Post No. 8612
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BOOKS INDIANS SHOULD READ – 34
R.Nanjappa
Chapter 13 Part 1
THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF DHARAMPAL-8
Our Constitution: A Fraud on Mahatma Gandhi?
VILLAGE SWARAJ, THE BASIS OF SWARAJ
In leading the struggle for Independence for 30 years, Gandhiji never forgot that the
object of Independence was the emancipation of the villages.
Gandhiji wrote:
India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in her seven hundred thousand
villages.
” India does not live in its towns but in villages. But if the cities want to
demonstrate that their populations will live for the villagers of India the bulk
of their resources should be spent in ameliorating the condition of and
befriending the poor. We must not lord it over them, we must learn to be
their servants.”
Young India, 23-4-1931
In the nearly 90 years since these lines were written, India has continued to live in villages.
According to 2011 census, there were 6,49,481 villages of which 5,93,615 were inhabited.
83 crore people or 68.8% of our population still lived in villages. There has been large scale
migration towards the towns and cities. Such migration continues. Still most Indians live in
villages.
But do these villages live? What sort of life do they lead? Are they villages or illages?
PROSPEROUS INDIA
When the British came to India, India was a nation of prosperous village republics. Kings
and kingdoms, big and small, existed. But the villages lived on their own. Each had its own
system of finance, public services, education, administration of justice. These have been
well documented by the British themselves. [See the previous articles.] They had survived
invasions and onslaughts by Muslims and others. Charles Metcalfe wrote:
Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down. Revolution succeeds to revolution. Hindoo, Pathan,
Mogul, Maharatha, Sikh, English are all masters in turn but the village communities remain
the same. In times of trouble they arm and fortify themselves. A hostile army passes
through the country. The village communities collect their cattle within their walls, and
let the enemy pass unprovoked.
And:
The village communities are little republics having nearly everything that they want
within themselves. They seem to last where nothing else does.
“This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself,
has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people
of India, through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered and is in a high
degree conducive to their happiness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom
and independence.”
[Care: This does not mean that the villages were isolated. They were economically
independent but socially, religiously, culturally cohesive.]
India lived on through all these changes because the villages were prosperous and lived.
FEEDING THE URBAN MONSTER
The British system of administration drastically changed this.They lived in cities and
fortifications. Their aim was to suck the wealth of India and send it to England, which
they did for well nigh two centuries. To this end, they changed land taxation, which took
away all surplus. The local communities were left without resources to continue public
services like medical care, education, etc . When taxation became excessive, they
abandoned farming and migrated to cities and towns. But the British took over local trade,
and closed down industries, in order to promote their own goods. Industries also declined,
and along with it employment. Vast numbers were shoved into poverty, and famine struck.
This is how India lost its freedom.
Among all our leaders, Mahatma Gandhi alone realised this from the beginning. He knew
that it was impossible to create jobs for all the seekers in the towns and cities. The jobs
had to go to where people lived. The villages had to be revived. Thus ‘village swaraj’
became the building block of Indian Swaraj. Three items in his 18-point Constructive
programme directly related to villages: village industries, village health, and improvement
of the lot of agriculturists.
Gandhiji was not idealising or idolising the village. He was fully aware of the shortcomings
and defects of village life. But he knew that these were the direct result of the British
model of top-down administration, where the village survived to serve the urban economic
monster. The villages were sucked to feed the town and the city. Villagers toiled so that
urbanites might prosper. The village and villager were mere numbers. Only cities and urban
elites mattered.
* To be continued
Tamil and Vedas 