Violence in Question

India lay open to invasion but her people still debated whether they should fight the invaders.

The Working Committee of India's largest political body, the Indian National Congress party, met in excited conclave in northern Allahabad. At night red flares cast a feverish light on the white-clad throng, and neither palm-leaf fans nor the cold water served in clay cups could cool the argument.

Most of it was a contest between the ideas of gaunt, intellectual Chakravarthi Rajagopalachariar ("C.R."), leader of the party's great Madras section, and of gaunt, mystical Mohandas Gandhi, still the saint of most of the party.

C. R. had favored Sir Stafford Cripps' recently rejected proposal for post-war Indian self-government and he wanted an internally amicable India to fight Japan tooth & nail. He had suggested fortnight ago that the Congress, as Britain proposed, recognize the right of India's great Moslem minority to form a separate state if they wished. Gandhi stood for no concessions to Britain, no violence toward the Japanese, no secession for the Moslems.

The Working Committee voted down C. R.'s Moslem proposal 120-to-15. Then they approved a counterproposal against any splitting of India, 97-17. Said C. R. bitterly: "Madras might be cut off. Then no amount of talk of Indian unity will avail you."

The Allahabad meeting went on to show that the Congress is still a kernel of rice in the palm of Gandhi's wizened hand. In the end the Working Committee majority decided to urge India's masses to face the Japanese with Gandhi's historic policy of Satyagraha (resistance by nonviolent non-cooperation).

Satyagraha in India is not so nonsensical as it appears to Western eyes. It has even more cogency in Hindu India than isolationism once had in the U.S. Gandhi's followers have always regarded Satyagraha as the best way to fight would-be aggressors. It is not a pro-Jap policy except in possible effect. As explained by the Congress: "We may not bend the knee to an aggressor. . . . If he wishes to take pos session of our homes and our fields we must refuse to give them up, even if we have to die in an effort to resist him [by non-cooperation]."

Satyagraha, with its philosophic basis in Buddhism, Indian Mysticism, and also Christianity, has a hold on Hindu imagination. In Hindu eyes, it has proved itself in India's British relations. As to how it might work against an invader, Gandhi Student Krishnalal Shridharani says in a lengthy book on the subject, War Without Violence: "Satyagraha has not had to face an invading army. . . . Drawing upon our imagination--thousands of citizens would throw their defenseless bodies on the earth at the frontier, giving the invading horde a choice of either advancing over a human bloody carpet or staying outside. . . . The suggestions might sound ridiculous and fantastic, for we are all the creatures of our past, and our senses hesitate to take chances with new perceptions. But a considerable part of what is suggested has been successfully practiced in India in the past, and perhaps the rest is not so impossible as it sounds."

Says Gandhi himself: "The underlying belief is that the aggressor will, in time, be mentally and even physically tired of killing non-violent resisters."

But in last week's raging Indian dissension, many political leaders with great followings were urging fighting war against the Japanese. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru joined C. R. in advocating all possible guerrilla tactics. So did Communist members of the Congress. There was no doubt that India's Moslems would fight. But it seemed clear that Gandhi was a good deal closer than C. R. or Nehru to the mind of most of India's Hindus.

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