Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
India →
Gandhi’s campaigns
It’s possible that if enough affluent Americans stopped participating in the economy, the politicians would sit up and notice.
It probably would not have worked much if at all in a Gandhian context; the British Raj’s sleep would have stayed quite blissfully untroubled if a few million poor Bengalis had decided to quit, and hence to starve.
Actually a big hunk of Gandhi’s program was in fact “economic secession” of this sort.
The salt march was all about encouraging people to (illegally) replace their taxed consumption of imported salt with untaxed domestic salt.
Similar was the Gandhian insistence that everyone in the independence movement should wear (and should personally take time every day to help create) homespun cloth rather than wear imported fabric (imported from Britain and taxed).
The boycotts and pickets of liquor stores and opium dens were only partially aimed at the intoxicating effects of the drugs, but were also directed at the British monopoly on alcohol and opium.
The raj was worried enough that the viceroy sent troops out who beat people senseless just for harvesting salt.
I’ve said elsewhere why I’m not a Gandhian pacifist, but I was very much influenced by his insistence that the way to throw off the chains of the tyrant is by withdrawing the everyday economic support it thrives on.
I gave my opinion that violent struggle for political change in the United States was unwise and likely to be counterproductive.
But I also expressed frustration at the ingrained ineffectiveness of today’s nonviolent protests, and tried to imagine what an effective nonviolent resistance might look like.
I’m not a doctrinaire pacifist the way Gandhi was.
I can imagine causes I would kill for as well as those I would die for.
And yet it seems to me that we’re more likely to reach the goal worth aiming for — and I’m speaking here practically and not just idealistically — through nonviolent means.
I recommended yesterday that “[p]eople who are committed to (or who prefer) nonviolence and who regret the rise of the ‘black bloc’ and other violent protesters should ask how Gandhi prevented the Indian National Congress from choosing the tactics of those in India who were advocating armed insurrection.”
“The answer,” I suggested, was that Gandhi “was more hard-core than they were, and he demonstrated results.”
But I decided to take my own advice and take a closer look, since I’m not a scholar of the Indian independence movement.
I picked up some facts of interest, both about the practical appeal of Gandhi’s program to an Indian National Congress with lofty and concrete goals, and about the importance of, yes, tax resistance in that program.
If we step into the Wayback Machine, we’ll see an India that was fighting for its independence against a hypocritically blind and openly imperalist British empire.
Jawaharlal Nehru remembered:
I have always wondered at and admired the astonishing knack of the British people for making their moral standards correspond with their material interests and for seeing virtue in everything that advances their imperial designs.
[SNC 160]
The violent struggle for independence in India, which Nehru initially supported, predates Gandhi’s nonviolent satyagraha techniques.
In fact Gandhi’s first use of these new tactics in India were in response to the British administration’s draconian anti-terrorist laws which had in turn been designed to fend off the violent independence movement (and which sound awfully familiar):
In the Rowlatt Bills were promulgated.
Their intent was to control a few wartime manifestations of terrorism and to prevent their recurrence during the postwar period… They incensed Indians and provided a focal point for resistance.
The bills made trial without jury permissible for political offenses and extended to the provincial authorities the right to intern suspected terrorists without trial.
On the day they were to become law, Gandhi, fresh from a victorious campaign in Champaran… proposed a nationwide hartal.
[SNC 163]
The hartal was something akin to a general strike.
The “victorious campaign in Champaran” was Gandhi’s first Indian satyagraha campaign, conducted when he was a newcomer on the political scene without a lot of “cred.”
He had been acting independently of existing resistance organizations as the founder of his own group called the “Satyagraha Sabha” because, in his words, “all hope of any of the existing institutions adopting a novel weapon like Satyagraha seemed to me to be in vain” [GAA 456]
The Raj responded to Gandhi’s new national campaign and the outrage over the Rowlatt Bills with violent reprisals, which included perpetrating the vicious Amritsar massacre and imprisoning Gandhi for .
Gandhi’s first national campaign of non-cooperation went nowhere.
Yet the Indian National Congress decided against a violent revolutionary movement and chose Gandhi as its commander-in-chief for the coming independence struggle.
One of Gandhi’s first acts in this capacity was to lead “what amounted to both a training exercise and a preliminary skirmish” [SNC 166] in Bardoli:
The farmers and peasants of Bardoli were being asked to pay a 22 percent land tax increase after a particularly bad agricultural year.
[Vallabhbhai] Patel led them in withholding all taxes until the increase was rescinded.
Solidarity was enforced in part through a social boycott of nonresisters.
The movement lasted , and ended with the resisters paying the tax into a government escrow account, pending an investigation of the fairness of the tax.
The investigation found that the tax was not justified, and it was withdrawn.
The Bardoli experiment demonstrated the power of disciplined collective action.
Nonpayment of taxes was an extremely aggressive act and subject to harsh penalties.
[SNC 166–7]
Gandhi and the Indian National Congress took heart at this victory.
Gandhi wrote about the British: “You have great military resources.
Your naval power is matchless.
If we wanted to fight with you on your own ground, we should be unable to do so, but… we cease to play the part of the ruled.
You may, if you like, cut us to pieces.
You may shatter us at the cannon’s mouth.
If you act contrary to our will, we shall not help you; and without our help, we know that you cannot move one step forward.”
[PNVA 84]
The key, according to Gandhi, was in withdrawal of cooperation.
“We recognize… that the most effective way of gaining our freedom is not through violence.
We will therefore prepare ourselves by withdrawing, so far as we can, all voluntary association from the British Government, and will prepare for civil disobedience, including nonpayment of taxes.
We are convinced that if we can but withdraw our voluntary help and stop payment of taxes without doing violence, even under provocation, the end of inhuman rule is assured.”
[PNVA 84]
The goals of the Indian National Congress were lofty.
“This was the first campaign in which immediate and unconditional independence for India emerged as the explicit objective and it mobilized more Indians for direct action in the service of that objective than any other single campaign” [SNC 157].
And the rhetoric was correspondingly confrontational.
Gandhi wrote: “sedition has become the creed of the Congress… Noncooperation, though a religious and strictly moral movement, deliberately aims at the overthrow of the Government, and is therefore legally seditious in terms of the Indian Penal Code” [PNVA 85].
Gandhi felt that “civil disobedience, once begun this time, cannot be stopped and must not be stopped as long as there is a single resister left free or alive.”
This was not a pastime for hobbyists or cowards.
Tens of thousands were arrested.
Hundreds killed.
Protesters had to be willing to be beaten with steel-tipped canes without even raising a hand to ward off the blows.
The first concentrated target of these protests was the Salt Act:
The existence of a government monopoly on salt, resulting from the Salt Act, perfectly exemplified the perceived evils of colonial rule.
Paying the tax on salt (and thereby providing much of the revenue to run the colonial regime) was more a mild irritant than a desperate hardship for most.
But why pay the bill for their own subjugation?
[SNC 172]
Gandhi also tried to extend this campaign to a boycott of foreign liquor and fabric.
Wearing homespun clothing (and thereby damaging the economy of occupation while at the same time encouraging self-reliance) became a symbol of resistance.
The Salt March, the Dharasana salt factory confrontation (one of the climactic scenes you may remember from Gandhi the movie), and “also the entire Salt Satyagraha campaign, were, technically, utter failures” when seen from the point-of-view of the lofty goals — that is, complete independence.
“Yet now we know that this bloody climax made India’s freedom inevitable, because it showed what the Satyagraha volunteers were made of, and what the oppressive system of government that the British had imposed on India was made of” [ITNOW 113]
Perhaps this is an example of the tendency of losers to use clever fantasy redefinitions to turn their losses into victories, a tendency I complained about on The Picket Line .
But it’s true that India did gain its independence, though , and it’s hard to look at the historical record and not conclude that Gandhi’s campaigns made Indian independence inevitable.
And it’s also true that Indians like Jawaharlal Nehru, who was not initially a proponent of nonviolent resistance, came to have respect for the effectiveness of the technique:
We had accepted that method, the Congress had made that method its own, because of a belief in its effectiveness.
Gandhiji had placed it before the country not only as the right method but as the most effective one for our purpose… In spite of its negative name it was a dynamic method, the very opposite of a meek submission to a tyrant’s will.
It was not a coward’s refuge from action, but a brave man’s defiance of evil and national subjection.
[PVNA 87]
Would that we could say the same for the nonviolent resistance movement in the United States today.
Last night I opened a collection of essays at random and fell into the middle of a discussion by American poet Karl Shapiro about Gandhi (On the Revival of Anarchism, ).
This was too good a coincidence, since I’ve been chewing over Gandhi thoughts in the last couple of Picket Line entries.
Shapiro gushes over Gandhi’s contribution to political thought:
Ahimsa, nonviolence, is a total force and a way of life.
It has the power of Christian humility, upon which it is partly based.
It is one of the noblest ideas advanced by modern man and it is destined to spread throughout the world.
It cannot be employed by governments because governments are by definition committed to violence.
Nonviolence is not a prerogative of governments but of men, even of one man.
One nonviolent man, like Gandhi or Christ, can change history.
Governments can only keep history on the march. Ahimsa can stop history.
These superlatives and sunny predictions are a little over-the-top, but Shapiro hits on something here that I’ve neglected:
Gandhian nonviolence not only can be an effective technique of political force, but it has certain built-in safeguards that make it difficult to use in the service of injustice.
A Gandhian revolution seems like one that is better-protected from devolving, as so many other revolutions have, into one in which the revolutionaries become the oppressors.
Shapiro writes that “governments are by definition committed to violence,” by which I think he is referring to the common political science definition of a government as an institution that has a (perhaps local and occasionally delegated) monopoly on the use of violence.
Could nonviolence be used in the service of injustice? Sure it could.
Nonviolent resistance is a force that can be applied justly or unjustly.
Some injustice, particularly state-protected injustice, masquerades as nonviolence while really having a violent nature.
So long as the threat of violence is enough to subdue challenges, what looks like “peace” prevails.
Nonviolent resistance can be a way of making this hidden violence explicit (and this is certainly one of its risks).
Gene Sharp writes of Gandhi’s nonviolent campaigns in South Africa:
The original “naked force of conquest” had been translated into the sanctity of law.
When the subordinate group challenged any law, even a trivial one, this was seen as “rebellion,” and increased “force” was applied to suppress the rebellion.
[Leo] Kuper points out that civil disobedience brought the violence behind the law and the domination into actual operation.
“Satyagraha strips this sanctity from the laws, and compels the application of sanctions, thus converting domination again to naked force.”
The nonviolent challenge had not created, but only revealed the violence.
“Force is implicit in white domination: the resistance campaign made it explicit.”
Gandhi initially used the English term “passive resistance” to describe his techniques.
But the phrase led to confusion.
Gandhi was once introduced to an English-speaking audience by a friend who inadvertently insulted Gandhi’s work in South Africa — saying that Gandhi’s forces “are weak and have no arms.
Therefore they have taken to passive resistance which is the weapon of the weak.”
Gandhi complained that “passive resistance” was an inappropriate description:
“it was supposed to be a weapon of the weak… could be characterized by hatred, and… could finally manifest itself as violence.”1
The term satyagraha (roughly “truth-force”) was coined and used instead, and Gandhi took pains to emphasize that it was a powerful tool for the strong, not a second-best tactic of the weak.
Satyagraha includes a more radical limitation than the renunciation of violence — in its purest forms it also includes the renunciation of force — except perhaps persuasive moral force — and sets much loftier political goals.
It does not claim victory in the defeat or subjugation of its foes — victory comes when those foes, under no threat aside from that of their own awakened consciences, willingly and gladly change their behavior.
This restricts the choice of nonviolent techniques considerably.
For instance: Would Gandhi have signed off on the lunch counter sit-ins of the American Civil Rights movement?
It is possible that he would have considered them to be too coercive.
Blockades and sit-ins designed to prevent people from doing business or moving about would be considered violations of satyagraha — only sit-ins like those caused when the authorities prevent people from legitimately continuing on their way would be used.2
All lawbreaking under satyagraha is to be done openly, and with the expectation and even invitation of state sanctions.
Would being a necessarily secret station on the Underground Railroad have been acceptable technique for a satyagrahi?
To Gandhi, the means so shaped the nature of the ends that this justified these scrupulous distinctions.
“Let us first take the argument that we are justified in gaining our end by using brute force because the English gained theirs by similar means…
[B]y using similar means we can get only the same thing that they got.
You will admit that we do not want that…
If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation.”
Satyagraha is designed not just as a tactic or weapon that might be useful for a particular battle, but as a solvent designed to dissolve injustice in general.
“This force,” Gandhi wrote, “is to violence, and, therefore, to all tyranny, all injustice, what light is to darkness.”
Violent, coercive or humiliating resistance techniques have certain pitfalls, for instance:
they might be applied unwisely or against the wrong targets, thereby causing more injustice than they relieve; they might cause such anguish or resentment in their victims as to provoke additional injustice on their part; they might encourage habits of violence, coercion, or humiliation in those who use them that would lead to injustice later.
The genius of satyagraha is that it is a strategy that addresses this.
It is a tool that is very difficult to use to serve an unjust cause, even by the unscrupulous or unwise.
Gandhi seemed at times to be promoting something like the “conservation of energy” principle in physics — as if there were a law of nature that if you add anger or violence to a situation, even in the service of justice, you will just increase the total amount of himsa (roughly, “harm,” the opposite of ahimsa).
Only through satyagraha can you be sure you’re working for the good guys and not just making a bad situation worse.
The satyagrahi eagerly, even masochistically, absorbs the harm inflicted by others, without retaliation or even resentment, and thereby retires that himsa for good.
Understandably, Gandhi, though he considered satyagraha “so simple that it can be preached even to children,” was frequently troubled by campaigns that went awry due to his followers’ imprecise understanding of or uncertain faith in the technique.
He had to pay a lot of attention to education and discipline, especially as his mass campaigns in India developed.
The full satyagraha vows were almost monastic in tone.
Again, I should mention that in spite of all of the pixels I’ve been using this week to talk about Gandhi and his program, I’m not a satyagrahi.
I’m interested in Gandhi’s theories, and I admire him for having followed them courageously and energetically to their logical extremes, but I’m not a true believer.
In an mention of Gandhi on The Picket Line I mocked him for his exceedingly idealistic opinion on how the Jews of Europe ought to respond to the emerging Holocaust (“The calculated violence of Hitler,” he wrote, “may even result in a general massacre of the Jews…
But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant”).
I still have a hard time imagining an appropriate and effective Gandhian response to Hitler.
But a few days after the attacks, I engaged in some light-hearted speculative journalism in which I tried to imagine an alternate universe where Dubya adopted a Gandhiesque defense posture:
On , the impossible — the unthinkable — became reality, world politics were turned on-end, and billions of people watched in rapt attention as their ideas of the possible turned brittle and shattered.
On , the United States put Operation Infinite Justice into effect, sealing our era off from the past even more decisively than the bombing of Hiroshima had done for the previous era.
Before this time, U.S. President George W. Bush was widely seen as an ineffective president — elected by less than the thinnest of margins, quickly losing his base of support in the Senate through misguided hubris, and thought even in Washington circles to be little more than the façade for the spokescommittee representing the real power in the executive branch.
During the initial stages of the crisis that led to Infinite Justice, there was little in President Bush’s actions or demeanor to counteract this impression.
His talk about a “crusade” to “rid the world of evildoers” harmonized well with the public mood, but was interpreted by many as a madman’s call to engage in a reckless, quixotic military adventure.
Perhaps even then, though, there was a method to his madness.
In any case, on the president emerged from a spontaneously-declared day of personal retreat and Christian prayer a changed man.
He took actual charge of the executive branch of which he was already the titular, legal head.
He took on the responsibilities, duties, and command of the U.S. armed forces, where he before had only the title “commander-in-chief.”
He frightened the bejeezus out of his cabinet.
Only a presidential pardon saved Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell from being tried for treason after it was later revealed that they consulted with heads of U.S. intelligence about how to “renormalise” the president.
Bush shocked nearly everyone when he addressed the nation on , and announced his plan to drop flower petals on Afghanistan “until it smells like potpourri from border to border.”
He was direct with his unconventional threats to Osama bin Laden, who was widely believed to have inspired or even directed the terrorist attacks that had killed thousands of people and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City, and who had taken refuge in Afghanistan.
“You have underestimated the American spirit,” Bush said.
“We will find you, we will surround you with bouquets, your feet will be unable to find the ground for the rose petals.
Our children will sneak up on you in the middle of the night and kiss your cheek while you sleep and wish you pleasant dreams.
We will pray for your health in our churches.
If you die, we will pile wreaths so high on your grave that nobody will be able to read the inscription on your tombstone.
We will donate money to charity in your name.
You think you can hide, but you cannot hide.
Wherever you go, you will return to the safety of your bed and find that we have already changed your sheets and washed your socks and put fresh soap in the bathroom.”
It goes without saying that this plan had critics among America’s hawks, but although today you will find few people who claim to have been against Bush’s visionary policy, at the time it was overwhelmingly unpopular.
Bush himself had initially started preparing a military response, and had called for Osama bin Laden to be surrendered “dead or alive.”
Most Americans were caught up in a terrible blood-lust, and reacted to his new speech with frustration and anger.
How many people remember that some of the national guard units called out to maintain order during the flower mobilization had to be used to put down rebellion by other units?
The mobilization itself was unprecedented.
The closest comparison would be the annual Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, which was much smaller then, and in any case is orders of magnitude smaller than Operation Infinite Justice.
Refrigerator trucks loaded with ornamental flower petals stretched in huge cross-country caravans that took them to coastal bases where transport planes carried them to the skies above Kabul.
Eventually, supplies of ornamental flowers ran low, and those who picked the petals were unable to keep up with the demand.
By the time of the Afghani surrender on , the U.S. was resorting to bombardments of whole daisies and dandelions.
At first, Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban government remained defiant — but their morale dropped significantly as footage of angry crowds burning effigies of Bush and the American flag under skies darkened by thousands of flower petals resulted in widespread ridicule throughout the Muslim world.
After the capitulation, other nations were quick to seize on the new form of warfare.
Russia was first to join the race, although early attempts were poorly executed, such as when Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of fully-sized ash trees to be dropped on Chechen rebels.
China and Taiwan almost immediately began flowerstrikes against each other.
Rebels in Chiapas began blanketing Mexico City with candy-filled pinatas in daring guerrilla raids.
And almost overnight, the world changed.
We can hardly recognize familiar emotions in the faces we see in pictures from that earlier era.
I’m basing these guesses about how Gandhi would apply his theories to the American civil rights campaign on how Gandhi advised the satyagrahis engaged in a campaign against the policy of excluding “untouchables” from the Vykom temple.
One wrote to him asking whether they should consider blockading the temple and preventing orthodox Hindus from entering until they allowed “untouchables” to worship there.
Gandhi responded, in part: “Such blocking the way will be sheer compulsion…
[The word] Satyagraha is often most loosely used and is made to cover veiled violence.
But as the author of the word I may be allowed to say that it excludes every form of violence, direct or indirect, veiled or unveiled, and whether in thought, word or deed…
Satyagraha is gentle, it never wounds.
It must not be the result of anger or malice.
It is never fussy, never impatient, never vociferous.
It is the direct opposite of compulsion.
It was conceived as a complete substitute for violence.”
On the other hand, Gandhi endorsed sit-ins at the blockades where police were preventing “untouchables” and their supporters from approaching the temple — these sit-ins were not coercive, but were reactions to the illegitimate coercion of the police.
It is guesswork to try to draw analogies to the U.S. civil rights movement, but I can certainly imagine Gandhi using similar logic to endorse the bus boycott, for instance, but not the lunch counter sit-ins.
My imaginary friend Ishmael Gradsdovic is, to put it mildly, an eccentric fellow.
For instance, he claims to have a tapeworm that is clairvoyant and that communicates with him telepathically.
Even knowing Ishmael as well as I do, I can’t tell whether this is a colorful metaphor, an artistic conceit, a schizophrenic delusion, or the honest truth in some way I can’t even imagine.
When Ishmael read my recent Picket Line entries concerning Gandhi and his satyagraha theory, he told me that coincidentally one of the things his tapeworm does is to channel the spirit of Gandhi, and that if I liked, he would try to arrange an interview.
How could I resist?
So what follows is, I should stress, an interview with the spirit of Gandhi, as channeled through a clairvoyant tapeworm that is communicating telepathically with an imaginary friend of mine.
Any resemblance to the actual opinions of Mohandas K. Gandhi may have been lost in transit.
Picket Line:
It is a delight, an honor and a surprise to be able to interview you Mr. Gandhi.
I am conducting this interview for my weblog — a sort of newsletter — which is concerned with how individuals can best respond to war and other state injustice, in particular through tax resistance.
I’m very interested in your thoughts on this subject.
Gandhi:
I’m actually fairly up on current events and I know what a “weblog” is.
Being a spirit isn’t as isolating as it is sometimes made out to be.
♇:
Then you know about the situation in Iraq and the growing belligerence and imperialism of my country.
Gandhi:
Of course.
♇:
Do you think tax resistance is a useful response to this?
Am I barking up the right tree?
Gandhi:Withholding payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.
But there is no movement in America that has evolved the degree of strength and discipline which are necessary for conducting a successful campaign of non-payment of taxes.
Civil non-payment of taxes is the last stage in non-cooperation.
I wouldn’t recommend it until a movement has put other forms of civil disobedience into practice.
♇:
I’m considering it less as a revolutionary act by a movement and more as a way of ending personal collaboration with injustice.
Gandhi:
In India, non-payment of taxes meant confiscation of property and the threat of impoverishment.
And this may be why I am so cautious about advocating it.
I didn’t want people to face this sort of punishment unless they were fully prepared to respond to it fearlessly and nonviolently.
If you have a way to avoid paying taxes without being subject to penalty, then the worry is a different one:
your protest may not involve sufficient sacrifice.
♇:
I’m not really aiming at sacrifice so much as noncollaboration.
Gandhi:
There are two ways people collaborate with an unjust state.
One is to support it directly, by working for it and paying taxes to it and so forth.
The other is to depend on it and therefore allow it to justify itself.
If you depend on the state for protection, for justice, to educate your children, and so forth, you might as well be wearing the state’s flag on your uniform.
You may need to beware of relying on the state to provide you with a relatively risk-free way to feel like you are aloof from it!
♇:Touché! You’re starting to sound like an anarchist!
♇:
But at some point if the government is doing evil, it’s proper to consider yourself an enemy of the government and to try to obstruct it, isn’t it?
Gandhi:
I would say that it remains proper to consider yourself a friend of the government and to redouble your efforts to improve it — but this may take the form of refusing obedience to law and renouncing the benefits of the schools and courts and so on.
You’re not being a friend to an alcoholic when you buy him a drink, and you’re not being a friend to the government when you cooperate in its corruption and devolution into injustice.
♇:
If my friend the alcoholic gets drunk and takes up a gun and starts waving it around, or dashes out to the car with keys in hand, or starts beating her children — maybe the best thing for me to do in order to reduce the suffering she might cause is to restrain her by force and to lock her in a closet until she sobers up.
Is this utilitarian calculation, which seems to violate ahimsa, an incorrect one?
Why wouldn’t this sort of logic also apply to acting against the evils of armies or governments?
Gandhi:Your reasoning is plausible.
It has deluded many, and I once found arguments like this compelling.
I think I know better now.
If your goal is to take control of a violent apparatus like the state because you think you can use it more wisely, then a violent technique might be appropriate, but your success will be to have risen by violence to being a powerful violent man.
Your belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake.
In the case of your alcoholic friend, I think I can imagine cases like the one you describe in which you could use force not against but wholly in the benefit of your friend — although it might not seem like it to her at the time.
Similarly, it is not forbidden to grab a child to prevent him from rushing out into traffic — this is physical force but not himsa.
Do not confuse this with fighting a government or army with violence.
You do not shoot a man with love for him in your heart.
♇:
I can imagine myself engaging in coercive or violent actions like blockades, sabotage, or even killing in order to stop terrible injustice and suffering, such as has been committed so frequently by states in recent history.
In fact, in these cases I imagine, I think I would feel cowardly and ineffective if I had to wait and raise an army of satyagrahis to patiently convert the enemy.
Gandhi:
This is the “what about Hitler” argument against reliance on non-violent resistance.
Violent replies to Hitler’s violent aggression failed, and failed again, and failed again, and then finally were triumphant (but it could just as plausibly have gone the other way).
Non-violent replies were rarely tried, and never in any sustained and disciplined way.
It is irresponsible to draw the conclusion from this that the only sensible response to Hitler is a violent one.
I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence.
Fortunately, these are not the only choices.
♇:
What response would you suggest to a Hitler?
What if Imperial Japan had invaded India during World War Ⅱ?
This sort of disobedience is not the path you’re following with your tax resistance, if I understand it properly.
There are two varieties of civil disobedience: Aggressive and defensive.
Aggressive civil disobedience targets the laws of the state in order to revolt against the state; although under ordinary circumstances those laws are not themselves offensive, the state that benefits from them is.
Defensive civil disobedience, on the other hand, is disobedience of such laws as are in themselves bad and obedience to which would be inconsistent with one’s self-respect or human dignity.
Usually, tax resistance is of the aggressive sort — done by people who aren’t on principle opposed to taxes, but who want to defund the government they are opposed to.
Your tax resistance seems to be defensive in that you consider it to be inconsistent with your moral beliefs to pay taxes because of the use the tax money is put to.
It’s an interesting border case.
If you decide to go from defensive to aggressive civil disobedience, I would urge you to do so as a satyagrahi.
♇:
But how?
If you want to become a soldier, you enlist.
If you want to become a satyagrahi… what, exactly?
I know it is “devotion to Truth” but that’s a little light on specifics.
Can you give me some idea of what is involved?
♇:
That is strict discipline.
It seems, well, puritanical almost to the point of anorexia in its demands of self-control and renunciation.
If you expect everybody to become a saint before they can become a satyagrahi then I expect that the nonviolent army of satyagrahis will be a long time coming.
Gandhi:
First: I do not regard the force of numbers as necessary in a just cause.
In such a cause every man can have his remedy.
Second: I have found that the degree of success in a satyagraha campaign is in proportion to the purity of the satyagraha practiced by the participants — not to their numbers — and this inspires me to ask for the strictest discipline, even though it may sound “anorexic” to you.
People who aren’t ready to adopt satyagraha can work for justice in other ways, but being part of a civil resistance movement using satyagraha requires a single-minded dedication and devotion that is stricter than but in some ways comparable to military training.
♇:
It seems like satyagraha is a fairly brittle technique.
To be effective it has to be practiced with a daunting purity both of action and of motive.
It doesn’t take much violent thought or deed, either by an erstwhile practitioner of satyagraha or by an agent provocateur to make it ineffective.
Gandhi:
I think we did pretty good work in South Africa and India using satyagraha — and none of us, me included, were saints.
As I said, the more pure the satyagraha, the better the results, which is like saying “the drier the powder, the more effective the shooting” but when the time comes to fight, you use the powder you’ve got, as dry as you’ve managed to keep it.
Sometimes I called for mass nonviolent action among undisciplined volunteers in order to provide a safety valve to release tensions that would otherwise have led to violent uprisings.
I also sometimes regretted calling for actions before the required discipline was in place.
All in all I would prefer an utter failure achieved with non-violence unimpaired than to depart from non-violence even slightly in order to achieve a doubtful success.
Satyagraha is a new science, it is not perfectly understood, and there are risks involved in using it.
When the world becomes more familiar with its use and when it has had a series of successful demonstrations, there will be less risk in civil disobedience than in aviation.
Gandhi was, among many other things of course, a strategist who as commander-in-chief of the Indian independence movement accomplished some of history’s most successful and organized tax resistance campaigns.
And while we’ve got Gandhi gazing at us from their banner ad, I’ll mention a couple of Gandhi-related links that have hit my bookmarks recently:
Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths: Civil Disobedience, Nonviolence, and Satyagraha in the Real World — by Mark Shepard
Next time someone tells you that Gandhi’s methods only worked because the British were softies, remind them that historians are still debating whether the British massacred millions or merely hundreds of thousands of Indians following the Sepoy Mutiny.
A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation.
In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.
Here are some of the examples I found:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the
subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any
illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”
Another example was the Association
of Real Estate Taxpayers in
Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal
battle against the tax.
American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty
Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the
IRS.
The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal
amount.
The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina
colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up
[the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any
confinement.”
Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.
Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities.
Whiteway Colony
was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the
Bijou and
Agape communities live below a taxable
income so as to avoid paying taxes.
Supporting resisters as an employer
Some members of the Restored Israel of
Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal
taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were
resisting taxes.
Vivien Kellems refused to withhold
taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American
citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and
responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am
not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”
Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans
to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn
withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a
voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or
half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several
months.”
British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also
used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and
crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction
house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke
out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized
for tax refusal.
Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way
communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse
to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment
of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to
a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown
in’ by the auctioneer.”
Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail
Jessica Ramer and a
Claire
Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash
whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether
or not to declare the income.
Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was
told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the
government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged
meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the
charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.
(100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government
calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)
You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when
you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even
leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t
tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is
the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but
still give the nice server what they have earned.
Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions
Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging
IRS
seizures:
The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington,
D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply
of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation.
He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a
lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop,
to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my
attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason
barter has become such an integral part of my life.
Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products
Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic
control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth,
alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition,
and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed,
non-foreign-monopoly salt.
An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on
alcoholic beverages).
Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses
One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used
by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:
Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and
Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that
his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn
many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty
Loan.
These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on
the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan.
The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.
Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda,
reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of
Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they
would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.
Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with
the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable
persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their
moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the
duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and
half Gentile.… among the Jews the words
“tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,”
“tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting
combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were
accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all
social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of
the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost
son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose,
and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their
testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit
at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests
especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of
pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful
receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic
regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might
easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and
necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials
to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the
refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before
the American revolution. John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes,
the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland,
have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet
high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains,
in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and
have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence
every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to
“have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to
him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the
spirit of liberty everywhere.
Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey
Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:
[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of
virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept
offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as
unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them;
withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life
which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to
each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they
deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to
the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after
the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent
technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of
violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this,
governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently,
percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which
only increases the resentment of those being collected from.
During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned
by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce
their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.
The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a
wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.
The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers
who complied in paying the excise tax.
Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters
If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade
people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people
who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of
taxed British imports by declaring that
…we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods
of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public,
shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation
takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer:
and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence,
with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer;
and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country,
and infamous, who shall break this agreement.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by
offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show
that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at
the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:
The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the
democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as
non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from
those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter
of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes
that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as
previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.
Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters
The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of
individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings,
you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for
establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which
tax collector.
Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests
When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the
social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.
During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax
resisters. In , for instance,
448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New
York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the
Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K.
Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman
Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan
Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson,
Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee
Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic
friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their
names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister
alternative funds function
partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.
When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs
as he was picketing the
IRS
office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax
debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this
sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
Keep in contact with resisters and express support
After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the
IRS
as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across
the country.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers
When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that
“The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure
eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may
be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they
have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry
to its knees.”
Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real
needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put
it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they
thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they
thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had
been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to
learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted
to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was
uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed?
They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I
sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me
to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about
the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They
were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly
nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and
readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my
clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The
older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the
clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that
in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more
courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief
deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me
and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged
the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the
men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to
have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I
had started.
And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.
You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel
like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that
score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was
deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to
try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that
I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to
greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about
wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
Support the families of imprisoned resisters
When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in
India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake
to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”
Study the law, give legal support
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for
women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is
certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation,
and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by
their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”
Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways
Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and
Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the
interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable
television on United States involvement in Central America, and a
people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community,
however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf
of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”
Can you think of any I’ve missed?
Google is starting to do for newspaper archives what it has been doing for books: putting scanned images on-line and making them text-searchable.
Hooray for Google, says I.
Here are a few articles I found while browsing around today:
A couple of pieces regarding a reconstruction-era dispute over the legitimacy of the Louisiana state government (in which tax resistance played a role):
The Nixon Administration asked the Supreme Court today to rule out draft exemptions for men who are conscientiously opposed to the Vietnam war but not to all wars.
…
Besides, the Administration argued, if selective exemptions are approved people could refuse to pay their taxes on religious grounds or could defy other laws.
Washington [D.C.] Official Urges Tax Refusal to Push Statehood The New York Times (“Walter E. Fauntroy, the District of Columbia’s Delegate to Congress, has urged residents here not to pay their Federal taxes until Congress makes Washington the 51st state.”
[C]ollection will be a formidable challenge after years in which taxes
were identified by Palestinians with foreign occupation.
Tax resistance is strong in the territories. It spread during a seven-year
uprising against Israeli rule, when Palestinians working in the tax
department resigned. According to Israeli estimates, only 20 percent of
Palestinians taxed in the West Bank met their payments in 1993, when tax
revenues totalled some $90 million.
The Palestinian Authority has already run into difficulties collecting
taxes in Gaza and Jericho, and it has published appeals in recent weeks
urging tax payment as a national duty. Outside of Jericho, it has no
police powers in the West Bank, and the legal system there remains under
Israeli control.
“Taxes are the dowry of independence and the key to democracy,” said Atef
Alawneh, director general of the Palestinian finance department, at the
ceremony today in Ramallah.
“Nonpayment of taxes under occupation was a national struggle worthy of
praise,” he added. “Now it is 180 degrees different. Now delay in paying
means a delay in building the Palestinian state.”
Zuhdi Nashashibi, the finance minister in the Palestinian Authority, said
he was confident Palestinians would now “hurry to pay” their taxes.
Mr. Alawneh argued that collection by Palestinians would be more effective
because it would lack the coercion of military occupation, would extend to
places the Israelis were unable to reach because of security concerns, and
would create new revenue sources. The tax authorities will not use force,
he said, but will rely instead on friendly persuasion and public goodwill.
Remember what this sort of thing used to be like? You’d get yourself down to
the library, and then you’d look through each volume of the
Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature or whatever,
one at a time, hoping that what you were looking for was among the things the
editors of that guide felt was worth indexing. Then with luck, some of what
you were looking for was available in bound volumes, microfilm, or microfiche
on-site (elsewise you could always try for inter-library loan, but that might
take a couple of weeks). In the case of the first, you could find it on the
shelves or ask the reference librarian, and then thumb through the pages, but
in the case of the latter two, you’d have to haul your film over to a reader
(one that wasn’t broken or occupied) and then spend five minutes or so just
trying to locate the pages you were interested in. Then, if it turned out to
be good, you’d have to scribble things down or drop in some coin for a
barely-legible photocopy.
I like the future.
Here’s another example of how the mainstream media in the British Empire belittled and misunderstood Gandhi’s civil disobedience campaigns.
From :
WHAT threatened to be a thunderbolt against the Government in India by the
campaign of civil disobedience by the Hindu, leader, Mr. Gandhi, has failed
so far to prove in practice more than a weakly supported protest. The
campaign to date has failed to advance the cause of the Nationalists and has
rather strengthened respect for the administration of India.
On the basis of the old proverb, “Forewarned is forearmed,” the authorities
have had ample time to take appropriate steps to meet any danger which may
have been apprehended, and its vigilance and patience have been the keynotes
of its attitude to the whole movement. There is no doubt that the delay in
launching the campaign has lost a good deal of the dramatic effect intended.
Although sufficient details of the programme of civil disobedience were
given by Gandhi some weeks ago the movement has resolved itself so far into
an attack on the salt duties.
There was a time when the salt duties in India contributed the second largest
share of the revenue to the Indian Government, coming next to the land tax.
The policy of the Indian Government since ,
however, has been to effect gradual reductions.
the duty was brought
down from 2½ rupees to 1 rupee per maund (a little over
82lbs). In
the gross yield of the duty was
£3,339,000 more than one-fourth of this being derived from imported salt. In
,
it amounted to nearly £5,000,000, but only occupied third place among the
principal heads of revenue. Customs duties have come to represent far the
largest individual source of Indian revenue in these days, and in
they accounted for considerably more than
half the total of the tax receipts, opium coming fourth, while land revenue
only occupied fifth place so far as the Central Government is concerned,
though the provincial Governments depend largely on this latter source of
revenue.
There are, roughly speaking; four ways in which the Indian salt supply is
obtained. The old-fashioned method of allowing sea water to collect in
shallow pans along the sea coast and evaporate under the rays of the sun,
leaving a salt sediment is still largely resorted to. The salt lakes in
Rajputana, leased by the Government from rulers of native States and salt
mines, especially in the Northern Punjab, also furnish much of this necessary
commodity, and a good deal is, in addition, imported from Britain and from
the Red Sea.
The idea of Mr. Gandhi and his confederates appears to be that everyone who
can do so should set to work to manufacture salt by evaporation all along the
coast line, and pay no duty to the authorities. As has already been seen,
however, this method of obtaining salt cannot be resorted to in secret from
its very nature and the Government is thus able to take steps to make the
process of evading the attention of the Revenue officials by no means a safe
or easy one.
As for the other proposals of the “civil disobedience” party, it is probable
that they will not be found in practice to work out very smoothly. That
Indians who are serving the Government in any capacity will resign their
posts and emoluments at a moment’s notice, en masse, seems an incredible
supposition, and it will be a matter of surprise if Indian lawyers desert the
courts at the command of the ascetic leader from the seclusion of his ashram.
An additional fact which must be stressed in connection with the aspirations
of Gandhi is that the Indian “separation” movement has no support from the
native princes whose territory forms one-third of all India. In the remaining
two-thirds the separatists do not in the least represent the unanimous
feeling of the people. They do not, in fact, represent the opinion of a very
large majority there if we consider the Moslems, the “untouchables,” and
other large sections of the population who have nothing to gain and a good
deal to lose by the domination of the men who are now aiming at supremacy
over all India.
The success of revolutionary movements such as Mr. Gandhi has inaugurated in
India depends partly on the unanimity of the support received from all
classes of the people and partly upon the hope of a failure of the
Government to cope with the situation. It does not appear in the least
likely that the first condition can be attained, and as regards the second,
the attitude of the Government so far affords satisfactory evidence that no
step of an aggravating character will be taken, and there is no reason for
believing the Government will be found wanting when the crisis comes.
In , the residents of Guntur jumped the gun, and, disregarding Gandhi’s pleas to wait, launched a tax resistance campaign on their own.
Gandhi Urged Calm Should He Be Seized
Ghose Asserts Civil Mass Disobedience Has Begun — Natives Not Paying Taxes.
Bombay,
(Associated Press).— While at Ahmedabad, Mohandas K. Gandhi, writing in the newspaper New India, said that if he were arrested the people should remain unmoved.
He asked that they fulfill the whole constructive program framed at Bardoli “with clockwork regularity and speed like the Punjab express.”
An appeal to the public to remain calm, “as we shall show no regard for Gandhi either by observing a hartal or going mad,” was issued today by the Congress committee.
The committee requests that the natives refrain from invoking a hartal and maintain “a peaceful, cordial attitude toward all.”
Special to The New York Times
Washington, .— Sailendra N. Ghose, director of the American Commission to Promote Self-Government in India, said that reports he had received from India showed that although Gandhi, the non-co-operation leader, who had just been arrested, had deferred civil mass disobedience, the Nationalists in several districts had refused to pay taxes, and in others individual land owners had taken the same course.
Mr. Ghose gave to the press, as typical of the prevailing conditions, the following report from the Secretary of the All-India Congress Committee for the District of Guntur:
“The nonpayment of taxes is very encouraging.
The revenue collected from Bapatla Taluk (taluk means a district somewhat similar to a township in this country) is 1,400 rupees against 200,000 (normal) in the first remittance; in Narsaravupet Taluk, 1,100 against 150,000; in Sattenapalli Taluk, 1,500 against 150,000; in Rapallo Taluk, 2,000 against 200,000; in Tenali Taluk, 6,000 against 200,000.
“Other taluks are not lagging behind.
“Village officers’ resignations are briskly proceeding.
Meetings are prohibited through Tenali Taluk.
Workers are disobeying in batches.
Developments are expected.”
In the rural sections of India, Mr. Ghose explained, taxes are imposed by the Government, not on individuals, but on communities, the annual levy averaging between 30 and 45 per cent. of the average gross production of the district over thirty-year periods.
The head man of the village is held accountable for the tax by the Government, and he is supposed to recover from the villagers.
“The figures for Guntur district are cited as typical of what is going on in many parts of India,” Mr. Ghose said.
“Although Gandhi has deferred orders for mass civil disobedience, he has encouraged individual action.
In many of the communities, however, mass action has been taken and in none of those districts has the tax collected this year exceeded 10 per cent. of normal, and in some cases, as is shown by the figures for Guntur, the ratio has been less than 2 per cent.
“To counteract this, the Government in some provinces has refused to allow village officers to resign, dismissing those who refuse to carry out their duties and thus depriving their heirs of their hereditary rights as village chiefs.
The Madras Government has moved to amend the law to shorten the time necessary to carry out the provisions of the Revenue Recovery Act so that land or movable property may be brought to sale immediately on failure of tax payments.
Trouble is certain where the police attempt to carry out the provisions for wholesale seizures of property.
A disclaimer paragraph follows that notes that Ghose “has been an active propagandist in Washington” who “announced early in , basing his statements on cable advices which he said he had received, that on the Nationalist leaders in India had proclaimed a republic which had a mobilized force of 1,400,000 men.
This information proved to be incorrect.
Subsequently Mr. Ghose announced that the Indian congress had declared against the Gandhi method of ‘civil disturbance’ and was about to begin active revolution.
This also proved to be an error.”
John Hampden was adopted as a sort of patron saint of the Women’s Tax Resistance League and other suffragist groups who used or defended the tactic of tax resistance.
To explain why the Hampden legend had the sort of resonance it did, I’ll turn to Stephen Dowell, who tells the story in his A History of Taxation and Taxes in England ():
The famous ship writs of king Charles Ⅰ. formed an extra-parliamentary method of obtaining the result of a tax on property.
They embodied the ultimate expression of the ingenuity of the king’s advisers in the invention of means to enable him to rule without a parliament.
It will be remembered that the position of the king as regards the levy of taxes on property was clear and acknowledged.
Except in the case of the Jews, who had been liable to indefinite extortion at the hands of the king because they were permitted to be here solely at his will, and in the case of the tenants of royal demesne, who by reason of their relation to the king as their landlord, were liable to tallage when he was in debt — with these two exceptions, the king never had any right to take an aid or subsidy from the subject without the consent of parliament, unless it were for knighting his son, for the marriage of his eldest daughter, or to ransom his person, and then only to a reasonable amount.
On any other occasion the grant was in the hands of parliament.
An acknowledgment of this right of parliament was implied in the terms used for the contributions in aid of the king, which were demanded as for “gifts” and “benevolences,” or under the specious pretext of “loans;” and these attempts at exaction and any tax of the kind had been suppressed by the Petition of Eight, to which the king had given his assent in .
There was nothing new in the use of ship writs.
They formed a well-known means of getting together a navy in times of war.
Before the invention of cannon there was little difference between any ship worthy to be called a merchant vessel and a ship of war; and in the times of the Plantagenets, when we had no permanent navy, when ships were wanted for war, the sea-port towns had been required to furnish their ships with men and equipment for the defence of the kingdom.
A permanent navy, commenced by Henry Ⅷ., with the Regent and the Harry Grâce à Dieu, or “the Great Harry,” had been carefully increased by him and Elizabeth, who, to the “one and twenty great ships and three notable galleys, with the sight whereof and the rest of the royal navy it was incredible how much her grace was delighted,” added, after the breach with Spain, one large ship at least every year.
But even after this formation of a permanent royal navy, it was from the merchant navy that two-thirds of the ships that formed the fleet against the Armada were derived; and they were the result of ship writs, issued according to precedent, to London and the other port towns, requiring them to furnish ships and their equipment for the defence of the kingdom.
Thus also, in , the greater number (12 out of 18) of the vessels employed in the attack on Algiers — the only warlike operation by sea undertaken by James Ⅰ. — were ships hired from private merchants; and on this occasion the port towns had been required to provide ships, and ship money was levied for the purpose.
And lastly, as late as in , when we were at war with Spain, the seaports had been required, after the dissolution of parliament, to provide and maintain a fleet of ships for three months.
But all these were war precedents, and applied only to the port towns; and Noy’s ingenuity in building upon them his famous superstructure consisted in drafting the preamble of the “new writs of an old edition,” so as to bring the case, as far as possible, within the precedents, and to prepare the way for a more extensive issue of writs throughout the kingdom, on the plan of the ship-geld of Anglo-Saxon times.
At this time, though England was at peace with other nations, a rising jealousy of the importance of the Dutch threatened at no distant date to lead to war with them upon the question of the close or open sea.
War was going on between the Spaniards and French and the Dutch.
While the Barbary pirates had extended their ravages upon our merchant ships even to within sight of our coasts.
Such was the state of affairs.
Noy made the most of them.
He began by infusing a spirit of crusade into the business by stigmatizing the corsairs as “Turks, enemies of the Christian name;” grouped these “thieves, robbers, and pirates of the sea” together in bands; recited their capture of ships and men in the channel and their further preparations of ships “to molest our merchants and grieve the kingdom;” and, referring to the wars abroad and the possibility that we might be involved in them — “the dangers which in these times of war do hang over our heads;” thus presented a strong case for providing for “the defence of the kingdom, safeguard of the sea, security of the subjects, and safe conduct of ships and merchandise coming to the kingdom and passing outwards to foreign parts.”
Then he went on to say — in allusion to the principle of the old ship-geld of Anglo-Saxon times, that the whole kingdom ought, it was true, to bear the burden of defence, but the maritime counties and towns were “more chiefly bound to set a helping hand, not only because they got more plentiful gain by the sea than others, but also because it was their duty of allegiance to defend the sea coast and keep up the honour of the king there,” for which reason writs were sent to them on this occasion.1
The writs were issued on .
There was no opposition to this levy, which, after all, was not an unprecedented charge, though some towns petitioned against what they regarded as an overestimate of the proportion of the whole amount to be paid by the town, and the citizens of London, who were charged with the payment of a fifth of the whole sum, remonstrated on the ground they had advanced in former times against tallage, of their peculiar privileges of exemption from such levies, by reason of their charter, their ancient liberties and acts of parliament.
But a summons of the lord mayor before the council and a stormy meeting ended in the submission of the Londoners to obey the king’s orders in the matter.
The amount raised was £104,252, a sum obviously insufficient for any extensive increase of the navy, while the course of events on the continent increased the anxiety of Charles to strengthen his force at sea.
He was now advised to advance in the business and carry the intention of taxing the whole kingdom into effect by means of a second set of ship writs, to extend to inland as well as maritime counties and towns; and in June, the lord keeper, Coventry, in the usual address to the judges of assize in the Star Chamber, previous to their going on circuit, informed them to that effect, and that the grounds on which the council had advised the step were that “since all the kingdom was interested both in the honour, safety and profit, it was just and reasonable that they should all put to their helping hands.”
Accordingly on , a second issue of ship writs was ordered, to extend to inland as well as maritime counties and towns.
In these writs the recital of the reasons for the issue was altered so as to suit the circumstances.
They proceeded upon the old principle of the ship-geld of Anglo-Saxon times, that inasmuch as the burden of defence relates to all, it should be borne by all, according to the law and custom of England.
A writ was sent to the sheriff of every county, and separate writs to a number of the principal cities and towns.
The writs stated the tunnage of the ship or ships required and the place of rendezvous at a given date, and contained elaborate provisions for the apportionment of the expense between the different parts and towns in the county, the assessment of the contributories, and the collection of the rate.
In substance the levy was an extra-parliamentary levy of a subsidy of a fixed amount for the purpose of increasing the navy; for it was not necessary to provide the ship itself or the men.
A special commission was issued for the loan of ships and pinnaces of the king’s own to counties and towns unable to find them as required by the writs, and the arming and furnishing them in warlike manner with ordnance and munition of all sorts; and the treasurer of the navy was empowered to receive from the officers of the counties and towns, all moneys paid in for the said ships and service.
Although the whole sum to be raised was but £208,900, a sum less than the produce of three subsidies, this more extended application of the ship writs encountered opposition not only in inland counties, but also in maritime places where the previous levy had not been opposed.
No doubt the new assessment involved in the levy tended to render the ship money unpopular throughout the country; for the contributories would have to expect that their assessments would be raised in the king’s subsidy books, and for all the different local levies of the period — for building houses of correction, for contributions for places stricken by the plague, rates for the poor, &c. And no doubt the people also resented the interference of the sheriff in the business.
But it was not for these reasons only that ship money met with opposition.
It was now opposed on principle.
In Oxfordshire, in the hundred of Bloxham, where stands lord Saye and Sele’s castle of Broughton, the constables, evidently upon careful advice, refused to proceed to the assessment, on the ground that they “had no authority to assess or tax any man” and conceived the warrants sent to them did not give them any power to do so, and eventually sir Peter Wentworth, the sheriff, was ordered himself to make the necessary assessment.
While troubles of the same kind occurred in Devonshire and other places.
In these circumstances the king caused a case to be submitted to the judges, in , for their opinion as to the legality of the levy and his power to enforce payment of the ship money, and the twelve judges, viz., the justices of the courts of king’s bench and common pleas and the barons of the exchequer, or ten of them according to some accounts, expressed and signed their opinion, in answer to the questions put to them, as follows:—
We are of opinion that when the good and safety of the kingdom in general is concerned and the whole kingdom is in danger, your Majesty may by writ under your great seal of England, command all the subjects of this your kingdom at their charge to provide and furnish such a number of ships, with men, victuals, and munition, and for such time as your majesty may think fit, for the defence and safeguard of the kingdom from such danger and peril; and that by law your majesty may compel the doing thereof in case of refusal or refractoriness.
We are also of opinion that in such case your majesty is the sole judge, both of the danger and when and how the same is to be prevented and avoided.
This opinion was, by command of the king, enrolled in the courts of chancery, king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer, and also entered among the remembrances of the court of star chamber; and thus fortified, he continued the levy of ship money.
A third issue of ship writs, similar to those issued on , was ordered in , and they produced £202,240 And in there was a fourth issue of writs.
Although under the new assessments, the ship money was, certainly, more fairly assessed than any fifteenth and tenth or subsidy hitherto collected — for indeed, it was of extreme importance to the king that no fault to be found with the assessment or any detail of the tax should endanger the rapidity and ease of the collection — and although the amount levied was no more than about the annual average of the produce of the subsidies granted to the king by parliament in the earlier part of the reign, the opposition of the people to ship money increased on every occasion of a levy.
Already Robert Chambers, a merchant of London, an old opponent of the imposts who had suffered imprisonment for his opposition, had endeavoured to test the legality of ship money in a court of law, but without success; for the court had refused to hear his counsel on the ground, as stated by sir Richard Berkeley, that “the question raised was one of government and not of law.”
And now lord Saye and Sele, and John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire, determined to obtain a legal decision upon the point.
The king, confident in the opinion expressed by the judges, had no reason to offer any opposition to the course proposed, and Hampden’s, made a test case, came on for hearing in the court of exchequer in .
In cases of great importance and difficulty arising in one of the three superior courts of law, it was usual to adjourn the case into the exchequer chamber, a court which, for this purpose, consisted of all the judges of the three courts.
This course was taken by the barons of the exchequer in Hampden’s case.
The case was argued solemnly for several days; and in the result, it was decided by a majority of the judges that Hampden should be charged with the sum assessed on him, the main grounds and reasons for the decision being those of the extrajudicial opinion of the judges in .
At last, the king was compelled to summon a parliament, , in order to provide for the expenses of the preparations for the campaign in Scotland.
But this parliament, subsequently known as the short parliament, was dissolved as soon as it appeared probable that they would refuse to proceed at once to the question of supply.
In the king summoned a great council of peers and laid before them the difficulties of his case, and on their advice, summoned in , subsequently known as the Long Parliament.
This parliament, after passing the Triennial Act and the Bill of Attainder against Strafford, settled the question of tunnage and poundage by granting the subsidy for a short term, and then proceeded to pass Acts against the ship money, distraint for knighthood and illegal impositions, and for ascertaining the bounds of the royal forests.
The Act against ship money, 16 Car.
I. c. 14, entitled, “An Act for declaring illegal and void the late proceedings touching ship money and for vacating all records and process concerning the same” recites:—
“The issue of the ship-writs.
The necessity of enforcing payment against sundry persons by process of law.
The proceedings against Hampden.
The hearing of the case and the decision of the judges that Hampden should be charged with the sum assessed on him.
The grounds for that decision.
The extrajudicial opinion given by all the judges on the case submitted to them in , and, That other cases were then depending in the court of exchequer and in some other courts against other persons, for the like kind of charge, grounded upon the said writs commonly called ship writs, all which writs and proceedings as aforesaid were utterly against the law of the land;” and enacts:—
That the said charge imposed upon the subject for the providing and furnishing of ships, commonly called ship-money; and the said extrajudicial opinion of the said justices and barons and the said writs, and every of them and the said agreement or opinion of the greater part of the said justices and barons, and the said judgment given against the said John Hampden, were, and are, contrary to and against the laws and statutes of this realm, the right of property, the liberty of the subjects, former resolutions in Parliament, and the Petition of Eight made in the third year of the reign.
And further, that all and every the particulars prayed or desired in the said Petition of Eight, shall from henceforth be put in execution accordingly, and shall be firmly and strictly holden and observed, as in the same Petition they are prayed and expressed.
And that all and every the records and remembrances of all and every the judgment enrolments, entry and proceedings as aforesaid, and all and every the proceedings whatsoever, upon, or by pretext or colour of any of the said writs commonly called ship writs, and all and every the dependents on any of them, shall be deemed and adjudged to all intents, constructions and purposes to be utterly void and disannulled, and that all and every the said judgment, enrolments, entries, proceedings, and dependents of what kind soever, shall be vacated and canceled in such manner and form as records use to be that are vacated.
The attorney-general, “with his own hand” — according to Edward Hyde Clarendon — “draughted and prepared the ship writs” for the maritime towns and counties.
“Noy,” writes Selden, in his Table Talk, “brought in the ship money for maritime towns, which was like putting in a little auger that afterwards you may put in a greater.
He that pulls down the first brick does the main work; afterwards, it is easy to pull down the wall.”
Karl Marx, when he was on trial for his own tax resistance, referred back to Hampden, saying:
Far be it from me to deny that the English revolution, which brought Charles Ⅰ to the scaffold, began with a refusal to pay taxes or that the North American revolution, which ended with the Declaration of Independence from Britain, started with a refusal to pay taxes.
The refusal to pay taxes can be the harbinger of unpleasant events in Prussia too.
It was not John Hampden, however, who brought Charles Ⅰ to the scaffold, but only the latter’s own obstinacy, his dependence on the feudal estates, and his presumptuous attempt to use force to suppress the urgent demands of the emerging society.
The refusal to pay taxes is merely a sign of the dissidence that exists between the Crown and the people, merely evidence that the conflict between the government and the people has reached a menacing degree of tensity.
It is not the cause of the discord or the conflict, it is merely an expression of this fact.
At the worst, it leads to the overthrow of the existing government, the existing political system.
The foundations of society are not affected by this.
In the present case, moreover, the refusal to pay taxes was a means of society’s self-defense against a government which threatened its foundations.
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker faced off in the pages of Liberty with a letter writer who contrasted Tucker’s hesitant tax resistance with that of Hampden’s. Some of Gandhi’s first writings on tax resistance also concerned Hampden:
At that time, King Charles was the ruler of England and he wanted to wage wars in foreign lands.
As his treasury had become empty, he imposed Ship Money.
Hampden, a rich gentleman of great prestige, saw that, if Ship Money were paid, the King’s demands would go on increasing and the people would suffer.
He therefore refused to pay the tax, and many joined him in this.
Though some of them agreed to pay the tax, Hampden remained firm and was prosecuted.
The judges sentenced him, declaring that he had committed a crime in not paying the tax.
Despite the sentence, Hampden did not pay the tax.
Hampden and his companions went to jail and the people congratulated them.
Like them, the people too remained firm.
Many did not pay the tax and there was a great revolt.
The King became nervous and the whole matter was reconsidered.
It was realized that thousands of people could not be sent to jail.
He therefore got the earlier judgment reversed by other judges and Hampden was set free.
The seed of the struggle for freedom that he sowed grew into a mighty tree.
As a result of the struggle he put up, Cromwell emerged and England acquired real power and the people were given a large share in the governance of the country.
Hampden died fighting for his country; he remains immortal.
India Government Seizes Movable Property for Non-Payment
Bombay, India, .
— With the coming of the rainy season halting attacks of the Indian Nationalists against the Government salt works, the authorities today strengthened their fight against the non-payment of taxes — which has succeeded the salt raids — in two widely-separated areas.
In the Gujerat, where civil disobedience has been widespread since Mahatma Gandhi opened his campaign there , the Government has begun attaching movable property of those who refuse to pay land taxes.
The evaders lock their doors and flee when tax collectors appear or hide in the fields, so attachment was resorted to.
To the northeast, in the Punjab, police arrested 17 tax evaders in a village 20 miles from Delhi.
Non-payment of land revenue has long been preached by civil resistance leaders, but until the monsoon brought the rains they were occupied chiefly with salt raids — and the police likewise were occupied with arresting them.
Now they are concentrating on the tax question despite the Viceroy’s ordinance against inciting to non-payment.
The Government campaign was given vigor last week by plans made at a conference of provincial governors.
The Nationalists in Bombay continued processions and demonstrations .
When Pandit Motilal Nehru, acting president of the All-Indian National Congress, reached here he led a parade of Nationalists from the Indian quarter to the Congress House.
He was called, it is understood, by the Bombay Congress Committee, which has been pushing the movement for the picketing of foreign cloth shops and liquor places.
When the procession ended the Pandit addressed a mass meeting and emphasized the need for intensifying the boycott programme.
He congratulated Bombay and the Gujerat district on the lead they had given to the civil disobedience movement.
Referring to suggestions that the campaign be called off as a preliminary to peace negotiations, he declared that any negotiations must always precede suspension of the movement.
V.J. Patel, former Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, appealed to the students to give up their studies for twelve months and devote themselves to congress work.
An interesting article in the latest edition of The Wilson Quarterly looks at the team that Gandhi assembled to help him carry out his satyagraha campaign in India.
The Gandhi myth is all about a charismatic, saintly individual making change with his idiosyncratic gestures of integrity and conscience.
The real story has a lot to do with a well-managed organization of talented and savvy people acting with determination and making deliberate and thoughtful tactical decisions.
Ashland, Ky., . — (AP) —
Members of a peace group of six charged they were ordered off a highway by state police while demonstrating to welcome Katsuki James Otsuka from prison.
Otsuka, a 28-year-old American-born Japanese [sic], completed 120 days in the Ashland Federal Correctional Institution, near here, for non-payment of war taxes.
Warden R.O. Culver indicated, however, that any release was out of his hands.
He said Otsuka first must appear before United States Commissioner J.C. Yeager here for non-payment of a $100 fine in connection with his sentence.
The peace group, led by the Rev. Ralph Templin of the Wilberforce, O., University faculty, appeared on the state highway near the prison at .
At Frankfort, Police Commissioner Guthrie F. Crowe said three troopers have been assigned to maintain order outside the institution.
The troopers were sent there at the request of Warden Culver, Crowe said.
The state policemen have been instructed to keep the highway clear and to see that no one is injured, Crowe said.
“The police will not interfere with placards, banners or speeches,” he added.
Crowe said the group interfered with the free movement of guards and other institutional employes as they went to work this morning.
Templin and the Rev. Ernest Bromley of Wilmington, O., later attempted to interview prison officials about Otsuka’s release, but were told by a tower guard that none was available at that hour.
Templin said that “four carloads of state police” drove up shortly after and ordered him and the others, all carrying peace placards, off the road and that they broke one of the placards.
The sign read:
“You did right in refusing to pay taxes for A-bombs.”
Templin said he asked what law was being violated by the picketing, but that he got no answer.
No one was available at the Ashland state police detachment for comment.
Other demonstrators included Henry Dyer of Yellow Springs, O., employe of a printing establishment; Lloyd Danzeisen, a railroad postal clerk of Brookville, O., near Dayton, and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Nelson of Covington, Ky.
Nelson is a construction worker.
Otsuka, native of San Diego, Calif., was sentenced to 90 days and fined $100 on in Indianapolis, Ind., by Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell for refusing to pay 29 per cent of his income taxes, amounting to $4.50, which he considered to be for war purposes.
He has served an additional 30 days in lieu of the fine, but Culver said he must still appear before the commissioner.
Ralph Templin was a former missionary stationed in India, and an admirer of Gandhi’s techniques.
The British government expelled him because of his support for Gandhi’s movement.
Back in the U.S., Templin noted that Gandhi had eagerly learned from American predecessors like William Lloyd Garrison and Henry David Thoreau, and proposed that Americans should return the favor by learning a thing or two from Gandhi.
To this end, he helped to form the “Harlem Ashram” and its Non-violence Direct Action Committee, which concentrated on non-violent actions to fight racial discrimination.
Dyer was one of the World War Ⅱ conscientious objectors who was further radicalized by / helped radicalize the civilian work camps to which drafted conscientious objectors in the United States were assigned (he was later one of thousands of conscientious objectors the U.S. imprisoned).
Lloyd Danzeisen was one of the “Peacemakers” group.
Wally & Juanita Nelson and Ernest Bromley I’ve covered here before in more or less detail.
Government Will Not Permit Natives to Make Salt — Riot
New Delhi, India, (AP) — The working committee of the Indian Congress party voted to reject the viceroy’s proposals for a compromise settlement of the party’s demands.
Firm on Salt Tax.
The government refused point blank, it was said in authoritative circles here, to grant the Mahatma’s demand that Indians be given the right to make their own salt, holding that the present salt revenue law could only be altered by a legislative act.
The viceroy was said to be equally determined not to yield on the question of obstructing the sale of foreign cloth and the boycotting of British goods.
Would Not Pay Tax: 1 Killed and 5 Injured
Lucknow, India, (AP) — An Indian revenue officer was killed and five persons were injured in a riot which followed the revenue officers’ attempt to collect taxes.
Forty-six persons were arrested.
The mob met the collectors with a shower of stones and beat them with staves.
The All-India National Congress organization was blamed by police for the refusal of the villagers to pay taxes.
Bondurant was working in military intelligence during World War Ⅱ and was assigned to India where she translated Japanese communications.
While she was there she was exposed to Gandhi’s satyagraha techniques as they were being developed and put into use there, and she was impressed by what she saw and decided to give the subject some study.
Her book was one of the first attempts to methodically describe the theory behind the use of satyagraha in political conflict.
(Bondurant seems to have had some instinctual appreciation of satyagraha ahead of time.
Legend has it that when she went to learn Japanese in her eagerness to help the war effort, she was turned away — the class was for men only.
So she sat outside the classroom door every day until they relented and let her in.)
Gandhi himself did not pause to try and rigorously delineate the contours of his theory.
He explained himself briefly on many occasions, and you can piece together a picture of what he had in mind from various examples of these, but because he was developing his technique on-the-fly, experimenting and refining along the way, he sometimes contradicts himself, and the overall picture of what he developed can be a fuzzy one.
Bondurant’s is one attempt of many to try to make up for this lack of a formal understanding of satyagraha.
She starts by giving an introduction to what satyagraha is, how Gandhi developed it, and how he described it.
She then tells how it played out in a variety of campaigns (including the Bardoli Satyagraha, of particular interest to people interested in mass tax resistance), and what generalizations we can draw from seeing how these campaigns played out.
Then she inquires into how much the success of satyagraha depended on the preexisting cultural context of Hinduism.
(She suggests that while Gandhi was skilled at remixing the symbols and norms of Hinduism and of Indian culture to explain his technique, the technique itself is universal, and could just as easily be translated to another culture.)
Finally, she compares satyagraha, which is a theory of political action, to a variety of other, more static political theories — such as anarchism, Marxism, liberalism, autocratic idealism, and paleoconservatism.
She finds that the means-are-the-ends philosophy of satyagraha give it an edge over other political philosophies that tend to be vague on the means to be used to bring about preferred ends or to resolve conflicts.
I found the book to be thought provoking in many parts, but also to be a little dry and sometimes wordy and vague.
Among the more interesting bits was the discussion of whether Gandhi could be considered an anarchist.
Gandhi did not profess a particular political philosophy or theory of the state.
Sometimes the things he said seemed to have no interpretation but an anarchist one; other times, he explicitly envisioned and promoted particular state-based action.
Bondurant suggests that part of the problem people have when trying to get a straight answer to this question is that they take for granted the traditional description of a state as an entity that claims a local monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Just as Gandhi was innovating in developing nonviolent ways of projecting force or of resolving conflict, Bondurant thinks, he was also able to imagine a state-like institution that did not use or legitimize violence in its methods of projecting force or resolving conflict.
So that when Gandhi spoke of ideal governments or states, he may not have been imagining anything that would necessarily make an anarchist upset.
Tax resistance campaigns can increase their visibility by adopting particular
uniforms, badges, ribbons, or other emblems to identify resisters and those
working in concert with the campaign. Today I will summarize some examples of
this.
Gandhi’s satyagraha in India
An important part of the Indian independence struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi
was the wearing of khādī (homespun cloth). This had three
purposes:
To encourage the development of Indian self-reliance and industry as the
economic foundation of Indian independence.
To hurt the British government by boycotting and thereby reducing the
profits from exports of British fabric to India.
To serve as an emblem to identify and express the commitment of Indian
patriots.
Gandhi wrote:
[T]he most effective and visible cooperation which all [Indian National]
Congressmen and the mute millions can show is by not interfering with the
course civil disobedience may take and by themselves spinning and using
khādī to the exclusion of all other cloth. If it is allowed
that there is a meaning in people wearing primroses on
Primrose Day, surely
there is much more in a people using a particular kind of cloth and giving a
particular type of labour to the cause they hold dear. From their compliance
with the khādī test I shall infer that they have shed
untouchability, and that they have nothing but brotherly feeling towards all
without distinction of race, colour, or creed. Those who will do this are as
much Satyagrahis as those who will be singled out for
civil disobedience.
Gandhi wearing a “Gandhi cap”
Gandhi himself put in many hours at the spinning wheel, and demanded this of
his followers as well.
“Gandhi caps” made from
khādī became almost a uniform of the resistance. One news
dispatch from around the time of the Dharasana salt raid noted:
The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the
increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said,
a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in
villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the
population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the
nationalist campaign.
Homespun cloth in the American revolution
But Gandhi’s campaign wasn’t the first blow against the British Empire that
was struck in part by homespun cloth and conspicuous consumption of
locally-manufactured goods. This was also an important part of the American
Revolution.
Here is an example reported in a
edition of the Massachusetts Gazette:
On Wednesday evening the honorable speaker and gentlemen of the House of
Burgesses gave a ball at the capitol… and it is with the greatest pleasure we
inform our readers… [of] the patriotic spirit… [that] was most agreeably
manifested in the dress of the ladies on that occasion, who, to the number of
near one hundred, appeared in homespun gowns; a lively and striking instance
of their acquiescence and concurrence in whatever may be the true and
essential interest of their country.
“Spinning bees” at which patriotic Americans worked together to card, spin,
weave, and sew, so as to avoid having to import clothing from England, were
ways that everybody could demonstrate their revolutionary spirit and
participate in the resistance. Resisters also made a point of eschewing
imported tea in favor of locally-produced substitutes (such as dried raspberry
leaves).
One patriotic poem of the time advised “young ladies”:
Wear none but your own country linen;
Of economy boast, let your pride be the most
To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
For when once it is known this is much worn in town,
One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be
To such as will wear London factory,
But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose
As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear;
Love your country much better than fine things;
Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion
To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Massachusetts patriots vowed in :
…that we will not, at funerals, use any gloves except those made here, or
purchase any article of mourning on such occasion, but what shall be
absolutely necessary; and we consent to abandon the use, so far as may be,
not only of all the articles mentioned in the Boston resolves, but of all
foreign teas, which are clearly superfluous, our own fields abounding in
herbs more healthful, and which we doubt not, may, by use, be found agreeable…
Rebecca Riots
The Rebecca Riots in Wales in
were notorious for the distinctive garb donned by the
resistance groups who would gather to tear down tollgates.
The leader of the party was usually a man dressed up in women’s clothing and
a large bonnet, sometimes wearing a long horse-hair wig or carrying a parasol,
who was given the name “Rebecca.” Rebecca’s followers also were men wearing
women’s clothes, or at least white blouses over their clothes, and sometimes
bonnets or other high-crowned hats, occasionally with fern fronds, feathers,
or other decorations on them. They would paint their faces black or yellow,
and sometimes drape their horses in white sheets.
In this case, the reasoning behind the costuming was not so much to express
public pride than for other purposes. For instance:
To disguise the participants so that the government would be less able to
take reprisals against them.
To resonate with ancient folk forms of grassroots vigilantism and protest
that had a similar character (cross-dressing, face painting, a carnival
atmosphere).
To intimidate toll gate keepers with their strangeness and reputation.
To create a figurehead for the movement that could be adopted and then
set aside by multiple people, so as to make the movement’s leadership
harder to target for reprisals.
To make the resistance more festive and carnivalesque and thereby
encourage participation.
To make it easier to identify fellow-resisters in the confusion of
late-night raids on dark country roads.
Badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance League
The badge representing Holloway Prison that was awarded to women’s suffrage
activists who had been imprisoned.
Women’s suffrage activists in the United Kingdom awarded badges to resisters
who had been imprisoned for their resistance. Here is a description of one
such badge given to Kate Harvey:
The badge is cast in the form of a shield on which is depicted the entrance
to Holloway Prison. On the reverse is a card inscribed in a faint hand:
“Given to Mrs K Harvey By Women’s Suffrage After She Had Been In Prison For
Tax Resistance.”
These badges were the equivalent of medals for meritorious service. An
American woman who visited her counterparts across the waters observed:
It was a queer sensation in those days to look upon sweet and ladylike young
women… and to know that they had actually been prisoners. It was not long
before they were looked upon as something sacred, as those who had made
special sacrifices for the cause, and they wore badges to show that they had
been prisoners and in every place were given the post of honor until their
numbers mounted up to the hundreds.
Relics of the Glastonbury cows
Abby & Julia Smith refused to pay taxes to a local government that denied
women the vote and that took advantage of this by excessively taxing women’s
property in order to ease the tax burden on male voters and to redistribute
the money to male patronage recipients. In response, the government
periodically seized and auctioned off the Smith sisters’ cows (“Votey” and
“Taxey”).
Emblems made from hairs of the cows’ tails, woven into the shape of flowers,
and tied with ribbons emblazoned with the slogan “Taxation Without
Representation,” became popular adornments for supporters of the Smiths’ tax
resistance.
“I refuse to fund this war” stickers
In , an American anti-war group held a
“Stop Funding the War in Iraq” rally near the offices of a Congressional
leader.
A war tax resistance group was there to hand out stickers for people to wear
that read “I refuse to fund this war!” I was there and noted:
I figured a few people would take them and wear them without thinking much
about it, a few people would refuse to take them without thinking much about
it, and the remainder would have to think about whether they should start
refusing if they hadn’t already.
As it turned out, just about everyone we offered the stickers to was eager to
wear one, though it’s hard to tell which of these will put their money where
their mouths are. Hopefully a few, anyway, had that light bulb go on, and
then looked around and wondered “have all these other people wearing these
stickers started resisting their taxes?”
French cockades and militia uniforms in the Fries Rebellion
The Fries Rebellion in the United States took place about a decade after the
enacting of the United States Constitution, and shortly after the successful
French Revolution.
The United States government was under the presidency of John Adams, who
represented the more authoritarian, aristocratic, pro-English faction; the
faction out of power was more populist, democratic, and pro-French.
Tax resisters who participated in the Fries Rebellion sometimes signaled
their loyalty (and frightened the Adams government) by wearing French
tricolor cockades in their hats to demonstrate their affinity with the
democratic revolutionaries across the pond, and/or by wearing their old
American revolutionary militia uniforms to show their belief that their
current rebellion was more in harmony with the spirit of the American
Revolution than were the policies of the federal government.
Masks at the Carnival of Viareggio
The Carnival of Viareggio is today a parade and bacchanal, but it began with
a tax protest in which “a number of local citizens, as a sign of protest…
decided to put on masks in order to show their refusal of high taxes they were
forced to pay.”
Australian miners wear a red ribbon
Australian miners, who in were resisting
a license tax, held a “monster meeting” at which they passed a number of
resolutions, including these:
[A]s it is necessary that the diggers should know their friends, every miner
agrees to wear as a pledge of good faith, and in support of the cause, a
piece of red ribbon on his hat, not to be removed until the license tax is
abolished.
That this meeting… desire to publicly express their esteem for the memory of
the brave men who have fallen in battle [during “the late out-break”], and
that to shew their respect every digger and their friends do wear tomorrow
(Sunday) a band of black crape on his hat…
Taking pride in resistance
Many of these are examples of resisters showing pride in their
resistance. This can be a way of short-circuiting a traditional government
gambit used against tax evaders: to publish their names as a way of calling
them out as bankrupts or deadbeats. If the government tries to shame tax
resisters as irresponsible tax evaders, but the resisters have already
willingly made their resistance public, this government tactic loses its
force.
When local council governments in the United Kingdom tried to use this tactic
against Poll Tax resisters in the Thatcher years, the newspapers who published
the lists of “shame” found themselves on the receiving end of letters to the
editor from resisters who were outraged that they had not made the
list — insisting that their names be included too!
Here are some similar examples of people taking pride in their resistance or
in things incident to resistance:
When the Women’s Freedom League (a British suffrage group which refused to
pay taxes on the salaries of its employees), was threatened with a legal
writ by the government, it decided to auction the writ as a
fundraiser.
Greek tax resisters in Penteli (near Athens), who have been refusing to
pay the new taxes attached to their utility bills during the recent “won’t
pay” movement, hung their urgent “past due” notices from a Christmas tree
in the town square as ornaments.
When somebody asked Quaker Nathaniel Morgan whether he and his father had
“got anything” in the course of their war tax resistance (by which he
meant, did his Quaker meeting reimburse them for their losses when their
goods were distrained and sold), Morgan replied: “Yes, peace of mind,
which was worth all.”
I made note of people and groups that had deliberately exposed themselves to extraordinary taxes, or had flouted the conditions of tax-exemption, in order to be subject to a tax that they could then resist.
That reminded me of the draft resisters during the Vietnam War who deliberately refused to invoke exemptions from the draft for which they were qualified (such as the draft exemption granted to ministers) so that they could resist in solidarity with draft resisters who did not qualify for any such exemptions.
Some of the examples I mentioned are a variety of tactic that has occasionally accompanied tax resistance campaigns: renouncing of government privileges and titles.
Here are some additional examples from this category:
When Gandhi was commander-in-chief of the Indian independence movement, his campaign of non-cooperation included tax resistance and other forms of civil disobedience, but he not only instructed his nonviolent army to resist taxes, wear untaxed domestic cloth, break the British salt monopoly by harvesting salt, and so forth — he also told them to resign their government posts, renounce any government-awarded titles or authority, take their children out of government schools, not ask for protection from the government’s law or courts, and stop voting or running for office.
He explained why:
This is the way of non-co-operation, or peaceful severing of relations.
That is, that we should neither seek help from the Government nor offer it any help.
How can we part company with it?
First we should renounce titles.
For us now to hold titles is a sin.
Next we should give up the courts.
The dispensing of justice should lie in our own hands.
The courts strengthen the roots of the Government.
Lawyers should give up their practice.
If it is possible for them they should, after giving up legal practice, serve the country.
Even if they cannot serve the country the giving up of legal practice would be by itself sufficient service.
They should take up other trades.
Parents should withdraw their children from schools and universities.
Boys who have reached the age of 16 should be treated as friends and advised to withdraw.
They should be told not to continue their studies in these institutions.
They should be told to go to school at institutions where they can remain free.
We should not go for education to a place where the Government’s flag flies.
The Congress has also said that we should not go into the Councils.
The election to the Councils will take place on .
It is the day when we shall be tested.
First we should persuade the candidates to withdraw.
If they do not give in, it will be the duty of voters to remain at home and not to cast their votes.
We should go on pleading with the candidates till the night of .
We should fall at their feet and beseech them not to stand for the Councils.
If they do not come round but persist in going into the Councils it will be your duty to refuse all help and do no work for them.
Again, soldiering is a sin.
You should not get recruited as soldiers, but it is your duty to become soldiers of freedom.
…With great humility I ask you: What have you done?
Have you withdrawn your boys from schools and colleges?
If your boy is grown up have you made him aware of his duty?
Have you given him your blessing in this matter?
If you have not done this, why are you gathered here?
It is the duty of boys to leave schools and to convince their elders.
Have you decided not to vote?
Have you taken the swadeshi vow?
These questions concern everyone.
Government recruitment should stop.
We should take our litigation to our elders and seek justice.
This will put an end to the “prestige” of the Government.
The Government will at the same time realize that its hundred thousand whites can no longer rule over three hundred million people.
So long the Government has carried on its rule over us by making us quarrel among ourselves, by offering us enticements and by giving and taking help.…
The British occupation government responded by asking its Indian employees, who were normally forbidden to engage with political questions, to explicitly oppose Gandhi’s movement.
This instead triggered even more resignations from those who were not active in the independence movement but who felt they could not explicitly oppose it.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, many members of the Bombay Legislative Council resigned in protest, some of the first resigners co-signing a letter in which they wrote that “when a Government forgetful of its own obligations commits grave breaches of law, and ruthlessly attempts to trample under foot such noble and law-abiding people, it is but fair and proper for us, as a protest against the high-handed policy of Government in that taluka [district], to resign our seats on the Bombay Legislative Council, and so we request your Excellency to accept our resignations of the same.”
Many local officials also resigned their posts, which meant a great deal of sacrifice for them and their families.
Gandhi said of them: “More purifying than this suffering imposed by godless and insolent authority is the suffering which the people are imposing upon themselves.”
By resigning, these officials, who were often part of the indigenous elite who had been bought off by the Raj with titles and state-guaranteed privilege, were risking all of that.
Resistance spokesman Sailendra Ghose noted that “the government in some provinces has refused to allow village officers to resign, dismissing those who refuse to carry out their duties and thus depriving their heirs of their hereditary rights as village chiefs.”
Quaker Meetings would frequently not only require that members adhere to their peace testimony by refusing to participate in military service or pay war taxes, but also that those members who had been in the military prior to becoming Quakers renounce their claim to military pensions.
Here is how the New England Yearly Meeting put it in their “rules of discipline” of 1808:
It is our sense and judgment, that it will not be consistent with our testimony against war, for any of our members to receive pensions from government, for military services performed before they became members, though reduced to necessitous circumstances; but that this necessity should be relieved by monthly and quarterly meetings, and thereby preserve our religious testimony against the anti-christian practice of war, and manifest their sympathy for their brethren, by contributing to their comfortable support.
Ghislaine “Ghis” Lanctôt embarked on a project of absolute individual independence from the governments of the world, something she termed “personocratia,” in .
She refused to cooperate with the government in any way, but also took a careful inventory of the benefits and privileges of the citizenship granted her by the government, and was careful to refuse those too.
She started by giving up her state health insurance card, later tossed her driver’s license and stopped paying traffic fines, gave up her claim to a family trust, and eventually let her passport expire.
She made a list of various state privileges that she was turning her back on: social security, professional licensing, insurance, legally protected property, certifications, intellectual property rights, the courts, access to banks, and so forth.
In Beit Sahour, during the first intifada, one of the ways the Israeli military occupation authorities would retaliate against tax resisters was to seize their identity cards, which would make it difficult for them to travel, get medical care, be employed, avoid arbitrary arrest, or “to pursue anything resembling a normal life under occupation.”
But the residents fought back in a creative and daring fashion: Hundreds of them voluntarily turned in their identity cards.
During the French wine-growers tax strike of , the municipal governments of the region resigned en masse.
The Mayor of Narbonne will open the strike.
He and the entire Municipal Council will resign , after having previously dismissed all municipal employes.
Officers of other cities will follow suit in the course of a few days.
Tax strike leader Marcelin Albert claimed that “12,000 cities, towns, boroughs, and villages in the south of France” were left without municipal governments as a result of the resignation.
The quitting of municipal officers is usually attended with much ceremony.
Generally a crape streamer is hoisted at the flagstaff, and the Mayor burns his official sash in public.
Beatrice and Cornelis Boeke
War tax resisters Beatrice and Cornelis Boeke felt that in order for their tax resistance to be consistent, they must also refuse to use state-run monopolies like the postal service and railways, relinquish their passports, stop contributing to retirement accounts, and renounce any claim to the protection of the police, courts, and military.
When the government started providing funding even for private schools, they withdrew and homeschooled their children.
They even stopped handling government-issued currency.
They took this to the point of abandoning their home rather than calling the police when vagrants moved in.
In Tasmania, in , 26 magistrates resigned their offices rather than try to enforce a widely-resisted tax.
Such an expressive demonstration on the part of gentlemen holding the commission of the peace incited the people to stronger resistance; for it appeared to them that a law which could not be conscientiously administered by the retiring justices was unworthy of obedience.
Tax resistance movements have often coordinated with labor strikes or business shut-downs as a way of further restricting government resources, demonstrating solidarity, and freeing up the time of resisters to engage in more campaign-oriented activities.
In some cases, these strikes are themselves a form of tax resistance — reducing the income or sales tax base by simply reducing the amount of income earned or sales made.
Here are several examples:
Labor strikes
In Germany, in , “A movement for a general refusal to pay taxes, originating in Württemberg, spread rapidly to other towns, principally Stuttgart, which was without gas, electricity and water for several days.
The strike began in the Daimler motor works in Württemberg, where the workers refused to allow the deduction of the legal tax of ten per cent from their weekly wages…”
A tax strike in aimed at the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela was accompanied by a multi-week labor strike that “bled the Chavez’s government’s economic lifeline, costing it millions of dollars a day.”
Prisoner slave laborers in the American state of Georgia went on strike in , refusing to work for the profit of the prison system.
In Savannah, Georgia, in , the city tried to impose a $10 tax on “stevedores and other laborers on the wharves,” which they refused to pay.
The city then locked them out of the wharves.
This, of course, seriously interfered with the shipping interests of the city, and the Council, finding that the laborers were not at all disposed to yield, and that meanwhile the “strike” was damaging the business community to the amount of thousands of dollars, and was driving all the vessels from this to other ports, met and reduced the tax to $3.
This, however, only tended to increase the feelings of the laborers, who had resolved not to pay any tax whatever, deeming it unjust, unconstitutional and oppressive to tax unskilled labor, and they determined that none of their number should work, whether they paid the tax or not.
During the recent Household Tax agitation in Ireland, the Civil and Public Service Union threatened to strike if the government tried to deduct the tax from the paychecks of resisting union members.
Ship stokers in France went on strike when the government tried to tax their incidental benefits like meals as income in .
The standoff kept the largest French trans-Atlantic ship stranded in port until the stokers’ employer agreed to pay the extra tax on their behalf.
In Birmingham, Alabama, in :
The plant of… [a] Paint company at North Birmingham, employing 200 men, closed down because a deputy tax collector served garnishment on five employees for the non-payment of poll tax.
Many of the men quit work causing the plant to shut down.
… The men persist in their refusal because they claim the tax is an unjust one and not constitutional.
The citizens all side with the strikers.
Hartals and business strikes
“Bushel Bob” Williams’ produce stand
When Argentina tried to increase taxes in the midst of a drought in , farmers there went on strike for a week and set up highway roadblocks.
American farmer Bob Williams, disgusted at the U.S. military budget, decided in to henceforth donate all of his produce to charity rather than sell it for taxable income.
For a week in , a strike spread amongst the vendors in Tehran’s bazaar until hardly any were open for business.
They were protesting a new VAT that would have applied to them.
Apparently this was a nonviolent resistance tactic that bazaar merchants used successfully before the Iranian revolution, but this was the first time they’d done it since.
20,000 lawyers in Delhi went on strike in , “paralyzing the lower courts,” when India tried to extend its sales tax to cover legal services.
In in Benares, the British imperial government tried to impose a house tax.
The residents responded with a hartal, or general strike: “the shops were closed, every kind of occupation was abandoned… a solemn engagement was taken by all the inhabitants to carry on no manner of work or business until the tax was repealed.
Everything was at a stand: the dead bodies were cast unceremoniously into the river, because there were none to perform the obsequial rites; and the very thieves refrained from the exercise of their vocation…”
Hartals and strikes, sometimes of specific industries and other times general strikes, were also frequently used in the later Indian independence movement led by Gandhi, sometimes in coordination with tax resistance campaigns such as the salt raids.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, for example, shopkeepers frequently shut down their operations whenever officials came to town, and hartals sometimes broke out spontaneously on other occasions.
Gandhi also led a strike of Indian miners in South Africa in that was directed against a poll tax on Indian immigrants, a strike in which hundreds were arrested, and which eventually drew in strikers from “harbour, corporation, and railway employees, as well as the drivers, cooks, waiters, and messengers.”
That campaign was successful at forcing the government to rescind the tax.
A Parisian cafe owner holds down the fort during a one-day business strike during the Poujadist campaign.
When the tax inspector called at St. Cere during the Poujadist tax strikes:
“The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books.
Nowhere did he get an answer.
When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat…”
During the first intifada in Palestine, the Unified National Command responded to a crackdown on the tax strikers of Beit Sahour by calling “an unprecedented five day in six general strike,” while “[s]torekeepers in the town launched a commercial strike that lasted three months…”
The Israeli practice of seizing equipment, supplies, and goods from businesses that refused to remit taxes also had the effect of putting those businesses into a state of strike whether or not that was their intention.
In , in support of Palestinian doctors who were refusing to pay an Israeli income tax, shopkeepers in Gaza City launched multiple two-day strikes.
In , Greek kiosk owners held a one-day strike to protest an increase in tobacco taxes.
In the Dutch West Indies in , “[m]erchants, as a token of their approval of [a] doctor’s refusal to pay the tax,” (the government was attempting to auction off his goods that day) “closed their places of business during the afternoon.”
In the waning days of the rule of the Gyanendra monarchy in Nepal in , people stopped paying taxes and utility bills, and accompanied this with a general strike.
In , cashew traders in Guinea Bissau went on strike:
“We cashew exporters have decided to boycott the current marketing season to protest the payment of a 50 CFA franc ($0.11) per kilogram export tax,” said the head of the exporter’s association.
In sympathy with the tax protests in Turkey in , there were often business strikes:
…all shops and businesses [in Kastamonu] remained closed during the day…
…merchants [in Erzurum] closed their shops in solidarity… shops were closed again…
Erzurum’s example of closing shops… [was followed] at Hasankale…
In the Ruhr, during the French/Belgian occupation of , businesses shut down rather than pay reparation taxes:
The owners of the German coal mines and foundries in the Ruhr are determined not to pay the 10 per cent. export tax imposed on coal by the French…
The owners will refuse to export an ounce of coal or coke.
They will dump the supplies in the yards, and are prepared for a long seige.
This was accompanied by a large-scale labor strike, which the German government supported by directly financially supporting the individual strikers.
Consumer strikes
In Cairo in , a boatload of cruise ship passengers refused to disembark because of a landing tax they would be forced to pay.
This so upset the tourist-dependent shopkeepers that they rioted and forced the tax officials to waive the tax.
In Melbourne, Australia, in “[b]etween 500 and 600 young men refused to pay the amusement tax at the Stadium last night to witness a boxing match between Edwards and Palmer.
They were patrons of the lower-priced seats.
The manager of the Stadium argued with the spokesmen for the crowd for some time, but neither side would yield, and the result was that the attendance was much smaller than usual.”
In the U.S., school districts often get government funding based on how many students are attending on certain “count days.”
One parent decided to use this as leverage, saying she would keep her children home from school on count days, and thereby deprive the district of money, to protest against poor district policies.
(I’ll cover consumer strikes of government-monopoly products in another episode of this series.)
As internet telephony started to become a real option several years ago, some American war tax resisters realized they could avoid the federal excise tax on telephone service by getting rid of their phone lines and switching over to such internet-based plans.
In , as the U.S. was launching its attack on Iraq, anti-war activists from other countries began to promote a boycott of the products of U.S. government contractors, and even of U.S. companies in general.
“The U.S. economy is strung out across the globe,” wrote Arundhati Roy.
“Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable.
Our strategy must be to isolate Empire’s working parts and disable them one by one.
No target is too small.
No victory too insignificant.”
When the Continental Congress imposed a tax on postage stamps to help pay for the revolutionary war effort, Quaker James Mott decided to stop using the mail.
He wrote to a friend:
Must our correspondence by mail be at end, in consequence of the extra postage?
or shall we pay it, and thereby contribute a mite to the support of measures calculated to destroy men’s lives and property?
Perhaps I may be alone in refusing to pay postage on letters.
Only a few cents — what can this do, it may be said, towards enabling government to prosecute the war?
Very little, I own: but the great sum required is made up of littles; and if all those littles are withheld, the effusion of human blood may be at an end. …
I cannot… believe it best for me to pay the present demand of additional postage, little as it is, and alone as I may stand.
Many years later, Congress issued revenue stamps that had to be purchased and applied to certain types of documents.
One Quaker wrote in :
I am one of those (I suppose there are others), who have felt an extreme unwillingness to help maintain our wars by the use of the revenue stamps, which were legalized expressly for war uses.
Our forefathers would have made an emphatic protest against it, if indeed they would not have refused entirely to use the stamps, and borne the consequences, whatever they might have been.
… at least we could restrict the use of checks (for example) wherever possible, and diminish in this way our contributions to the war fund.
Other Quakers began refusing to use or to deal in imported goods, so as to avoid paying import duties that were being directed to military expenses.
Joshua Evans wrote:
About , I understood a law was made for raising money to defray the expenses of war, by means of a duty laid on imported articles of almost every kind. …
I had felt myself restrained, for thirty or forty years, from paying such taxes; the proceeds whereof were applied, in great measure, to defray expenses relating to war: and, as herein before-mentioned, my refusal was from a tender conscientious care to keep clear in my testimony against all warlike proceedings.
Quaker shopkeeper Isaac Martin decided to stop dealing in imported goods rather than pay an import duty:
[A] weighty concern attended my mind on account of a tax on shop keepers, who dealt in foreign articles, to be appropriated towards carrying on the war against England.
I felt much scrupulous in my mind, respecting the consistency thereof with our peaceable principles. …
I believed my peace of mind would be affected, if I paid the said tax.
So I resigned myself to the Lord’s will, let the event be as it may.
But scarcely a day passed, that I had not to turn customers away, who applied for articles which I had on hand, but could not sell, on account of the heavy penalty.
Quaker meetings also had a policy of warning their members against “sharing or partaking in the spoils of war by purchasing or selling prize-goods” — that is, goods seized from the ships of enemy nations by government-sanctioned pirates.
Government bonds are an obvious boycott target for people trying to restrict the resources available to the government.
John Payne wrote a tract in entreating Quakers to divest from government bonds that went to pay for wars:
[T]he King [once] had the power of summoning the barons to the field, and the barons their retainers: by these means armies were raised, fields fought, and blood-stained laurels acquired.
But now immense sums are wanted; and without them War would be an impossibility.
The magnitude of the money necessary, infinitely exceeds any resource which the kingdom can immediately supply: therefore the ingenuity of ministers has recourse to the aid of Funding; that is, of establishing a fictitious capital, which shall bear a certain rate of interest; and any person, purchasing of Government a portion of this fictitious capital, is put into the receipt of interest according to the sum he purchases, and the country is burthened with taxes to support the payment of such interest.
No man hazards his veracity by saying that War cannot be now supported without the Funding System.
As no man then can deny this solemn truth, is it not astonishing to find Quakers holders of stock, not only in their individual, but in their collective capacity?
What then is the conclusion?
The Quakers, at the time they declare their fundamental principles prohibit War, are actively and voluntarily supplying the only prop by which the modern system of War is supported.
Payne himself went even further.
Eager to avoid as much as possible paying money to the British government that was fighting the American revolutionary war, he bricked up a third of the windows of his home to reduce his property tax (which was assessed based on the number of windows), he disabled his coach to avoid its license fee, and he rode miles out of his way to avoid road tolls.
Upset at the government siphoning off a portion of pew rents in establishment churches “to relieve the embarrassments in the city finances, occasioned by an extravagant self-elected magistracy,” some people in Edinburgh around the time of the Annuity Tax resistance there proposed also refusing to rent pews until government spending were to become more responsible.
The “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement aims to boycott businesses that profit from Israeli settlement expansion in occupied Palestine.
The “Potato Movement” in Greece is trying to circumvent the over-taxed middle-men of the above-ground commercial market by directly connecting producers and buyers in a way that is mutually-beneficial to them and less profitable to the state.
The British government’s enforced monopoly on tea imports into the American colonies was “equal to a tax” in the eyes of Samuel Adams and his fellow patriots.
Boycotts of monopoly tea were widespread, and were famously backed up by acts like the Boston Tea Party, in which monopoly tea was destroyed in bulk.
Other monopoly British imports that suffered from American boycott included house paint, cloth, glass, paper, and dye.
One patriotic song included the lyric:
The use of the taxables, let us forbear:—
(Then merchants import till your stores are all full,
May the buyers be few, and your traffic be dull!)
Boycotts of British-monopoly goods like salt were also, of course, big parts of the Indian independence campaign led by Gandhi.
During the tax resistance and protests that accompanied the campaign for the Reform Act of , “associations were proposed of persons who would undertake to use no excisable articles.”
In Russia around the time of the Vyborg Manifesto, a report noted that “the peasants are deciding to boycott all state-owned businesses.”
For example: “they have undertaken a concerted abstention from vodka, the manufacture and sale of which intoxicant was made a Government monopoly… [which] has since constituted one of the principal sources of the public revenue.”
Another report said that “[t]he leaders of the workingmen’s organization have taken the lead in placing fresh obstacles in the way of the government raising money at home by advising their followers to refuse to use spirits upon which the government collects an enormous tax.”
In the Vietnam era, “[o]ne pacifist, imprisoned for draft refusal and therefore lacking income to refuse taxes on, gave up smoking because the cigarette tax brings the [U.S.] government more revenue than any other single consumer-commodity tax.”
Another possibility is to obstruct the sale of such goods:
In Wales, truckers blockaded a Chevron refinery and called upon the tanker operators to join them in shutting it down, to protest the government’s tax on fuel.
Farmers in Argentina decided in to “halt sales of grains and livestock for a week, setting up roadblocks and hampering exports to press for lower taxes.”
In Greece, recently, resisters to taxes that were added to utility bills have barricaded the offices of utility companies.
I think it makes for good food for thought, and some of the advice would be very useful to people who haven’t already been hammered with it (e.g. if arrested in the U.S., you do have the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present during questioning, and you’d be a fool not to insist on taking advantage of both of those rights).
But I also found the book to be disappointing in being often a collection of on-the-one-hand / on-the-other-hand stories.
This, I think, is not so much a weakness of the book as a reflection on the difficulty of the subject matter — there is no silver bullet here.
The closest thing to a silver bullet is one that Wolfe never mentions — the radical honesty I wrote about above.
A movement like Gandhi’s satyagraha campaign in India defused the danger of snitches and narcs by conducting all of its lawbreaking and conspiring in the open: they would announce “I am going to be breaking such-and-such a law on such-and-such a date in such-and-such a place.”
Snitches and narcs had nothing particularly meaty to rat them out about that they weren’t already shouting from the rooftops.
(Of course they might still be vulnerable to agents provocateurs, or to people trying to analyze their communications networks in order to disrupt them, or people trying to sow discord, or people hoping to turn key movement members by means of blackmail, or any number of other harmful infiltration strategies — so this, too, is no silver bullet.)
After Gandhi learned about some infiltration by government agents in Indian independence work, he wrote:
This desire for secrecy has bred cowardice amongst us and has made us dissemble our speech.
The best and the quickest way of getting rid of this corroding and degrading Secret Service is for us to make a final effort to think everything aloud, have no privileged conversation with any soul on earth and to cease to fear the spy.
We must ignore his presence and treat everyone as a friend entitled to know all our thoughts and plans.
I know that I have achieved most satisfactory results from evolving the boldest of my plans in broad daylight.
I have never lost a minute’s peace for having detectives by my side.
The public may not know that I have been shadowed throughout my stay in India.
That has not only not worried me but I have even taken friendly services from these gentlemen: many have apologized for having to shadow me.
As a rule, what I have spoken in their presence has already been published to the world.
The result is that now I do not even notice the presence of these men and I do not know that the Government is much the wiser for having watched my movements through its secret agency.
Such an approach might not work for all varieties of campaigns and actions, but I think for many of them, it might be worth asking “what would we do even if we knew the authorities were watching us and one of us was an informer” rather than guessing “what should we do, since we hope the authorities aren’t watching us and none of us is an informer.”
The alternative, of always looking over your shoulder and suspecting everyone you work with, as Wolfe’s book sometimes seems to recommend, seems more a recipe for paralysis.
As early attempts to get methodical about nonviolent resistance theory and practice, these are interesting works.
I’ll note some of what he had to say about tax resistance as a nonviolent resistance tactic here today:
Tax resistance against the Education Act of
This was the organized opposition to the English Education Act of , which extended the private school system of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches at the expense of the general taxpayer.
The interest of the matter for the purposes of the present discussion lies in the fact that it was explicitly an example of passive resistance, inasmuch as the agitators called themselves “passive resisters” and published, for a decade or more, a periodical called “Passive Resistance,” from whose pages this account is drawn.
Their method was to refuse to pay the school tax, which they held to be grossly unjust to dissenters, but to submit obediently to the penalty prescribed by the law for delinquency.
This punishment came with great regularity in the form of fines, which the passive resisters steadfastly and consistently refused to pay; whereupon their goods were distrained, or, in default of goods, the recalcitrant was cast into prison.
The magnitude of the movement is shown by the fact that within two and one half years of its inauguration the league had on file reports of seventy thousand summonses and 254 commitments to prison.
The character and social standing of the members of the movement are facts of significant interest.
According to the secretary of the organization,1 “The men and women whose goods have been sold belong to all classes and ranks.
They are clergymen and ministers, journalists and teachers, manufacturers and magistrates, members of Parliament and candidates for Parliament, farmers and gardeners, aged women and young men.”2
The movement was losing momentum in , in response, as was supposed, to a feeling on the part of some that the Liberal victory of , for which the Passive Resisters seem to have been more or less responsible, insured the repeal of the obnoxious law.
But the decline was doubtless due also to the proverbially early exhaustion which overtakes all sudden expressions of popular indignation.
The secretary admitted in that the Passive Resisters were “fewer in number compared with the hosts which at first resisted the fraudulent legislation of .”3
“Passive Resistance,” ; p. 7.
Ibid.
Ibid.; p. 4.
Tax resistance in the American Revolution
The merchants, true to the intuition of their class, were by no means revolutionary or even reckless as regards the foundations of law and order, although in this case they permitted their zeal for prosperity to encourage social forces which, in turn, eventually raised a tempest that they could not quell.
Their intention, both real and apparent, was the organization of a boycott against British trade, particularly in commodities subjected to taxation or other restrictions under the recently enacted revenue laws.
This boycott was planned with clear comprehension of the interplay of interests that obtains in human affairs, and particularly the dependence of political policies upon personal and business influences.
Consequently the colonial merchants did not aim a general broadside at the whole British Empire, but planned to reach particular interests with a well-directed blow.
More specifically, they hoped, by means of their boycott measures, to give the British mercantile and manufacturing people a motive, in the person of their own imperiled interests, for seeking the ear of Parliament with a demand for the repeal of the objectionable legislation.
The straight, or primary, boycott was the method used to impress the minds of the British trading class, which was, of course, the British government for practical purposes.
The secondary boycott, as now known, was in turn brought to bear upon Americans who failed to observe the original agreement and resorted to dealing within the limits prescribed, either as to persons or goods.
For instance, in the earlier struggle, waged against the stamp tax, communities that paid the same were made to feel the disapproval of their neighbors, as in Charleston, South Carolina, where a radical fire company agreed that ”no provision should be shipped “to that infamous Colony Georgia in particular nor any other that make use of Stamp Paper.’ ”1
During the later boycott, directed against the Townshend taxes, Rhode Island yielded to that temptation which constitutes the greatest peril for any concerted movement of this kind, namely the impulse to reap a rich harvest by seizing the opportunities deliberately left to go begging through the self-denial of one’s competitors.
This incident also discloses another weakness inherent in such organized “voluntary” efforts, which is that they are really seldom, if ever, completely voluntary.
Enthusiasts for every cause, however worthy, almost invariably make use of coercion by means of the hundred and one devices known to social pressure, and thereby incorporate the seeds of their own disintegration.
Thus a contemporary Rhode Islander wrote that they “were dragged in the first place like an ox to the slaughter, into the non-importation agreement,” and that adherence to the same “would have been acting out of character and in contradiction to the opinion of the country.”2
The resistance of the colonists was destined, however, to run the entire gamut of forms known to social opposition and constraint.
Evasion of law had long been an established business in the form of smuggling; the peaceable boycott, both primary and secondary, was now well under way; but political action, litigation, social ostracism, mob violence, and armed revolution were either already coming into play or waiting to enter the stage as the historic drama proceeded.
And this list makes no mention of those subtle methods of persuasion and “influence” which operate between friends and relatives, business and scientific associates, boon companions, and numberless other channels of daily intercourse, not to mention the more overt persuasion of pulpit, press, and platform.
And one of the most significant aspects of it all is the tendency of any one of these situations to transform itself into one or more of the other members of the series, so that one method can hardly be used without sooner or later invoking the others.
This truth is clearly exemplified in the events now before us.
For example, in the secondary boycott directed by Charleston against Georgia, as quoted above, the resolution threatened death for future offenders, with destruction of their vessels.
In Boston, especially during the earlier contest over the Stamp Tax, the disturbances were most serious.
The rioters were led by one Mackintosh, a shoemaker, endowed by nature for “government by tumult.”
Under his leadership, the mob, which was currently reported to include “fifty gentlemen actors” partly disguised in workman’s attire, not only razed the stamp office but also attacked the house of the registrar of the admiralty, and even the residence of Governor Hutchinson himself.
In all these scenes the Sons of Liberty, composed largely of workingmen, did the strong-arm work.
Meanwhile the merchants, ostensibly committed exclusively to the boycott and orderly methods, lent in private an anxious but effective moral support.
One of them testifies in a private letter of the time that they were endeavoring “to keep up the Spirit” of resistance but were “not a little pleas’d to hear that McIntosh has the Credit of the Whole Affair.”3…
“The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, ,” by Arthur Meier Schlesinger; Vol. ⅬⅩⅩⅧ, Whole Number 182, of “Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law,” edited by the faculty of political science of Columbia University.
New York, ; p. 82.
Ibid.; p. 215.
Ibid.; p. 72.
Economic pressure through the boycott and physical force in the form of violence were constantly supported by the more subtle forms of social coercion.
Thus the Boston agreement of was to be enforced by a discountenancing “in the most effectual but decent and lawful manner” of all who should fail to aid the movement.
At Philadelphia, any person failing to support the boycott was to be branded “An Enemy of the Liberties of America,” and it was the plan to publish such names in the newspapers.
The commercial resisters of Savannah likewise agreed that “every violator should be deemed ‘no Friend to his Country’ ”; while in South Carolina non-supporters were “to be treated with the utmost contempt.”
In the Boston boycotters circulated thousands of handbills throughout their own and neighboring provinces calling on the inhabitants to have no trade relations with persons whom they named as lacking in regard for the public good.
While this is apparently merely a case of the secondary boycott already described, the publicity methods connected with it are of interest just here.
Public disapproval, aside from withdrawal of patronage, was a factor held in view.
It was an effort to revive the ancient pillory upon its mental though not its physical side that prompted some of these acts — perhaps that of the Harvard College seniors who resolved never again to deal with Editor John Mein, who championed the non-boycotters.1 The town meeting went a step further, and ordered the names of seven persistent offenders inscribed on the town records in order “that posterity may know who those persons were that preferred their little private advantages to the common interest of all the colonies.”2
Boston, the scene of so many stirring activities, staged a prototype of our present-day “peaceful picketing” on a mass scale, when, during the struggle to prevent disintegration of the boycott forces, in , a procession of more than a thousand persons proceeded, in what Professor Schlesinger describes as “impressive and orderly array,” to the homes and shops of the recalcitrant merchants, among them two sons of the governor, whom they sought under the roof of the executive mansion itself.
Having made their demonstration and protest, in every place the multitude quietly dispersed.3
Ibid.; pp. 112, 130, 148, 149, 158, 172.
Ibid.; p. 173.
Ibid.; p. 176.
Francis Deak’s campaign against Austrian domination in Hungary
Deak proceeded to organize a scheme for national education and industry, and a boycott against Austrian goods was set in motion.
As relations between the two governments became more tense, “Deak admonished the people not to be betrayed into acts of violence, nor to abandon the ground of legality.
‘This is the safe ground,’ he said, ‘on which, unarmed ourselves, we can hold our own against armed force.
If suffering be necessary, suffer with dignity.’
He had given the order to the country — Passive Resistance”; “and the order was obeyed.
When the Austrian Tax Collector came to gather the taxes the people did not beat him nor even hoot him — they just declined to pay.
The Tax Collector thereupon called in the Austrian police, and the police seized the man’s goods.
Then the Hungarian auctioneer declined to auction them, and an Austrian auctioneer had to be introduced.
When he arrived he discovered that he would have to bring bidders from Austria also if the goods were to be sold.
The government found before long that it was costing more to distrain the goods than the tax itself was worth.”
Gandhi’s campaigns against anti-Indian measures in South Africa
The long struggle, which the London “Times” declared, according to Mr. Polak’s report, “must live in memory as one of the most remarkable manifestations in history of the spirit of Passive Resistance,” was drawing to its close in .
Mr. Gandhi, in connection with the discussion in Parliament and elsewhere in England, just prior to the great “March” of , above described, had accepted full responsibility for his advising the Indian community to resist the law.
His plan, which he held to be “of educational value, and, in the end to be valuable both to the Indian community and the State,” consisted, as he worded it himself, in “actively, persistently, and continuously asking those who are liable to pay the £3 tax to decline to do so and to suffer the penalties for non-payment, and what is more important, in asking those who are now serving indenture and who will, therefore, be liable to pay the £3 tax upon the completion of their indenture, to strike work until the tax is withdrawn.”1
This, as has been shown, was his plan of procedure at , when he proposed the strike of protest for .
But the new year opened with a series of conferences with the authorities, a truce was declared, and the principal points in the long dispute were finally settled by the Indian Relief Act, passed in …
“Speeches and Writings,” p.
ⅩⅬⅦ.
Gandhi’s independence campaign in India
At the close of his year of silence we find Gandhi organizing the ryots of the Kaira district in his own province in a passive resistance movement, i.e., Satyagraha, against the payment of taxes which they asserted should have been suspended because of a partial failure of their crops.
The struggle continued to , when the passive resisters were released from jail and their contention accepted.
Meanwhile the non-coöperation movement, the strangest revolution in human history, had been launched at a special session of the Indian National Congress, which met in Calcutta in .
the program was amended and strengthened in what are known as the Regular Congress Resolution, or the Nagpur Resolutions, of .
The resolution is based upon the two fundamental propositions, (1) that the British Government in India had forfeited the confidence of the country, and (2) that it should be brought to an end by the non-violent method of simply refusing to cooperate with it longer.
The program of non-cooperation was planned to culminate in “civil disobedience,” specifically in refusal to pay taxes for governmental support.
It was realized, however, that this drastic measure would subject the social order to a terrific and perilous strain.
Therefore a more or less extended period of discipline was seen to be necessary by way of preparation for the final stroke.
It will be recalled that the Non-cooperation Resolutions promised Swaraj within one year.
But as the tumult tended to increase with the passing months of , it became necessary, time and again, to postpone the most drastic measure, namely civil disobedience or refusal to pay taxes or remain in the government service, in which it was planned to culminate.
In , the All-India Congress met at Delhi, where Gandhi, according to the despatches to London of , declared it necessary to accelerate the movement by using all the measures in the non-cooperation arsenal.
“This,” he declared, “embraces the policy of civil disobedience, which means civil revolution.
Whenever it is practised it will end Government authority.
It means open defiance of the Government and its laws.
I will launch this campaign in my own district, in Gujarat, within the next fortnight.
The nation must await the result of this example, which should open the eyes of the whole world.”
The congress committee pointed out in a resolution that only a little more than a month then remained of the year within which Swaraj had been promised.
In view of this and the “exemplary self-restraint” observed by the nation in its adherence to non-violence, the committee then authorized “every province on its own responsibility to undertake civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes,” provided they would observe Hindu-Moslem unity and all the other features of the non-cooperation program.
So much for the individual provinces, but, as for the nation as a whole, the decision was that it must await Gandhi’s signal.
And so it came about that at a meeting of the working committee of the All-India Congress on , with Gandhi presiding, a resolution was adopted postponing civil disobedience until , or pending the final result of the negotiations at the round-table conference then in progress between leaders of all parties…
During an interview with an American correspondent, in ,1 Mr Gandhi admitted that mass civil disobedience had been abandoned on the very eve of its promised inauguration, because “the country was not ready.”
“The principles of non-violence,” he explained, “had not yet made themselves felt.”
But he declared it merely a postponement, adding, “We will continue individual disobedience and boycott.”
Mr. John Clayton, in the Chicago Tribune, .
Shortly thereafter, Gandhi was jailed, and he was still in jail when Case was writing his book.
Non-Co-operation Movement and Attack on Financial System Rapidly Growing
in East
Plans are under consideration by leaders of the movement for Indian
independence to strike at the British Government of India in the surest
possible way — to undermine its finances, according to the latest word
received by the Friends of Freedom for India, 799 Broadway.
The dispatch states that Mahatma K. Gandhi, leader of the nonco-operation
or Swaraj movement, will shortly issue a proclamation calling an the people
of India to refuse to pay taxes to the British administration.
Before this step is taken, according to the dispatch, Gandhi will urge every
native Indian policeman and soldier to leave the service of the British
Government, in order that when the inevitable bloodshed results the
responsibility may be placed squarely upon the English police force and
soldiery.
Non-Co-operation Movement Spreads.
Meanwhile, the government has taken official cognisance of the rapidly
spreading non-co-operation movement by calling upon all citizens and Indian
officials to avow their active opposition on the ground that the movement is
“frankly anarchical or revolutionary,” according to the same news sources. A
United Provinces Government communique, dated
, is as follows:
“The position taken by the government is that opposition to the
non-co-operation movement is the duty of all citizens, without regard to their
political views, as the movement is frankly anarchical or revolutionary. Any
existing prohibitions to government officers regarding participation in
political movements cannot apply to them when actively opposing
non-co-operation, and it is the policy of the government to encourage all
officials to declare themselves openly and actively against the movement.”
Taraknath Das, executive secretary of the Friends of Freedom for India,
explained that the British Government had always prohibited its officials in
India from engaging in the politics of the country, at that this rule had been
voided in view of the growing strength of Swaraj.
Government Officials Resign.
The response to the proclamation, the dispatch states, is that many government
officials have resigned, including many who were not active participants in
the non-co-operation movement, but who refused actively to oppose it. As far
as the populace is concerned, the order has been ignored completely.
Promulgation of the order was immediately followed by scores of arrests in the
province of Behar. Known followers of Gandhi were subjected to restrictions
which forbade them from leaving the province, and in some cases the city, and
prohibited their making any public addresses.
Strikes of railwaymen, general strikes, revolts in the agrarian districts, and
the winning of support from the loyalist faction mark the progress of India’s
struggle far independence, other dispatches state.
A strike of 25,000 railway workers in the province of Bengal was in progress
when the Friends of Freedom for India received its last word. Starting from
Calcutta, the strike spread rapidly through the province. English engineers,
however, refused to join the strikers, and went so far as to equip their
trains with machine guns.
Lloyd Comes in — Workers Go Out
When Sir George Lloyd, governor of the province of Bombay, went to the City
of Karachi all the workers walked out in a general strike and remained out
during the continuation of his stay, which was a week. Karachi is the second
largest port in India, according to Mr. Das.
Four persons were killed and 11 injured when the police at Raebarli fired on
a crowd of peasants, the dispatches state, For some time previously the
peasants of this and other districts had been in a state of revolt against an
increase in taxes.
Loyalists, who had previously taken a position analogous to that of the
liberals in England, have gone over to the support of Gandhi’s program of
complete independence for India, according to the dispatches. An example of
their support has been accorded in the legislative council of Gengal, where
they forced through a measure cutting down the appropriation for the police
force one-third. This has caused apprehension in England, according to Mr.
Das, coming as it does at a time when the police and military of India are
being strengthened against possible revolt rather than decreased in number.
Here are some examples of how the newspapers of the day covered the
Dharasana Salt Raids:
Woman Leader Bides Time When Path Blocked in Salt Raid
Bombay, India, — (United Press) — Police blocked the raid of Mrs. Sarojini
Naidu and her volunteers near the Dharasana salt depot today in one of the
quietest and most weird clashes of the independence campaign inaugurated by
the Mahatma Gandhi.
Authorities adopted the methods of the Satyagraha, or passive registers, to
halt the raid. They formed a cordon around the volunteers headed by Mrs.
Naldu and merely prevented them from moving.
When the police halted them. Mrs. Naidu announced that they would not go back
to their camp.
“We will not move,” the police superintendent replied.
The volunteers brought Mrs. Naidu a chair and they all sat down to await a
move by police, who quietly stood their ground.
Sarojini Naidu
The long-awaited raid led by Mrs. Naidu started
when she left the
Satyagraha camp at the head of the first group of volunteers, reiterating her
intention of seeking “death or victory.” On two previous occasions the raid
was stopped by the arrests of Gandhi and his first successor, Abbas Tyabji.
The thinly-clad volunteers trudged along the road to the government salt
works in ragged formation, equipped with pliers to cut the barbed wire
barricade police had erected. The police force, strengthened by reinforcements
from Jalalpur, awaited them.
The volunteer procession was met on the route by the superintendent of
police, accompanied by 50 excise policemen and a dozen district policemen
armed with sticks. The procession was halted about a half mile from the camp.
Forming a cordon of his men, the police superintendent managed to block the
paths of the Satyagrahis and also cut them off from spectators in the rear.
“You cannot proceed,” the superintendent Informed Mrs. Naidu.
“We will not go back,” the poetess and leader replied. “We will stay here.”
“We are going to stay here, too, and offer Satyagraha ourselves as long as
you stay,” the superintendent said, ordering his men to stand their ground.
They parleyed for a short time and then Mrs. Naidu ordered a chair brought
from a nearby house. She sat down and wrote letters and talked jovially with
her friends. Her followers squatted on the ground nearby, many of them
engaged in spinning cloth.
Mrs. Naldu, educated in England and the mother of four children, announced
before her departure from Bombay for Dharasana, that she was determined to
carry out the responsibilities of the leadership she inherited from Gandhi
and Tyabji, both of whom now are in prison because they declared India should
rule herself.
The Dharasana salt works, state-controlled, have been made the center of the
passive resistance campaign, and Mrs. Naidu’s participation in a raid on it
marks her entrance into the campaign in an active role.
Indian women have participated in the passive resistance campaign since it
was inaugurated at Dandi when Gandhi began making salt illegally, but until
the British government had
ignored them. Mrs. Lakshmipathi, a prominent Madras social worker, was
arrested , however, when she went
to Vederanyam to lead a salt raid. She was sentenced to one year’s simple
imprisonment.
The little woman, who violated the strict rules or Hindu caste to marry Dr.
Naidu. declared the Satyagrahis would ask or give no quarter. Her dark eyes
glowed as she told of her hopes for India, and she was almost trembling with
eagerness when she said neither jail nor death held any terrors for her.
A new plan for defiance of British authority in India, the most deliberate
yet made by the Indian national congress and designed as the last stage in
the campaign for Indian Independence, has been drawn up by the executive
committee of the congress. It was understood on the most reliable authority
.
The executive committee, which has been meeting secretly at Allahabad for the
, adopted a resolution
urging the peasants of the Bengal and Bihar districts to refuse to pay taxes
levied against them for maintenance of village watchmen.
The committee also urged natives of the Gujerat district not to pay the land
revenue in protest against the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi, a Gujeratite.
The plan constitutes the most deliberate defiance of Great Britain’s
authority yet made by the congress, which previously has contented itself
with violations of the government salt monopoly and picketing of liquor and
foreign cloth shops.
The plan is fraught with great possibilities, and will affect hundreds of
thousands of people if it gains complete response.
The watchmen’s tax was selected because the land revenue in Bengal and Bihar
is paid by peasants to landowners and not to the government direct. The
watchmen, however, are employed by the government.
No compromise will be made with foreign cloth merchants, another resolution
declared, and therefore picketing of cloth shops will be intensified.
Dharasana, India, (AP) — Indian authorities,
including the High Commissioner for the Northern Division of Bombay
Presidency, today went to the volunteers’ camps around the Dharasana salt
depots to interview the leaders regarding their intentions as to further
raids.
“We are all leaders,” replied the volunteers, when the Magistrate asked who
directed their activities.
Military officers served notices on the volunteers to quit the camp by
today.
Calcutta,
(AP) — Indian Moslems
in a great gathering here protested the policy of the Nationalist Congress
group in Calcutta municipality of systematically ignoring Moslem claims. A
resolution was passed in favor of a campaign of civil disobedience in the
form of refusing to pay municipal taxes, and demanding an amendment to
existing municipal law so that at least one-third of the total number of
councillors will be Moslems.
Bombay, , (AP) — Undeterred by clashes within British police in which about 200 were injured and as many or more arrested, Indian Nationalists again raided the Government salt depots at Wadala.
Eighty-three Nationalist volunteers led the assault on the wire enclosure.
Thirty returned with two mounds or baskets of salt, while 30 of the remaining
53 were arrested immediately.
The “war council” of the Nationalist Congress convened in a secret meeting here to consider the situation brought about by the raids, in which rioting developed which finally led to the police firing six rounds into the mob. Most of those fired upon were said to be excited textile operatives.
17 Hurt in First Raid
The raids in which 300 were injured began early in the day, with 100
volunteers forming a nucleus of a group which finally circumvented the police
and obtained considerable salt from the depot. The police, with their lathis,
or bamboo staves, injured seventeen, seven seriously, and arrested more than
100 persons.
Later in the day a mob of thousands, in which the Satyagrahis or volunteers
of Mahatma Gandhi, now in prison at Yeroda, Poona, numbered by tens to
hundreds of others, stormed the salt works. Eighteen others were hurt, five
seriously by the police with staves, and others were arrested.
The brunt of thwarting the raid, which was partially successful, fell
principally upon the European police, who were said to have shown great
forbearance. The native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their
own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings.
Police Stoned
Late in the evening a third raid took place, and about a thousand Nationalist
sympathizers, abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned
guards and police. Five police and three excisemen were injured by the
pebbles.
Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were
themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire. After warning shot
into the air six rounds were fired into the crowd. Casualties were not known
immediately, although an estimated 50 persons were injured by the police in
this in the accompanying action. [sic]
It was reported here from Ahmadabad that 65 Nationalist volunteers leaving on
a train for Dharasana, where the Government operated salt pans are located,
were arrested at Barejadi, 11 mllea from Ahmadabad.
The Nationalist camp at Untadi, near Dharasana, now is in charge of Miss
Maniben Patel, daughter of Villabhai Patel.
London, — (Associated Press) — A dispatch to the Dally Herald
from its Bombay correspondent quoted
a “high official” as saying that if by the end of the year the tax-resistance
campaign is succeeding, the government will be faced with considerable
financial embarrassment. The dispatch added that hope prevailed that civil
resistance would have been checked or abandoned by then, “although at the
moment all signs point in the contrary direction.”
The correspondent said the growth of the Gandhi movement was shown by the
increased number of persons wearing the Gandhi caps. In the cities, he said,
a majority of the people wear them; they also are beginning to be worn in
villages in Punjab while even in aristocratic Simla one person in six of the
population in the bazaars have donned caps, which is the symbol of the
nationalist campaign.
Concurrently he said there has been an intensification of the boycott of
British goods. He cited an unnamed Punjab merchant who has 100,000 pounds of
Lancashire cotton goods on his hands which it is useless to attempt to sell.
This merchant is prepared to accept his losses cheerfully as a contribution to
the nationalist cause, he added.
The government was represented in the dispatch as determined to put down
lawlessness, but the writer implied a doubt whether the civil forces would be
able to prevail against disruption without the aid of the military.
500 Begin Drive Against Foreign Cloth and Liquor Shops — Boycott Expected to Replace Raiding of Salt Depots
Bombay, India, — (United Press) — Wholesale defiance of the government’s
ordinance against picketing shops selling foreign goods or liquors was
inaugurated today by the India independence volunteers.
More than 500 women volunteers renewed picketing of foreign-cloth shops in
Bombay and the local congress leaders were organizing more volunteers for the
work, which was expected to replace the practice of raiding salt depots.
The picketing campaign was a direct challenge to the recent ordinance of the
Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and was expected by many observers to decide definitely
the strength of the home rule movement. The independence leaders also have
planned to defy the Viceroy’s order to halt propagandizing against payment of
land taxes.
Bombay, — (Associated Press) — Official India today could cease to
worry about Indian nationalists’ raids on the government salt pans, but faced
a problem of greater importance — non-payment of taxes, which is being
instigated as the next step in the nationalist campaign of civil disobedience.
A “final” salt raid was undertaken
at Wadala by 15,000 nationalist volunteers and spectators who for a week had
prepared for the occasion. One hundred fifty of their number were injured by
the police with their bamboo clubs, but the remainder broke through the
cordon and obtained handsful of salt.
Holding the salt aloft, and with their bodies covered with slime and mud up
to their waistlines, the volunteers paraded the streets of Bombay crying
aloud their usual: “We have broken the salt laws.” The spirit of the crowd
seemed subdued, however, in comparison with recent raids, a development which
authorities attributed to troops which were at hand for use in case of need.
The nationalists had widely advertised the raid, and raids on a smaller scale
at Dharasana as “final,” a decision taken because of the approach of the
summer monsoons, when the salt areas cannot be approached.
The anti-tax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against
the salt laws already has been initiated in the Bardoli district where
officials are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands
will be forfeit if they refuse to pay the dues. Thus far they have found the
villages deserted.
The government announced a new
ordinance aimed at the notax campaign. This provides for heavy prison and
monetary penalties against instigators of this form of civil disobedience.
The salt tax, which is the center of the nationalist attack, is less than a
farthing a pound, and is not new to India. It is an ancient method of raising
money which the East India Company inherited from the Mogul empire. Collected
at first only in Bengal, it was subsequently extended to other districts.
The native peasants are great consumers of salt, much of which is required to
counteract the insipidity of their vegetable diet.
In some districts the manufacture has diminished owing to the importation of
foreign salt, but the industry is still widespread and very important. It is
carried on partly by private firms and partly by government agents, but duty
has to be paid on it, and to carry on the manufacture without license is
illegal, hence the significance of the Gandhi procedure.
New Action Comes as Rainy Season Halts Salt Raids — 15,000 Take Part in “Final”
150 Injured by Police
Bombay,
(AP) — A
drizzling rain fell over Bombay Presidency today from cloudy, forbidding
skies, marking the first of the rainy season which comes every summer with
arrival of the monsoon.
This year the rain will mark the end of an important phase of the Indian
Nationalist civil disobedience campaign. The showers of today will be
torrents tomorrow and the salt deposit areas, such as at Wadala and
Dharasana, will become morasses of mud and slime, inaccessible to the raiders
who during the past two months have harassed British police guarding them.
The final raid of the year at Wadala was undertaken by 15,000 Nationalist
volunteers and spectators. Presence of troops was believed to have restrained
the crowd somewhat, although about 150 persons were injured when the police
charged with their lathis, or bamboo clubs.
There will be some further raiding at Dharasana, but even this will cease
within a few days. There was no raiding anywhere today inasmuch as Monday is
the day observed by Mahatma Gandhi, imprisoned leader of the swarajist
movement, as a day of silence.
Tax Resistance Stressed
With abandonment of the campaign against the salt law, the Nationalist
volunteers are stressing the nonpayment of taxes, a campaign of possibly
much more serious import for the British authorities than that just
concluded.
The antitax campaign which it was said would replace the campaign against the
salt laws has already been initiated in the Bardoli district, where officials
are arriving to post signs warning the peasants that their lands will be
forfeited if they refuse to pay the taxes. They thus far have found the
villages deserted.
The Government announced a new ordinance aimed at the no-tax campaign
providing heavy prison and monetary penalties against instigators of this
form of civil disobedience
Campaign Seen as Serious
London,
(AP) — A
Bombay dispatch to the Daily Herald today from its own corresponded there
quoted a “high official” as saying that if by the end of the year the
tax-resistance campaign still is succeeding the Government will be faced with
considerable financial embarrassment. The dispatch added that hope prevailed
that [illegible] resistance would have been checked or abandoned by then,
“although at the moment all signs point in the contrary direction.”
Peasants Reported Leaving Farms as Part of Civil Disobedience Campaign
Await Gandhi Orders
Bombay, (AP) — Nonpayment of taxes,
one of the planks of the civil disobedience campaign platform, appears to be
gaining ground in some sections of India.
All-India National Congress reports say that 50,000 peasants of the Bardoli
region have left their homes, resolved not to pay land taxes until swaraj,
or home rule, is established. Many left their household goods, chattels and
crops behind, the Government confiscating and auctioning them off.
The peasants are said to have for their slogan, “No swaraj, no revenue.” The
leaders of the movement declare the peasants do not desire to evade payment,
but simply will not pay until Mahatma Gandhi is released from jail and has
ordered them to pay.
The Congress characterizes the the peasants’ actions as “an unrivaled example
of a migration movement on the part of people who are resolved to forfeit
their all in the interest of the Gandhi cause.”
The Bardoli district has an area of about 233 square miles and contains 123
villages with a total population of 88,000, of whom 82,000 are rural. The
annual land revenue exceeds $183,000.
The Government claims that [illegible] villages have paid all their arrears
and that throughout the district only twenty-five peasants have [illegible]
payment altogether, dwellers of the villages merely having gone elsewhere to
await developments.
Beginning on , The Spectator published a few articles that touched on tax resistance in the Indian independence struggle.
Here are some excerpts from these articles.
First, from the issue (though the dispatch itself is dated ), the dismissive and condescending voice of colonial orthodoxy speaking from within the Bombay bubble:
Has the world for centuries witnessed anything comparable to what is occurring in India to-day?
From his Ashram at Ahmedabad, where eighty devoted followers submit themselves to a discipline so iron that none can write a letter without his permission, Mr. Gandhi has issued his edict to the Viceroy, demanding that certain things shall be immediately done, under pain of challenge to all authority in the country.
Here is a manifestation of a truth often forgotten in England — that whilst some Indians speak in terms of democracy, all think in the language of autocracy.
Mr. Gandhi speaks for none but himself.
He has secured complete immunity, even from such authority as the National Congress may wield.
His edict needs only the stroke of the Vermilion Pencil and the words — fully intended — Tremble and Obey, to carry us back to the most despotic days of the Manchu Emperors.
The Edict was borne to Delhi by a young Oxford graduate called Reynolds, of whom none heard before yesterday.
He has gone in a Gandhi cap and cotton homespun; picture the Carpenter from Alice in Wonderland with his box cap and clad in “shorts,” and you have the scene.
What is in this edict?
It is a long tirade against “the curse” of British Rule, with not a word of the peace it wrought; of the one and sixpenny ratio, of which Mr. Gandhi knows no more than of Chinese metaphysics; of the land revenue, centuries old, and cast on an equitable basis in Lord Curzon’s days; and of The Salt Tax, which averages five annas per head yearly.
There is not one concrete proposal not a single justification for the revolution which Mr. Gandhi intends to inaugurate.
The scene of action will probably be the coast of Surat; where the British Factors had their first settlement; the objective will probably be to encourage the villagers to make salt from sea water and thereby to break the law under which the Salt Tax is collected.
Many young folk will go to gaol, and then the movement will peter out.
That is to imagine the most favourable situation.
In less fortunate circumstances there will be riot and bloodshed, strikes and disturbances, from which many innocent people will suffer.
What does India think of this?
To that inquiry none but the very ignorant would attempt a dogmatic answer.
India is not Europe; the Hindu mind has little in common with the West.
Most of the Indians with whom you come in contact say that Mr. Gandhi must completely fail; they think that the land wants peace and quiet in order to recover from the industrial depression and prepare for the Free Conference which will consider the report of The Simon Commission.
In short, they regard Mr. Gandhi as an annoying megalomaniac, who is disturbing men’s minds without the possibility of success, particularly the minds of the young men, so apt to be swept by gusts of emotion.
But that is not the whole truth.
The Indian, and particularly the Hindu, sees nothing inappropriate, but rather a reversion to tradition, in the individual challenging the State.
Then, remember always that the strongest emotion in India to-day is the emotional surge towards Swaraj, expressed in the yearning for independence — an unreasoning emotion, unchastened by knowledge of the principles of constitutional growth or experience, but not less strong for that.
Even those who differ markedly from Mr. Gandhi, who see the perils of the course on which he has embarked, are not without a hidden sympathy for an Indian who deliberately throws down the gauntlet to the British Raj.
This afternoon it was my good fortune to fall into intimate talk with a wise Indian, long prominent in the public life, who has held high office.
He dwelt on the extraordinary difficulties of the Government of India.
“The Administration,” he said, “stands in the eyes of the people chiefly as the tax-gatherer.
The Government officials seen by the villager are the tax-gatherer and the policeman; in addition to the dues they collect there are the petty exactions of the Native subordinates.
In England if you do not like the Government of the day you can turn it out through the ballot-box; you have to pay the same taxes under the new.
Government, but you have the satisfaction of venting your displeasure.
Here there is no such relief.
Then every evening, when work is done, the rural folk gather round the village banyan tree, and the schoolmaster reads from one of the Extremist newspapers vehement denunciations of the ‘Foreign Government,’ to which all ills, real and imaginary, are attributed.
My wonder is not that the Government is unpopular, but that it is as well liked as it is.”
The 18 April issue included another dispatch, presumably from the same correspondent, dated .
It is another desperate attempt to ridicule, dismiss, and downplay the impact of Gandhi’s movement, and reminds us that the role of journalism has long been to tell us what we want to hear as though it also happened to be true:
My knowledge of and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Gandhi goes back many years.
I recall the days during and immediately after the War when we worked in complete harmony; when he used to sit in my office, and in his own words “pour out his soul.”
He was then an eminently reasonable man.
At the end of these long discussions the feeling uppermost in my mind was the intense desire to agree with him, though that was impossible.
Since we parted company when he launched on non-co-operation, I have been sorely baffled.
Is he the sincere, simple-minded gentleman that I should still like to think him, or is he, as my Indian friends tell me, an ingenious, not to say cunning, politician?
Perusal of the uncensored reports of the speeches he has been making in the Kaira district on his pilgrimage to the sea to violate the Salt Laws removes the last doubt.
They reveal either the revolutionary politician or a monomaniac who is a danger to the State.
Consider the nature of these speeches, made to people who are politically ignorant, made at a time when India is so riven by militant communalism that no District Magistrate can rest secure against the peril of an émeute.
Regardless of facts which show that by every test which can be applied to modern societies India has made immense progress in all that indicates national growth, he declares that British rule has brought about the moral, material, cultural, and spiritual ruination of the land: “I have made it my religion to destroy this government as early as I can do it.
I pray God day and night that this system of Government may be destroyed once and for all.
I appeal to you to make it your dharma to destroy this satanic government… this Government is so Monstrous that it is a sin to allow it to exist any longer.”
And so on — one long unqualified hymn of hate.
And this in a programme launched in the name of love and non-violence.
Doubt is no longer permissible.
If there is a spark of sincerity left in Mr. Gandhi — if he really believes that language of this character can be used to untutored villagers without producing violent reactions of the most virulent character — he is no longer sane.
The kindest act towards him and to the country is to put him under the restraint the law imposes on dangerous lunatics.
The grave menace which lurks in this propaganda is its complete nihilism.
Nowhere in his writings or speeches can you find a trace of constructive imagination.
When Mr. Gandhi is tackled on the subject of the system of government he would establish in place of that which exists, he takes refuge in the excuse that this is the business of the politician.
That is not simplicity; it is cunning, because he knows full well that the moment the stage of construction emerges immense problems arise.
That is illustrated by the unbridgeable differences that stamp the report of the Indian Committee which was appointed to co-operate with the Simon Commission.
His doctrine is one of political anarchy, and that in a land beset with religious, racial, and communal feuds.
Were the issue less serious, there would be an element of grim humour in the mountain of hate he seeks to rear and the significant duty on which it is based.
The actual incidence of the Salt Tax is a little less than sixpence per head of the population.
In the history of civilization is there a more grotesque disproportion between cause and effect?
What has induced this development of splenetic hate in the man who at the Lahore Congress fought a losing battle with the forces of youthful revolution?
Already Mr. Gandhi has found that his followers are too few.
He has had to lower the standards for admission into the ranks of volunteers and to agree to a simplified form of pledge.
The volunteer now agrees to accept the creed of the National Congress — “the attainment of Purna Swarajya (complete independence) by the people of India by all peaceful and legitimate means”; to express his willingness to suffer imprisonment and to refuse if he is sent to jail to seek any monetary help for his family from the Congress funds.
Unlike the old pledges, this simplified form makes no mention of the wearing of khaddar, of the promotion of communal unity and the removal of the stain of untouchability.
For years Mr. Gandhi has written as though each of these aims was a cardinal factor of his political philosophy.
Is it possible that the man who has told no one what is to be done when he has won complete independence for India is ready to sacrifice his principles merely to win more recruits for his new campaign?
It was at one time possible to understand Mr. Gandhi’s attitude to the political future of India.
But now it appears that Mr. Gandhi advocates anarchy because he is himself suffering from a complete anarchy of thought.
The movement will probably soon cease to be non-violent.
For this Mr. Gandhi’s lack of prescience is to blame.
The All-India Congress Committee is ready to act as soon as Mr. Gandhi manufactures salt at Dandi.
The breaking of the Salt Act is to be nothing more than a ritual, and Mr. Gandhi no more than a master of ceremonies.
The future of the movement belongs not to Mr. Gandhi but to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the younger men who control the Indian National Congress, if the Congress can be said to be controlled at all.
They have made preparations in various parts of the country.
Congress supporters in Bombay propose to manufacture salt at Juhu, “the Brighton of Bombay.”
The proceedings will bring thousands to Juhu; and Bombay, which has had more than its share of communal riots and industrial discontent within the last two years, does not like the new menace.
Mr. Gandhi is old and far from well.
He refuses to return to the Ashram until he has won the war with the “Satanic” Government.
He will die or be arrested.
No one knows what gesture he will make when the movement comes into the control of revolutionaries fed on pamphlets from Moscow and when even the pretense of non-violence is given up.
What an atmosphere in which to launch the report of the Simon Commission!
Sir John and his colleagues have kept their counsel well; none has an inkling of the tenor of their proposals.
But this careful secrecy does not affect the realities of the situation.
With the Congress directly committed to revolution, and the Indian Liberals outbidding the Congress by demanding almost immediate Dominion status, the issue is fast clarifying itself.
There seem to me to be only two alternatives — everything or nothing.
Either Parliament must face the tremendous risks involved in virtual responsible government or dig its toes in and maintain the strong central government which must be predominantly British.
Halting between these two will induce nothing but failure and confusion.
The “Simon Commission” was Britain’s attempt to mollify Indian protests by setting up a committee to study the grievances and make recommendations for reform.
Independence-minded Indians were largely unimpressed with the idea of a reform of their country’s Constitution as decided upon by a commission of seven British parliamentarians, and had been dismissive of the commission from the start.
The news from India is still grave, but better than might have been expected.
On , Mr. Gandhi was arrested in his camp at Jalalpur.
Receiving every consideration; he was removed by train, and then in a car with the blinds drawn, to Poona, where under an ancient regulation — issued by the East India Company in — he is being detained “during the Government’s pleasure.”
The Governor of Bombay has thus hit upon an ingenious way of avoiding the clamorous demonstrations which would have attended a political trial, and Mr. Gandhi’s treatment as a guest rather than as a prisoner should atone for a revival of the raison d’état.
In a Press note the Bombay Government charges Mr. Gandhi with “incitement to withhold payment of land revenue” and with having threatened to raid salt which was the property of salt manufacturers.
We must congratulate the Government of India on a forbearance which is duly appreciated throughout the world, but which also confers on the Government a certain tactical advantage.
The careful plans of the Congress leaders for a campaign of resistance to succeed the arrest of the Mahatma are in disarray, since several of the organizers are already under restraint and out of mischief.
The Government’s arrangements were much the better.
History didn’t quite play out in the way the author suggested it should.
Indians didn’t shrug their shoulders at Gandhi’s “treatment as a guest” but, more realistically, were infuriated at his arrest and detention without trial.
The Dharasana salt raids continued under new leadership, and when those leaders were arrested, new ones took their places.
Salt raiders who peacefully submitted to savage beatings by soldiers guarding the salt depots became the face of the Indian independence movement in the international press, and helped to strengthen and radicalize the Indian independence movement.
A year after his imprisonment, Gandhi would be negotiating on behalf of the Indian independence movement in London.
The issue contained an article that began “The purpose of this page is to ventilate that moderate Indian opinion which, recognizing all the difficulties, yet believes in the continued association of Great Britain and India within the loose framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations” — which shows how far the goalposts had moved by that time.
That article praised Gandhi as a moderate and even “a conservative by nature” and urged the government to get out in front of him by enacting some inevitable reforms by fiat.
Thousands of old newsreels from the British Pathé archives have been posted to YouTube.
Here are a handful that show some rare motion picture footage of tax resistance actions of the past:
The nicest way of being Arrested
“Tired of waiting — women councillors arrange by telephone with Sheriffs Officer to be taken to prison altogether at 3 o’clock!”
This was part of the Poplar Rates Rebellion of (silent):
Les obsèques des ouvriers de l’usine Krupp…
Footage of the funerals of (and commemorative parade for) of Krupp factory workers killed during the strikes of the Ruhrkampf in (silent):
Footage of Gandhi
Here’s some footage released in soon after his imprisonment for sedition.
It shows him addressing an outdoor Indian National Congress meeting (silent):
This comes from , at the time of the Salt March, and shows Gandhi addressing a crowd and large groups of people in “Gandhi caps” walking along with him (silent):
Rideaux Baissés et Portes Closes
Parisian shopkeepers and businesses shut down one afternoon in in a hartal to protest against new taxes (silent):
Footage of Irish Blue Shirts
This comes from a point in when the quasi-fascist Blue Shirt party had launched a tax strike.
One person was killed by police during an attempt to stop a tax auction of seized cattle, and this newsreel shows footage of the funeral (silent):
Tax & Taxis!
Parisian taxi drivers blockade the streets outside the Chamber of Deputies in a tax protest:
Farmers Protest
Belgian farmers drive their tractors into the provincial capital in to protest a new tax, and a pitchfork-waving, paving-stone-throwing, tire-burning riot ensues:
Footage of a large meeting with Pierre Poujade speaking
From , by which time Poujade was trying to transform his regional tax protest into a national political party (silent):
Around , a flurry of
articles began to appear in the English-language press about the possibility of
a tax resistance campaign in India in service of the nationalist independence
campaign there. Here are some examples.
From the
Devon and Exeter Gazette:
Indian Boycott.
Passive Resistance Projected.
The All-India Congress Council, following the failure of the talk between the
Viceroy and Congress leaders, has drafted a resolution declaring that Swaraj,
in the Congress creed, shall mean complete independence. As a preliminary step
towards organising the campaign for independence, the resolution declares a
complete boycott of the Central and Provincial Legislatures, and calls upon
Congressmen to abstain from participating, directly or indirectly, in future
elections, and upon present members of the Legislature to tender their
resignations. It also authorises the All-India Congress Committee, whenever it
deems fit, to launch a programme of civil disobedience, including non-payment
of taxes.
The resolution will come immediately before the Congress for consideration.
The Bardoli tax
strike had taken place the previous year and had proven the power of the
tactic for wresting concessions from the government.
Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India
under the British imperial government, had been negotiating with the Indian
National Congress, but those negotiations collapsed on
.
Here’s another report, from the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail:
The outlook in India has taken a turn for the worse. The Working Committee of
the All-India National Congress has drafted an extreme resolution rejecting
the round table conference proposed by the Viceroy. The resolution advocates
complete independence and the Dominion status scheme is dropped. The Committee
proposes to boycott the Central and Provincial Legislatures from which
Congressmen will be asked to resign. The Congress Committee seeks power to
launch at any moment a programme of passive resistance including the
non-payment of taxes. Possibly the majority of Congress do not accept these
views but the general feeling in India appears to be that the rank and file
will drop into line with the leaders.
And here’s how the Albuquerque Journal reported
the news (via a United Press wire report):
Revolt Talk in India Growing; 80,000 Gather to Take Action
Sunday May See, at Lahore, Declaration of Independence From the Rule of
Great Britain
Refuse to Pay Tax; Passive Resistance
That Is Suggestion of Mahatma Ghandi [sic]; But Hot Heads
Want to Proclaim Open Warfare
Lahore, India,
(UP) — Eighty
thousand Indians, about to proclaim their country free and independent of
Great Britain, jostled and fought their way to the meeting place of the Indian
national congress . The declaration
of independence, which will be followed by refusal to pay taxes, participate
in the legislative assembly under British rule, and by a general policy of
passive resistance, probably will be introduced at the first plenary session
.
The weather was bitterly cold, but the delegates, inspired by their religious
beliefs, suffered willingly. Many delegates from the Punjab were observed to
had [sic] added a warm coat — obviously made in England — to
their turbans and wide trousers. However, many from the south, thinly clad,
suffered intensely, in compliance with the boycott against foreign cloth
ordered by Mahatma Gandhi.
The ascetic and spiritual leader of the hopes and aspirations of millions of
Indians added merely a strip of cloth across the shoulders to his loin cloth.
Talk of Revolt
While Gandhi is opposed to violence and has consistently urged an attitude of
merely passive resistance, hot heads in the convention muttered of revolt.
At ’s session of the subjects
committee,
N.C.
Kelkar of Bombay led the opposition to Gandhi’s resolution proclaiming
the policy of the congress. Kelkar moved an amendment urging the president of
the congress, Jawaharlal Nehru, to call another convention of all parties,
similar to the one which framed the famous Nehru report, before finally
changing the creed of the congress.
The first open rupture came , when
Subhas Chandra
Bose, of Bengal, resigned from the working committee and walked out with
[24?] followers. His action was in protest against a ruling [made?] by
Motilal Nehru (the
elder) in the Bengal election dispute, which took control of the party in
Bengal from Bose.
From the
Devon and Exeter Gazette:
Indian Trouble Launched.
Congress Adopts Gandhi Resolution.
Passive Resistance.
Lahore,
. Mr. Gandhi’s resolution
was adopted by the All-India Congress
by an overwhelming majority.
The resolution expresses appreciation of the efforts of the Viceroy towards a
peaceful settlement of the National movement; declares that no good purpose
would be served by attending a round-table conference; declares that Congress
shall in future mean complete independence; calls for a complete boycott of
the Central and Provincial Legislatures; calls for present members to tender
their resignations; and authorises the All-India Congress Committee to launch
a programme of civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes. — Reuter
The edition of the paper
suggested that the campaign hadn’t gotten off to a very good start:
Indian Passive Resisters.
A Poor Start.
Calcutta,
. The non-tax movement
started in Bandabila has practically collapsed. Its leader has been further
charged with attempted murder in connexion with an assault on a collecting
agent. — Reuter
The following report, from the Western Morning News and Mercury
concerns an action that predated the Congress resolution and was a spontaneous,
grassroots satyagraha that gained Gandhi’s support after it was
launched. It seems to have been about local grievances rather than about the
independence struggle:
Farmers Satisfied
End of Forced Labour Dispute in India
Bombay,
. Following the settlement of
the dispute at Khakharechi, a village in Kathiawar, those taking part in the
“civil disobedience” campaign have resolved to cease further activities with
regard to the dispute.
The leader of the local farmers, who was arrested for his part in the
resistance to the system of “forced labour” and certain taxes which were
thought to be unjust, has now been released, and declares that the farmers are
quite satisfied with the settlement.
When the passive resistance campaign began Mr. Gandhi expressed his approval
of it. — Reuter.
The cherry on top of this campaign would be Gandhi’s famous salt march. The
following report, from the
Yorkshire Post, touches on the salt tax angle for
the first time:
Civil Disobedience in India.
Mr. Gandhi Plans Along Two Lines.
Defiance of Salt Tax.
Ahmedabad,
. Mr. Gandhi’s concrete
proposals for the campaign of passive resistance with the Government have
been tentatively formulated, and will be informally explained to the members
of the Congress Working Committee, which meets
.
Mr. Gandhi’s one object has been to evolve a plan of action which should not
run the risk of being interrupted by a repetition of
the tragedy at
Chauri Chaura, which led to the suspension of his non-co-operation
movement, and it is stated that he has arrived at a suitable formula.
His proposal seems to be that Congress should not directly control or lead a
campaign of civil disobedience, but should agree to give moral support to the
Council of War which should conduct the operations in selected areas in the
country. It is learned that Mr. Gandhi is prepared to meet the contingency
which may arise if Congress refuses to play a merely passive part. His move
then will be to start a campaign without the authority of Congress.
Alternative Methods.
Mr. Gandhi seems to be inclined to favour alternative methods, to be adopted
according as best suits the area selected. A no-tax campaign on the lines of
Bardoli may be adopted where the atmosphere has been prepared, while concerted
defiance of the Government salt monopoly may be decided in other places. Later
a proposal will be carried out along two lines; firstly the production of salt
by the people wherever natural facilities offer; secondly the organisation of
the dock-workers at Calcutta and other ports, with a view to securing their
united refusal to handle imported foreign salt. — Reuter.
The Western
Morning News and Mercury brought us up to date as the Salt March was
about to begin:
India No-Tax Campaign
Lack of Success in Some Districts
Mr. Gandhi’s March Propaganda
Ahmedabad,
. It is understood that Mr.
Gandhi contemplates leading the first batch of volunteers from the Sabaramathi
Ashram (seminary) on foot so soon as the period of notice given to the Viceroy
expires. This procedure is regarded by Mr. Gandhi and his followers as
calculated greatly to help on his propaganda.
The Congress Committee of the Tamilnadu district, north of Madras, meeting at
Vellore , says a Madras message,
passed a resolution welcoming the Congress Working Committee’s decision
authorizing Mr. Gandhi to initiate civil disobedience, calling upon the
Tamilnadu people to give every assistance and co-operation to the campaign,
and authorizing Mr. Raja Gopala Chari, one of Gandhi’s lieutenants, to
determine when and in what manner the campaign shall be started in this
province. — Reuter.
Mr. Benn Questioned
Commons Statement on Tax Resistance
Replying to Mr. Wardlaw Milne
(Con., Kidderminster), in
the House of Commons , Mr.
Wedgewood Benn, Secretary for India, said that in certain districts in Bengal
attempts had been in progress for some weeks to organize resistance to the
payment of the Union Board Tax with the assistance, or at the instigation of,
the local Congress Party.
According to his latest information, except in the one district of Bandabilia,
they had met with no success. At Bandabilia the movement began as long ago as
, but the tax was now being
collected with less difficulty in certain villages in Burmah.
There had been a recrudescence of the resistance to the capitation tax, but
this had now collapsed. He had no information as to any instances in
connection with the salt tax.
Finally, the march began, and an Associated Press was there to file this
report, which I take from the Reading [Pennsylvania]
Times of :
Gandhi Starts on Rebel March
150,000 See India Mystic Leave ‘College’ with 70 Followers
Ahmadabad, India,
(AP) — Mahatma
Gandhi, Indian leader and mystic, led his pioneer band of volunteers out of
his quarters here at
and started his march to the Gulf of Cambay, opening his campaign
of civil disobedience to the Indian government.
As Gandhi, with a firm step despite his 61 years, emerged from his “Ashram,”
or college of devotees, at the head of his volunteers a great shiver of
excitement ran through the throng. Almost the whole population of Ahmadabad,
nearly 150,000 normally and swollen by visitors that have been flocking here
for days to see Gandhi depart, was present.
Gandhi will address the villagers at Asali, through which he will pass at
about .
Refuse to Pay Tax; Demand Independence
The departure of Mahatma Gandhi and his 70 volunteers on their 20-day march to
Jalalpur, not only opens their civil disobedience campaign against the Indian
government, but begins in earnest the latest struggle of Indian Nationalists
for emancipation from British rule.
The history of their demands shows a constant increase in the measure of
emancipation sought. Until this year they had asked first, for home rule,
then for Dominion status within the British empire, and finally for complete
independence. It is now the last that they are fighting for.
“Civil disobedience” embraces the non-payment of taxes and similar resistance
to the government.
The Taunton Courier of
told the story this way:
India Peril.
500,000 Demonstrate at Bombay.
Salt Tax Effigy Thrown Into Sea.
Rebel Leaders Sent to Jail.
Crowds, estimated at 500,000, including thousands of women and children,
thronged into Bombay on to take part
in the demonstration announced by Mahatura [sic] Gandhi to be
the last day of the so-called National Week, when the salt tax was formally
“killed and buried.”
From sunrise the dense throngs trailed out to Chaupatti sands, carrying pots
to take sea-water home, and the streets resounded with patriotic songs, and
catch-phrases as “The salt law has been broken.”
The proceedings culminated towards sunset, when crowds went out to the beach,
and an effigy of the Salt Act was thrown into the sea.
Obviously actuated though the crowds were by some sort of mysterious
enthusiasm, their behaviour was orderly, and the day was not marked by any
untoward incident.
Gandhi’s volunteers observed the day as a partial fast, eating once only in
36 hours, and they refrained from collecting or disposing of salt.
Gandhi appealed to a large crowd of men and women who had gathered in a dry
creek under a blazing sun, “to pass through the heat of misery,” and not to
throw stones at Government officials.
Meanwhile, there came a report from Bombay that two bomb outrages had occurred
in connection with the Great Indian Peninsula railway strike.
Extremist Leaders Imprisoned.
Police Rounding Up Salt Law Breakers.
Events moved swiftly in India on
with the imprisonment of two extremist leaders.
Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, president of the All-India Congress, was arrested at
Allahbad on a charge of infringing the Salt Law.
He was seized at the railway station on the point of leaving for Raipur, and
taken to gaol.
News of his arrest spread through Bombay like wildfire, and within a few
minutes the cotton, bullion, seeds, and share markets had suspended business.
Members of the Bombay Congress Committee immediately decided to observe a
“hartal” (day of mourning).
Later the pundit was brought up at Naini and sentenced to six months’ simple
imprisonment. There was a demonstration in front of the gaol, where a large
number of people gathered waving national flags.
Meanwhile, at Calcutta, Mr. Sen Gupta, the Mayor, and five students, were
sentenced to six months’ rigorous imprisonment for sedition, conspiracy,
and obstructing the police.
The Swarajist Mayor was arrested while reading proscribed literature to a
meeting of students.
Sixteen persons were also arrested at Lucknow on
and five in Bombay for offences
against the Salt Law.
Gandhi’s Sons Arrested.
Mr. Gandhi’s son, Ram Das, who was arrested for breach of the salt laws at
Bhimrad, has been sentenced to six months’ rigorous imprisonment. Mr.
Jarunalal Bajaj and two other volunteers have each been sentence to two
years’ rigorous imprisonment and fines of £20. They were accused of
inciting a crowd to lawbreaking.
While his father was looking in vain for a policeman who would lock him up
on , another of Mr. Gandhi’s
sons, Davi Das Gandhi, and Mr. Shanker Lal, president of the district
congress, were arrested for making salt at Salumpur. Altogether 25 volunteers
were arrested and 13 of them were detained in custody.
Gandhi himself was arrested in the wee hours of and would be held without trial until
.
Another article on the same page said that “untouchables” in India were going
to start their own passive resistance campaign to interfere with Gandhi’s march
by blockading it as a way of highlighting their own struggle. This is the first
I’d heard of this.
Finally, this comes from the
Mason City, Iowa Globe-Gazette, also via Associated
Press:
Refuse to Pay Tax to British
“No Swarage, No Revenue,” Say 50,000 Indian Peasants.
Bombay,
. (AP) — Non-payment
of taxes, one of the planks of the civil disobedience campaign platform,
appears to be gaining ground in some sections of India.
All-India national congress reports say that 50,000 peasants of the Bardoli
region have left their homes, resolved not to pay land taxes until Swaraj, or
home-rule is established. Many left their household goods, chattels, crops
behind, the government confiscating and auctioning them off.
The peasants are said to have for their slogan, “No Swaraj, No Revenue.” The
leaders of the movement declare the peasants will not pay until Mahatma Gandhi
is released from jail and has ordered them to pay.
The Bardoli district has an area of about 222 square miles containing 123
villages with a total population of 88,000 of whom 82,000 are rural. The
annual land revenue exceeds $133,000.
Some links that have graced my browser in recent days:
The Troika Fiscal Disobedience Consultancy is “building a European network of companies which support a European tax disobedience movement.”
In short, they’re trying to use the same bag of tricks that multinational corporations use to evade taxes on their profits in order to build an alternative economic network of European dissidents.
Fair.coop also has some commentary on the campaign.
Italian pacifist Turi Vaccaro climbed up a satellite dish at a U.S. military base near Niscemi, Italy, and, over the course of about 34 hours, with manual hand tools, did about €800,000 in damage.
Did the U.S. government ever press charges against Voices in the Wilderness for violating the sanctions?
Kathy Kelly
They would bring us into court with some regularity. It was curious because at one point there was a $50,000 fine. I thought, “What are you going to take — my contact lenses?” I just had to laugh. I mean, I haven’t paid a dime of taxes to the U.S. government as a war tax-refuser since 1980. So there is nothing they could take from me. The people that would go over were in the same boat. So good luck collecting from them!
Spirit
But as it turned out, they did fine your group $20,000, didn’t they?
Kelly
Yeah, they finally took us into court. And I think Condoleezza Rice inadvertently might have saved us. This is speculation on my part, but this much is true. Chevron settled out of court, acknowledging that they had paid money under the table to Saddam Hussein in order to get very lucrative contracts for Iraqi oil.
Condoleezza Rice was the international liaison for Chevron while it was paying money under the table to get these lucrative contracts. So when we finally had our day in court, Sen. Carl Levin’s staffers were still digging up this information and it was beginning to become public evidence that Chevron, Odin Marine Inc., Mobil and Coastal Oil had all been paying money for these oil contracts under the table to Saddam Hussein.
So there were big fish in the pond that broke the sanctions and there were little fish in the pond that broke the sanctions. I think some of the big fish said, “That is one hot potato. You drop that hot potato as fast as you can, and don’t make a big deal because those people are little fish but they’re mouthy little fish.” So they never tried to collect a dime from us. The money was just sitting there.
Spirit
Well, what exactly did happen to you when the U.S. government took you to court for violating the sanctions?
Kelly
We were found guilty and were fined $20,000. Federal Judge John Bates wrote in his legal opinion that those who disobey an unjust law should accept the penalty willingly and lovingly.
Spirit
Unbelievable! A federal judge lectures you about lovingly accepting this unjust fine using the words of Martin Luther King?
Kelly
Yes. We said to Judge Bates, “If you want to send us to prison, we will go, willingly and lovingly. We’ve done that before already. But if you think we will pay a fine to the U.S. government, then we ask you to imagine that Martin Luther King would have ever said, ‘Coretta, get the checkbook.’ We are not going to pay one dime to the U.S. government which continues to wage warfare.” At that time, supplemental spending bills appeared every year, sometimes two or three times a year, and congressional representatives and senators continued to vote yes on those spending bills for the military. So we said, “No, we won’t pay a dime of that fine.”
Spirit
You have also been a war tax resister for a long time.
Kelly
I’m a war tax refuser. I don’t give them anything.
Spirit
Oh, you’re not a 50 percent withholder, like many war tax resisters. You’re a 100 percent withholder?
Kelly
Yes, I’m a 100 percent withholder. I think war tax resistance is important but I happen to be a refuser. They haven’t got one dime of federal income tax from me since 1980.
Spirit
Why did you begin refusing to pay federal taxes entirely?
Kelly
I won’t give them any money. I can’t and I won’t. I won’t pay for guns. I don’t believe in killing people. I also don’t want to pay for the CIA, the FBI, the corporate bail-outs or the prison system. But particularly, I began as a war tax refuser. I wouldn’t give money to the Mafia if they came to my door and said, “We’d like you to help pay for our operations.” I’m certainly not going to pay for wars when I’ve tried throughout my adult life to educate people to resist nonviolently.
Spirit
How have you gotten away with not paying federal taxes ? Do you keep your income low?
Kelly
Many years I have lived below the taxable income. But in , someone from the IRS came to my home. I had in some years claimed extra allowances on the W-4 form. And I just don’t file. I haven’t filed . Now, that’s a criminal offense and they could put me in jail for a long time for that. If I was earning over the taxable income, I would just calculate how many allowances I have to claim so that no money is taken out of my paycheck. It says in the small print on the W-2 form to put down the correct number of allowances so that the correct amount of tax is taken out. Well, that’s easy. The correct amount of tax to take from me is zero, so I just do the math.
Spirit
Why do you think they haven’t come after you?
Kelly
Well, they have come to collect taxes. But I don’t have a savings account, and I don’t own anything. The IRS is like my spiritual director [laughs]. I don’t know how to drive a car, and I’ve never owned any place that I’ve lived in. I just don’t have anything to take.
Spirit
So has the IRS given up on even trying to collect?
Kelly
Once they came out to collect in 1998 when I was taking care of my dear Dad, who was wheelchair-bound, and a bit slumped over in the chair. Dad liked to listen to opera and I had a really awful old record player playing a scratchy record. I had been in the back of the house and I didn’t know she was coming, so I ran down to answer the door while the record player was making such a horrible noise. The apartment was fine but it only had a few sticks of furniture.
The woman asked me if I was going to get a job, and I told her I couldn’t leave my father. Then she asked if I had a bank account, and I said no. She said, “And you don’t own a car?” And I told her I didn’t even know how to drive. Then she just kind of leaned toward me and said, “You know what? I’m just going to write you up as uncollectible.” And I said, “That’s a very good idea.” [laughs] They’ve never tried to collect since. There was just nothing to take! Zero. Nothing.
On your side, you state that those who set themselves against Western wars pay, nevertheless, taxes, which are used by the State for war and the oppression of the colored peoples.
That is quite true.
In fact our anti-militarist struggle also is as yet only something very relative, and it must go on extending.
But in any case, we have fixed clear and inflexible borders: we refuse absolutely all direct, personal participation in war and in its social and moral preparation.
But several of us employ still other means of fighting against it.… Moreover, a few of us have already decided individually to refuse to pay any taxes, whilst the organization of which I am a member has already several times been the propagandist of collective refusal of taxation.
But whereas refusal, even on a very restricted scale, to do military service has been morally and socially efficacious, the refusal to pay taxes by a restricted number of citizens only has so far had very little result, as the authorities, in confiscating property and inflicting fines, take possession of sums much larger than a direct payment of taxes would have brought them.
From this point of view, your compatriots have already given some impressive examples of collective refusal, although they also were not able to avoid regular unfair demands of the Government.
I think “the organization of which I am a member” may have been War Resisters International.
Gandhi’s response to this point is an interesting one:
A non-violent man will instinctively prefer direct participation to indirect, in a system, which is based on violence and to which he has to belong without any choice being left to him.
I belong to a world, which is partly based on violence.
If I have only a choice between paying for the army of soldiers to kill my neighbours or to be a soldier myself, I would, as I must, consistent with my creed, enlist as a soldier in the hope of controlling the forces of violence and even of converting my comrades.
You can find more of Bart de Ligt’s thoughts on tax refusal, non-violent struggle, and Gandhi’s campaigns in the essay The Effectiveness of Non-Violent Struggle, also on the Satyagraha Foundation site.
And from the academic and related worlds:
A paper by Jay A. Soled and Kathleen DeLaney Thomas on Revisiting the Taxation of Fringe Benefits notes that many companies are compensating their employees with “a cornucopia of fringe benefits, including frequent-flier miles, hotel reward points, rental car preferred status, office supply dollar coupons, cellular telephone use, home Internet service, and, in some instances, even free lunches, massages, and dance lessons.”
Some of these are proving difficult for the government to effectively tax as income.
Gregg Polsky has come up with a potentially useful way of using Roth IRA conversions to keep money away from the tax collector.
Maciej Bartkowski looks at what causes people to break out of their apathy and join risky movements for social change, in Forming a Movement: Cognitive Liberation.
Plan to Give Up All British Titles and Honors and Resign From Civil and Military Positions
Also Refuse to Pay Taxes
Drastic Action in Sympathy With Sultan to Soften Turkish Treaty
Drastic action, through a “non-cooperation movement,” is planned in India among the Moslems, with Hindu assistance, to force the government to take action toward obtaining such modification of the Turkish peace treaty as will make it more acceptable to the Moslem world, according to advices received here yesterday by the India Information Bureau.
On , it is stated by M.K. Gandhi, a prominent leader in India of the Satyagraha (passive resistance) movement, the newly devised “non-cooperation movement” is to be put into effect, if by that time a favorable reply is not received from the Indian government.
This movement, should the plans for it become effective, would be carried out in four progressively serious stages, thus:
First—Giving up all titles and honors conferred by the crown.
Second—Resignations from all government offices and from the legislative council.
Third—Resignation of officers and soldiers from all army duties.
Fourth—Refusal to pay taxes.
Hindu Leaders Join
The decision to this effect, the bureau says its advices show, was taken at a conference recently held by Moslem and Hindu leaders from all parts of the country.
An executive committee was appointed to organise a volunteer corps to collect subscriptions and prepare the Indian, public for this movement, to promote which meetings have been held all over India for some time past.
The Moslems, it is indicated, hold that the treaty as it now stands will injuriously affect Moslem prestige all over the world, and their desire is to compel the Indian government to present their demands for its modification to the treaty-making powers, and have them made effective.
The Moslems also hold that the Sultan, as their religious head, should have complete control of Constantinople.
