Letter 8

My dearest Bal,
Your letter to dear Baba dated 2-6-20 reached us and made us glad by removing the sense of anxiety caused by your constant postponing your coming over here. My health is just as it was when you left me. It is not worse either. But after your going the health of our brother has been going from bad to worse. It is his turn now. The complaint is the same. Digestion troubles and consequent liver disorder. His weight is 106 lbs. Because I write this much do not imagine that our health must be worse still. Not so. I write exactly as it stands. If something worse happens I shall inform you of it.

After all the general amnesty has come ! Hundreds are being released. Thanks chiefly to the great exertions of the Bombay National Union and of our leaders and of our patriotic countrymen who organized, supported and signed the mass petition for the release of Indian political prisoners. That huge petition signed by no less than 75,000 people at such a short notice as that must have certainly put an immense though unacknowledged pressure on the Government. At any rate it elevated the moral status of the P.P.s and therefore of the cause for which they fought and fell. Now indeed our release if at all it comes in worth having, as the people have expressed their desire to have us back. We cannot sufficiently thank our countrymen for sympathy and solicitude for us all. They had really shown greater regard for us than we honestly believe to have deserved. Nor have their efforts been entirely fruitless. For although we two have been declared to fall outside the scope of the Amnesty and are still rotting in the cells yet the sight of hundreds of our political comrades and co-sufferers’ release makes us feel relieved and repaid for all the agitation that we have been carrying on for the last eight years or so through strikes, letters, petitions, the press, and the platform, here and else where.

On the 2-4-20 I put in a fresh petition to the Government of India on subject of Royal clemency recently granted. Therein after thanking the Government for the release of hundreds of political prisoners and for thus partially granting my petition of 1918, I have pleaded for the further extention of the Royal clemency to those who are yet in jail as well as to the Political exiles abroad. I had once more defined my personal position as regards the political situation in India, especially with reference to those questions which from time to time are still being discussed and debated upon in the official circles and have been personally pressed before me by some of them only very very recently.

We believe in an universal state embracing all mankind and wherein all men and women would be citizens working for and enjoying equally the fruits of this earth and this sun, this land and this light, which constitute the real Motherland and the Fatherland of man. All other divisions and distinctions are artificial though indispensable. Believing thus that the ideal of all political science and art is or ought to be Human state in which all nations merge –their political selves for their own fulfilment even as the cells in an organism, organisms in families and tribes, and tribes in nation-states have done; and believing therefore that humanity is higher patriotism and therefore any Empire or Commonwealth that succeeds in welding numbers of conflicting races and nations in one harmonious, if not homogenious, whole in such wise as to render each of them better fitted to realize, enrich and enjoy life in all its noble aspects is a distinct step to the realization of that ideal I can conscientiously co-operate with any attempt to found a common-wealth which would be neither British nor Indian but which may, till a better name be devised, be styled as an Aryan Common-wealth. With this end in view I am willing to work now. And therefore I rejoiced to hear that the Government have changed their angle of vision and meant to make it possible for India to advance constitutionally on the path to Freedom and strength and fullness of life. I am sure that many a revolutionist would like me cry halt under such circumstances and try to meet England under an honourable truce, even in a halfway house as the reformed Council Halls promised to be, and work there before a further march on to progress be sounded.

For it was this very principle that humanity was a higher patriotism that made us so restless when we saw that a part of it should aggrandize and swell like a virulent cancer in such wise as to threaten the life of the human whole; and forced us for the want of any other effective remedy; to take to the Surgeon’s Knife and feel that severity for the moment would certainly be mercy in the long run. But even while combating force with force we heartily abhorred and do yet abhor all violence. For violence is force aggressively used-force that is life killing. I never cherished not even in my dreams any aggressive ambition for personal or national aggrandizement, and so far was I from being a party to violence that I actually kept opposing it tooth and nail whenever I saw it used by powerful combinations against their weaker but righteous rivals. I heartily abhorred violence resorted to in days gone by-by ambitious men and nations not only outside India but even in India herself. I felt as rebellious against the caste systems and the untouchability inside India as her dominated by foreigners from outside.

Thus we were revolutionists under necessity and not by choice. We felt that the best interests of India as well as of England demanded that her ideals be progressively and peacefully realized by mutual help and co-operation. And if that be possible even now I shall take the first opportunity to resort to peaceful means and rush in the first constitutional breach effected by revolution or otherwise, however narrow it be and try to widen it so as to enable the forces of evolution to flow in an uninterrupted procession.

If the reforms whole heartedly effected and worked out by the Government would serve the purpose of such a constitutional breach as that then revolution ceases and evolution becomes a watchword and a rallying cry of us all. And I as one humble soldier in Her rank would honestly try my best to make the reform successful, that is, work them out so as to render them a stepping stone to the realization of the great mission of our generation of making India free and great and glorious, leading or marching hand in hand with others to the appointed destiny of man.

Such were my view when I was working in the revolutionary camp. And such are my views after 12 long years of being pent up within the four walls of a solitary cell. True it is that we found it impossible to bear love and loyalty to laws that were dictated by the Sword, and constitutions that serve as masks to conceal the heidousness of Tyranny yet it is equally true that we honestly felt and still feel ourselves in duty bound to stand by the side of Law –that is the expression of the righteous resolve of a free people and constitution that holds together harmonizes and fuses the efforts of free men and women towards the good of man and the glory of God.

As to the question so often put to me and others by officers no less exalted than the members of the Indian Cabinet ‘what if you had rebelled against the ancient kings of India? They used to trample rebels under the feet of Elephants’. I answer that not only in India but even in England and all other parts of the world such would have at times been the fate of rebels. But then why did the British people fill the whole world with a howl that the Germans had ill treated their captives and did not allow them fresh bread and butter ! There was a time when captives were flayed alive and offered as victims to Moloch and Thor and such other Gods of war !’ The thing is this that this advanced stage in civilization attained by man is the resultant of the efforts of all men and therefore their common inheritance and benefits all. Speaking relatively to Barbarian times it is true that I had a fair trial and a just sentence and the Government is at liberty to derive whatever satisfaction they can from the compliment that they give a fairer trial and a juster sentence to their captives than the cannibals used to do. But it should not be forgotten that if in olden days the rulers flayed their rebels alive then the rebels too when they got the upper hand flayed alive the rulers as well. And if the British people treated me or other rebels more justly i.e. less barbarously then they may rest assured that they too would be as leniently treated by the Indian rebels if ever the tables are turned?

Please do not hope much from this petition so far as our release is concerned. We never pitched our hopes too high and if not released we shall not be very much disappointed. We are quite prepared to face it either way. You have tried your best and it is mainly due to your unceasing efforts that the release of P.P.s because such a burning question as that and though not we two, yet hundreds of others have won back their liberty.

Hoping to find you in good health and with best and loving regards to all our friends and relations.

Yours affectionately
TATYA