The
Great Ahmedabad Trial Of Mahatma Gandhi
By Bal Patil
30 January, 2007
Countercurrents.org
I
think it would be most appropriate to recall the great Ahmedabad trial
at this juncture when the centennial of the Gandhian satyagraha in South
Africa is commemorated worldwide. When Mahatma Gandhi entered the Central
Hall of the Government Circuit House at Ahmedabad on the 18th of March,
1922 to face a trial on a charge of sedition under section 124A of the
Indian Penal Code about two hundred spectators inside the improvised
courtroom stood up as a mark of respect to the frail figure in loincloth.
The spectators included
Kasturaba, Sarojini Naidu, Pandit Malaviya, N.C. Kelkar, Smt. J.B. Petit
and Ansuyaben Sarabhai.. Sarojini Naidu has described how the entire
court rose in an act of spontaneous homage to a “frail, serene,
indomitable figure in a coarse and scanty loin cloth.” who joked
in a characteristic manner looking at them saying: “This is like
family gathering and not a law court.”
Gandhiji’s trial came
in the wake of the mounting political tempo in the country following
his call for non co-operation with the Government and boycott on the
1st of August 1920 . The immediate cause, however, was the publication
in Young India of three articles criticizing severely the repressive
measure adopted by the government to put down the struggle . The articles
in question were branded as seditious and calculated to cause disaffection
against the existing government.
It was a “momentous
and historic” trial. The issue raised by Gandhiji was not one
arising ostensibly out of a breach os Section 124A, but the perennial
one of “Law versus Conscience”. The trial was endowed with
classic grandeur enveloped with with a Socratic passion for truth emanating
from Gandhiji’s lips.
There was not the slightest
difficulty in establishing the guilt of disaffection, the accused having
pleaded guilty with alacrity; but in doing so the illustrious accused
performed the phenomenal trick of indicating his accusers the British
Government.
How Gandhiji did it is one
of the wonders of history and it demonstrates the triumph of soul force
over bruteforce. Gandhiji termed Section 124A as the “Prince among
the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress
the liberty of the citizen” and bluntly reminded the Government
that “affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law.
Gandhiji pointed out that
he had no disaffection towards any particular person or administrator,
but he emphasiszed: “I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected
towards a government which in its tatality has done more harm to India
than any previous system.”
More trenchantly still the
Mahatma explained in his statement before the Court: “Non violence
is the first article of my faith; it is also the last article of my
faith; but I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system
which I consider has done an irreparable harm to my country or incur
the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood
the truth from my lips.”
Gandhiji then made an extra
ordinary plea which he alone could have conceived and uttered sanctioned
by his life long pursuit of the transcendent ideals of truth and non
violence. “The only course open,” Gandiji said; “to
you, the Judge is either to resign your post which I know is impossible
for you to do and dissociate yourself from evil if you feel that the
law you are called upon to administer is an evil thing and that in reality
I am innocent: or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe
that the system and the Law you are assisting to administer are good
for the people of this country, and that my activity us, therefore,
injurious to the public weal.”
Such as impassioned utterance
delivered in a Socratic manner must have had an ennobling effect on
all those present in the Court Room. The trying Judge, Mr. R.S. Broomfield,
rose to the occasion Inpassing the sentence the chivalrously conceded
that “it would be impossible to ignore the fact that you are tried
or am likely to have to tried or am likely to have to try. It would
be impossible to ignore the fact that in the eyes of millions of your
countrymen. You are a great patriot and a great leader.”
Thus, the judge proceeded
to pass a sentence, of six years, two years simple imprisonment on each
of the three counts, taking as precedent Lokmanya Tilak’s case.
He classed Gandhiji with Tilak which Gandhiji considered as the “proudest
privilege and honour.”
This grand and memorable
trial of the Father of the Nation together with his printer , Shankerlal
Banker, marks a watershed in the Indian struggle for freedom. It is
a significant landmark because it brought to the fore and clearly defined
the basic issues involved in any revolt against slavery, Every word
uttered by Gandhiji in the course of this trial and the articles he
wrote to defend his countrymen’s right of non violent non co-operation
with an unjust imperialist system are aflame with patriotic passion
and will ever remain a testament of freedom against tyranny.
Gandhiji staked his all
to prove the superiority of spiritual as against man made laws because
he held it to be “contrary to our manhood if we obey law contrary
to our conscience.” The trial proved once for all Gandhiji’s
ondomitable faith in civil resistance. “To expect me, “he
said,” to give up the preaching of civil disobedience is to ask
me to give up preaching peace, which would be tantamount to asking me
to commit suicide.”
The important issue in the
present context when there is a national debate reduced to the filmy
level of ‘Gandhigiri” on whether non violent direct action
has any significant role to play in changing social relations in a society
subject to the Rule of Law. Satyagraha can be a legitimate weapon to
show dissent against an unjust law in a parliamentary democracy. For
example thaere is no reason why there cannot be A Gandhian satyagraha
demonstration in the Gandhinagar itself against the unconstitutional
Bill of the Freedom of Religion.
One is constrained to state
that the Gandhian message being paraded on the celluloid screen as 'Gandhigiri"
and debated on the TV channels is the ultimate travesty of the Gandhian
message.
Perhaps the TV channels
debates could have been better arranged in the suicidal environs of
the Vidarbha region Who knows it might have served to reach the "Gandhigiri"
message to the endless suicidal spree of desperate farmers. Where they
can invite Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to give "counselling sessions"
in the Art of Living as so thoughtfully suggested by the Maharashtra
Chief Minister. It would be truly in the tradition of the queen Mary
of France who in her royal majesty asked the starving mases to eat cake
if they cannot get bread and spawned the revolution which started a
global era of liberty, fraternity and equality.
Gandhiji was in fact more
revolutionary in his social and economic outlook than the so-called
fire-brand revolutionaries who are out to change the world at a stroke.
In his passion for egalitarianism he would yield place to none. And
that is why he could say in his Constructive Programme: Its Meaning
and Place:
“Economic equality
is the master-key to non-violent independence… A nonviolent system
of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between
the rich and the hungry millions persists. The contrast between the
palaces of New Delhi and the miserable hovels of the poor labouring
class cannot last one day in a free India in which the poor will enjoy
the same power as the richest in the land. A violent and bloody revolution
is a certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication of riches
and the power that riches give and sharing them for the common good.”
(p.18)
It may be worthwhile to recall what Gandhiji said: “Whenever you
are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the
following test: recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom
you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going
to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore
him control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead
to Swaraj
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