truth. In such .an affection there is nothing strange. The States command sentimental loyalties in a way that the Provinces of British India have never yet succeeded in doing. Such loyalties are rather fine even if they be apt to conflict with the aspirations of enthusiasts who would like to see India become a nation overnight. But more cogent reasons than sentiment may be suggested as underlying Gandhi's friendly regard for the States. In the dominions of the Indian Princes com- munal differences do not distract society, do not embitter politics. That of India's present sorrows the crown of sorrows is Communalism, can be denied by few. Gandhi himself affirms it. It is a more difficult problem than the Communism against which he fights so shrewdly.
Whatever be its pathology, the States are, free of com- munalistic infection and deserve full credit for the social hygiene that insures such an immunity. Gandhi may be a saint or a sinner, but he is the last man to refuse credit where credit is due. Without doubt he approves the absence of the communal spirit throughout the territories of the Indian Princes.
The question of the depressed classes faces the States even as it faces the Provinces, but, the former are likely to find the answer more easily than the latter, since in Indian India this, social question has not so far been com- plicated by its conversion into a political one, such as it has become in British India. It will be solved eventually by personal influence rather than by legislation, and it is difficult in the world of to-day to find persons locally more influential than the Indian Princes, each in his own particular State. Few, if any, of those Rulers can have any quarrel with Gandhi's main idea that under any system of Federation in India, the fundamental rights of the individual in the Provinces or the States should be the same, even if they may not agree with him as to what exactly those rights should be or as to the best method of implementing those rights.
Again, Gandhi is a brave man and not afraid of much in the material world where his lot is cast. But would he not admit his forebodings in one particular matter ? Is he not afraid of the rapid industrialization of India along. Western lines, perhaps because he is aware that in his mental armoury he has no real weapon of defence against such a possibility ? If the States as a whole cannot show the factory system spreading with the same rapidity as can the Provinces, Gandhi is the last person to find fault with such a laggard progress towards indus- trial modernity.
Other reasons—and, perhaps, less negative ones than those already mentioned—may be adduced for the hypothesis that Gandhi does not hold everything to be rotten in the State of Janjira. As an idealist, Gandhi doubtless would like to mould each of those States nearer to his heart's desire, but with him it would always be a case of mending, not of ending. He has never associated himself with the section of Indian politicians who give tongue directly the question of the States is mentioned, and the writer believes that such reticence is not due to the fact that Gandhi is neither a demagogue nor a Machiavelli." Rather it is that this man of Faith, who sees the good in everything, can appreciate' what good there is in the States at present and what tremendous possibilities for future good depend on their continuance.
Gandhi trusts the States, and trust begets trust, but that is not the whole of the matter. Whatever its basis, his affection for the States is a genuine sentiment, just as his faith in them is founded on reason. But was there ever a man whose motives were worse misconceived, whose ideals were regarded as more impracticable, and whose determination more Under-rated than thiS man of Destiny ?
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