Title: The
Nonviolent Struggle for Indian Freedom, 1905-19
Author: David Hardiman
Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2018
(First)
ISBN: 9780670091089
Pages: 280
Of
all the imperialist powers, the British Empire was the most far-flung.
Britannia was said to be ‘ruling the waves’ and the sun never set on its wide
borders. India was their most prized possession, in fact, a jewel in the crown. It is an everlasting
wonder of history that this powerful empire let go of India as a result of a
series of non-violent protests organized by a British-educated Indian lawyer,
who combined deft political maneuvering with naïve exploitation of popular
sentiments. India’s official history of the independence struggle eulogizes
nonviolence to the level of gospel. This book is a timely mirror on the origins
of passive resistance in India that was adopted and transmogrified by Gandhi into his Satyagraha. Most of it was, unfortunately, nonviolent in all but
name. Any credible Indian historian don’t subscribe to the view that freedom came
entirely as a result of Gandhi’s nonviolent struggle. David Hardiman is a
professor of history at the University of Warwick. This book is an outcome of
the author’s longstanding interest in Indian Nationalist Movement and Gandhi’s
role in it. It is here combined with a recent engagement with the theory and
practice of nonviolent resistance. The author’s research is split into two
volumes, this being the first to cover the period from 1905 to 1919 that
narrates the development of civil forms of protest under the rubric of ‘passive
resistance’.
As
a preliminary exercise, the book clears away notions that credit Gandhi with
the invention of nonviolent passive resistance in the world. The enormity of
this falsehood is further driven home by the uncertain and bungling modus
operandi he employed in his earlier satyagrahas. The Chartist Movement of the
1830s combined the diligent activism of high-minded proponents of ‘moral force’
with the more turbulent protest of the advocates of ‘physical force’. Passive resistance
was a strategy to make administration impossible. This was adopted in Ireland
by Parnell when he organized a campaign of rent refusal and persistent
obstruction of all Irish business in Westminster. The first ever concentrated
and sustained mass protest in India began in 1905 with the partition of Bengal
when Gandhi was still in South Africa. Swadeshi movement was tasked with the
aim of buying only indigenous produce. Volunteers helped enforce the boycott,
sometimes physically. People who violated the restrictions were subjected to
social ostracism by caste councils. This was not very effective in the end. In
addition to several clashes with the protesters, Muslims did not support the
agitation to revoke the partition of Bengal (p.25). But passive resistance
promoted a spirit of national unity and independence that had atrophied for
India. It afforded the best training for these qualities.
Hardiman subjects the protestors to a class
analysis that is generally not seen outside leftist studies. He observes two
distinct objectives for the elite and the subaltern who took part in the
struggle. The elite sought to win constitutional power and deployed agitation
to this end. Elite nationalists were not committed to giving the subaltern any
real power, often withdrawing protest when they were seen to pose a challenge to
Indian elite groups. This led to the elites stressing nonviolence, as it offered
a lesser threat to their power. Indian national Congress, in its initial
stages, represented the interests of a middle class that had benefited from
British rule and which then claimed that it had reached that stage of civilized
development at which it deserved a share of imperial power. This period saw a
clear shift from its earlier practice of meek petitioning and initiating
respectful requests to the British to honour their promises. Indian national
movement’s three stages of development are also spelt out in the book. These
consisted of the moment of departure, manoeuvre and arrival. The first was a
period of mild reformist demands with minimal mass engagement. The second was
synonymous with the emergence of Gandhi and the elites’ embracing of populist
politics that gave the impression that they were champions of the people. The
third phase came as it became clear after about 1937 that the British would
soon yield power and the nationalist elite developed agendas to consolidate their
class power in an independent India. Populism was then abandoned, except during
short periods such as the Quit India movement.
Contrary to popular misconception, the book
establishes that Swadeshi movement had come into being almost a decade before
Gandhi returned from South Africa. But this took on curious social guises.
Imported goods were thought to be not only an economic evil, but a threat to
caste purity as they were allegedly contaminated with ritually impure
substances. This strengthened the social prejudices rather than undermining
them. The practice assumed a distinctly communal tone. Surendranath Banerjee
encouraged people to take a vow before a Hindu deity to support Swadeshi
products and the boycott of foreign goods. This was anyhow logical, as the
Muslims never took part jointly with the Hindus against the British except on
the two occasions of the 1857 Mutiny and the 1921 Khilafat. The passive
resistance method was also pragmatic, considering the immense firepower of the
British who used to spend almost a quarter of the national income on defence
and police. This was especially suited to countries where the government
depends mainly for the continuance of its administration on the voluntary help
and acquiescence of the subject people. Its applicability in Nazi Germany or Communist
Russia was rather doubtful. The novel kind of protest also confused the police
on how to deal with it. They had been able to crush unruly assemblies by the
lower classes with few scruples. Now they found it hard to know how to respond
to protests by the ‘respectable’ classes. In East Bengal, the protestors
belonged to landlord class and they strongly opposed government attempts to
record the rights of tenant farmers.
The author gives due prominence to Gandhi even
though he came on the scene rather late in the period under scrutiny in this
book. A primer on his South African career is also included. His track record
there was not scintillating by any stretch of the imagination. His campaigns
against the 1907 Registration Act and laws that nullified Hindu and Muslim
marriages were dubious in its efficacy. Gandhi's strategy was to win over the
opponent in a spiritual way and class solidarity was not given any weightage. During
the white railway workers’ strike in 1913, Gandhi suspended his movement to
help the government break the strike. The truth is that Gandhi could never
extract anything more solid than a few pragmatic concessions the other side was
willing to concede. Gandhi’s three Indian campaigns of Champaran (1917), Kheda (1918)
and the Rowlatt satyagraha of 1919 are covered in this volume. The first was a
partial success, the second a failure and the third a total disaster. Even
during 1917-18, Gandhi projected himself as a well-wisher of the British Empire
who supported the war effort and asked Indians to enrol in the army. In Champaran,
he gave orders that there was to be no mention of Congress or Indian
nationalism lest it antagonise the British officials. Gandhi lost control of
the masses very quickly and then they indulged in an uncontrolled orgy of
violence. Tagore had warned Gandhi that he was playing with fire just before
the Rowlatt satyagraha began. True to his prophecy, it ended with the
Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Gandhi himself later admitted that it was a ‘Himalayan
miscalculation’. The book includes a detailed description of the violence
during the protests.
A crucial highlight of Hardiman’s arguments was
that Gandhi idealized the village society out of ignorance of them. The typical
Indian village was riven by inequalities and hierarchy and all of them were not
half-starved as Gandhi wrongly thought. Also, violence was routinely employed
in the villages to enforce the will of the dominant against subordinate castes
and by men against women. The peasants who provided the backbone to the
movements in Champaran and Kheda were from a wealthy village oligarchy. They
were not fighting to end the inequality within the villages but to end their oppression
at the hands of white planters. The agrarian legislation which came as a result
of the agitation in 1918 benefited mainly wealthier peasants. The poor farmers
were quite scathing about Gandhi and his legacy for the area. Caste
organisations were also mobilized in support of satyagraha. They enforced the social
boycott of anyone who paid taxes. This book includes the story of another
satyagraha at Bijoliya in Rajasthan which was guided by Vijay Singh Pathik.
This was a profound success and Pathik never worried that the masses would get
out of hand as Gandhi always feared.
The book is interesting to read and provides a refreshingly
new perspective of the nonviolent movement keeping aside reverence to the Father
of the Nation wherever it was not due nor deserved. A good bibliography is a
boon to the readers who want to pursue further from where the author has
stopped.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
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