Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. Sadly, is utterly useless. Signs and symbols represent things. There is a 'picture-theory' of Language which treats semantics as essentially representational rather than strategics. However how signs and sentences are interpreted is a matter of hermeneutics- Mimamsa in Sanskrit- which, in strategic contexts, is economic (artha) and game theoretic.
Mahatma Gandhi certainly used signs and symbols- e.g the spinning wheel- to great effect. Some claim that his semiotics caused the Brits to repent of ruling India and to depart from its shores in the grip of remorse. Sadly, there is no truth to this notion. The Raj existed for economic and strategic reasons. When those reasons disappeared, the Raj disappeared. Gandhi had always functioned more as a totem or mascot for the Congress Party which, sadly, neglected to go down the road its founder, A.O Hulme, had envisaged- viz. solving collective action problems to boost productivity- preferring instead to degenerate into the ancestral property of a brain-dead dynasty helmed, till recently, by a nice Italian lady.
Was this outcome inevitable? I think it became so once the fundamental principle of representative government was abandoned or turned on its head. Gandhi, it seems to me, was the politician most culpable in this regard.
To be clear, a leader need not represent the views or interests of his followers. He may shape those views or even dictate them. A leader is a 'Principal', not an 'Agent'. A representative, however, is an Agent. Ideally, a representative accurately reflects the views and interests of those she represents. She may exercise some discretion and make deals which she believes best advance the interests of her people. Indeed, a representative who is seen to do so effectively may become more of a 'leader' than a 'representative'. This is the fundamental principle of representative democracy. Sadly, it means that today's leader is unceremoniously dumped tomorrow. As Mahatma Gandhi noted in 'Hind Swaraj', this, very sadly, meant that Parliament was like a prostitute which gave itself to a new master every few years. His semiotics enabled democratic India to become Dynastic- save in so far as assassination could curb autocracy.
At the Second Round table Conference in London in 1931, Gandhi was the representative of the Indian National Congress. The claims he made there were the claims Congress was making. However, Gandhi was not just a representative. He was also a leader. Indeed, we may say he was primarily a leader and only accidentally a representative. Indeed, he probably did not want to attend but did so in order to get Congress prisoners released.
In a speech to the Conference, Gandhi said
to most of these Reports (compiled for the information of the British Parliament) you will find that there is a dissenting opinion, and in most of the cases that dissent unfortunately happens to belong to me. It was not a matter of joy to have to dissent from fellow delegates. But I felt that I could not truly represent the Congress unless I notified that dissent.
Thus, Congress was not in agreement, on a large number of issues, with the other Indian parties attending the Conference. In other words, Congress had beef with the British but other Indians had beef with Congress.
There is another thing which I want to bring to the notice of this Conference namely, what is the meaning of the dissent of the Congress? I said at one of the preliminary meetings of the Federal Structure committee that the Congress claimed to represent over 85 percent of the population of India, that is to say the dumb, toiling, semi-starved millions.
Some of those semi-starved millions wanted to eat beef. But millions also wanted a ban on cow slaughter. Gandhi's own position on this was commendably liberal. But could he stop majorities imposing their will in this respect? People who remembered the beef riots in Bihar in 1917 knew the answer to this. It was no.
But I went further: that the Congress claimed also, by right of service, to represent even the Princes, if they would pardon my putting forth that claim, and the landed gentry, and the educated class. I wish to repeat that claim and I wish this evening to emphasize that claim.
At that time, Burma was part of India. It wasn't till 1937 that it was allowed to go its own way.
All the other Parties at this meeting represent sectional interests. Congress alone claims to represent the whole of India and all interests.
I may claim to represent you. But if you are present and you keep telling everybody that I'm a shithead, it is an empty claim.
It is no communal organization; it is a determined enemy of communalism in any shape or form.
In other words, it was a determined enemy of the Muslim League which was, as its name suggests, a communal organization. But the same could be said about the Hindu Mahasabha.
Congress knows no distinction of race, color or creed; its platform is universal. It may not always have lived up to the creed. I do not know a single human organization that lives up to its creed. Congress has failed very often to my knowledge. It may have failed more often to the knowledge of its critics. But the worst critic will have to recognize, as it has been recognized, that the Indian National Congress is a daily growing organization, that its message penetrates the remotest village of India, that on given occasions the Congress has been able to demonstrate its influence over and among these masses who inhabit its 700,000 villages.
Why then had communal violence increased so greatly just when its influence was spreading? If Congress truly represented India then it also represented the negative aspects of India- e.g. communalism and casteism.
And yet, here I see that the Congress is treated as one of the Parties. I do not mind it; I do not regard it a calamity for the Congress; but I do regard it as a calamity for the purpose of doing the work for which we have gathered together here.
In other words, Congress expected the Conference to fail and this expectation would ensure it did in fact fail. But that would mean that the Brits would dictate the pace and scale of reform.
I wish I could convince all the British public men, the British Ministers, that the Congress is capable of delivering the goods.
To do so, it had to convince the other Indian parties at the Conference. Gandhi did try to do a side deal with the Muslims so as to keep out the Untouchables but this enraged Ambedkar.
The Congress is the only all-India wide national organization, bereft of any communal bias: that it does represent all minorities which have lodged their claim-I hold unjustifiably-to represent 46 percent of the population of India. The Congress, I say, claims to represent all these minorities.
Gandhi was a lawyer. He knew that claims had to be backed up with evidence. Congress did have members from all communities. Surely, that was evidence enough? The answer was no. There had to be evidence that those members commanded the support of their natal community. After all, the Communist party might have members who were aristocrats or millionaire industrialists or even clergymen. But that doesn't mean the Communists represent the interests of land-owners and capitalists.
What a great difference it would be today if this claim on behalf of the congress was recognized.
In that case, India- like Ceylon- could have elections under universal adult suffrage. Congress may well have won, but there would be boycotts and then riots and a drift to Civil War in parts of the country. The Irish example was not encouraging.
I feel that I have to state this claim with some degree of emphasis on behalf of peace, for the sake of achieving the purpose which is common to all of us, to you Englishmen who sit at this Table and to us the Indian men and women who also sit at this Table. I say so for this reason: Congress is a powerful organization: Congress is an organization which has been accused of running or desiring to run a parallel Government; and in a way I have endorsed the charge. If you could understand the working of the Congress you would welcome an organization which could run a parallel Government and show that it is possible for an organization, voluntary, without any force at its command, to run the machinery of Government even under adverse circumstances.
In Ireland, from about 1919, there was an actual parallel government- with its own army and Cabinet and Dáil Courts (which built upon the arbitration provided by Sinn Fein Courts). Sadly, Gandhi's attempts to boycott Government Courts and schools etc. had failed miserably. Perhaps, if Gandhi hadn't unilaterally surrendered in February 1922, India could have got what the Irish and the Egyptians got in that year. But, as things were, India had had no 'Easter uprising'. It did have guys queuing up to get hit on the head and then carted off to jail. The problem was that a capacity to take a beating is not evidence of strength.
But no. Although you have invited the Congress, you distrust the Congress.
The other Indian parties distrusted it more.
Although you have invited the Congress, you reject its claim to represent the whole of India.
Just as Congress rejected the Muslim League's claim to represent Muslims, or Ambedkar's to represent 'Harijans'.
Of course it is possible at this end of the world to dispute that claim,
it was disputed in India as well.
and it is not possible for me to prove this claim; but, all the same, if you find me asserting that claim, I do so because a tremendous responsibility rests upon my shoulders.
So, Gandhi might not have made such a foolish claim if he hadn't taken on the responsibility of representing Congress at the Conference.
The Way of Negotiation
The Congress represents the spirit of rebellion.
Like the 'Easter Rebellion'? Those were 'fighting words'. No wonder Gandhi & Co were sent to jail when he returned to India. It turned out a spell of porridge was enough to dissipate this 'spirit of rebellion'.
I know that the word 'rebellion' must not be whispered at a Conference which has been summoned in order to arrive at agreed solutions of India's troubles through negotiation. Speaker after speaker has got up and said that India should achieve her liberty through negotiation, by argument, and that it will be the greatest glory of Great Britain if Great Britain yields to India's demands by argument. But the Congress does not hold quite that view. The Congress has an alternative which is unpleasant to you.
Queuing up in an orderly fashion to go to jail. But prison is unpleasant to the prisoner not the turnkey.
The Old Way
I heard several speakers-I have tried to follow every speaker with the utmost attention and with all the respect that I could possibly give to these speakers-saying what a dire calamity it would be if India was fired with the spirit of lawlessness, rebellion, terrorism and so on. I do not pretend to have read history, but as a schoolboy I had to pass a paper in history also, and I read that the page of history is soiled red with the blood of those who have fought for freedom.
As opposed to the blood of those who meekly pleaded guilty and went to jail- which is what Gandhi himself had done.
I do not know an instance in which nations have attained their own without having to go through an incredible measure of travail. The dagger of the assassin, the poison bowl, the bullet of the rifleman, the spear and all these weapons and methods of destruction have been up to now used by, what I consider, blind lovers of liberty and freedom. And the historian has not condemned them. I hold no brief for the terrorists. Mr. Ghuznavi
Abdul Halim Khan Ghuznavi who won elections in Bengal. Gandhi had never won an election.
brought in the terrorists and he brought in the Calcutta Corporation. I felt hurt when he mentioned an incident that took place at the Calcutta Corporation. He forgot to mention that the Mayor of that Corporation made handsome reparation for the error into which he himself was betrayed, and the error into which the Calcutta corporation was betrayed through the instrumentality of those members of the Corporation who were Congressmen.
Congressman caused that betrayal. The Mayor suddenly remembered that the Brits took a dim view of terrorists. He'd better make 'handsome reparation' before Charles fucking Tegart got on his case. Incidentally, Tegart ended up a Director on the board of Birla's London holding company.
I hold no brief for Congressmen who directly or indirectly would encourage terrorism.
Which is why Gandhi expelled the Congressmen involved- right? Wrong. He didn't do shit.
As soon as this incident was brought to the notice of the Congress the Congress set about putting it in order. It immediately called upon the Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation to give an account of what was done and the Mayor, the gentleman that he is, immediately admitted his mistake and made all the reparation that it was then legally possible to make. I must not detain this Assembly over this incident for any length of time. He mentioned also a verse which the children of the forty schools conducted by the Calcutta Corporation are supposed to have recited. There were many other miss-statements in that speech which I could dwell upon, but I have no desire to do so.
Gandhi was a great lawyer. If he were defending you on a charge of jaywalking he would say 'I deplore rapists and murderers. I don't want to dwell upon any rapes and murders my client committed. There have been mis-statements in the evidence given by the arresting officer against my client. I won't waste your time by saying what they are. What I want you to understand is that I don't approve of people who rape and kill their own mothers even if no criminal charges can be brought against them.'
It is only out of regard for the great Calcutta Corporation, and out of regard for truth, and on behalf of those who are not here tonight to put in their defence, that I mention these two glaring instances.
'I only mention my abhorrence of rape and murder because those who have been raped and murdered can't be here to testify against my client even if that raped and murdered person was his own doting Mother.'
I do not for one moment believe that this was taught in the Calcutta Corporation schools with the knowledge of the Calcutta Corporation.
Because I don't believe the Calcutta Corporation has a clue as to what is going on in the schools it runs.
I do know that in those terrible days of last year several things were done for which we have regret, for which we have made reparation.
Congress had restored the lives of those killed by the terrorism some of its members supported.
If our boys in Calcutta were taught those verses which Mr. Ghuznavi has recited, I am here to tender an apology on their behalf.
A conditional apology is no apology.
But I should want it proved that the boys were taught by the schoolmasters of these schools with the knowledge and encouragement of the Corporation.
Why? The Corporation was either an accessory or else it was negligent. If it offered 'reparation', it must have been negligent. But it may also have been an accessory.
Charges of this nature have been brought against Congress times without number, and times without number these charges have also been refuted, but if I have mentioned these things at this juncture, it is again to show that for the sake of liberty people have fought, people have lost their lives, people have killed and have sought death at the hands of those whom they have sought to oust.
So, Congress wasn't really interested in 'liberty' because it was non-violent. Still, being a fucking nuisance may be enough to earn you a spell of porridge. That's what happened to Congress after which it stopped making veiled threats of terrorism or the setting up of a parallel government.
The New Way
The Congress then comes upon the scene and devises a new method not known to history, namely, that of civil disobedience,
Thoreau coined that word. Dissenters, protesting against the application of local rates to the support of Anglican schools, had used it with great effect as did the Suffragettes. In India, the thing failed. Why? Spontaneous uprisings can succeed. Forming an orderly queue to get hit on the head and go to jail is bound to fail.
and the Congress has been following up that method.
earlier that year, this 'method' resulted in 300 or 400 deaths in Kanpur. Muslims refused to shut their shops and paid the price.
But again, I am up against a stone wall
it would soon be a prison wall. That had its effect.
and I am told that that is a method that no government in the world will tolerate. Well, of course, the Government may not tolerate, no Government has tolerated open rebellion. No Government may tolerate civil disobedience, but Governments have to succumb even to these forces, as the British Government has done before now, even as the great Dutch Government after eight years of trial had to yield to the logic of facts. General Smuts, a brave general a great statesman, and a very hard taskmaster also, but he himself recoiled with horror from even the contemplation of doing to death innocent men and women who were merely fighting for the preservation of their self-respect. Things which he had vowed he would never yield in the year 1908, reinforced as he was by General Botha, he had to do in the year 1914, after having tried these civil resisters through and through.
Nonsense! What happened was that, following a suggestion from Sarojini Naidu, a Round Table Conference between the South Africans and the Government of India was held in 1926-27. GoI agreed to a repatriation scheme. Sadly few Indians wanted to return to the mother country. Smuts had previously ejected the Chinese- Gandhi's allies- and could now hold repatriation over the heads of restive Indians. The truth is, Gandhi and Congress made the position of the South African Indians worse not better. They should have joined forces with the Cape Coloureds (whose leader was Muslim) and the White Trade Unions and, as they would eventually do, the ANC.
And in India, Lord Chelmsford had to do the same thing: the Governor of Bombay had to do the same thing in Borsad and Bardoli.
Would the new Viceroy, Willingdon, 'do the same thing'. Nope. He cracked down on Congress. That worked just as cracking down on 'Quit India' worked. But then Indira's Emergency worked for the same reason- viz. that agitators can't agitate if they are locked up. The public is pleased to be spared a nuisance.
I suggest to you, Prime Minister, it is too late today to resist this, and it is this thing which weighs me down, this choice that lies before them, the parting of the ways probably. I shall hope against hope, I shall strain every nerve to achieve an honourable settlement for my country, if I can do so without having to put the millions of my countrymen and countrywomen, and even children, through this ordeal of fire.
There was no such ordeal. Some 30,000 went to jail with the result that communal violence declined and the morale of the administration was restored. Willingdon had more experience of India than most Viceroys. He listened to the older ICS officer- typified by Sir Reginald Craddock who told the House that 'Mr. Gandhi is a Bania, a Gujerati Bania. He is a man who is accustomed to bargaining, and so forth. He belongs to the class of moneylenders, and that is the attitude that he has adopted here. He is disguising what his real intentions are by what I might call conjuror's patter, giving extracts from religious books, and so on. He deceives himself as much as anybody, and he is an impossible person to negotiate with.'
It must be said, there were people in both Houses who, while admitting the essential truth of Craddock's charge, yet retained a doubt as to whether Gandhi really wanted Independence. He might simply be a reverse Pied Piper leading turbulent children by a winding path back to their beds and a properly obedient attitude to their Nannies or Governesses.
It can be matter of no joy and comfort to me to lead them again to a fight of that character, but if a further ordeal of fire has to be our lot,
because an insufficiently burnt child does not dread the fire sufficiently.
I shall approach that with the greatest joy and with the greatest consolation that I was doing what I felt to be right, the country was doing what it felt to be right, and the country will have the additional satisfaction of knowing that it was not at least taking lives, it was giving lives: It was not making the British people directly suffer, it was suffering.
As runaway children suffer. But if the reverse Pied Piper gets them to dance to his tune, then, though they might get scorched a little, they will be led back to their Nannies having learned a salutary lesson.
Professor Gilbert Murray
whose support for Irish Home Rule carried over into sympathy for India.
told me-I shall never forget that, I am paraphrasing his inimitable language-"Do you not consider for one moment that we Englishmen do not suffer when thousands of your countrymen suffer, that we are so heartless?"
The trouble is, they weren't heartless enough to hand over Muslims and Dalits to the tender mercies of a hypocritical Bania.
I do not think so. I do know that you will suffer but I want you to suffer because I want to touch your hearts;
A teacher flogging his pupil may say 'this hurts me more than this hurts you' and, in later years, the pupil might come to see some truth in the assertion. But a kid who burns himself because he wants Mummy to suffer will grow up to feel ashamed of this childish action.
and when your hearts have been touched then will come the psychological moment for negotiation.
Touching hearts so as to bring about penitence or forgiveness is honourable. To do so in order to gain an advantage in negotiation is dishonourable. Indeed, no actual Gujarati businessman would ever stoop to it. Craddock was wrong about that.
Negotiation there always will be; and if this time I have travelled all these miles in order to enter upon negotiation, I thought that your countrymen, Lord Irwin,
the 'Holy Fox' Lord Halifax who, like, the Christian Scientist, Lord Lothian, had a soft spot (in the head) for the Mahacrackpot.
had sufficiently tried us through his ordinances, that he had sufficient evidence that thousands of men and women of India and thousands of children had suffered; and that, ordinance or no ordinance, lathis or no lathis, nothing would avail to stem the tide that was onrushing and to stem the passions that were rising in the breasts of the men and women of India who were thirsting for liberty.
Willingdon's crackdown worked so well that no future Viceroy bothered with Gandhi. Halifax himself was considered, a bit unfairly, as an 'appeaser'. There is even a theory that he had got into that habit in India! But this is to equate Hitler with Gandhi.
The Price
Whilst there is yet a little sand left in the glass, I want you to understand what this Congress stands for. My life is at your disposal.
It wasn't. India was under the Rule of Law. He couldn't be hanged for sedition. He would need to actually wage war on the King Emperor.
The lives of all the members of the Working Committee, the All-India Congress Committee, are at your disposal.
Only if they waged war on the King Emperor. Talking bollocks was not enough.
But remember that you have at your disposal the lives of all these dumb millions.
Anyone foolish enough to let Gandhi speak for him must be plenty dumb.
I do not want to sacrifice those lives if I can possibly help it.
He hadn't the power to sacrifice shit.
Therefore, please remember, that I will count no sacrifice too great if, by chance, I can pull through an honourable settlement. You will find me always having the greatest spirit of compromise If I can but fire you with the spirit that is working in the Congress, namely, that India must have real liberty. Call it by any name you like; a rose will smell as sweet by any other name, but it must be the rose of liberty that I want and not the artificial product.
Children may demand liberty but they don't get it till they have grown out of the habit of making childish demands. Something similar may be said of lunatics.
If your mind and the Congress mind, the mind of this Conference and the mind of the British people, means the same thing by the same word, then you will find the amplest room for compromise, and you will find the Congress itself always in a compromising spirit.
What 'compromise' was Congress offering. A pact with the Muslims to keep out the Dalits? The problem was that nobody trusted Congress to keep its word. That's what gave the Brits the whip hand. Even those who didn't trust them an inch, trusted them more than any Indian- more particularly their brother, if that brother stood to inherit money from them.
But so long as there is not that one mind, that one definition, not one implication for the same word that you and I and we may be using.
The problem here is that Gandhi had said that he represented all Indians- including the Princes. Either he was lying and knew he was lying or the word 'represent' meant something different to him than its ordinary meaning.
It is impossible, Prime Minister, I want to suggest to you in all humility, that it is utterly impossible then to find a meeting ground, to find a ground where you can apply the spirit to compromise.
In which case, Gandhi & Co. would be sent to jail if they broke the law. There was no compromise. Congress surrendered. It accepted the 1935 Act and participated in provincial elections in 1937 and formed Ministries where it gained majorities.
And I am very grieved to have to say up to now I have not been able to discover a common definition for the terms that we have been exchanging during all these weary weeks
Somebody should have given him a dictionary.
Our Goal
I was shown last week the Statute of Westminister by a sceptic, and he said, "Have you seen the definition of Dominion?" I read the definition of "Dominion" and naturally I was not at all perplexed or shocked to see that the word "Dominion" was exhaustively defined and it had not a general definition but a particular definition. It simply said: the word 'Dominion' shall include Australia, South Africa, Canada and so on ending with the Irish Free State. I do not think I noticed Egypt there.
Egypt had been a 'veiled protectorate'.
Then he said, "Do you see what your Dominion means?"
It meant that the King of England was the Head of State even if neither the King nor his representative, the Governor General, had any political power whatsoever. Their position was entirely ceremonial.
It did not make any impression upon me. I do not mind what my Dominion means or what complete independence means. In a way I was relieved.
In other words, Gandhi literally did not know what he was talking about and wanted everybody to understand this was the case. This may have been a relief to him. It was certainly a great relief to the 'die-hard' Tories, not to mention Viceroy Willingdon and the Governors of the various provinces
I said, I am now relieved from having to quarrel about the word 'Dominion', because I am out of it. But I want complete independence,
in other words, India would have its own Head of State. There would be no obligation on the part of the King Emperor, or that of his Government, to life a finger to defend the place. This meant India would need its own Navy and Airforce.
and even so, so many Englishmen have said, "Yes, you can have complete independence, but what is the meaning of complete independence?", and again we come to different definitions.
Nope. If you aren't a Dominion, the King Emperor is not compelled to do anything for you
One of your great statesmen was debating with me, and said: "Honestly I did not know that you meant this by complete independence." He ought to have known but he did not know, and I shall tell you what he did not know. When I said to him: "I cannot be a partner in an Empire", he said: "Of course, that is logical." I replied: "But I want to become that. It is not as if I shall be if I am compelled to, but I want to become a partner with Great Britain.
As Smuts and South Africa had become
I want to become a partner with the English people; but I want to enjoy precisely the same liberty that your people enjoy,
The British only enjoyed 'liberty' because they were the top Naval power. India could neither feed nor defend nor administer itself.
and I want to seek this partnership not merely for the benefit of India, and not merely for mutual benefit; I want to seek partnership in order that the great weight that is crushing the world to atoms may be lifted from its shoulders."
Gandhi wanted to abolish the law of Gravity? Cool.
This took place ten or twelve days ago. Strange as it may appear, I got a note from another Englishman, whom also you know, and whom also you respect. Among many things, he writes: "I believe profoundly that the peace and happiness of mankind depend on our friendship"; and, as If I would not understand that, he says: "Your people and mine." I must read to you what he also says: "And of all Indians you are the one that the real Englishman likes and understands."
Fake Englishmen were running India. Lord Willingdon's real name was Suzy Wong- a Hong Kong prostitute who took the job of Viceroy so as to escape from her pimp.
He does not waste any words on flattery, and I do not think he has intended this last expression to flatter me.
Because I truly am so very wonderful that it would be impossible to flatter me by describing me as God in human form
It will not flatter me in the slightest degree. There are many things in this note which, if I could share them with you, would perhaps make you understand better the significance of this expression, but let me tell you that when he writes this last sentence he does not mean me personally. I personally signify nothing, and I know I would mean nothing to any single Englishman; but I mean something to some Englishmen because I represent a cause, because I seek to represent a nation, a great organization which has made itself felt. That is the reason why he says this.
Real Englishmen liked liberty and liked people who wanted liberty for their own people. They also liked straight shooters who did not resort to terrorism. Some people understood Gandhi as this sort of person. Others thought he was a scheming, hypocritical, bania masquerading as a 'naked faqir'.
But then, if I could possible find that working basis, Prime Minister, there is ample room for compromise. It is for friendship I crave.
Why had the Ali brothers, once his closest friends, turned against him. Why did both Jinnah and Ambedkar come to loathe him?
My business is not to throw overboard the slave-holder and tyrant.
Nor was it the business of his father and grandfather and great-grandfather. They worked for a dude who owned slaves and who was often tyrannical. He himself did nothing for 'bonded labour'.
My philosophy forbids me to do so, and today the Congress has accepted that philosophy, not as a creed, as it is to me, but as a policy, because the Congress believes that is the right and the best thing for India, a nation of 350 millions to do.
You have one policy when you are weak and another when you are strong. Gandhi is saying 'I won't be horrible to you. Currently, Congress to follows that policy. But it is not the creed of the Congress party. It is just what they currently consider politic.'
Our Weapon
A nation of 350 million people
needs the Brits to run things. Why? Because its people didn't trust each other.
does not need the dagger of the assassin, it does not need the poison bowl, it does not need the sword, the spear or the bullet. It needs simply a will of its own, an ability to say 'no' and that nation is today learning to say 'no'.
At the Second Round Table Conference ALL the non-Congress delegates said 'fuck, no!' to Gandhi.
But what is it that that nation does? To summarily, or at all, dismiss Englishmen? No. Its mission is today to convert Englishmen.
Sadly, to this day, in England you have people knocking on your door trying to convert you.
I do not want to break the bond between England and India, but I do want to transform that bond. I want to transform that slavery into complete freedom for my country.
There was no fucking slavery. The Brits had abolished it.
Call it complete independence or whatever you like, I will not quarrel about that word, and even though my countrymen may dispute with me for having taken some other word, I shall able to bear down that opposition so long as the content of the word that you may suggest to me bears the same meaning. Hence, I have times without number to urge upon your attention that the safeguards that have been suggested are completely unsatisfactory.
Safeguards for minorities would reduce the 'complete independence' of the majority. The solution only slowly became obvious- Partition. But Ireland had been partitioned. India would go down the same road.
They are not in the interests of India.
Or of Pakistan.
Financial Cramp
Three experts from Federation of Commerce and Industry have, in their own way, each in his different manner, told out of their expert experiences how utterly impossible it is for any body of responsible Ministers to tackle the problem of administration when 30 percent of her resources are mortgaged irretrievably.
Mortgages are retrievable. What India needed to do was boost revenue by boosting productivity- not promoting crackpot schemes to do with spinning cotton or mud-packs as a cure for every disease.
Better than I could have shown to you, they have shown out of the amplitude of their knowledge what these financial safeguards mean for India. These mean the complete cramping of India.
Unless it followed sensible economic policies.
They have discussed at this Table financial safeguards but that includes necessarily the question of Defence and the question of the Army.
Gandhi wanted the Brits to hand over the Army to Congress.
Yet while I say that the safeguards are unsatisfactory as they have been presented, I have not hesitated to say, and I do not hesitate to repeat that the Congress is pledged to giving safeguards, endorsing safeguards which may be demonstrated to be in the interest of India.
But nobody trusted Congress. It was led by a crack-pot. It was clear that it was using the Mahatma to disguise its true intentions.
At one of the sittings of the Federal Structure Committee I had no hesitation in amplifying the admission and saying that those safeguards must be also of benefit to Great Britain.
This was the crux of the problem. It had to be beneficial to Britain to guard India. Those Indians who ensured that such benefit was received by Britain got to exercise much power and garner much wealth in India. What the Princes and Zamindars didn't realize was that their days were numbered.
I do not want safeguards which are merely beneficial to India and prejudicial to the real interests of Great Britain. The fancied interests of India will have to be sacrificed.
i.e. Gandhi's crackpot schemes had to be sacrificed. Indeed, the man himself had to be killed.
The fancied interests of Great Britain will have to be sacrificed.
e.g. ruling a shithole
The illegitimate interests of India will have to be sacrificed.
e.g. the desire not to suffer famine, pogroms or invasion.
The illegitimate interests of Great Britain will also have to be sacrificed.
i.e. stuff which wasn't profitable- e.g. ruling shitholes.
Therefore, again I repeat, if we have the same meaning for the same word, I will agree with Mr. Jayakar, with Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and other distinguished speakers who have spoken at this Conference.
Which was like agreeing with your Mummy that you are actually very bright and teechur is wrong to say are a fucking cretin jus' coz you spill wuds bet er than the dickshun erry.
I will agree with them all that we have, after all these labours, reached a substantial measure of agreement, but my despair, my grief, is that I do not read the same words in the same light.
coz I iz a freakin genius and know what wuds mean much bet er than any dickshun erry.
The implications of the safeguards of Mr. Jayakar,
of the Hindu Mahasabha, who wanted safeguards for non-Muslims in Muslim majority areas
I very much fear, are different from my implications, and the implications of Mr. Jayakar and myself are perhaps only different from the implications that Sir Samuel Hoare, for instance, has in mind; I do not know.
Hoare- slippery Sam as he was known- braved Churchill's ire to pilot through the 1935 Act- which became the basis of about two thirds of the Indian Constitution.
We have never really come to grips.
Hoare was a homo. It is a good thing he and Gandhi didn't 'get to grips'.
We have never got down to brass tacks, as you put it, and I am anxious-I have been pining-to come to real grips and to get down to brass tacks all these days and all these nights, and I have felt: why are not we not coming nearer and nearer together,
why doesn't Hoare get nearer and nearer to me? Does my khadi dhoti make my ass look fat?
and why are we wasting our time in eloquence, in oratory, in debating, and in scoring points? Heaven knows, I have no desire to hear my own voice. Heaven knows, I have no desire to take part in any debating.
Nor any ability in that department.
I know that liberty is made of sterner stuff, and I know that the freedom of India is made of much sterner stuff.
Indian liberty involved India becoming rich enough and cohesive enough to defend itself. Gandhi thought this was neither possible nor desirable.
We have problems that would baffle any statesman.
Indians did. Their British rulers didn't. But running India had to yield at least a modest profit.
We have problems that other nations have not to tackle.
Like whether to form an orderly queue to go to jail or to talk bollocks instead.
But they do not baffle me; they cannot baffle those who have been brought up in the Indian climate.
One peculiarly favourable to British rule.
Those problems are there with us. Just as we have to tackle bubonic plague,
the Brits did that. Tilak was sent to jail for opposing their efforts. This was the first use of the sedition law under which Gandhi would be jailed. The plague commissioner was shot dead by a person who, it was believed, had been influenced by Tilak's articles.
we have to tackle the problem of malaria.
Ross of the Indian Medical service got a Nobel Prize for this.
We have to tackle, as you have not, the problem of snakes and scorpions, monkeys, tigers and lions.
Jim Corbett was very good at tracking down and killing man-eaters.
We have to tackle these problems because we have been brought up under them.
Gandhi was constantly killing man-eating tigers when he wasn't discovering the cause of malaria.
They do not baffle us. Somehow or other
under British rule
we have survived the ravages of these venomous reptiles and various creatures. So also shall we survive our problems and find a way out of those problems.
Partition. That was the solution. So was begging for food from Uncle Sam.
But today you and we have come together at a Round Table and we want to find a common formula which will work. Please believe me that whilst I abate not a little of the claim that I have registered on behalf of the Congress, which I do not propose to repeat here, While I withdraw not one word of the speeches that I had to make at the Federal Structure Committee, I am here to compromise; I am here to consider every formula that British ingenuity can prepare, every formula that the ingenuity of such constitutionalists as Mr. Sastri, Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru, Mr. Jayakar, Mr. Jinnah, Sir Muhammad Shafi and a host of others can weave into being.
But Gandhi did not understand words like 'Dominion', 'safeguard' or even 'representative'.
Mutual Trust
I will not be baffled.
because Gandhi felt relieved when he discovered he did not know the meaning of the words being used by the other delegates.
I shall be here as long as I am required because I do not want to revive civil disobedience. I want to turn the truce that was arrived at in Delhi in to a permanent settlement.
While Gandhi was in London, there had been a General Election. The Tories, not Labour, were now in charge of the India office. The truth is, there was no compromise Gandhi could offer. Equally, a revived Civil Disobedience was bound to fail. Hoare and Willingdon wanted to outflank Churchill and the 'die-hards'.
But for heaven's sake give me, a frail man 62 years gone, a little bit of a chance. Find a little corner for him and the organization that he represents.
That corner was in a jail cell. Still, Gandhi was useful. He had a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
You distrust that organization though you may seemingly trust me. Not for one moment differentiate me from the organization of which I am but a drop in the ocean. I am no greater than the organization to which I belong. I am infinitely smaller than that organization; and if you find me a place, if you trust me, I invite you to trust the Congress also. Your trust in me otherwise is a broken reed. I have no authority save what I derive from the Congress. If you will work the Congress for all it is worth, then you will say good-bye to terrorism;
People like Tegart had already crushed Jugantar and the Ghaddarite cells before Gandhi came on the scene. That was a war they well knew how to win.
then you will not need terrorism. Today you have to fight the school of terrorists which is there with your disciplined and organized terrorism, because you will be blind to the facts or the writing on the wall. Will you not see the writing that these terrorists are writing with their blood? Will you not see that we do not want bread of wheat, but we want the bread of liberty; and without that liberty there are thousands today who are sworn not to give themselves peace or to give the country peace.
But there were hundreds of thousands more who would happily hunt down the terrorists in return for a government salary and a pension.
I urge you then to read that writing on the wall. I ask you not to try the patience of a people known to be proverbially patient.
Why make such a foolish request? There is no risk in trying the patience of passive people. It's not like they might lose their temper and stick a knife in you.
We speak of the mild Hindu, and the Musalman also by contact good or evil with the Hindu has himself become mild.
Hindus and Muslims were so mild to each other in Kanpur, a few months previously, that 400 died in a week long riot.
And the mention of the Musalman brings me to the baffling problem of minorities. Believe me, that problem exists here, and I repeat what I used to say in India-I have not forgotten those words-that without the problem of minorities being solved there is no Swaraj for India, there is no freedom for India. I know and I realize it; and yet I came here in the hope 'perchance' that I might be able to pull through a solution here. But I do not despair of some day or other finding a real and living solution in connection with the minorities problem. I repeat what I have said elsewhere that so long as the wedge in the shape of foreign rules divides community from community and class from class, there will be no real living solution, there will be no real living friendship between these communities.
The Brits kept minorities safe. Multi-ethnic Empires can be good at that. But the Great War had rung the death knell on Tzars and Kaisers and Caliphs. Sadly, Nations States, to come into existence, might do ethnic cleansing of religious or linguistic minorities.
It will be after all and at best a paper solution. But immediately you withdraw that wedge, the domestic ties, the domestic affection, the knowledge of common birth-do you suppose that all these will count for nothing?
Indians trusted the Brits. They didn't trust each other. Stuff which counted while Pax Britannica obtained, would cease to do so once they departed. At any rate, that's what happened in India after the transfer of power.
Were Hindus and Musalmans and Sikhs always at war with one another when there was no British rule, when there was no English face seen there?
Yes. Indeed, brother fought brother and father fought son.
We have chapter and verse given to us by Hindu historians and by Musalman historians to say that we were living in comparative peace even then.
No we don't.
And Hindus and Musalmans in the villages are not even today quarrelling.
The longer Gandhi remained at the helm of Indian politics, the more they would quarrel.
In those days they were not known to quarrel at all.
Because Islamization was imperfect outside the big cities.
The late Maulana Muhammad Ali often used to tell me, and he was himself a bit of an historian. He said: 'If God-'Allah' as he called out-'give me life, I propose to write the history of Musalman rule in India; and then I will show, through documents that British people have preserved, that Aurangzeb was not so vile as he has been painted by the British historian; that the Mogul rule was not so bad as it has been shown to us in British History; and so on.
Sadly, the truth was, British rule was better than either Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or Buddhist rule. Indeed, it was better than Portuguese or French Catholic rule, not to mention the disgusting drunken Dutch Calvinist.
And so have Hindu historians written. This quarrel is not old; this quarrel is coeval with this acute shame. I dare to say, it is coeval with the British advent, and immediately this relationship, the unfortunate, artificial, unnatural relationship between Great Britain and India is transformed into a natural relationship, when it becomes, if it does become, a voluntary partnership to be given up, to be dissolved at the will of either party, when it becomes that you will find that Hindus and Musalmans, Sikhs, Europeans, Anglo-Indians, Christians, Untouchables, will all live together as one man.
Indeed, they will all fit into the same pair of under-pants. The plain fact is, either India would have come under a single West European power or else it would have been divided up between them. Gandhi may be forgiven for not knowing that Japan would be poised to conquer India just ten years after he uttered these words. The Brits, who had the job of safeguarding India, could not afford to put their faith in fairy tales. Yet, when it came to the rising threat from Germany and Japan, the Brits did bury their heads in the sand.
I do not intend to say much tonight about the Princes, but I should be wronging them and should be wronging the congress if I did not register my claim, not with the Round Table conference but with the Princes.
Gandhi was mistaken. Nobody felt 'wronged' by him if he refrained by claiming crazy shit from them or on behalf of them or for them.
Anyway, Gandhi wasn't really claiming anything from them. It was just the Brits, who weren't tyrants, whom he considered to be tyrants.
It is open to the Princes to give their terms on which they will join the federation. I have appealed to them to make the path easy for those who inhabit the other part of India, and therefore, I can only make these suggestions for their favourable consideration, for their earnest consideration. I think that if they accepted, no matter what they are, but some fundamental rights as the common property of all India, and if they accepted that position and allowed those rights to be tested by the Court, which will be again of their own creation, and if they introduced elements-only elements-of representation on behalf of their subjects, I think that they would have gone a long way to conciliate their subjects. They would have gone a long way to show to the world and to show to the whole of India that they are also fired with a democratic spirit, that they do not want to remain undiluted autocrats, but that they want to become constitutional monarchs even as King George of Great Britain is.
So King George must kiss my ass but the Thakore Sahib of Rajkot is welcome to fuck over his subjects. Gandhi's Rajkot Satyagraha, a few years later, was an abject failure.
An autonomous Frontier Province
Let India get what she is entitled to and what she can really take, but whatever she gets, and whenever she gets, and whenever she gets it, let the Frontier Province get complete autonomy today.
Gandhi thought his pal would rule it. He was wrong. If the place was left alone it would become...what it is today- a breeding ground for crazy jihadis.
That Frontier will then be a standing demonstration to the whole of India,
that Britain's forward policy was sound. Giving it up- as Jinnah would do- was the fucking kiss of death, though this only became apparent three or four decades later.
and therefore, the whole vote of the Congress will be given in favour of the Frontier Province getting Provincial Autonomy tomorrow.
Everybody got it at the same time.
Prime Minister, if you can possibly get your Cabinet to endorse the proposition that from tomorrow the Frontier Province becomes a full-fledged autonomous province, I shall then have a proper footing amongst the Frontier tribes and convene them to my assistance when those over the border cast an evil eye on India.
People like Brigadier Dyer had handed the Afghan King his ass in 1939. There was no Afghan threat.
Thanks
Last of all, my last is a pleasant task for me. This is perhaps the last time that I shall be sitting with you at negotiations. It is not that I want that. I want to sit the same table with you in your closets
Hoare was closeted.
and to negotiate and to plead with you and to go down on bended knees before I take
your dicks into my toothless mouth?
the final lead and final plunge.
into my tender asshole? Sadly, sodomy was illegal in England at that time. Still, Gandhi's appearance at the Second Round Table Conference was helpful to Westminster. It showed that Congress was high on its own supply. It's leader was a crackpot. Old India hands should be left alone to manage British disengagement from a shithole. The 1935 India Act was the longest and most boring piece of legislation Westminster had to pass. Never again would its time be wasted by debates about peshkash or taqqavi or the Akond of Swat. If Indians found such things interesting, they were welcome to discuss them in their own Legislative Assemblies. Sadly, the one thing Indians weren't interested in was raising productivity so they could feed and defend themselves and maintain the rule of law. That's where Gandhi came in useful. His crackpot schemes were an excuse to waste time and money while being as corrupt as fuck.
