Civil Liberty / M.K. Gandhi

Gurudev has given the poetry of civil liberty . It bears reproduction in a weekly journal like Harijan although the statement has gone round the world. The reader will find it in another post. It is a paraphrase of "Work out Thine Own Salvation" ,or "Man Is His Own Enemy and His Own Friend". Civil liberty is not criminal liberty.When law and order are under popular control , the ministers in charge of the department cannot hold the portfolio for a day , if they act against the popular will . It is true that the Assemblies are not sufficiently representative of the whole people . Nevertheless the suffrage is wide enough to make it representative of the nation in matters of law and order . In seven provinces the Congress rules . It seems to be assumed by some persons that ,in these provinces at least, individuals can say and do what they like . But so far as I know the Congress mind , it will not tolerate any such license . Civil liberty means the fullest liberty to say and do what one likes within the ordinary law of the land . The word 'ordinary' has been purposely used here . The Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, not to speak of the Special Powers Legislation, contains provisions which the foreign rulers have enacted for their own safety. These provisions can be easily identified , and must be ruled out of operation . Te real test, however , is the interpretation by the Working Committee of the power of the Ministers of Law and Order . Subject , therefore,to the general instructions laid down by the Working Committee for the guidance of Congress Ministers , the statutory powers limited in the manner indicated by me , must be exercised by the ministers against those who , in the name of civil liberty , preach lawlessness in the popular sense of the term . It has been suggested that Congress ministers who are pledged to non-violence cannot resort to legal processes involving punishments . Such is not my view of the non-violence accepted by the Congress . I have, personally , not found a way out of punishments and punitive restrictions in all conceivable cases . No doubt punishments have to be non-violent, if such an expression is permissible in this connection . Just as violence has its own technique , known by the military science , which has invented means of destruction unheard of before , non-violence has its own science and technique . Non-violence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution . Its vast possibilities are yet unexplored . The exploration can take place only if it is practised on a big scale and in various fields . Congress ministers , if they have faith in non-violence, will undertake the explorations. But whilst they are doing this,or whether they do so or not,there is no doubt that they cannot ignore incitements to violence and manifestly violent speech , event though they may themselves run the risk of being styled violent . When they are not wanted , the public will only have to signify its disapproval , through its representatives . In the bsence of definite instructions from the Congress,it would be proper for the ministers to report,what they consider is a violent behaviour of any member of the public , to their own Provincial Congress Committee, or the Working Committee , and seek instructions . If the superior authority does not approve of their recommendations , they may offer to resign .They may not allow things to drift so far as to have to summon the aid of the military . In my opinion, it would amount to political bankruptcy, when any minister is obliged to fall back on the military , which does not belong to the people , and which , in any scheme of non-violence,must be ruled out of count for the observance of internal peace . One interpretation I put upon the India Act is that it is an unconscious challenge to Congressmen to demonstrate the virtue of non-violence and the sincerity of their conviction about it . If the Congress can give such a demonstration , most of the safeguards fall into desuetude, and the Congress can achieve its goal without a violent struggle , and also without civil disobedience . If the Congress has not impregnated the people with the non-violent spirit , it has to become a minority , and remain in opposition , unless it will alter its creed. Harijan , 23-10-'37 , p 308

The Poet on Civil liberty

( The following is the text of the message which was sent by Rabindranath Tagore to the London Conference on Civil Liberty in India held on October 17th, 1937.) Liberty is a privilege which the individual has to defend daily for himself;for even the most democratic Government tend to be oppressive if its tyranny is tempted by the indifference or cowardice of its subjects.Hence the need for a Civil Liberties Union in any system of Government,and hence the need for such unions to realize that they cannot safeguard liberty for the individual if they do not teach him to defend it for himself by his continual readiness to pay for it by sacrifice. The problem is one,not of external organisation so much , as of inducing the appropriate moral qualities in the individual , of creating in him an awareness of his innate worth as an individual . Otherwise , if the individual is made to care for liberty as a means of attaining mere material satisfaction , then the State will easily tempt him to part with it by holding out to him the bait of better satisfactions ; which is what is actually happening in party dictatorships - Red , Black or Brown. The English people too , though they are traditionally supposed to cherish liberty for its own sake , have allowed other peoples to be robbed of it without any scruple whatsoever , simply because their greed for material satisfactions has been effectively appeased thereby.Perhaps my English friends will not agree with me there , but when the rivalry for colonial exploitation would become still more acute , the British citizens will find it necessary to arm their Government at home with extraordinary powers to defend their possessions abroad . Then they will suddenly wake up to find that , without meaning it , they have forfeited their own liberty and drifted into a Fascist grip , and may be , the they will realize that liberty has a true foundation only in the moral worth of the individuals who compose the State. [Gurudev has given the poetry of civil liberty . It bears reproduction in a weekly journal like Harijan although the statement has gone round the world. It is a paraphrase of "Work out Thine Own Salvation" ,or "Man Is His Own Enemy and His Own Friend".- M.K.Gandhi, Harijan , 23-10-'37,p.308 ]