PEOPLE CEMENTED............INDEPENDENT 53
have been lost if the Congress had accepted the Round Table Conference. Its failure would entail nothing but the postponement of Civil Disobedience by a year and would be of positive value to the Congress. For, it must disillusion all and sundry who rightly or wrongly live in-faith. Taking all things into consideration I cannot help saying that the Congress has committed a great blunder in starting the Civil Disobedience Movement at this juncture and in rejecting the method of peaceful negotiations provided by the Round Table Conference.
- Another reason why I cannot support the Civil Disobedience Movement is this. I do not think it is compatible with the safety and security of our interests. The Civil Disobedience Movement is a movement of mass action. It is a movement the essence of which is coercion. It is a method of stampede and if carried out on a sufficiently large scale it is bound to effect a revolution. A revolution, bloody or bloodless, it makes no difference, is a method of change which is most uncertain in its issue and in which the danger of confusion and disaster in the process is very great. We have before us the famous example of the French Revolution started for the ostensible purpose of establishing democracy resulting in the establishment of autocracy. Revolutions are often inevitable. All the same we must not forget the vast difference that separates a revolution from real social change. A revolution transfers political power from one party to another, just as conquest transfers it from one nation or race to another. I am sure we cannot be satisfied with an empty change of this sort. What we want is a transfer of power accompanied by such a distribution of that power that the result will be a real social change in the relative strength of the forces operating in society. This is a matter which needs adjustment. The future of the Depressed Classes entirely depends upon such adjustments being recognized and implemented. The problem in India is not to make a Government. Nor is it to give freedom. The problem is to form a free Government. And to quote Burke again “To make a Government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience; and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires