Freedom Through Disobedience

Speaking to the Indian National Congress at Gaya in December 1922, Chitta Ranjan Das asks how a people can claim freedom when the government demands obedience. His presidential address opens with Gandhi's imprisonment and moves into an argument about rights, authority and civil disobedience. Drawing on English constitutional history, Das examines the claim that maintaining law and order justifies a government's power, and considers how resistance has helped people secure their liberties.

The address also sets out a vision of Swaraj, or self-government, built around village life and cooperation between local communities. Das warns that replacing foreign officials with an Indian bureaucracy could leave power concentrated in a narrow class. He instead argues for practical local autonomy, with wider institutions growing through cooperation. Readers interested in India's independence movement can follow both a public speech shaped by its immediate political moment and a sustained argument about who should hold power.