Gandhiji was discussing with a friend and co-worker his reactions to the Haripura Congress. He said he would make these views known as early as possible for the information and benefit of those who would be responsible for the session in Mahakoshal.
The Congress is a striking testimony to the great organizing ability of the Sardar and his lieutenants as also his ability to command financial help from moneyed friends. But the scale cannot be, must not be, repeated. It is wrong to make lavish use of money even when it is plentiful. I am partly responsible for the use of electricity and motors and motor lorries. For Dev and Dastane's importunity had weakened me at Faizpur. Sardar's thoroughness showed me the glaring absurdity of the use of these things for a village Congress. They made the Congress camp look like a bit of Bombay instead of the multiplied village it should have looked and was intended to look like.
Classes were retained at Faizpur. At Haripura the classification was intensified. There were the leaders, ministers, delegates visitors and the villagers. The division was not horizontal but vertical. The Congress is our political Mecca. The annual 'function is not a tamasha or a fair,but a Haj, a pilgrimage, at which all distinctions as between rich and poor, learned and illiterate, city-dweller and villager disappear. Why should Working Committee members have more conveniences than others? Why should they have food other than the villagers? Should a villager eat different food and be differently housed when he becomes a member of the Working Committee? Or why should a delegate who happens to be a Minister have a much multiplied hut? It is a wholly different thing when one is ill or is used to special food. Such persons should make their own arrangements or have them made by the Reception Committee by previous appointment. Indeed those who have frail bodies should abstain from attendance, unless their presence is urgently required in the interest of the Congress. Vertical division of the camps into different classes sets a pernicious example to the vast number of villagers who attend the Congress. The Congress management has to go out of its way to show the villagers that before it there is no prince and no pauper and that all are equal. If these artificial differences disappear next year, much expense will be saved.
Electric lights are in no way necessary. Visitors should be expected to bring their own lanterns. The Reception Committee will confine itself to the lighting that may be required for the despatch of Congress work and for the safety of the camp. Much work must not be expected to be done after dark.
Motors and motor lorries are a nuisance, bad education for the villagers, disturbing of peace, a hindrance to the proper despatch of work, and conducive to the raising of dust. The distance of ten miles or less from a railway station must be negotiated on foot or in bullock-carts. None but pedestrian traffic should be permitted inside the camp.
The site selected for the Congress should be a solid square block as far as possible.This will ensure a compact camp avoiding long distance between one end of the camp and the other. The layout can be round the quadrangle where the open session is to take place.
There should be one common kitchen from where food should be served at stated prices per course, not to be eaten on the spot but to be taken to the place of residence of the diner.
If these precautions are not observed, the whole idea of villagers' Congress for their education and for establishing a living and national contact between the city-dweller and the villager is likely to be frustrated.
