Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c3.12

c3.12

No less interesting and valuable is Shri Dharampal’s discussion of the place of *satyagraha* in post-independence and democratic India. An oft-repeated criticism of government in free India—and one which has not lost its significance by repetition—is that it adopted without change the bureaucratic machine that had originally been designed by the colonial power for purposes of economic exploitation and suppression of dissent. One of the more malignant features of that machine is its continued adherence to the British imperialist theory that it is the duty of the people to obey first and then to protest. In fact, that view has been further strengthened by the convenient plea that the bureaucracy is no longer an instrument of an alien government but that of a democratically established national government. As a result, whenever there is a fast, a stoppage of work, a withdrawal of cooperation, the official reaction is neither talk, nor settlement until the popular action is withdrawn or put down. The consequence is that more often than not, the people concerned are driven to violent action, after which the government usually surrenders or makes a compromise. There is no doubt that *satyagraha* has often been resorted to for partypolitical gains, but had government conceded the right of the people to disobey and resist peacefully whatever seemed unjust or oppressive to them, a code of conduct would have evolved through the past 25 years that would have set the limits of the people's and party's action on the one hand and of the government's action on the other. The plea that in a democracy the people have the ultimate sanction of removing an unpopular government at the next general election has been effectively answered by Acharya Kripalani in the passage Shri Dharampal quotes in the introduction.