Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present SituationGandhi, Mahatma
Religion
Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation
Gandhi, Mahatma
British -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947; Nonviolence
Vivekanand used to call the Panchamas 'suppressed classes.' There is no
doubt that Vivekanand's is a more accurate adjective. We have suppressed
them and have consequently become ourselves depressed. That we have
become the 'Pariahs of the Empire' is, in Gokhale's language, the
retributive justice meted out to us by a just God. A correspondent
indignantly asks me in a pathetic letter reproduced elsewhere, what I am
doing for them. I have given the letter with the correspondent's own
heading. Should not we the Hindus wash our bloodstained hands before we
ask the English to wash theirs? This is a proper question reasonably
put. And if a member of a slave nation could deliver the suppressed
classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would
do so to day. But it is an impossible task. A slave has not the freedom
even to do the right thing. It is a right for me to prohibit the
importation of foreign goods, but I have no power to bring it about. It
was right for Maulana Mahomed Ali to go to Turkey and to tell the Turks
personally that India was with them in their righteous struggle. He was
not free to do so. If I had a truly national legislative I would answer
Hindu insolence by creating special and better wells for the exclusive
use of suppressed classes and by erecting better and more numerous
schools for them, so that there would be not a single member of the
suppressed classes left without a school to teach their children. But I
must wait for that better day.
Meanwhile are the depressed classes to be loft to their own resources?
Nothing of the sort. In my own humble manner I have done and am doing
all I can for my Panchama brother.
There are three courses open to those downtrodden members of the nation.
For their impatience they may call in the assistance of the slave owning
Government. They will get it but they will fall from the frying pan into
the fire. To-day they are slaves of slaves. By seeking Government aid,
they will be used for suppressing their kith and kin. Instead of being
sinned against, they will themselves be the sinners. The Mussalmans
tried it and failed. They found that they were worse off than before.
The Sikhs did it unwittingly and failed. To-day there is no more
discontented community in India than the Sikhs. Government aid is
therefore no solution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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