Mr.Narayan Desai(1924-)is an eminent social worker of India. He is also a biographer of Mahatma Gandhi to whom his father, Mr.Mahadev Desai, was the secretary. His new four-volume biography of Gandhi(2009), 2,260 pages in all, is overwhelming. Here I would venture to discuss one point from the third volume, not as a review of the book but rather to put my thinking in order.
It is on a political process of great significance under Gandhi's initiative that was unfolding in India exactly 70 years ago. It came to be known as the "Quit-India"movement.
The movement was conceived by the resolution Gandhi himself submitted to the AICC(All India Congress Committee)toward the end of April 1942. It requested the British to evacuate from India, declared that India would win independence by non-violence and defend it in a similar way, and if the Japanese would invade India, the Indian people would resist it by means of non-violent noncooperation. Due to the difference of opinion in the AICC, that part of it saying that India would defend her independence (solely)with non-violence was dropped. Gandhi himself did not go to the meeting and sent Mirabehn, an English woman, instead.
Anyway India said it wanted to be left alone by war, but if involved by the Japanese it would resist the invasion(Desai, p.449. Why Gandhi's resolution was modified is not clear here).
Since when, by the way, did Gandhi think of independent India without arms? At the public meeting at Paris on his way back home from the Second Round Table Conference at the end of 1931, one of the questions was if independent India would have its own army. He replied that 'he was confident that if India were to win freedom through means of truth and non-violence, she would have no use for the army'(Desai, pp.57-8). In my view this was the first time Gandhi categorically said so.
Then in Switzerland where he arrived from France, he said something very remarkable on what the Swiss would do to an invading army. 'I would have invited every citizen to refuse all supplies to invading armies...and build a living wall of women and children and invite the invading armies to walk over their bodies...Non-violence is not and has never been the weapon of the weak'(Desai, p.68).
In my view also Gandhi never pointed out the strength of non-violence so forcefully. This must have been what was in his mind when he talked of resisting the Japanese.
After the above AICC, Gandhi sent Mirabehn this time to Orissa to observe the situation there. It is a coastal province facing 'Malaya, Singapore, Burma'(Gandhi's words) already under the Japanese occupation. Gandhi might have imagined Japanese landing army there would meet very little armed resistance, as Mirabehn reported that the British were keen to defend the inland steel town of Jamshedpur, and 'the dislike of the British Raj being so great, that anything anti-British will be welcomed with open arms(Desai, pp.450-1).
What Mirabehn told him must have made Gandhi's determination for the 'Quit-India' movement still firmer. The British police, however, arrested Gandhi and almost all other leaders early in August, and the movement collapsed even before it got started. But I do not think that we the people of Japan can easily forget it away, even after 70 years.
It is on a political process of great significance under Gandhi's initiative that was unfolding in India exactly 70 years ago. It came to be known as the "Quit-India"movement.
The movement was conceived by the resolution Gandhi himself submitted to the AICC(All India Congress Committee)toward the end of April 1942. It requested the British to evacuate from India, declared that India would win independence by non-violence and defend it in a similar way, and if the Japanese would invade India, the Indian people would resist it by means of non-violent noncooperation. Due to the difference of opinion in the AICC, that part of it saying that India would defend her independence (solely)with non-violence was dropped. Gandhi himself did not go to the meeting and sent Mirabehn, an English woman, instead.
Anyway India said it wanted to be left alone by war, but if involved by the Japanese it would resist the invasion(Desai, p.449. Why Gandhi's resolution was modified is not clear here).
Since when, by the way, did Gandhi think of independent India without arms? At the public meeting at Paris on his way back home from the Second Round Table Conference at the end of 1931, one of the questions was if independent India would have its own army. He replied that 'he was confident that if India were to win freedom through means of truth and non-violence, she would have no use for the army'(Desai, pp.57-8). In my view this was the first time Gandhi categorically said so.
Then in Switzerland where he arrived from France, he said something very remarkable on what the Swiss would do to an invading army. 'I would have invited every citizen to refuse all supplies to invading armies...and build a living wall of women and children and invite the invading armies to walk over their bodies...Non-violence is not and has never been the weapon of the weak'(Desai, p.68).
In my view also Gandhi never pointed out the strength of non-violence so forcefully. This must have been what was in his mind when he talked of resisting the Japanese.
After the above AICC, Gandhi sent Mirabehn this time to Orissa to observe the situation there. It is a coastal province facing 'Malaya, Singapore, Burma'(Gandhi's words) already under the Japanese occupation. Gandhi might have imagined Japanese landing army there would meet very little armed resistance, as Mirabehn reported that the British were keen to defend the inland steel town of Jamshedpur, and 'the dislike of the British Raj being so great, that anything anti-British will be welcomed with open arms(Desai, pp.450-1).
What Mirabehn told him must have made Gandhi's determination for the 'Quit-India' movement still firmer. The British police, however, arrested Gandhi and almost all other leaders early in August, and the movement collapsed even before it got started. But I do not think that we the people of Japan can easily forget it away, even after 70 years.
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