The Daily News FRIDAY, JULY 21, 1933. DISOBEDIENCE FAILS.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 July 1933, Page 6

The Daily News

FRIDAY, JULY 21, 1933. DISOBEDIENCE FAILS.

OFFICES: NEW PLYMOUTH, Currie Street. STRATFORD, Broadway. HAWERA, High Street.

The formal abandonment of civil disobedience by the Indian nationalist organisation known as “The Congress,” to be announced this week, will be no surprise to British authorities. Civil disobedience has been one of the most troublesome of the difficulties in the way of constitutional development in India. The movement began in 1930, and was inaugurated under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi when, at his instigation, _ Congress refused the invitation of the then Viceroy, Lord Irwin, to a round table conference on the constitutional questions surrounding the desire for greater self-governing powers. For a while it looked as though the “ non-co-operation ” movement might succeed. At the close of the Congress session which had refused the Viceroy’s invitation Gandhi, who continued to deprecate any appeal to violence, made a pilgrimage on foot to the coast 300" miles away. The object of the journey was to show defiance of the salt tax by distilling salt on the shore. In the course of his pilgrimage he had urged the people of the centres he passed through to join the non-co-operation movement, to burn all foreign cloth, to set up their own courts, and to refuse to pay taxes. Native Government officials were urged to resign their positions, and by the time the shore was reached nearly 200 of these positions had become vacant and a large body of pilgrims had also been collected. The distillation of salt was begun in the presence of thousands, and it appeared as though, a national crusade had been bom. Gandhi anticipated that his personal opposition to all forms of violence would render him safe from /prosecution, but the authorities took another view. Gandhi was arrested, and • his arrest was followed by a general stoppage of work in every lajge industrial centre of India. But the- weakness of the movement has been that outside those industrial centres and a few districts in which Gandhi’s personal influence has been greatest it has been impossible to stir the Indian people into a revolt against authority, or even passive resistance to the demands of authority. India is a country of vast distances, bitter prejudices, and colossal ignorance. The strength of India is in its village life,, and millions of villagers have probably . never heard of the Congress, and certainly have never been in direct contact with its leaders. Gandhi’s incarceration was the first indication that the Indian Government, with all its sympathy for Indian desire for constitutional development, would not treat lightly any revolutionary tactics. Gandhi’s visit to England and the negotiations there and in London for a new Constitution for India are well known. From the time of his arrest the firmness of British Ministers and officials has been accompanied by manifest goodwill to India, and gradually the impulse that launched the civil disobedience movement has lost its strength. When Gandhi began his recent fast and was released from prison he suspended non-co-opera-tion for a month, and announced that his fast had no political significance but was to support a religious cause affecting his own people only. When the month’s suspension ended Congress extended the suspension for a further six weeks, and it is now reported that the suspension is to be indefinite, but that individual disobedience can continue, presumably at the peril of the individual. Apparently that is the way in which Congress is abandoning a policy that has become meaningless by the breakdown of the passive resistance to taxation that was its cardinal principle. It is true that the militant sections of the Congress have urged that violent measures should take the place of civil disobedience, but if the milder form of protest has proved unacceptable to the great mass of the people it is hardly likely that more militant action against authority—which has shown itself firm as well as sympathetic—will make any real appeal. There is every reason to hope that with the abandonment of ci v il disobedience the negotiations for wider selfgoverning powers will have a better chance of success. They have reached a critical stage, for there is strong feeling in Great Britain that too many concessions have been made to the nationalists of India. Any substitution of violent for passive resistance to authority will confirm this opinion, and may make it impossible for the Imperial

Government to reach a point of understanding "dth the Indian leaders.