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Today's
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March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
March 11, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Bedtime
for Democracy
Bill Kauffman
Hey,
Ralph! Why Not Another Party of the People?
James Hollander
Slaughter
in Madrid: Consolidating an Ally?
Norman Solomon
They
Shoot Journalists, Don't They?
Patrick Gavin
The Salvation of Dan Quayle: Family Values Return
Becky Burgwin
You're
Messing with the Wrong Generation
John Sugg
The FBI is on My Trail
March 10, 2004
Hammond Guthrie
Read
This Book!: "Who the Hell is Stew Albert?"
Chris Floyd
Operation Enduring Sweatshop: Another
Bush Brings Hell to Haiti
Elizabeth Corrie
Remembering the Death of Rachel Corrie
Mike Whitney
US Press Torpedoes Aristide
M. Junaid Alam
An Anti-Civilizational War?
Bob Feldman
The Occupation of Haiti: Recalling 1915-1934
John L. Hess
An Overload of Crises
Gary Leupp
On Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi and the Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"
March 9, 2004
Greg Weiher
The
Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2
Ben Tripp
Word Up! Let's Have a Conversation
Tom Barry
Neo-Cons Target Syria
Sharon Smith
The Hypocrites in the Catholic Church
Robert Fisk
The Same Old Iraq
Doug Giebel
The Bush Strategy: Laughing All the Way
Ralph Nader
Pension Rights, the Trail of Broken Promises
Daniel Estulin
In Memory of Ricardo Ortega: a Great Journalist, Killed in Haiti
Dave Lindorff
Martha Stewart's Cloudy Day
Saul Landau
Will the Filthy Rich Dump Bush?
Website of the Day
Imperial Armies in the Garden
March 8, 2004
Amy Goodman
An
Interview with Aristide
Eric Ruder
An Interview
with Robert Fatton on the Coup in Haiti
Robert Jensen
The Presidential Library Terrorist
Connection
Mike Whitney
Expel the US from the Security Council
Jason Leopold
How Cheney Helped Cover Up Pakistan's
Nuclear Proliferation
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Why is Apartheid Touted as a Solution?
Kevin Alexander Gray
The Legacy of Strom Thurmond
Derek Seidman
Radical Continuity: an Interview with Paul Buhle
Steve Perry
Kerry Fiddles While He Could be Burning Bush
Website of the Day
Patriot
Act Game
March 6 / 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Understanding the World with
Paul Sweezy
Robert Pollin
Remembering Paul Sweezy
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Timber Theft
Tom Reeves
Bush's Mass Deportations: 63,000 and Counting
Charles Lewis
Who Mugged Howard Dean in Iowa:
Kerry, Torricelli and a Mysterious Frontgroup
Tom Jackson
My Breakfast with Sen. Judd Gregg
Kurt Nimmo
Is Venezuela Next?
Alan Cisco
A Report from Caracas
Jack Random
Haitian Democracy be Damned
Colin Piquette
Oh, Canada: the Coup Coalition
Lee Sustar
Labor's State of Emergency
William D. Hartung
Iraq and the Costs of War
David Sally
Rebuilding
Amérique
Mark Scaramella
When God Mooned Moses: Test Your Bible Knowledge
Mickey Z.
What We Can Learn from Ashcroft's Gallbladder
Ron Jacobs
Politics and Baseball
Dave Zirin
The Longest Jump: the Blackballing of Phil Shinnick
Poets' Basement
John Holt and Larry Kearney
Website of the Weekend
National Day of Action for Rachel Corrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend
Edition
March 20 / 21, 2004
The Great Trial of 1922
Chauri
Chaura & Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
If ever we reverse course and attain to a degree
of sanity (an expectation unwarranted by recent history), March
18 will surely be celebrated as one of the most important anniversaries
in our calendar.
On March 18, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi addressed
the courtroom of the District and Sessions Judge, Ahmedabad,
India. He was being charged with "bringing or attempting
to excite disaffection towards His Majesty's Government established
by law in British India", the offences being in three articles
published in Young India (Gandhi's journal).
When, after the charges were read out,
Judge CN Broomfield asked Mahatma Gandhi how he would plead,
he replied, "I plead guilty to all the charges".
The prosecuting counsel, JT Strangman,
insisted that the judge take into account "the occurrences
in Bombay, Malabar and Chauri Chaura, leading to rioting and
murder. Mr. Strangman stated that "in (Gandhi's) articles
you find that non-violence is insisted upon as an item of the
campaign and of the creed. "But", he added, "of
what value is it to insist on non-violence, if incessantly you
preach disaffection towards the Government and hold it up as
a treacherous Government, and if you openly and deliberately
seek to instigate others to overthrow it?"
Gandhi's statement in reply (after having
pleaded guilty) is a timeless classic, ranked by many as equal
in tone, wisdom and eloquence to Socrates' statement before his
accusers over 2000 years before.
Before we study Gandhi's answer, however,
it is instructive and necessary to survey the events leading
up to the trial.
When Gandhi's Satyagraha (non-violent,
non-cooperation) movement was in full swing in 1921-22, a group
of non-violent protesters was beaten up by some policemen in
the small town of Chauri Chaura in Northern India. Such beatings
were scarcely uncommon, but the instructions to the satyagrahis
(protesters) was very clear -- they would take the beatings but
not respond in kind.
For whatever reason, in this instance
the protesters were provoked enough to chase the policemen who,
finding they were outnumbered, locked themselves in their police
station. The crowd then set fire to the police station, killing
22 policement.
Gandhi, without even consulting with
the Congress Working Committee, called off the national civil
disobedience movement. He took personal responsibility for the
atrocity. In doing so he earned the criticism (and the wrath,
in some cases) of many of his associates, who believed this was
a small blot on an otherwise peaceful movement. Besides, many
felt that the momentum was so much in favor of the freedom fighters
that but for Gandhi's precipitate action, freedom would have
been theirs by year end.
But Gandhi was neither an Arafat nor
a Sharon. He genuinely believed that a freedom won by bad means
would be a bad freedom. He has been proved right by every other
country freed from colonialism by adopting any means possible
(Indonesia, Kenya, Algeria, to name a few). "The guns that
are used against the British", Gandhi once said, referring
to those Indian freedom fighters who saw assassination of British
officials as a reasonable retort to British oppression, "will
tomorrow be turned against Indians". The need to build a
polity where the discourse of ideas, not the discharge of weapons,
would win the day, was evident to Gandhi, though not to impatient
but shortsighted hotheads across the country. Gandhi wrote, "God
has been abundantly kind to me. He had warned me that there is
not yet in India that truthful and non-violent atmosphere which
can justify mass disobedience which can be described as civil,
which means gentle, truthful, humble, knowing, wilful yet loving,
never criminal and hateful. God spoke clearly through Chauri
Chaura."
After he had withdrawn the movement,
the British Government ordered his arrest. That was what the
trial was about. Now to Gandhi's statement, portions excerpted
below:
"...I have no desire whatsoever
to conceal from this court the fact that to preach disaffection
towards the existing system of Government has become almost a
passion with me."
"...I wish to endorse all the blame
that the learned Advocate-General has thrown on my shoulders
in connection with the Bombay occurrences, Madras occurrences
and the Chauri Chuara occurrences. Thinking over these things
deeply and sleeping over them night after night, it is impossible
for me to dissociate myself from the diabolical crimes of Chauri
Chaura or the mad outrages of Bombay. He is quite right when
he says, that as a man of responsibility, a man having received
a fair share of education, having had a fair share of experience
of this world, I should have known the consequences of every
one of my acts. I know them. I knew that I was playing with fire.
I ran the risk and if I was set free I would still do the same.
I have felt it this morning that I would have failed in my duty,
if I did not say what I said here just now."
"...I wanted to avoid violence.
Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the
last article of my creed. But I had to make my choice. I had
either to submit to a system which I considered had done an irreparable
harm to my country, or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people
bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips. I
know that my people have sometimes gone mad. I am deeply sorry
for it and I am, therefore, here to submit not to a light penalty
but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not
plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and
cheerfully submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted
upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime, and what appears
to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open
to you, the Judge, is, as I am going to say in my statement,
either to resign your post, or inflict on me the severest penalty
if you believe that the system and law you are assisting to administer
are good for the people. I do not except that kind of conversion.
But by the time I have finished with my statement you will have
a glimpse of what is raging within my breast to run this maddest
risk which a sane man can run."
"...I came reluctantly to the conclusion
that the British connection had made India more helpless than
she ever was before, politically and economically. A disarmed
India has no power of resistance against any aggressor if she
wanted to engage, in an armed conflict with him. So much is this
the case that some of our best men consider that India must take
generations, before she can achieve Dominion Status. She has
become so poor that she has little power of resisting faminies.
Before the British advent India spun and wove in her millions
of cottages, just the supplement she needed for adding to her
meagre agricultural resources. This cottage industry, so vital
for India's existence, has been ruined by incredibly heartless
and inhuman processes as described by English witnesses. Little
do town dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of India are
slowly sinking to lifelessness. Little do they know that their
miserable comfort represents the brokerage they get for their
work they do for the foreign exploiter, that the profits and
the brokerage are sucked from the masses. Little do they realize
that the Government established by law in British India is carried
on for this exploitation of the masses."
"...No sophistry, no jugglery in
figures, can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in
many villages present to the naked eye. I have no doubt whatsoever
that both England and the town dweller of India will have to
answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity,
which is perhaps unequalled in history. The law itself in this
country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased
examination of the Punjab Marital Law cases has led me to believe
that at least ninety-five per cent of convictions were wholly
bad. My experience of political cases in India leads me to the
conclusion, in nine out of every ten, the condemned men were
totally innocent. Their crime consisted in the love of their
country. In ninety-nine cases out of hundred, justice has been
denied to Indians as against Europeans in the courts of India.
This is not an exaggerated picture. It is the experience of almost
every Indian who has had anything to do with such cases. In my
opinion, the administration of the law is thus prostituted, consciously
or unconsciously, for the benefit of the exploiter.
"...In fact, I believe that I have
rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation
the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living.
In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as
is co-operation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation
has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer.
I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation
only multiples evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by
violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention
from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the
penalty for non-co-operation with evil."
"...I am here, therefore, to invite
and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted
upon me for what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears
to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open
to you, the Judge and the assessors, is either to resign your
posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil, if you feel that
the law you are called upon to administer is an evil, and that
in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty,
if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting
to administer are good for the people of this country, and that
my activity is, therefore, injurious to the common weal."
That the atrocity at Chauri Chaura happened
despite Gandhi's efforts to keep the movement peaceful, that
such misfirings were rare in a huge national movement involving
hundreds of thousands, made no difference to Gandhi. He took
total responsibility as the leader of the movement, and staked
his entire career upon it. Much as he believed in non-violence,
his action here, I believe, was as much about orienting the movement's
sights in a highly visible manner.
One of the main tasks of leadership is
to set standards. Every act of a leader does so, consciously
or otherwise. Every act of compromise, hidden under some convenient
excuse, in the end must lower the standards for all. The fact
that not one single statesman today seeks to set standards shows
why a Gandhi is rare. But it goes beyond that -- far from setting
standards, no politician or leader today is even embarrassed
by shirking responsibility. And we are so used to this that we
hardly notice it any more. So it is Bush continues to defend
the attack on Iraq. On the other side, does anyone expect Kerry
to say, "Yes, I voted for the Iraq resolution, because I
was afraid of Bush's popularity. I should have sided with Sens.
Robert Byrd and Paul Sarbanes to postpone the vote till after
the 2002 election. But I lacked the courage then." Get real.
Nor is this an affliction of American politicians alone. India's
Vajpayee will never take responsibility for the Gujarat Carnage,
just as Pakistan's Musharraf will not for the nuclear bazaar
run from his (country's) basement. King Fahd will not accept
the blame for 15 of his people causing the world to turn upside
down. Nor will Putin for the daily killings in Chechnya.
Stopping the non-cooperation movement
following Chauri Chaura was one of Gandhi's most significant
acts -- a cleansing of the body politic, in effect. Years later,
despite several heapings of criticism, from being called a confused
man to being called a British lackey, he did not waver on the
correctness of the decision. Writing in 1928, he said, "[to]
this date I have felt that I have served the country by calling
off the non-co-operation movement. I am confident that history
will look upon it as a form of perfect satyagraha and not as
an act of cowardice."
Eighty two years later, after innumerable
instances of idealism degenerating into senseless violence, Gandhi's
good sense (and sense of good) stands vindicated.
Niranjan Ramakrishnan is a writer living on the West Coast. His writings
can be found on http://www.indogram.com.
He can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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