Study of the Indian National Movement

Transcription

1 Study of the Indian National Movement Some Problems and Issues* Bipan Chandra This paper deals with some of the problems and issues in the study of the Indian national movement. In the main, it will discuss briefly the different historiographic schools regarding the movement, then the values, ideals and ideological make up of the movement, and lastly its distinct but untheorized strategy. I The conservative administrative view was embodied in the official pronouncements of the Viceroys Lord Dufferin, Curzon and Minto and the Secretary of State George Hamilton.1) V. Chirol, the Rowlatt (Sedition) Committee Report, Verney Lovert and the Montague-Chelmsford Report first put it forward in a cogent manner.2) It was theorized, for the first time, by Bruce T. McCully, an American scholar, in 1940; its liberal version was adopted by Reginald Coupland and Percival Spear, while its conservative version was first argued after 1947 by B. B. Misra.3) It was refurbished and further developed by J. A. Gallagher and Anil Seal and their students and followers after 1966 and has got known as the Cambridge School.4) The three versions of this school are based on, and are defined by, one common assumption \the denial of the existence of colonialism as a distinct economic, political and cultural structure in India. They also do not accept that India's economic, political, social and cultural development required the overthrow of colonialism. In other words, their analysis of colonialism and the national movement is based on the denial of the basic contradiction between the interests of the Indian people and the interests of British colonialism and therefore of the causative role * Presented at the inaugural session of the JASAS in October

2 that this contradiction played in the rise and growth of the national movement. Consequently, they implicitly or explicitly deny the anti-imperialist or national liberation character of the Indian national movement led by the Indian National Congress.5) The denial of the central contradiction and the anti-imperialist character of the national movement is a fatal flow in the entire approach and writing of these scholars, though their meticulous research does help others to use it within a different framework. The writers of this school also tend to deny that India had entered or could enter the process of becoming a nation.6) What was called India in fact consisted of diverse religions, castes, regions, communities and interests. Consequently, the emergence of Indian politics around the concept of an Indian nation or an Indian people or India-wide social classes is also not recognized by them.7) If the national movement did not express the interests of the Indian people vis-a-vis imperialism, then whose interests did it represent? The writers of the colonial school have asserted since the late nineteenth century that this movement was in reality a product of the needs and interests of the elite groups who used it to serve either their own narrow interests or the interests of their own castes and communities. Thus, the elite groups, and their needs and interests, provided the origin as well as the driving force of the idea, ideology and movements of nationalism in India. Nationalism was, then, a mere ideology which the elite groups used to legitimize their own narrow interests and to mobilize the masses for their achievement. Gallagher, Seal and their students have added another dimension to this approach. While Dufferin, Curzon, McCully and B. B. Misra held that the frustrated middle classes or educated elite used nationalism to fight the British to serve their own interests, Gallagher, Seal and their students further developed a parallel view, found in Chirol and Rowlatt Committee, that the national movement represented the struggle of one Indian elite group against another for British favours. As Seal put it: " It is misleading to view these native mobilizations as directed chiefly against foreign overlordship. Much attention has been paid to the apparent conflicts between imperialism and nationalism; it would be at least equally profitable to study their real partnership."8) In fact, the main contribution of the British to the growth of the national movement was 23

3 through the creation of new arenas and institutions for the mutual rivalries of the Indian elite. The Cambridge School also extended the basis on which the elite groups were formed and their leaders emerged. Using the approaches of the British historian Lewis Namier and the functionalist political scientists, they argued that these groups were formed on the basis of patron-client relationships. As British power was extended, local potentates (or elite) started organizing politics by clients and patrons whose interests they served and who in turn served their interests. Indian politics were increasingly formed through this patron-client linkages. Bigger leaders arose to link together the politics of the localities (i.e. of the local potentates). At the top arose the all-india brokers of power.9) Thus, according to the historians of this school, the national movement was really an instrument of, and a cover for, the struggle between various sections of the elite. They, thus, deny the legitimacy of the movement as a movement of the Indian people for the overthrow of imperialism and the establishment of an independent nation-state. Consequently, categories of nation, nationality, class, social base, popular mobilization, and ideology, which are generally used by historians to analyze anti-colonial movements and revolutionary processes in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, are usually missing from their treatment of the national movement. Moreover, they not only deny colonial exploitation and underdevelopment but also any anti-imperialism to those who fought against British colonial domination. As S. Gopal has put it: " Namier was accused of taking the mind out of politics; this School has gone further and taken not only the mind but decency, character, integrity and selfless commitment out of the Indian national movement."10) This school, moreover, denies any active political role to the mass of common people who are treated as mere cannon-fodder for the elite.11) A few historians, headed by Ranajit Guha, have in the last few years initiated a new trend, described by its proponents as subaltern. They dismiss all previous historical writing, including that based on a Marxist perspective, as elite historiography.12) Their claim is that they are initiating a new people's or subaltern approach. They do not accept that in the colonial period the chief contradiction was between colonialism and the Indian people. Instead, it lay between the elite \both Indian and British \on one side and the dominated, subaltern groups on the other 24

4 side. They argue that the Indian people were never united in a common anti-imperialist struggle; that there was no such entity as the Indian national movement. In fact, no such movement could have ever come into being because of the basic divide between the elite and the subalterns. Instead, there existed two distinct and separate movements: the real antiimperialist movement of the subalterns and the bogus national movement of the elite. The elite movement, led by the National Congress, was nothing but a cloak for the struggle for power among and by the elite. The subaltern school's characterization of the actual, historical national movement bears a disturbing resemblance to the colonial school's characterization. Its approach is also characterized by a generally ahistorical glorification and treatment of all forms of popular militancy and consciousness and an equally ahistorical contempt for all forms of initiative and activity by the intelligentsia, organized party leaderships and other 'elites '.13) The category of the elite as opposed to class and classes is also, I believe, misleading and inapposite to the historical situation, especially when not a specific category of elite such as economic elite, political elite, social elite, religious or ritual elite, bureaucratic elite, caste elite, etc., but the blanket category of ' elite ' is used. In any case, this new school which has promised to write a history based on the people's own con.- sciousness, is yet to tap new sources that may reflect better popular perceptions; it continues to use the old sources, especially official sources. Nor have its practitioners yet produced a rounded or full-scale history of the anti-imperialist struggle of the Indian people; and their work of a more general non-monographic nature has been no different from the so-called elite history with some bows being made here and there to the subaltern classes. Another major historiographic approach is that of nationalist historians from R. G. Pradhan, Pattabhi Sitaramayya and Andrews and Mukerji to Tara Chand, Bisheshwar Prasad, B. R. Nanda and Amles Tripathi.1-4) The nationalist historians, especially the recent ones, incorporate an economic critique of colonialism, but on the whole they tend to ascribe the rise of nationalism and national movement to t he spread and realization of the idea or spirit of nationalism or liberty. The increasing militancy of the national movement in its later phases is then explained by better ideas and a greater spirit of freedom. They do, however, take full note of the process of India becoming a nation. They also see the national 25

5 movement after 1918 as a popular movement a movement of the people. Their other weakness was that they tend to ignore or underplay the inner contradictions of Indian society, class and caste differentiation and class consciousness. They tend to ignore that while the national movement represented the interests of the Indian people as a whole, that is, of all classes, vis-a-vis colonialism, it only did so from particular ideological and class perspectives, and that, consequently, there was a constant struggle between different social, ideological perspectives for hegemony over the movement. The nationalist historians have, therefore, neglected the study of the impact of class consciousness and class behaviour on the ideological features of the national movement. They also usually take up the position adopted by the rightwing of the national movement and equate the rightwing with the national movement as a whole. They have also not tried to grapple with the impact on the movement of the religious, caste and cultural dimensions of Indian society. Their treatment of the strategic and ideological dimensions of the movement is also inadequate.") The foundations of the Marxist school were laid by R. Palme Dutt and A. R. Desai; but several others have developed it over the years, the most recent work being that of E.M.S. Namboodiripad.16) The Marxist writers have a clear understanding of the developing central or primary contradiction between colonialism and the Indian people as a whole as well as of the process of the Indian nation-in-the-making. They see the national movement in its various phases as a response to the basic contradiction between the interests of the Indian people and the interests of British colonialism, which represented the subordination of Indian economy and society to the interests of the foreign, metropolitan society and economy and the foreign-based ruling classes. Consequently, the Indian national movement developed basically as an anti-imperialist movement. The Marxists have noted that the nature of the primary contradiction in India and other colonial countries was very different from the primary contradiction which was responsible for the rise of nationalism in Europe. In Europe, nationalism was the expression of the contradiction of the rising bourgeoisie and the bourgeois mode of production with the feudal classes and the feudal mode of production. In the colonial countries, the entire people had a contradiction with colonialism; colonialism oppressed the entire people and promoted the development of the entire society. This means that while in Europe nationalism and bourgeois democratic revolu- 26

6 tion simultaneously represented internal class struggle between the bourgeoisie and feudalism, promoted peasantry's contradiction with the feudal classes, in colonial countries, the contradiction of the entire people vis-avis colonalism would override all other contradictions; that is, the contradiction with imperialism had to be assigned a primary role and the internal class contradictions secondary roles. However, in practice, many of the Marxist writers \and Palme Dutt in particular-are not able to fully integrate their treatment of the primary anti-imperialist contradiction and the secondary inner contradictions, and, in their historical practice, though not in theory, do what the Communist Party did, that is, they tend to counterpose the anti-imperialist struggle to the class struggle. They also tend to see the national movement as a fully structured bourgeois movement, and sometimes even as a bourgeoisie's movement, though they hold that it was still to be supported by the left. Consequently, they often miss the open-ended and multi-class character of the movement. They see the bourgeoisie as playing the dominant role in the movement \they tend to equate or conflate the leadership of the national movement with the bourgeoisie. They also tend to interpret the class character of the movement in terms of its forms of struggle, for example, in its non-violent character, its participation in the colonial constitutional structure, and its willingness to enter into negotiations with the authorities, and in the fact that it made strategic retreats and compromises. The Marxists have also not investigated the strategy, programme, ideology and the extent and forms of mass mobilization of the national movement. The approach of some of us at Jawaharlal Nehru University, while remaining within the broad Marxist framework, tries to locate the issues discussed above in a framework which differs in many respects from the existing Marxist approaches, including the classic Marxist approach of R. Palme Dutt and A. R. Desai.17) In our view the leadership of the Indian national movement from the beginning grasped the basic or primary contradiction of colonical India. Taking the social experience of the Indian people as colonized subjects, evolving a scientific critique of colonialism,'8) and recognizing the common interests of the Indian people vis-a-vis colonialism, they gradually evolved a clear-cut anti-colonial ideology on which they based the movement. This anti-colonial ideology and critique of colonialism were disseminated among the intelligentsia and the midde 27

7 classes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and among the mass of people during the mass phase of the movement after II The values, ideals and ideology around which the people were mobilized during the national movement are important subjects of study in themselves. But they acquire greater significance because the political and ideological features which have had a decisive impact on post-independence development of India have deep roots in the struggle for independence. Broadly speaking, the vision of the national movement was that of bourgeois or capitalist, independent economic development and a secular, republican, democratic, civil libertarian political order, both the economic and political order to be based on principles of social equality. All but one elements of this vision were to remain unquestioned till 1947 (or this day); all questioning and controversy were confined to the capitalist character of the future economy. The national movement was fully committed to parliamentary democracy and civil liberties. It popularized democratic ideas and institutions and provided the soil and climate in which these two could dig deep roots. The Indian National Congress was organized on a democratic basis and in the form of a parliament. It not only permitted but encouraged free expression of opinion within the party and the movement. Some of the most important decisions in its history were taken after heated debates and on the basis of open voting. From the beginning the nationalists fought every inch of the way against attacks by the colonial authorities on the freedom of the press, speech and association and other civil liberties. One of the brightest spots in the record of the Congress Ministries during was the visible, massive extension of civil liberties. It was the national movement and not colonialism which rooted democracy and civil liberty in India. The national movement was fully committed to the economic development of India on the basis of modern industry and agriculture. This objective, moreover, included independence from foreign capital, the creation of an independent capital goods sector and the foundation of independent science and technology. A crucial role was assigned to the public sector and, in the late 1930s, the objective of economic planning was widely accepted. 28

8 From its initial stages, the national movement adopted a pro-poor orientation which was further strengthened with the advent of Gandhi and the rise of the left. The left struggled to make the movement adopt a socialist outlook and the socialist vision of free India. The movement also increasingly moved towards a programme of radical agrarian reform. However, socialism did not, at any stage, become the official goal of the Indian National Congress. Despite intense political and ideological struggle by the left during the 1930s and 1940s, the dominant vision within the Congress remained within the broad parameters of a capitalist conception of economy. Secularism was from the beginning made a basic constituent of the nationalist ideology and strong emphasis laid on Hindu-Muslim unity. The leadership of the movement fought hard, especially after 1918, to inculcate secular values among the people, though it failed in the end to overcome Muslim communalism. But despite the partition of India in 1947, and the accompanying massacres, the nationalist leadership did succeed in laying the foundations of a secular state after independence. The world-outlook of the movement was also an important aspect of its dynamics. Over the years, it evolved a policy of opposition to imperialism on a world scale, and of expressing and establishing solidarity with the anti-imperialist movements in other parts of the world. It took a clear-cut anti-fascist stand in the 1930s and gave active support to the anti-fascist struggles of Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and the Jewish people, and the national liberation struggles of the Arabs against British imperalism and the Chinese against Japanese imperalism. In the 1920s, the National Congress asked the Indian soldiers not to join British imperialism in suppressing the Chinese Revolution; and, in the 1930s, it repeatedly asked Indians to boycott Japanese goods. The Indian national movement was a popular all-people's multi-class struggle as is any popular anti-colonial struggle. However, the Indian people, though unified against colonialism, were at the same time divided into social classes. Therefore a people's movement could not function in an ideological limbo or vacuum. It had to have an ideological character, which would determine its class consequences. We do not believe that the Indian national movement was a bourgeois movement or that the bourgeoisie led it; nor that the bourgeoisie exercised exclusive hegemony over it. Our formulation is that it was a ' national-popular peo- 29

9 ple's movement under bourgeois ideological hegemony. It was something like the British Labour Party which has been a working class and not a bourgeois party and which has not been led by the bourgeoisie; nor has the bourgeoisie had exclusive hegemony over it. But it has been under bourgeois reformist ideological hegemony, with socialist forces constantly contending to hegemonise it under a broad socialist ideology. Because of this character of the movement, the Indian national movement was from 1929 onwards open to ideological contention and hegemony by the socialist forces. This contention did occur during the 1930s and 1940s; and the outcome was not predetermined or preclosed at any stage. However, as pointed out earlier, upto the end the dominant vision of the movement remained of capitalist development. This was the basic weakness of the movement., in our view, An important question awaiting detailed research pertains to the question of popular mobilization: What was the social base of the movement or who were mobilized? On what issues were they mobilized? How were they mobilized and to what extent? With or around what popular ideology and politics were they mobilized? A major effort has to be made to get at popular consciousness and at popular conception of what the participants in the struggle were doing and why? What was the nature of nationalist ideology at the grass roots level; and what was the perception of the movement as seen from below? The important question is how we are to get at popular consciousness. We do not think this can be done by relying on government records or secret police reports. We are trying to do so by relying on the popular press, pamphlets and popular songs and by studying popular response to popular propaganda, mass movements, elections, peasant movements, trade union movements and social reform movements \and above all on interviewing participants and leaders at the village, taluka and town levels. We believe that the judgement regarding mobilization will also depend on our conception of political mobilization. Mobilization in a open mass movement is different from mobilization in a violent revolution as in France or Russia or China. Another way of putting it is that forms of political work \including mobilization \in a war of position (Gramsci) are very different than in a war of manouevre. If the basic purpose is to destroy the hegemony of the colonial rule and colonial state then forms of political work have to be multisided, encompassing all walks of life. We find that 30

10 people participated in the movement in varied ways: from jail-going satyagraha and picketing to participation in public meetings and demonstrations, from going on hartals and strikes to cheering jathas (groups) of Congress volunteers from the sidelines, from voting for nationalist candidates in municipal, district, provincial and central elections to participating in constructive programmes, from becoming a 25 paise member of the Congress to wearing khadi and a Gandhi cap, from contributing funds to the Congress to feeding and giving shelter to Congress agitators, from distributing and reading nationalist magazines and the illegal patrikas (or bulletins) to staging and attending nationalist dramas and nationalist poetry festivals, and from writing and reading nationalist novels, poems and stories to walking and singing in prabhat pheries (groups of people making rounds of a village or a town or a part of a town). The movement and the process of mass mobilization involved immense innovation and initiative from below by the people and the local cadres or political workers. Our research also tends to show that after 1920 \but especially in 1930 movement \women participated in the movement on a large scale. Perhaps, no other popular movement of modern times has witnessed such large scale participation by women. The Indian national movement is an interesting example of an extremely wide movement with a common aim in which diverse political and ideological currents existed and worked together even while contending with each other for overall ideological, political and organizational hegemony over the movement. Socialists, Communists, liberals, Gandhians, and rightists were all part of it. Socialists and communists worked inside the Congress and at the same time had full freedom to do independent political work under their own banners and in trade unions and peasant associations. They also acquired organizational influence inside the Congress organization. After 1936, they controlled nearly one-third of the delegates to the All-India Congress Committee. Only two conditions were mandatory for members of the Congress: (i) Non-violence to be followed in practice; (ii) no group could start a movement in the name of the Congress without the permission of the Congress. Interestingly, while intense debate on all basic ideological, strategic and tactical issues was allowed, the diversity and resulting tension did not weaken the cohesion and striking power of the movement. On the contrary, the diversity and atmosphere of freedom and debate within its ranks became a major 31

11 source of its strength. From this point of view, the National Congress should be seen not as a party but as a movement, for all political trends, except communal currents, were incorporated in it. It is interesting that the Congress split on Moderate-Extremist lines only once in This error was corrected when the two united in After that despite wide differences and debates on ideological, strategic, and tactical issues the Congress never split, both the Right and the Left showed tremendous capacity to accept majority decisions. It did not split even on the question of Partition. There were many other strands than the Congress in the freedom struggle. The Indian National Congress was the main stream but not the only stream. There were the peasant, trade union and tribal movements, the Revolutionary Terrorists, the Ghadr and Home Rule movements, the Akali and Temple Reform movements, the state people's movements, the politics of the capitalist class, the INA and the RIN Revolt. But they are not to be treated as ' parallel ' streams as some have done. Though many of them remained outside the organizational framework, there was no Chinese wall separating them from the Congress. The contemporaries did not see them as rivals but as tributaries to the mainstream even when not part of it. In fact, nearly all these movements and the Congress established a complex relationship with each other. And at no stage did these non-congress movements become an alternative to the Congress; nor were they ever quantitatively and qualitatively in the same class. It was the Congress-led movements in which millions upon millions of both sexes and all classes, castes, regions and religions, to a greater or lesser extent participated. It was the movement led by the Congress, which, with all its positive and negative features, was the actual anti-imperialist movement of the Indian people incorporating their historical energies and genius, as is the case with any genuine mass movement. The study of the National Congress before 1947 has therefore to be at the heart or centre of the study of the Indian anti-imperialist struggle, though it need not occupy the sole position. The national movement, because it made massive efforts to transform the existing consciousness, created space for, as well as got integrated with, other modern liberationist movements movements of women, youth, peasants, workers, Harijans and other lower castes and cultural development on the basis of one's own language. Nearly all major periods 32

12 of trade union and peasant struggle have occurred after a phase of militant nationalist struggle. Our research shows that peasant movement was not able to grow in areas where the national movement was weak. For example, West Punjab (today's Pakistan), South-East Punjab (today's Haryana). On the other hand, it was strong where previously the national movement had spurted forward : for example, Andhra, Malabar, Bihar, U. P., Gujarat, Central Punjab. In Mappila part of Malabar, there was no national movement after the communalization of the Mappila Uprising. And there has not been a peasant movement either till this day. In East Bengal a peasant movement developed in the 1920s and early 1930s but, in the absence of the national movement, fell prey to communalism and Muslim League reaction. A new phase with Tebhaga began in North- Bengal after World War II under the impetus of resurgent nationalism. III The Indian national movement had, we believe, an untheorized strategy, though its instrumental elements were found in the writings of Gandhiji and quite thoroughly grasped and internalized by lower level intellectualcadre. It is the only movement where the broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of position was successfully practised; where state power was not seized in a single historical movement of revolution, but through prolonged popular struggle on moral, political and ideological levels; where reserves of counter-hegemony were built up over the years through progressive stages; where the phases of struggle alternated with ' passive ' phases. Various phases and forms of struggle were integrated within this strategy. This strategy was formed by the waging of hegemonic struggle for the minds and hearts of the Indian people. The purpose was to destroy the two basic constituents of colonial hegemony or the belief system through which the British secured the acquiescence of the Indian people in their rule; that British rule was benevolent or for the good of the common Indians and that it was invincible or incapable of being challenged or overthrown. Simultaneously, the objective was to undermine the hold of the colonial state on its state apparatuses. In the case of a popular anti-imperialist movement, the leadership excercises hegemony by taking the anti-colonial interests of the entire colonized people and by unifying them by, to use Mao's phrase, adjusting the internal class struggle by adjusting the conflicting class interests of the different 33

13 classes, strata and groups. The nationalist strategy was based on the alternation between two types of phases. There were phases of massive mass struggle which broke existing laws and phases of intense political-ideological work within the legal framework which in turn provided scope for such work. This aspect of the strategy was based on the assumption that mass movements by their very nature could not last for long, for it was not possible for the vast mass of people to engage continuously in a long drawn-out extra legal struggle that involved considerable sacrifice. The basic purpose of both phases was to undermine colonial hegemony over the people and to build up the people's capacity to struggle. That is why none of the Gandhi-led movements achieved success in terms of their stated goals, but after each mass movement, the nationalist movement emerged stronger. The British officials could never grasp this. Similarly, the non-mass-movement phases were periods of intense political work in which forces were gathered for another mass struggle. I have described this strategy as Struggle- Truce-Struggle or S-T-S'. The entire political process of S-T-S' was an upward spiralling one. This strategy also assumed advance through stages but the stages were stages of struggle and not of freedom. The third aspect of nationalist strategy related to constitutional work and constitutional reforms which formed a basic element of the equally complex colonial strategy. The study of the interplay between the colonial and Congress strategies can serve as a fine example of how a hegemonic struggle is fought, only we do not have the space to do so here. Since the state was the terrain of struggle between the national movement and the colonial authorities, constitutional structures were simultaneously instruments and aspects of the colonial strategy of domination and the fruits of the anti-colonial struggle, the ground that colonialism was forced to yield under nationalist pressure. They were a measure of the continually changing balance of forces. They represented, simultaneously, instruments of cooption by colonalism and widening of the democratic space in which the national movement could operate. Basically, the nationalist answer was to work the reforms, not in the way the colonial authorities wanted, but by evolving and following an alternative method that would upset imperialist calculations and advance the nationalist cause. Work in the councils also filled in the political void when the national movement was recouping its strength. Nor did those who worked in the 34

14 councils fall prey to cooption. Congress strategy in this respect was not directed at the grass level reform of colonial institutions and structures; it was aimed at the replacement of the colonial state. Legislatures were not seen as arenas for the transformation of the colonial state; they were seen as arenas of struggle against the colonial state. Constructive work played an important role in nationalist struggle, especially during the constitutional phases. It was primarily organized around the promotion of khadi, the spinning and village industries, national education and Hindu-Muslim unity, the struggle against untouchability and for the scoial upliftment of Harijans or untouchables and the tribal people and the boycott of foreign cloth and liquor. Constructive work was crystallized by hundreds of Ashrams which came up all over the country, almost entirely in the villages. Constructive work was basic to a war of position. It played a crucial role during the non-mass movement phase in filling the political space left vacant by the withdrawal of civil disobedience. It partially solved a basic problem that a mass movement faces \the sustenance of a sense of activism in the non-mass movement phases of the struggle. Constructive work had also the advantage of involving a large number of people. Parliamentary and intellectual work could be done by relatively few. Constructive work could involve millions. Moreover not all could go to jail. But constructive work was within the reach of all. The hard core of constructive workers also provided a large cadre for the civil disobedience movement. They were Gandhiji's steel frame or standing army. What role did non-violence play in this strategy. Was it a mere dogma of Gandhiji or was it dictated by the interests of the propertied classes? We do not agree. For Gandhiji, of course, non-violence was a matter of principle. But for most of his contemporaries in the Congress C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Sardar Patel, Acharya Narendra Dev, and so on it was a matter of policy. As a policy and as a form of political action, it was basic to a strategy based on the conception of a hegemonic movement and on wide mass mobilization. It was because of this hegemonic and mass character of the national movement that non-violence became one of its basic elements. At the same time the point of differentia specifica was not its non-violent forms of struggle, but its hegemonic and mass character. 35

15 The adoption of non-violent forms of struggle enabled the participation of the mass of the people who could not have participated in a similar manner in a movement that adopted violent forms. This was particularly true of women's participation. Women would have found it difficult to join an armed struggle in large numbers. But when it came to undergoing suffering, facing lathi-charges, picketing for hours on end in the summer or the winter, women were probably stronger than men. Nonviolence as a form of struggle was also linked to the semi-hegemonic, semiauthoritarian character of the colonial state and the democratic character of the polity in Britain. Non-violence meant above all fighting on the terrain of moral force, a basic feature of war of position or hegemonic struggle. Non-violent mass movements placed the colonial authorities in the wrong and exposed the underpinning of colonial state power in brute power, when the authorities used armed force against peaceful satyagrahis and picketeers. In fact, a non-violent mass movement put the rulers on the horns of a dilemma. If they hesitated to suppress it because it was peaceful, they lost an im- portant part of their hegemony, because the civil resisters did break existing colonial laws. Not to take action against them amounted to abdication of administrative authority and a confession of the lack of strength to rule. If they suppressed the movement by use of force, the colonial authorities still lost, for it was morally difficult to justify the suppression of a peaceful movement and non-violent law-breaking through the use of force. They were in a no-win situation. In practice, the colonial authorities constantly vacillated between the two choices, usually plumping in the end in favour of suppression. By taking recourse to suppression of a non-violent movement, they had to suffer constant erosion of hegemony. Consequently, the hegemony of colonial rule or its moral basis was destroyed bit by bit. The adoption of non-violence by the national movement was also linked to the fact that a disarmed people had hardly any other recourse. On the one hand, the colonial state had, through an elaborate system, com- pletely disarmed the Indian people since 1858, and made it difficult for them to obtain arms or to train in their use; on the other hand, the colonial state was a strong and not an inert state. It had developed a strong police system as also a large and efficient secret police. The leaders of the national movement from Dadabhai Naoroji and Tilak to Gandhi and Nehru 36

16 understood clearly that Indians did not possess the material resources necessary to wage an armed struggle against the strong colonial state. In non-violent mass struggle, on the other hand, it was moral strength and the force of massive and mobilized public opinion that counted. And here the disarmed people were not at a disadvantage. In other words, in a war of position, the non-violence of a mass movement was a way of becoming equal in political resources to the armed colonial state. Two further remarks maybe made in this context. Can a mass move- ment assume a violent form or is it that by its very nature, because millions participate in it, it has to be non-violent? In other words when a political structure allows mass mobilization and a mass movement, the movement has to take a non-violent form. It is only when the structure does not permit this \and is simultaneously weak \that a cadre-based violent or armed struggle takes place and perhaps becomes inevitable. It is interesting that in the last 100 years, wherever the state is democratic or semi-democratic, as in Western Europe and North America and Japan after 1950 not a single armed struggle has taken place. Second, in India's case, non-violent struggle was as revolutionary in character as an armed struggle in other situations. It was a part of a revolutionary strategy of hegemonic struggle of a war of position \for changes in the structure of state and society. The nationalist strategy \as a war of position \was also linked to the semi-hegemonic or the legal authoritarian character of the colonial state which functioned through the rule of law, a rule bound bureaucracy and a relatively independent judiciary while simultaneously enacting and enforcing extremely repressive laws, and which extended a certain amount of civil liberties in normal times, enabling politicization of the people and organization of national movement, though it curtailed these civil liberties in periods of mass struggle. Once the basic character and objectives of the nationalist strategy are grasped, the successes and failures of the different phases of the movement have to be evaluated in a fresh manner. The criterion of success and failure here is the extent to which the colonial hegemony over the Indian people was undermined and the people were politicized and prepared for struggle. Judged in this light, we would see that these objectives were progressively achieved through successive waves of mass movements alternating with phases of truce. Even when mass movements were sup- 37

17 pressed (1932, , 1942) or withdrawn (1922) or ended in compromise ( ) and were apparently defeated in their stated objectives of winning freedom or major policy concessions, in terms of hegemony, these movements were great successes, and marked leaps in mass political consciousness. That this was not clear to many contemporaries is clear from the twin comments of Willingdon, the Viceroy, who declared in early 1933 having successfully suppressed the second phase of the civil disobedience movement: "The Congress is in definitely less favourable position than in 1930 and has lost its hold on the public ".20) And then he bewailed in 1934 when the elections to the Central Legislative Assembly produced a triumph for the Congress: " Singularly unfortunate. A great triumph for little Gandhi."21) He could not make the connection between the apparent suppression and defeat of the movement and its real success in terms of the spread of hegemony. He was utterly unaware the ' great triumph of little Gandhi ' was related to the strategy of struggle. This is what hegemonic struggle is all about. Seen from this point of view, the peaceful and negotiated nature of the transfer of power in 1947 was no accident, nor was it the result of a compromise by a tired leadership, but was the result of the character and strategy of the Indian national movement. It was the culmination of a war of position where the British recognized during World War II and after that the Indian people were no longer willing to be ruled and the Indian part of the colonial apparatus \and perhaps sections of the British part too \could no longer be trusted to enforce a rule which people no longer wanted or were willing to tolerate. The British recognized that they had lost the battle of hegemony or war of position. They decided to retreat rather than make a futile attempt to rule such a vast country by the use of a sword that was already breaking in their hands. What is the significance of the Indian national movement in a world perspective? It does not lie, we believe, in its ideology or in Gandhian philosophy or even in non-violence. Its great significance for the rest of the world lies, we believe, in its strategic practice. It is of great relevance to those wanting to transform the existing political and social structure in societies that broadly function within the confines of the rule of law, and are characterized by a democratic and civil libertarian polity. It may have some relevance to other societies too. India's is the only actual historical example of a semi-democratic or 38

18 democratic type of state structure being replaced or transformed, of the broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of position being successfully practised. The study of its experience can yield many insights into the processes of historical change and state transformation, both in the past and the present, to the historian, social scientist and political activist. Notes 1) B. L. Grover, British Policy Towards Indian Nationalism , Delhi, 1967; S. Gopal, British Policy in India , London, ) V. Chirol, Indian Unrest, London, 1910; Verney Lovett, A History of the Indian National Movement, London, ) Bruce T. McCully, English Education and the Originsof Indian Nationalism, New York, 1940; Reginald Coupland, The Indian Problem , London, 1942, 1943; Percival Spear, India, A Modern History, Ann Arbor, 1961; B. B. Misra, The Indian Middle Classes, London, ) Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later 19th Century, Cambridge, 1968; J. Gallagher, G. Johnson and A. Seal (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation, Cambridge, 1973; C. J. Baker, G. Johnson, A. Seal (eds.), " Power, Profit and Politics: Essays on Imperialism, Nationalism and Change in 20th Century India ", Modern Asian Studies, Cambridge, Also books by W. A. Washbrook, C. A. Bayley, C. J. Baker, and Judith Brown. 5) A. Seal describes the Indian national movement as a battle (" a mimic warfare "), "A Dassehra dual between and simulated combat ". Op. cit., p ) Ibid., p ) Ibid. 8) Ibid. two hollow statues, locked in motiveless 9) J. Gallagher, G. Johnson and A. Seal; and C. J. Baker, G. Johnson, A. Seal, cited above in f.n ) S. Gopal, "Book Review ", The Indian Economic and Social History Review, New Delhi, Vol. XIV, No. 3, July-September, ) For a critique of the Cambridge School, see ibid.; Jayant Prasad, " Neo-Liberal History or an Imperialist Apologia ", Social Scientist, New Delhi, Vol. I, No. 12, July 1973; Mridula Mukherjee, " Book Review ", Studies in History, New Delhi, Vol. I, January-June, 1979; Tapan Raychaudhuri," Indian Nationalism as Animal Politics ", The Historical Journal, Cambridge, Vol. 22, No. 3,

19 12) Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies, I-VI, 1982-; Partha Chatterjee, Bengal , Volume one: The Land Question, Calcutta, 1984, and Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, Delhi, ) For a critique of this aspect, see Mridula Mukherjee, "Peasant Resistance and Peasant Consciousness in Colonial India ", Economicand Political Weekly, Bombay, 8 and 15 October Also see Dipankar Gupta, " On Altering the Ego in Peasant History: Paradoxes of the Ethnic Option ", Peasant Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 1, ) R. G. Pradhan, India's Struggle for Swaraj, Madras, 1929; B. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, The History of the Indian National Congress, Madras, 1935; C. F. Andrews and Girija Mukerji, The Rise and Growth of the Congress in India, London, 1938; Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, 4 Volumes, Delhi, 1961-; Bisheshwar Prasad, Changing Modes of Indian National Movement, New Delhi, 1966; B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, London, 1958, and Gokhale, the Indian Moderates and the British Raj, Delhi, 1977; Amles Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge, New Delhi, ) For a detailed critique, see Bipan Chandra, " Nationalist Historians' Interpretations of the Indian National Movement ", in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Romila Thapar (eds.), Situating Indian History, Delhi, ) R. Palme Dutt, India Today, Bombay, 1949; A. R. Desai, Social Background of Indian Nationalism, Bombay, 1959; E.M.S. Namboodiripad, History of Indian National Movement, Trivandrum, 1986; Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India, New Delhi, 1966; and Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, New Delhi, 1979; Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, , Delhi, 1983, and The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, , New Delhi, 1973; M. B. Raos (ed.), The Mahatma, Marxist Evaluation, New Delhi, 1969 ; Mohit Sen, The Indian Revolution, Review and Perspectives, New Delhi, ) Bipan Chandra: Indian National Movement \Long-term Dynamics, New Delhi, 1988; editor, The Indian Left, New Delhi, 1983; and others, India's Struggle for Independence, New Delhi, ) See Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India. 19) For a detailed discussion of the strategy of the Indian national movement, see Bipan Chandra, Indian National Movement \Long-term Dynamics. 20) Quoted in B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p ) Quoted in D. A. Low, " Civil Martial Law ", in D. A. Low (ed.), Congress and the Raj, London, (J. Nehru University) 40