Quarterly Journal of the Gandhi Peace Foundation VOLUME 41 ❏ NUMBER 1 ❏ APRIL – JUNE 2019 Editorial Team Chairperson Kumar Prashant Editors M.P. Mathai ❏ John Moolakkattu [email protected] Book Review Editor: Ram Chandra Pradhan Assistant Editor: Nisha V Nair Editorial Advisory Board Johan Galtung ❏ Rajmohan Gandhi ❏ Anthony Parel K.L. Seshagiri Rao ❏ Ramashray Roy Sulak Sivaraksa ❏ Tridip Suhrud ❏ Neera Chandoke Thomas Weber ❏ Thomas Pantham Gandhi Marg: 1957-1976 available in microform from Oxford University Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; 35 Mobile Drive, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4A1H6; University Microfilms Limited, St. John’s Road, Tyler’s Green, Penn., Buckinghamshire, England. II ISSN 0016—4437 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CARD NO. 68-475534 New Subscription Rates (with effect from Volume 34, April-June 2012 onwards) Period Individual Institutional Individual Institutional (Inland) (foreign) Single Copy Rs. 70 Rs. 100 US $ 20 US $ 25 1 year Rs. 300 Rs. 400 US $ 60 US $ 80 2 years Rs. 550 Rs. 750 US $ 110 US $ 150 3 years Rs. 800 Rs. 1000 US $ 160 US $ 220 Life Rs. 5000 Rs. 6000 US $ 800 N.A. (including airmail charges) Remittances by bank drafts or postal or money orders only Copyright © 2019, Gandhi Marg, Gandhi Peace Foundation The views expressed and the facts stated in this journal, which is published once in every three months, are those of the writers and those views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Comments on articles published in the journal are welcome. The decision of the Editors about the selection of manuscripts for publication shall be final. Published by Ashok Kumar for the Gandhi Peace Foundation, 221 & 223 Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, New Delhi-110 002 (Phones: 23237491, 23237493; Fax: +91-11-23236734), Website: www.gpfindia.org, e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], and printed by him at Gupta Printing and Stationery Service, 275, Pratap Nagar, Street No. 18, Delhi-110 007 Contents Articles Editorial 5 John S. Moolakkattu Gandhi and Ambedkar against Untouchability: A Reappraisal of their Discourses 7 Sujoy Biswas Resolution of Economic Conflicts: A Gandhian Perspective 33 B. Sambasiva Prasad From Mohandas to Bapu and Kasturbai to Ba: Some Reflections on Ashram Life 47 Preeti Singh Non-violent Action and the Naxalites 61 Chris Brown Notes & Comments Gandhiji and the Spiritual Leaders of His Time 77 Amitabha Bhattacharya Towards a New Art of Border Crossing Integration: Meditative Verbs of Pluralizations and the Calling of Planetary Realizations 83 Ananta Kumar Giri Practical Utility of Gandhian Style of Research in Social Sciences 89 Arun K. V. Gulzarilal Nanda: Making of a Gandhian Trade Union Leader 97 Saurav Kumar Rai Impact of Mahatma’s Path of Trusteeship in The Development of CSR Practices in India – A Case Study 105 Suresh Chandra Ch Gandhi and the African American Interpreters of Non-violence 113 Meghna Chandra Does Non-violent Resistance Have an Origin Story? 119 Joseph Geraci Editorial ● 5 Gandhi Marg Quarterly 41(1): 5–6 © 2019 Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi http://gandhipeacefoundation.org/ ISSN 0016—4437 Editorial THE NATIONAL REGISTER of citizens is an idea that is fraught with dangerous overtones. Not only is the ‘sons of the soil’ idea so strong in many States that those who saw this country as their home and settled outside their home State oblivious of such developments have become the most vulnerable. Citizenship issues are highly contested issues everywhere and passions are ignited by those who claim themselves to be autochthones against sections whom they call settlers or migrants. When the State itself takes the initiative to identify the foreigners, they fail to recognize the fact that many genuine Indian citizens also become outsiders or second-class citizens. While the government is expected to be an impartial arbiter among competing interests, when it acts as an interested party to identify foreigners and expel them, its conflict resolution role becomes eroded and suspect. The experience of Assam suggests that such exercises in identification of citizens carried out by the State cannot be efficient and inclusive. Many foreigners with resources will find themselves included and many genuine citizens will be classified as foreigners. It is the poor who suffer most in such situations due to lack of documents. The poor includes landless nomadic tribes, Bengali-speaking Hindu and Muslim migrants and even Assamese Muslims. People in Assam have to prove that either they or their parents had lived in the State before the Bangladesh liberation war in order to qualify for citizenship. When we do not have a repatriation arrangement with Bangladesh, what can we do with those declared as illegal settlers other than accommodate them in detention camps? We know that thousands of people from Bangladesh fled to India to escape from the clutches of the Pakistani army immediately prior to the conflict or during its course. Not being content with the flawed Assam register, the Central government has announced a national register for the entire population of the country. Such an exercise can bring in conflicts of greater magnitude than imaginable and generate feelings of xenophobia based on language, race and religious identities April-June 2019 6 ● GANDHI MARG throughout the country. Would it be sane to take a more nuanced approach to the problem of citizenship rather than trying to homogenize the border lands given the fluidity that citizenship has assumed in the South Asian context? This issue of Gandhi Marg has four full-length articles and seven shorter ones in the notes and comments section. The first article by Sujay Biswas revisits Gandhi’s and Ambedkar’s views on untouchability. B. Samabasiva Prasad examines resolution of economic conflicts from a Gandhian perspective. Preeti Singh examines the evolution of Mohandas to Bapu and Kasturba to Ba. Chris Brown examines the potential of non-violent action in the Naxalite conflict. In the notes and comments section we have articles by Amitabha Bhattacharya, Ananta Kumar Giri, Arun K. V., Saurav Kumar Rai, Suresh Chandra Ch and Joseph Geraci. We hope that the variety of articles contained in this issue will enthuse the readers. JOHN S MOOLAKKATTU Editor Volume 41 Number 1 Gandhi and Ambedkar against Untouchability ● 7 Gandhi Marg Quarterly 41(1): 7–32 © 2019 Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi http://gandhipeacefoundation.org/ ISSN 0016—4437 Gandhi and Ambedkar against Untouchability: A Reappraisal of their Discourses Sujay Biswas ABSTRACT A false dichotomy has been created in much of our historical and political analyses between the welfare programme for the ‘Harijans’1 as put forward by Gandhi and Ambedkar. Gandhi’s constructive programme, it is stated, was “non-radical”, as it sought to improve the conduct of the ‘Harijans’ at the individual level, with campaigns also involving the ‘caste Hindus’ to work in the ‘Harijan’ slums and promote “cleanliness, abstinence from alcohol, meat- eating and other Brahmanic virtues.” Ambedkar, on the other hand, is said to have stood for the annihilation of caste to secure equality for the ‘Harijans’. Ambedkarite scholars view Ambedkar’s proposals as being “more progressive” than Gandhi’s constructive programme. This paper draws on a letter that Ambedkar wrote on 14 November 1932, addressed to Amritlal Vithaldas Thakkar, the Secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh, proposing a programme of action that the Harijan Sevak Sangh should undertake for the welfare of the ‘Harijans’ and the Constitution of the Harijan Sevak Sangh (1932, 1935), drafted by Gandhi himself, to question the above hypothesis and to argue that the programmes of the two leaders actually show similarity in the intent and content of their welfare programmes towards the ultimate uplift of the ‘Harijans’ in India. Key words: Gandhi, Ambedkar, Harijan Sevak Sangh, ‘Harijan’ welfare programme, untouchability. April–June 2019 8 ● GANDHI MARG I UNTOUCHABILITY WAS ONE of Gandhi’s central concerns. Gandhi attacked untouchability in both words and actions that seemed radical for a ‘caste Hindu’ to consider. In the early 1920s, Gandhi had pushed for the removal of untouchability to the forefront at the Nagpur session of the Indian National Congress where non- cooperation resolution was adopted.2 The inception of an enduring and autonomous Anti-Untouchability Movement under him, however, dates from his ‘fast unto death’ against the Communal Award that was announced in 1932 by the British Government and had awarded separate electorates to the ‘Untouchables’. The Poona Pact resolved this crisis between the ‘caste Hindus’ and the ‘Untouchables’ through Ambedkar. The Poona Pact (1932) was accompanied by a pledge by the Hindu leaders at public conferences in Bombay on 25 and 30 September 1932, to secure for the ‘Harijans’ complete political and social equality and to work for the removal of all disabilities and hardships suffered by them. On 30 September 1932, a large public meeting of the Hindus was held at the Cowasji Jehangir Hall in Bombay under the Presidentship of Madan Mohan Malaviya. Through a resolution, the meeting established the Harijan Sevak Sangh with its headquarters at Delhi and branches in different provincial centres for the purpose of carrying on propaganda against the observance of untouchability, and that for this purpose the following steps were to be immediately taken: (1) all public wells, dharmashalas, roads, schools, crematoriums, burning ghats, etc., be declared open to the ‘Untouchables’, and (2) all public temples be opened to the members of the ‘Depressed Classes’.3 The meeting appointed Ghanshyam Das Birla as the President and Amritlal Vithaldas Thakkar as the General Secretary of the Harijan Sevak Sangh, and authorised them to take all the necessary steps to organise the Harijan Sevak Sangh and bring about the fulfilment of the objects of the Harijan Sevak Sangh and to organise collection of funds for its work.4 “The settlement arrived at,” Gandhi said in a message, “is to me but the beginning of the work of purification,” and added: “The agony of the soul is not going to end until every trace of untouchability is gone […].