Almost immediately after the Ahmedabad meeting I went to Nadiad. It was
here that I first used the expression 'Himalayan miscalculation'
which obtained such a wide currency afterwards. Even at Ahmedabad I
had begun to have a dim perception of my mistake. But when I reached
Nadiad and saw the actual state of things there and heard reports
about a large number of people from Kheda district having been
arrested, it suddenly dawned upon me that I had committed a grave
error in calling upon the people in the Kheda district and elsewhere
to launch upon civil disobedience prematurely, as it now seemed to
me. I was addressing a public meeting. My confession brought down
upon me no small amount of ridicule. But I have never regretted
having made that confession. For I have always held that it is only
when one sees one's own mistakes with a convex lens, and does just
the reverse in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a
just relative estimate of the two. I further believe that a
scrupulous and conscientious observance of this rule is necessary
for one who wants to be a Satyagrahi.
Let us now see what that Himalayan miscalculation was. Before one
can be fit for the practice of civil disobedience one must have
rendered a willing and respectful obedience to the state laws. For
the most part we obey such laws out of fear of the penalty for their
breach, and this holds good particularly in respect of such laws as
do not involve a moral principle. For instance, an honest,
respectable man will not suddenly take to stealing, whether there is
a law against stealing or not, but this very man will not feel any
remorse for failure to observe the rule about carrying head-lights
on bicycles after dark. Indeed it is doubtful whether he would even
accept advice kindly about being more careful in this respect. But
he would observe any obligatory rule of this kind, if only to escape
the inconvenience of facing a prosecution for a breach of the rule.
Such compliance is not, however, the willing and spontaneous
obedience that is required of a Satyagrahi. A Satyagrahi obeys the
laws of society intelligently and of his own free will, because he
considers it to be his sacred duty to do so. It is only when a
person has thus obeyed the laws of society scrupulously that he is
in a position to judge as to which particular rules are good and
just and which are injust and iniquitous. Only then does the right
accrue to him of the civil disobedience of certain laws in
well-defined circumstances. My error lay in my failure to observe
this necessary limitation. I had called on the people to launch upon
civil disobedience before they had thus qualified themselves for it,
and this mistake seemed to me of Himalayan magnitude. As soon as I
entered the Kheda district, all the old recollections of the Kheda
Satyagraha struggle came back to me, and I wondered how I could have
failed to perceive what was so obvious. I realized that before a
people could could be fit for offering civil disobedience, they
should thoroughly understand its deeper implications. That being so,
before restarting civil disobedience on a mass scale, it would be
necessary to create a band of well-tried, pure-hearted volunteers
who thoroughly understood the strict conditions of Satyagraha. They
could explain these to the people, and by sleepless vigilance keep
them on the right path.
With these thoughts filling my mind I reached Bombay, raised a corps
of Satyagrahi volunteers through the Satyagraha Sabha there, and
with their help commenced the work of educating the people with
regard to the meaning and inner significance of Satyagraha. This was
principally done by issuing leaflets of an educative character
bearing on the subject.
But whilst this work was going on, I could see that it was a
difficult task to interest the people in the peaceful side of
Satyagraha. The volunteers too failed to enlist themselves in large
numbers. Nor did all those who actually enlisted take anything like
a regular systematic training, and as the days passed by, the number
of fresh recruits began gradually to dwindle instead of to grow. I
realized that the progress of the training in civil disobedience was
not going to be as rapid as I had at first expected.