79

Chapter 4

Gandhi’s Concept of Nationalism

Scholars and commentators, while assessing Gandhi’s success as a nationalist

politician, generally mention about a kind of ‘irony’ in his image - a
‘paradoxical nature’ in his personality. Krishna Kripalani, for example, wrote
about ‘an unconscious irony in this image of Gandhi as the ‘father of the nation’
because, according to him, “India tom with violence, bleeding and writhing in
horror and hate, could hardly be called the legitimate child of Gandhi.”1 R.C.
Majumdar, well-known historian of the ‘nationalist school’, on the other hand,
opined, “Gandhi combined in himself the dual role of a saint and an active
politician.”2 Buddhadeva Bhattaeharyya, Gandhi- scholar, also put forward a
theory of two Gandhis - ‘the idealist philosopher and the practical politician -
who, paradoxically enough, represented a singularly unified character.’3
Not only theses authors, but form the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in
India, people expressed doubts about the possibility of combining religion-as-
morality with politics. Gandhi himself, on so many occasions, preached - after
his guru Gokhale - on the need of ‘spiritualizing the political life’ and that
‘politics without morality is a thing to be avoided’4. He was also aware of his
critics who held that with such a ‘moralist’ view, Gandhi must retire from all
public activity. However, he refuted such criticisms and argued, “I must try to
live in society and yet remain untouched by its pitfalls.”5 (Emphases added.)
Thickly embedded in politics, he declared, “The politician in me has never
dominated a single decision of mine, and if I seem to take part in politics, it is
because politics encircle us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot
get out, no matter how much one tries.”6
This dualism, of being in politics and yet remaining untouched by it, marked
the basis of Gandhi’s politics, and his nationalism was a part of it. Throughout
his life, he was hailed/described as the father/initiator of India’s mass
nationalism. After independence, he held (and is still holding) the official stature
of the ‘father of the nation’. Yet, throughout his career, he had to explain others
(sometimes in a self-explanatory tone) that his nationalism was ‘not exclusive’7
and that his ‘nationalism is intense internationalism.’8 He was also not hesitant
to announce, ‘Loyalty to the country is always subordinate to loyalty to God.’9 It
is thus clear that no straitjacket theory would suffice to explain his concept of
nationalism.

Compared to Tagore, Gandhi was definitely more Hindu. He was also deeply
rooted in the north/western Hindu/Indian culture. The Gandhi-family of
Kathiawad followed the Sanatani Vaisnavism, founded by Vallabhachrya.
Hinduism in this region was also influenced by Jainaism, which had a strong
 80

hold in Gujrat. But he was more influenced, as time went on, by the Northern
Vaisnavism derived from Ramananda. This tradition, owing to its contact with
Islam, was more, protestant, ascetic and liberal. The religion, which Gandhi
professed, in his later life, was closer perhaps to this tradition.
The spirit of Vaisnavism is devotion and self-surrender to the ‘Supreme
Person’ (Vishnu or His incarnations like Ram or Krishna) rather than in a
‘Supreme Abstraction’ (like the Upanishadic ideal of Brahma preached by the
Advaitvaists or the modem Brahmos). He acknowledged the deep influence of
his devoutly religious mother and his nurse. “They were noble women. They
taught me to tell the truth and not to fear.’10 In his early youth, he came across
religious books in Gujrati - Tulsidas’s Ramayana, the Bhagavata and the
Manusmriti. These books had a lifelong influence on him.
Thus, culturally, he was brought up in an environment that bore less
tension/dilemma than that of Tagore’s. Not only Tagore, but many of his
Bengali ‘enlightened’ contemporaries too, grew up in an atmosphere charged
with the spirit of reforms on the modem/westem line. The spirit of the Western
Enlightenment swept the Hindu-elites of Bengal since the beginning of the 19th
century. Every field of public sphere - from education to religion, literary
activities to theatre - was brought under scrutiny and reform. Some went for a
heady-radical reform like the ‘Young Bengal’ influenced by Henry Derozio.
Others began to court Rammohun Roy’s Brahmo religion, which professed non­
idolatry and worshiped the Upanishadic ideal of Brahma, modelled, to a great
extent, on the Christian church-system. Even the traditional Hinduism did not
remain the same as before. Vidyasagar, the father of modem Bengali Prose,
initiated the widow-marriage and Ramkrishna Paramhansa preached a liberal
Hinduism. Thus an average English-educated Hindu youth, in Gandhi’s
contemporary Bengal, had to face more difficulty to oppose/bypass/avoid the
West culturally.
In his schooldays, Gandhi looked at Christianity as something ‘foreign’. He
developed a dislike for it. ‘In those days Christian missionaries used to stand in
a comer near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their
gods. I could not endure this.” (Emphasis added.) He also referred to a well-
known Hindu, whose conversion to Christianity made him to eat beef, drink
liquor and dress like a European. ‘These things got on my nerves... [A] religion
that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor and change one’s own clothes did
not deserve the name.”11
Yet, he was attracted by the physical strength of the British. Thus the doggerel
by the Gujrati poet Narmad - ‘Behold the mighty Englishman/ He rules the
Indian small,/ Because being a meat-eater/ He is five cubits tall.’ - had its due
effect on him. And he, in collusion with a friend, began to take meat for a year,
but with a strong sense of guilt (for indulging in such a ‘prohibited’ practice and
lying at home). He, in his boyish fantasy, thought that his fellow Indians would
be strong enough to overcome the English12, only if they started eating meat.
This was his known first-ever reaction against the British - and in a way this can
be taken as the seed of his future nationalism. In the Autobiography he wrote, “It
 81

was not a question of pleasing the palate. I wished to be strong and daring and
wanted my countrymen also to be such, so that we might defeat the English and
make India free. The word Swaraj I had not yet heard. But I know what freedom
meant.”13
However, Gandhi was not alone in judging the English/British in terms of
physical strength - the otherwise better-equipped Bengali intellectuals like
Bankimchandra had also distinguished between the materialist West (and
Physical strength is also an important element of the ‘materialist’ strength) and
the spiritualist Orient/India.14 We may also recall that Tagore too, in one of his
early writings, mockingly advocated for ‘cannibalism’ to combat the brute
British.15 Thus, despite his lesser enchantment of the Western culture, Gandhi
grew up within the prevalent orientalist discourse that treated the British/West
principally as a physical power and reserved the moral!spiritual domain mainly
for the East/India.
However, during his student-days in England, he became more aware of the
‘moral/ethical’ basis of the Western civilization. His childhood impression of
Christianity-as-a-religion-that -compelled-‘meat eating and drinking wine’, got
a radical change as he came to know a number of liberal theosophists (with two
of them Gandhi read the Gita for the first time and also read Edwin Arnold’s
The Light Asia) and Christian-believers through the Vegetarian Society circle.
He mentioned about a Christian friend to whom he narrated his Rajkot
recollections of Christianity. “He was pained to hear them. He said, ‘I am a
vegetarian. I do not drink. Many Christians are meat-eaters and drink, no doubt;
but neither meat-eating nor drinking is enjoined by the Scripture.” Gandhi’s
friend advised him to read the Bible, which the latter complied and saw a new
light in the Sermon on the Mount. “ The verses ‘But I say unto you, that ye resist
not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also. And if any man take away thy coat let him have thy cloak too’... My
young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, the Light of Asia and the
Sermon of the Mount.”16
Thus Gandhi had finally made entry into a certain section of the English
society. But this section was, in Geoffrey Ashe’s analysis17, only ‘a set’. “With
all the rest of English society”, argued Ashe, ‘his record was a virtual blank.’ He
had a little knowledge about the Church of England. He was also an almost
stranger to modem English literature and culture. “In most respects’, Ashe held,
“his Anglophile outlook was still as much as outsider’s as it had been in
Rajkot.” (Emphasis added.) Since this time, gradually grew the first phase of an
all-embracing critique of the modern-western civilization, which, in time,
became the intellectual basis of his nationalism. And it is noteworthy that most
of his arguments against the ‘modem-western’ were based on the ideas of the
western writers themselves. Henry Salt, whose pamphlet, A Plea for
Vegetarianism, had given Gandhi a rationale for being a vegetarian - was a cult
figure of the anti-establishment/radical (in a very broad and diverse sense) circle
in London. Salt and his friends drew inspiration from Shelly’s critique of
civilization and his (and also Thoreau’s) concepts of nonviolence and civil
 82

disobedience. Ruskin and Tolstoy were the other inspirations. Gandhi as a

young apprentice of the Society read with a great interest many very-recent and
even ‘just-out’ books of such variety. The influence was indeed long lasting.
But during this sojourn, he also evolved as a ‘faithful’ Indian-subject of the
Empire. And the basis of this subject-hood was his legal concept of the rights
and duties within the British Empire. The apparently liberal atmosphere of
England, the more or less strict application of the ‘Rule of Law’ and the Law-
course that he was going through had its due effect on the young Gandhi. He had
read ‘Legal Maxims’ with interests. In the future course he would often quote
them. It also deepened in him the sense of a morally superior law (i.e.
jurisprudence) higher than any constitution or positive law. (Tagore also felt so,
albeit sans a legal training.) Moreover, it developed his great practical skill in
preparing petition to governments, in drafting constitutions and moving
resolutions for various political/social organizations, both in India and South
Africa.
However, in his Autobiography, Gandhi did not overtly mention whether his
development as a Right-conscious-faithful-subject of the Empire took place
during the student-days. But we can guess, by implication that this period had
cast a deep impression on his formative mind. David Hardiman, in his recent
book,18 referred to two incidents (mentioned by Gandhi himself) that are
popularly seen to have hurt Gandhi’s feeling of ‘equality’ within the Empire as
well as forged an elementary nationalism.
The first occurred in 1892 when he was roughly humiliated by the Political
Agent of Rajkot, who previously treated Gandhi in a friendly manner in London.
When he approached Pherozeshah.Mehta, eminent lawyer and nationalist leader
(through a barrister friend for his advice), Mehta told Gandhi’s friend that “such
things are the common experience of many vakils and barristers. He is still fresh
from England and hot-blooded. He does not know British officers.”19 (Emphasis
added.) The second one is very dramatic and popular and had been told and
retold by popular narratives and romantic films. It was about Gandhi’s supreme
humiliation during a train journey in South Africa, when he was thrown out of
the first class compartment (despite having a first class ticket) onto the platform
at Maritzburg. These two incidents led Gandhi to take on the course of
‘confrontation’ (albeit non-violent) with the colonial/racial regime.
But all these instances prove beyond doubt that Gandhi’s development as the
Right-conscious-subject of the Empire took place during his sojourn in England
(‘He is still very fresh from England.’). And his legal education should have
made him more conscious about the equitable status of all the subjects within
the Empire. Throughout his South-African-days, as Hardiman holds, Gandhi
‘refused to play by the largely unwritten rules of discrimination - he insisted on
his right to equality as a citizen of the Empire.’20 (Emphasis added.) His
knowledge in jurisprudence strengthened his conviction. “His approach to
politics”, writes Anthony J. Parel, “was as much jurisprudential as ethical.”21
 83

II

In South Africa, over two decades and a half, Gandhi continued to fight for
equal citizenship. ‘He consistently took’, wrote Hardiman, ‘a stance that forced
matters to a head: provoking either a crude and violent counter-attack or an
embarrassed and shame-faced retreat.’22 The method of nonviolent Satyagraha
evolved in this period. Gandhi would experiment with community living that
would help him develop his future Ashrams in India. In this period would
gradually grow his all-embracing critique of the modem/westem civilisation.
His editorial skills also would flourish now, which would establish him as a
writer-with-a-difference and provide him with a weapon to preach his ideas as
well as combat others’. In short, South Africa made him a new man and
provided him with a laboratory for experiments that would change his future
course of life.
Gandhi himself, in retrospect, thanked God for his South African experience.
“...God laid the foundations of my life in South Africa and sowed the seed of
the fight for national self-respect.”2j (Emphasis added.) But, compared to the
prevalent streams of nationalism in contemporary India, Gandhi’s nationalism
took a different course from the beginning. Far away from the caste-ridden
India, which at that time was bubbling with the excitement of the ‘Extremist’
politics (under Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bepin Behri Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai) that
drew its inspiration from the ‘Hindu nationalism’ to a great extent, his notion of
nationalism had been a multi-class-caste-community-movement-of-the-Indians.
And if we are to believe him, daily experiences of racial insults and inequality
brought him to this realization.24
The first Indian labours had been shipped to Natal from Calcutta and Madras as
far back as November 1860. By 1881, the Asian community spread to Transvaal
and then throughout South Africa. But the large Indian minority was divided
into diverse groups. On top were the rich Muslim merchants, who employed
Hindu and Parsee clerks. These groups, despite income-differences, enjoyed a
kind of social acceptance by the more tolerant whites. But the worst sufferers
were the Indian labours brought over on an indentured basis and were looked
down upon, not only by racial whites, but also by fellow Indians. They were
called ‘coolies’, which literally meant the ‘carriers’. But this became a kind of
common identity of the Indians for the whites, which, naturally, the dignity-
conscious-white-color Indians had to swallow with a pinch of salt. The Indians
were also called ‘Sammy’, used as an alternative word for coolly. It derived
from the ‘Swami’, used at the end of many South Indians.
Geoffrey Ashe referred to a piece of doggerel that appeared in the Natal
Mercury, at about the time when Gandhi was struggling through his first days in
South Africa. It contrasted the white colonialists’ happy past with their nervous
present. The piece ran like this:
We had no squalid coolies then.
With truthless tongues and artful ways;
No Arabs storeman’s unclean den
 84

Disfigured West Street in those days.

The White Man ran the kafir trade,
And was the boss in days gone by;
But now the Hindoo takes our cash.
‘Busts up’ and straightway ‘does a guy’.
With a ha ha ha and a ho ho ho,
Ramasammy soon will have to go.
Faced with such a racial anti-Indian campaign, which treated the elite and
subaltern alike, there was hardly any option for the just-founded Natal Indian
Congress (instantly founded to protest over a proposed bill that would deny
voting rights to the Indians), if it had to be organizationally successful, to draw
its ranks from all the quarters of the Indian community. And, contrary to the
native-Indian situation, where the Muslim-elites lagged far behind the upcoming
Hindu English-educated elite, in South Africa, it was the Muslim merchants
(mainly Gujrati in origin), who were considered as the leaders of the Indian
community. That is why, the Natal Indian Congress was largely funded by these
merchants, who, in order to retain Gandhi as the Secretary, appointed him as
their (twenty in number) legal advisor at an annual payment of 300 sterling
pounds. Not only, Muslim merchants and their Hindu and Parsee clerks, but also
the Indians, who were converted to Christianity, joined the organization. But
soon it shed its ‘elite’ character through the dramatic case of Balasundaram26, an
indentured labour, who had been brutally beaten by his master.
The Natal Congress stood by him and this incident drew other hapless Indians
of the labouring classes towards the Congress. Thus, the Natal Indian Congress,
with Gandhi as its very agile founding-Secretary, was not only free from
communal/caste feelings, but also became free from the ‘elitist’ character of the
Indian National Congress. Again, unlike the demagogic/hyperbolic character of
the INC-leaders (the moderate-extremist alike), the Natal Congress under
Gandhi was active round the year and undertook many tasks, which, in India,
would have been regarded as the programme of a social-reformist organization.
The objectives of reforms had been very ambitious. These were: to increase
knowledge of India among the community, to introduce Indians to their own
history and literature and to do social and charitable work among them. A good­
will building effort among the Indians and the Europeans was also to be
undertaken. An ‘Educational Association’ was proposed to act as a platform of
exchanges for the English-speaking Indian youths, who were bom in the colony.
At the same time, it also undertook to develop political consciousness (this
primarily meant making conscious about the Rights) in the community. Thus,
unlike the INC, the Natal Indian Congress developed primarily like an ‘interest
group’ to settle terms with the colonizers to secure better living conditions and
some basic political rights for the Indians. Its other social programmes, such as,
eradication of illiteracy, training in English and hygienic habits had never been
undertaken by the INC. Gandhi would carry this new style politics that blended
politics with social reforms (a kind of politics preferred by Tagore and later the
poet hailed Gandhi on this account) with him even in India.
 85

Soon this new politics took an ethical direction. We know about Gandhi’s
quest for religion-as-morality. Like his student days’ London, South Africa too
provided him with many opportunities of interactions with the Christians of
different varieties. He also read Carlyle’s biography of Muhammad. He began to
assimilate the teachings of different religions in his own inimitable way. He also
minutely studied the Gita in this period. And found the reflection of all the
ideals (including Ruskin’s and Tolstoy’s philosophy) in the Karmayoga of the
Gita. But the importance of Tolstoy and Ruskin as a moral as well as practical
critique of the modern industrial civilisation can hardly be overemphasized.
As a member of Henry Salt’s circle in London, he had a brief introduction of
anarchist literature of different varieties. Thus the names of Tolstoy and Ruskin
were not unfamiliar but he had not read them thoroughly at that time. But now,
at South Africa, he got to know them by heart. First he took up with Tolstoy’s
The Kingdom of God is Within You, which completely won him. Like a prophet,
he advocated for a simple life of a farmer and a total renunciation of force.
Therefore, the Russian literary-genius condemned the institution of State as
‘unholy’ (since State was a power-structure based on force) and the Church as
‘fraudulent’, because it sanctified the State. On the other hand, he had a chance-
introduction to John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, courtesy, Henry Polak, a
newfound friend, who lent Gandhi this book for a train-journey.
He considered that the arguments of Ruskin in this book could be summarized
in three maxims: 1) That the good of the individual is contained in the good of
all; 2) That a lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s inasmuch as all
have the same right of earning; and 3) That a life of a labour, i.e. the life of the
tiller and the handicraftsman is the life worth living.27 All these principles would
act as the founding stones of his future doctrine of Sarvodaya, which literary
meant ‘General Good’ or the ‘Welfare of AH’.
According to Ashe, Gandhi ‘misunderstood’ Ruskin’s maxims. “The second
maxim [as understood by Gandhi] is not there, the third only doubtly.”28 Gandhi
too, admitted that he had ‘dimly realized’ the second maxim. “This dim
realization that dictated the three-point summary was an amalgamation of
Tolstoy, Edward Carpenter’s Simple Life doctrine, the memory of Mariann Hill
[A monastery and convent of the Trappist Order, which he often visited and
found that place a ‘quite little model village’ a true republic that practised
vegetarianism and lived on farming and handicrafts], the theory of the Ashram
in Hindu religion, and the theory of corporate property in Hindu law.”
All these led him to found a settlement at Phoenix, fourteen miles from Durban
(popularly known as the Phoenix Settlement), on a cooperative basis - its main
activities, beside common farming and cooking, also comprised the publication
of Indian opinion - the journal that not only represented Indian interests but also
published various ethical discourses. Around this journal grew a self-reliant
cooperative community of Indians and a few white-followers (who worked for
the press) of Gandhi, who had overcome the hazards of a very hard life. It was,
indeed, a miniature republic under Gandhi’s spell and many years later when he
would be defining ‘Village Swaraj’ - the building block of the Sarvodaya - as a
 86

‘complete republic’29, he definitely had in mind, the model of the Phoenix, built
to materialize Ruskin’s ideal. However, in 1910, to do away with some
inconveniences, a new settlement was founded, at a 1,100 acres farm owned by
Gandhi’s friend and follower Hermann Kallenbach, at Lawley, twenty-one miles
from Johannesburg. The settlement, known as the Tolstoy Farm, was a second
Phoenix in spirit, but with a difference. It was a ‘home’ for the Sayagrahis and
of a number of children and adolescents. Gandhi not only stressed on
compulsory labour and vocational training, but also became involved in the
education of the young members - which indeed was full of experiments.
But his faith in and struggle for equal rights within the Empire continued for a
long time. That is how he tried to justify, not without self-defeating hesitations,
his war-involvements. Although in all the times (during the Boer war, Zulu
‘rebellion’ and World war I) he organized/served in the ambulance-corps and
did not take part in violence, he had to pass through the ordeal of inner struggle.
However, his objective (at least in case of the Boer war) was twofold: to
perform loyal duty to the British Empire, in which he demanded his rights as a
citizen and to dispel the image of the Indian as a ‘coward’ in the eyes of the
average Englishman.30 In those days he firmly believed that “India could
achieve her complete emancipation only within and through the British
Empire.”31
In India, any Congress leader, who adhered to the same view, would have been
branded as a ‘Moderate’. Gandhi’s admiration for and association with Gopal
Krishna Gokhale, the Moderate stalwart of India, could lead one to see the
shadow of Moderate-policy in his politics. But even if so, even if there were
‘Moderate’ ingredients in Gandhi’s politics - it was also filled with spirited
activism, unknown not only to Moderates, but also to the Extremists in the
Indian National Congress. Also the Extremists, when they went into direct
confrontations with the British, during the Swadesi Movement, did not have
such an ethical rigour (which at many times seemed unbearable, even to the
faithful followers).
The guiding principle behind such an ethics was (as Gandhi declared) Truth as
understood empirically by its applicant. For him, Truth signified all the
‘positive’ qualities - like love (not carnal), reverence, cooperation, non­
violence, renunciation, honesty, self-reliance etc. - enshrined in all the religious
teachings. It would arm the protagonist with such a moral force that even the
toughest opponent could be won without any physical/mental violence. Gandhi
applied this weapon of Truth (the ‘Truth-Force’) i.e. a non-violent movement
against a racial ordinance in 1906. Apparently this movement had similarities
with the already famous Passive Resistance. But Gandhi was aware of the
difference: his movement would be not only non-violent it would also mean
non-hatred for the opponent. He himself, later compared Satyagraha with that of
Passive Resistance. While Passive Resistance was a political expediency,
Satyagraha was a moral weapon. Again, Passive Resistance was the weapon of
the weak - a ‘negative’ weapon because it was for the persons who could not
afford to resist actively. But Satyagraha was the weapon of the bravest.
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Moreover, Passive Resistance was not as universal in its application as

Satyagraha?u So Gandhi, from the beginning, was in search of a new name for
the new movement and after some contemplation the name, Satyagraha, came
into being. In Gujrati, it meant ‘firmness in Truth’ or, simply, ‘Truth-Force’32.
Thus Gandhi not only undertook a different course in terms of recruitment of
cadres (irrespective of religion/caste/class/language), activism of various sorts
and foundation of an ‘ideal’ society, but also in terms of application of ‘Truth-
Force’ - a non-violent movement charged with ethical righteousness. The
nationalism thus conceived and practised by Gandhi in South Africa, differed
from the Moderate-Extremist line of Indian nationalism in many respects.
Another point of difference was whereas the Indian National Congress
(Moderate-Extremist differences apart) never took part in wars as a mark of
cooperation with the British, the Indians, under Gandhi’s leadership, in South
Africa did that for thrice. Yet, in spite of such a record of cooperation as the
‘citizen of the Empire’, Gandhi launched a most fundamental epistemic/cultural
critique of the Modern Western civilization - unprecedented by any of the native
Indian national leaders. His Hind Swaraj bore it all.

Ill

In June 1909, Gandhi sailed to England. He intended to mention certain points

in the negotiation process (initiated by Smuts and Botha, the Boer war-heroes)
towards the union of the South African colonies into a single Dominion. In this
sojourn, an abortive one (in terms of his main objective), Gandhi came in
contact with different brands of Indian Revolutionaries, ‘anarchists’ as he called
them. Their arguments turned his attention seriously to his own country’s future.
The outcome was a ‘seminal’ pamphlet Hind Swaraj or the ‘Indian Home rule’ -
which he wrote, originally in Gujrati, in ten days, between 13 and 22 November
1909, on board the ship Kildonan Castle, on his return trip to South Africa.
According to Anthony J. Parel, there is something ‘heroic’ about this book33.
The whole manuscript was written on the ship stationery, and the writing went
on such an extreme pace that when the right hand got tired, Gandhi continued
with the left: forty out of 275 manuscript-pages were written by the left hand. It
is also a rare work, which he himself translated from Gujrati into English. It
should be mentioned that even his Autobiography was translated by his
secretary. Hind Swaraj was serialized in Indian Opinion and a copy went off to
Tolstoy.
According to Parel, “Hind Swaraj is the seed from which the tree of Gandhian
thought has grown to its full stature.” For B. R. Nanda, it was his ‘confession of
faith’34 and Dennis Dalton described it as “a proclamation of ideological
independence”35. Romain Roland saw in this book, ‘the negation of Progress
and European science’36. For Raghavan N. Iyer, it was the fundamental point in
Gandhi’s moral and political thought, which severely condemned the modem
civilization.363 However, Partha Chatterjee finds that “on the surface it is
indeed a critique of the modem civilization.”37 (Emphasis added.) This book
 88

also laid down the founding stone of a kind of nationalism, hitherto unknown to
the torchbearers of various streams of Indian nationalism.
In this book, Gandhi openly acknowledged his intellectual debts to the Western
as well as the Indian sources. He himself, especially directs the readers38 of Hind
Swaraj to read six of Tolstoy’s works, namely, 1) The Kingdom of God is Within
You (where Tolstoy presents Christianity as a doctrine of nonviolence and
conscience); 2) What is Art? (in which, Tolstoy rejects the doctrine of
autonomous art, i.e. art for art’s sake); 3) How Shall We Escape?\ 4) The Slavery
of our Time; 5) The First Step and the controversial 6) Letter to a Hindoo.
He also acknowledged the influence of a large number of nineteenth century
British critics (initially introduced during his student-days as a member of the
Salt circle) of the new industrial civilization. Among them, Ruskin had been the
most influential. It was from him that Gandhi derived his basic economic
philosophy. Ruskin’s books: A joy for Ever and Its Price in the Market and the
Political Economy ofArt criticized the famous Art Treasure Exhibition, held in
Manchester, in 1857. Ruskin’s dictum that ‘blankets’ must come before ‘silk
laces’ - influenced Gandhi considerably to highlight the ‘basic needs’ aspects of
common people than the art objects. But more influential was Ruskin’s Unto
this Last, which, as we have seen, inspired Gandhi to establish the Tolstoy Farm
at Phoenix,
The text was written in a dialogical style (Gandhi, would use this style in
future, not so directly, to initiate polemics in his journals) - as a form of a
dialogue between a newspaper Editor (i.e. Gandhi) and a Reader (i.e. a
composite of various groups of modern Indians). “It is significant”, Parel
reminds us, “that Gandhi chose for himself the role of a newspaper editor - a
very modern figure - not that of a traditional guru.”39 Divided into twenty short
chapters, Hind Swaraj dealt with historical reflections in eleven chapters, while
the rest deal with the philosophical ones.
The historical reflections begin with an assessment of the contribution of the
Indian National Congress towards the rise of Indian nationalism. It is curious
that Gandhi jumped onto a somewhat heated debate with the ‘Reader’ when he
(Gandhi) acknowledged with gratitude the contribution of the Congress in
fostering the ‘Home Rule wave’40. Although he had adopted a synthetic and
assimilatory line in assessing the role of the Congress - his reference to and
even defence of the role of the Moderates including Dadabhai Naoroji and
Baddurudin Tyebji and especially Gokhale, made it clear about his sympathies
for the Moderates. Surprisingly, he even mentioned the role of A. 0. Hume and
Sir Wedderbum in the foundation of the Congress and other sympathetic
Englishmen (causing more displeasure for the ‘Reader’) because “if we shun
every Englishman as an enemy, Home Rule will be delayed. But if we are just to
them, we shall receive their support in our progress towards the goal.”
Did Gandhi like to repeat his South African experience in India, in which many
whites - Christians and Jews - served as activists in the Satyagraha to restore
the dignity of the Indians? Or, did it reflect his still-adherence to the view that
Indian emancipation would come through the Empire? Whatever be the reason,
 89

it is significant that he highlighted the Moderates’ contributions in the post-Surat

Session (1907) period, which saw the Congress split between the (Moderate run)
official Congress and the Indian National Party (headed by the Extremists). In
this light, it is further important to note that Gandhi not only disapproved of the
manner by which, some journals of the Extremists (two of these journals were
edited by Tilak himself) attacked Gokhale, but also he did not mention the name
of any Extremist leader (in the first chapter), who had contributed to the
development of the Home Rule movement.
However, despite such showering of reverence on the Moderates, he gradually
acknowledged the importance of the Swadesi Movement (1905)41, led mainly by •
the Extremists, as the direct cause behind the Home,Rule movement. Also in the
concluding chapter42, he would make it clear that neither the politics of the
Extremists nor of the Moderates would serve the purpose. When asked by the
baffled ‘Reader’, whether Gandhi was taking a ‘third party’ line, the latter
answered in the negative. “I would serve both the moderates and the extremists.
Where I should differ from them, I would respectfully place my position before
them, and continue my service.”43
He rather sought to approach a synthesis between the two conflicting lines of
the Congress. “I would say to the extremists, “I know that you want Home Rule
for India... This you would never obtain by force of arms. Brute force is not
natural to the Indian soil. You will have, therefore, to rely wholly on soul-
force’” 44(Emphasis added.) And to the moderates he would plead: ‘Mere
petitioning is derogatory: we thereby confess inferiority. To say that British rule
is indispensable is almost a denial of the Godhead.”45 He would adopt this line
of synthesis again and again during his most valuable involvement in Indian
politics. And, whether he admitted it or not, his was indeed a very different
position.
A through analysis of the causes and consequences of British rule in India was
made between chapters VII - XII. The causes are, on the one hand, the
commercial and political interests of the British and, on the other, the political
and moral decay of the Indian society. “Napoleon is said to have described the
English as a nation of shopkeepers. It is a fitting description. They hold
whatever dominations they have for the sake of their commerce. Their army and
their navy are intended to protect it. When the Transvaal offered no such
attractions, the late Mr. Gladstone discovered that it was not right for the
English to hold it. When it became a paying proposition, resistance led to the
war. Mr. Chamberlain soon discovered that England enjoyed a suzerainty over
Transvaal. It is related that someone asked the late President Kruger whether
there was gold in the moon? He replied that it was highly unlikely, because, if
there were, the English would have annexed it.”46 But despite their lust for
wealth and power the British could not have won India, without the assistance of
the Indians themselves. “The English have not taken India: we have given it to
them. They are not in India because of their strength, but because we keep
them... They had not slightest intention at the time of establishing a kingdom.
Who assisted the Company’s officers? Who was tempted at the sight of their
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silver? Who bought their goods? History testifies we did all this. In order to
become rich all at once, we welcomed the Company’s officers with open
arms.”47
Having made this finding Gandhi severely criticized the uncritical attitude,
towards the modern civilization (as represented by the British), of the middle
class and even of the revolutionaries, who dreamt to win India’s freedom. It
would be great blunder to build Swaraj on such a foundation because “ in effect
it means this; that we want English rule without the Englishman. We want
tiger’s nature, but not tiger: that is to say, you would make India English, and
when it becomes English, it will not be called Hindustan but Englishstan. This is
not the Swaraj that I want.”48
And this brought forward Gandhi’s critique of modem civilization - “a
civilization only in name’. Fundamentally he attacked the very notions of
modernity and progress. According to him, modem civilization made man a
prisoner of his craving for luxury and self-indulgence, released the forces of
unbridled competition and brought upon the society the evils of poverty, disease,
war and suffering. ‘The people of Europe today live in better-built houses than
they did a hundred years ago. This is considered an emblem of civilization, and
this is also a matter to promote bodily happiness. Formerly they wore skins and
used as their weapons spears. Now they wear long trousers, and for embellishing
their bodies, they wear a variety of clothing, and, instead of spears, they carry
revolvers containing five or more chambers.”49 Gandhi provided a long list of
comparison between the activities and devices of the ancient and the modem
times. And the way he denounced the modem civilization - lock, stock and
barrel - would lead any reader to brand him as an ‘anarchist’ and ‘anti-modem’.
But he was also aware of the dominant/privileged position of the West
compared to the other cultures and peoples and how the West defined
‘modernity’ as Westernization. “Ifpeople of certain country, who have hitherto
not been in the habit of wearing much clothing, boot etc., adopt European
clothing, they are supposed to have become civilized out of savagery.”50
(Emphases added.) Thus the West determined the definition of the modern
civilization, which, in turn, opened the floodgates of industrial production and
became the source of inequality, oppression and violence.
Gandhi also launched an extensive attack against the constitutive features of
modem civil society.51 He criticized the modem parliament and party politics as
‘hypocritical and selfish’ and the newspapers, often worshipped as Bible of the
modem-English-voters, as ‘dishonest’. Even the profession of the lawyers (his
own profession!) was not spared: since the lawyers live on others’ disputes. Also
the science of medicine came under his bitter criticism since it enabled people to
consume more than dealing with the removal of disease. Moreover, he was
highly critical of the ‘division of labour’ between the mental and the manual
ones and which privileged the intellectual labour over the manual one.
Another area of concern was the issue of Hindu-Muslim unity. In South Africa,
we have seen, he had been successful in developing a united front of the Indians
(along with several white-friends of India) against the racist regime. Here too (in
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the very first chapter), he made it clear that Indians (of different religious
communities) needed to forge unity among themselves and they should include
the sympathetic English friends. But he was really preoccupied with the Hindu-
Muslim question. His conception of the Indian nation as a multi-community
entity also clearly developed here, “India cannot cease to be one nation because
people belonging to different religions live in it. The introduction of foreigners
does not necessarily destroy the nation, they merge in it. A country is one nation
when such a condition obtains in it. That country must have a faculty for
assimilation. India has ever been such a country... If the Hindus believe that
India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dreamland. The
Hindus, the Mahomedans, the Parsees and the Christians who have made their
country are fellow countrymen, and they will have to live in unity if only for
their own interest. In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion
synonymous terms: nor has it ever been so in India.”52
And regarding the ‘inborn’ Hindu-Muslim enmity he held the British
responsible. “The phrase [‘Hindu-Muslim enmity’] has been invented by our
mutual enemy... They have long since ceased to fight. How, then, can there be
any inborn enmity? ...[W]e did not cease to fight only after the British. The
Hindus flourished under Moslem sovereigns, and Moslems under the Hindu...
Should we not remember many Hindus and Mahomedans own the same
ancestors, and the same blood runs through their veins?”53 (Emphasis added.)
He further pointed out that there had been many deadly conflicts between the
followers of Shiva and Vishnu, “yet nobody suggests that these two do not
belong to the same nation. It is said that the Vedic religion is different from
Jainism, but the followers of the respective faiths are not different nations.” He
would even let the ‘sacred’ cow (which he respected very much) go than kill a
“Mahomedan brother. However, the best way, according to Gandhi, in this
matter was to ‘approach my Mahomedan brother and urge him for the sake of
the country to join me in protecting her... If I were overfull of pity for the cow, I
should sacrifice my life to save her, but not take my brother’s.”
It may be mentioned here that Gandhi’s concept of Swaraj found its fullest
expression here. Swaraj-as-autonomy was very popular at the time of writing the
book. And by ‘autonomy’ people understood the ‘Dominion Status’ of India like
that of Canada or Australia. But Gandhi used the term in a very broad and
inclusive sense. And it primarily meant, as we have seen, a spiritual freedom
from the materialistic wants and values fostered by the modern-Western
civilization. Therefore, in the concluding paragraph, he reminded, “In my
opinion, we have used the term ‘Swaraj’ without understanding its real
significance.’ (Emphasis added.) Further, it should be noted, Gandhi seldom
used the term ‘independence’ because his ambition was ‘much higher than
independence.” “I want India to come to her own and that state cannot be better
defined by any single word than Swaraj .”S4
And it all began with the Hind Swaraj. Therefore, it would not be out of
context to quote the following observation of Parel55:
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“Thus by 1909 Gandhi had integrated all the essential ingredients of his
political philosophy into a coherent whole, ingredients that were derived from
the East and the West He had by then acquired a definite philosophical vision
which enabled him to assess the relative significance of things that concerned
him - the problem of the self, of the Indian praja, the nature of Indian
nationalism, the modem industrial civilization, colonialism, the extreme
selfishness of the Indian middle classes, racialism, the spectre of rising violence
in India and the legitimation of terroristic violence by extreme nationalists. It is
from that vision that the basic argument of Hind Swaraj emerges.”

IV

But Hind Swaraj had a little bearing on Gandhi’s unfinished business in South
Africa. It would belong to his next phase of life in India. And Gandhi, after
several abortive attempts, would finally sail for his country via London, where,
during a brief stay he would organize, at the beginning of World War I, an
Ambulance Corps by the Indian, a decision that could not draw support, even
from a follower like Polak. However, this venture too, was not very successful.
And Gandhi would reach India, in January 1915 and settle down there to
embrace a new course of national struggle for freedom.
India, as we have seen, had been witnessing a number of official and
unofficial/outlawed ‘political’ courses during this time. The Congress was
divided and the Swadesi Movement had lost its vigour. The ‘Home Rule’
movement was separately led by Tilak and Annie Beasant. The heroic ventures
of the national-revolutionaries had failed to draw the masses. Gandhi came to
the scene at this juncture. And the way he analysed the home-situation and the
conclusion that he drew in Hind Swaraj, in 1909, it is clear that he was aware
not only of the contemporary Indian politics, but also was aware of his future
role.
And precisely that role would be to foster an assimilatory - as broad as
possible - all-India nationalism, based on anti-modern values. For him, both
objectives were interrelated. A broad-based national front should be formed
against the British, which was the embodiment of the evils of modern
civilization. Thus to oppose modernity was to oppose the very foundation of the
British rule. Therefore, his adherence to the anti-modem/anarchist, non-violent
and Simple Life doctrines gave him the moral basis to challenge the British rule
in India. Moreover, he could preach the ideal of Swaraj, in different rhetorical
voices to the masses of different communities: Ram-rajya for the Hindus;
Khuda-I-raj for the Muslims and the Kingdom of God for the Christians.
However, the objective of assimilation could be actualised only on various
strategic and tactical compromises. But this dilemma - of being moral and yet
making compromises - would be the key to understand the Gandhian politics
and nationalism.
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Here it must be humbly submitted that very carefully and consciously, we use
the terms ‘assimilatory’ and ‘anti-modem’ together, without making a hierarchy
of these words. But many Gandhi-scholars have stressed on the assimilatory role
of the Gandhian nationalism. For example, Buddhadeva Bhattacharyya, while
acknowledging the importance of his moral (anti-modem/anarchic) objectives
and the dilemma between the ‘dreamer’ and the ‘realist’ Gandhis, saw Gandhi’s
nationalism mainly as a multi-class [caste-community] movement.56 While,
scholars like Gopinath Dhawan57, highlighted the moral/anarchist nature of
Gandhi’s politics. Partha Chatterjee58, on the other hand, focused on Gandhi’s
critique of the modem civil society (based mainly on Hind Swaraj) not only as
the key to his concept of nationalism but also as a central theme of the Indian
nationalist thought - between the ‘Moment of Departure’ (i.e. urge for
modern/material development yet retaining traditional/spiritual values) as
represented by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the ‘Moment of Arrival’ (i.e.
urge of the independent Indian state for rapid modern/industrial development) as
represented by Jawaharlal Nehru, stood the ‘Moment of Manoeuvre’’ (that
challenged the very foundations of modernity and offered an alternative course
of development), represented by the lonely figure of Gandhi.
But Chatterjee too, did not take Gandhi’s anti-modernism as pure anarchism,
rather for him, it was a manoeuvrable step, which was used to organize and
mobilize the agrarian masses (even by deception, because the word ‘manoeuvre’
also carries this sense) behind the elite leadership of the Congress - the
population who did not belong to the discourse of modernity. Gandhi’s politics -
style, content and form-wise - appealed to them more. Thus again we enter the
same circle of reason that credited Gandhi for his assimilatory nationalism - as
the originator of India’s mass nationalism.
However, it must be kept in mind that even a Marxist Gandhi-scholar like
Bhattacharyya did not suspect Gandhi’s anarchic/anti-modem ideals and
practices as a scheme for organizing masses: rather a note of tragedy could be
heard from the following lines. “One notices that Gandhi did not ignore the
demand or underrate the value of the ultimate.. .[I]n his corporate activity he laid
stress on the immediate - one step was enough for him - only to draw further
sustenance for attaining to the ideal he cherished. Gandhi, in a rather exalted
philosophical mood, could well share Shelly’s anarchist vision of man in a
world which still lies outside history and outside time, but the realist in him
would wake up again to come to grip with the realities with a grim
determination to reshape this time-bound world.”59 (Emphases added.)
Thus there are fundamental differences in viewing Gandhi’s nationalism -
theory and practice - and its effect on the Indian struggle for freedom. Although
both the views, discussed above, agreed on the interrelation between two most
important components of his nationalism - i.e. the urge for assimilation and
insistence on anti-modernism - which gave the Gandhian nationalism its
uniqueness, yet, for one set of view it was all but a scheme, a move that Gandhi
willy-nilly (or even unconsciously) accomplished (and Chatterjee is not alone in
this line, others had been more crude), while for the other it was a ‘grim’ affair
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to surrender, to give in - the cherished ideal at the altar of realistic demands.

Also we find a ‘one step forward, two steps back’ kind of theory in
Bhattaeharyya’s analysis (he too, is not alone, in this line of argument), which
held that compromises made by Gandhi were ‘only to draw further sustenance
for attaining to the ideal he cherished’.
Let us now consider the development of Gandhi’s concept and practice of
nationalism in India, in the light of the above views and see which set of views
explains our case in an all-comprehensive manner, or should we look at it from a
different angle.

Within a month of his homecoming Gokhale, Gandhi’s mentor died. It was a

terrific blow for the disciple because it was on Gokhale’s insistence that he came
to undertake a new role in India. But soon, Gandhi, in his own unique way,
overcame the situation and rose to fulfil the tasks laid down by his ‘master’. And
a remark of Gokhale’s had impressed upon him: that he should travel about
observing India for a year, and ‘keep his mouth shut’. This period, Gokhale
thought, would give Gandhi an ample scope for apprenticeship in Indian politics
and also a chance to know India by heart. Gandhi undertook this vow. But he
founded his ashram, with a large financial support from the rich cotton-mill-
owner, Ambalal Sarabhai, at Sabarmati, near Ahmedabad round about this time.
He travelled the length and breadth of the country as a ‘third class’ railway
passenger dressed like a fakir, which soon earned him the title (already ascribed
by Tagore) of ‘Mahatma’. But for the most of the common people, it had a
religious significance - for them, he was a saint, who had come for their
emancipation. At the ‘Kumbha Mela’ (a sacred pilgrimage/festival, attended by
millions of Hindus from different parts of India) at Hardwar, he was asked
several questions by many sadhus and others, not only on religion, but also on
what should be the proper dress for a ‘Mahatma’. Thus, Gandhi’s politics had
begun to be associated with religion in India, before its formal beginning - a
phenomenon, which had not happened in South Africa. To a great extent Gandhi
himself was responsible for this image: his dress, his vegetarianism, his
religious-moral discourses along with observation of various rites (like fasting
on sacred days) and organization of daily-prayers had brought him such an
image.
But in this very first year, he also met several of his future political
comrades/followers like Ballabhbhai Patel, who was not much impressed by the
first meeting. However, he attracted many young men, particularly after his
speech at Benaras Hindu University Central College at the request of Annie
Besant60. Following almost the Hind Swaraj-Wne, in the presence of Lord
Hardinge, the Viceroy and several other jewelled and gorgeous ranks of the
nobility, Gandhi lamented the use of a ‘foreign language’ like English even in a
native gathering, attacked the ‘richly bedecked noblemen’ and argued that ‘our
 95

salvation can only come through the farmer. Neither the lawyers, nor the
doctors, nor the rich landlords are going to secure it.’ He even questioned the
tight security arrangement for the Viceroy, adding much embarrassment to the
organizers. But it won Gandhi a lifelong disciple, Vinoba Bhave: another
follower was the young G. D. Birla, future business tycoon (who funded
Congress and Gandhi’s ashrams in a big way and Gandhi spent his last days and
was killed in his premises in Delhi). He also addressed a few other meetings,
where he propounded his old thesis that the Indian Swaraj must come through
the Indian way.
Thus, in the first year, he seldom spoke, but whenever he did, he extended his
arguments of Hind Swaraj that India should achieve Swaraj following an anti­
modem western (and thereby, Indian) path. But at the end of 1916, his other
objective: the ideal of a broad-based assimilatory platform, to a great extent,
came into being during the Lucknow session of the Indian Congress. Earlier the
Extremist breakaway group of the Congress led by Tilak and others merged with
the official Congress. Also the separate Home-Rule Leagues lead by Beasant
and Tilak agreed to work in cooperation. But the most significantly, the
Congress and the Muslim League came into an agreement to work together for
Swaraj, It was within this session that Gandhi met Jawaharlal Nehru, another
foremost political disciple-to-be. He also met Rajkumar Shukla61, a simple
peasant from Champaran, who insistently drew Gandhi’s attention towards the
exploitation of the indigo planters in the Champaran region in north Bihar. And
this provided the ‘Mahatma’ with the first chance to prove the magic of
Satyagraha in the Indian soil613.
In Champaran, the peasants were obliged by the European planters to grow
indigo on a certain percentage of their land and to part with the crop at a fixed
rate. This was inevitably detriment to the peasants’ interest. But the local
administration remained dumb to their discontent. Gandhi had no idea about the
Champaran region or about the indigo plantation. But he arrived there on
Shukla’s insistence and found the ground perfectly ready for the Satyagraha
experiment. As he had done before, like an empiricist, he sought to conduct a
first-hand inquiry. But before he could do so, the news that a Mahatma had
arrived to inquire into their misery spread like wild fire and that brought
thousands of peasants for a darshan. Sensing a mass unrest the police first asked
Gandhi to leave the district, and when he refused to comply, he was summoned
to the court. Thousands followed him and sat for a dharna, making the
embarrassed magistrate postpone the trial and release Gandhi without a bail.
After this first round of moral victory, Gandhi proceeded with his inquiry and
at the same time taught the peasants the principles of Satyagraha. He also
organized volunteers to instruct the peasants about the elementary hygiene and
run school for their children. Observing the growing popularity of his
movements an unnerved district authority appointed an official inquiry
commission, making Gandhi one of the members. And the unanimous report
submitted by the commission went in favour of the tenant-peasants although
Gandhi, in his characteristic way, agreed to minor concession in favour of the
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planters. This gesture, of not ignoring opponent’s point of view and a

simultaneous ability to argue his case convincingly, impressed Sir George
Rainy, a member of the Commission, very much.

After this victory, Gandhi had to hurry back to Ahmedabad, where the textile
workers were confronting with the mill-owner, Ambalal Sarabhai, the same
person who funded Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram in a big way. Gandhi found that
the workers were protesting over a cut in the wartime allowance: the withdrawal
would lead them to immense misery as prices of all the basic commodities had
in the mean time shot up. Having satisfied himself that the workers’ demands
were justified, he advised the workers to go for a non-violent strike.
However, after a few days, the zeal among the workers seemed to die down -
the workers’ fear for a long time starvation brought them to the brink of a
violent reaction. This time too, Gandhi intervened. He himself went for an
indefinite fast (a weapon he would use many a time later and would popularise it
as an effective method of protest) until a settlement could be reached. This had a
due effect on both the parties in conflict. At the end of three days both agreed to
settlement. The fast rescued Gandhi from a sense of helplessness.
The self-imposed suffering created in him a feeling of exaltation. But it raised,
as before, a moral question. Was not this, another form of coercion, or to be
more critical, a non-violent violence? From Mary Parker Follett62, American
Public Administration scholar to a critical admirer such as Tagore raised such
questions at various points of time. For example, Follett held that conquest by
suffering was morally the same as conquest by force. Tagore too, we know,
criticized the cult of ‘unquestioning obedience’ fostered by the Gandhian
leadership. To the question by the American missionary, E. Stanley Jones, “Isn’t
your fasting a species of coercion?” - Gandhi replied, “Yes, the same kind of
coercion which Jesus exercises upon you form the Cross.’”63 Krishnalal
Sirdharani and many others argued that although Satyagraha should not be taken
as a form of non-violent coercion but “it is equally misleading.. .to call
Satyagraha a pure and simple process of conversion as Gandhi and some of his
followers would have it. There is an element of what, for want of a better term,
we shall, call compulsion in it...”64 In this context, Bhattacharyya reminded us65
that the “dictionary meaning of the term ‘coerce’ is to compel, to constrain.
Nehru interchangeably used the terms coercion and compulsion.” Gandhi
actually used the word ‘compel’ in his earlier writings. Therefore, argued
Bhattacharyya, “coercion being associated with employment of physical force
should be avoided in an exposition of Satyagraha.”
However, keeping the debate in abeyance for a moment, let us move over to
the scene of agrarian trouble in the Kheda district of Gujrat, where the peasantry
were on the verge of destitution owing to a widespread failure of crops. And the
authorities were insistent on collecting tax at the usual rate. Gandhi advised all
the peasants - better off or poor - to practice civil resistance by not paying
taxes. The movement lasted for four months and ended at the Government
decision to suspend the assessment for the poor peasants. This victory too was
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marred by a compromise. The taxes were only suspended, not withdrawn. But
this had been a typical Gandhian feature: in most of the cases, he preferred
gradualism to radicalism. And this was reflected in his next move.
After the successful {almost successful, because Gandhi was not much happy
with the Ahmedabad Satyagraha) completion of the three area-specific
Satyagraha experiments, he did not immediately jumped onto the fire-bed of
anti-British struggle. Rather, he undertook a most strenuous task of recruiting
soldiers for the British force at the last phase of the World War I. Did he
undertake this task (most embarrassing for the friends because this time he did
not take any hesitant step like forming an ambulance corps, but recruited men
for direct war - which was the antithesis of non-violence) for tactical reasons, to
gain from the British some liberal measures after the war? Or did he still feel
like a righteous subject of the Empire, and a bit indebted too, because without
somehow hesitant steps of the colonial authorities, the Satyagrahas in
Champaran or in Kheda could not have attained success so quickly?
Whatever be the reason, Gandhi, as usual, presented his new role in the cloak
of a moral logic of supreme importance. In a letter to Polak, he wrote: “What do
you say to my recruiting campaign? It is for me a religious activity undertaken
for the sacred doctrine of ahimsa. I have made the discovery that India has lost
the power to fight - not the inclination. She must regain the power and then, if
she will, deliver to a groaning world the doctrine of ahimsa. She must give
abundantly out of strength, not her weakness. She may never do it. That to me
would mean her effacement. She would lose her individuality and would be like
the other nations - a worshipper of brute-force. This recruiting work is perhaps
the hardest task yet undertaken by me.”66 (Emphases added.)
Thus by joining war, India would and should shed the cowardly fear of
fighting. And having attained such bravery and courage, India would be fit to
deliver the doctrine. Thus better follow the path of brave-violence than
cowardly-ahimsa. The same argument had been repeated by Gandhi on many
occasions. But what was really striking here was not simply that Gandhi, by this
activity, had made once again a ‘compromise’, but the fact that more than the
doctrine of ahimsa per se, his concern was India or the role of India as the guru
offearless-ahimsa in ‘a groaning world’. The ‘nationalist’ in Galndhi took over
the uncompromisingly ‘moralist’ in him.

VI

But the ‘nationalist’ was disillusioned soon. Instead of offering a liberal

system, the Government’s gift, after the British victory in the war, was the
Rowlatt Bill, which proposed to curtail severely the civil liberties and vesting
the executive with arbitrary powers of arrest and imprisonment without proper
trial. Gandhi was so anxious that he came to Delhi, to listen for the first time a
legislative debate over the proposed Bill, with the hope that passionate and
convincing speeches by the Indian leaders against this repressive Bill would
 98

bring sense to the viceroy. But his hopes were misplaced. It dispelled his
temporary despondency and brought him to the thick of a new battle. The
Government soon received a rude shock to see the erstwhile ‘recruiting
sergeant’ of the Empire turn a rebel.
“It was the Rowlatt Bill”, wrote Krishna Kripalani66®, “which hustled Gandhi
into the storm of active Indian politics. From 1919 to his death in 1948, he
occupied the centre of the Indian stage and was the chief hero of the great
historical drama which culminated in the independence of India.” Since the
proposed bill was not a local issue the struggle had to be launched on a national
scale. And the first step was to be (Gandhi decided on a tour of South India) a
call upon the country to observe a general strike {hartal) and observe the day as
one of fasting and prayer.
The day was observed with an unprecedented mass enthusiasm which took
even Gandhi by surprise. But the people went frenzy after Gandhi was arrested
on his way from Bombay to Delhi. Government put down the movement with a
heavy hand, the police opened fire on the processionists. People went mad and
in Ahmedabad a sergeant had been done to death. Gandhi imposed on himself a
three-day fast for his ‘Himalayan Miscalculation’ and suspended the Satyagraha
on the ground that “Satyagraha is pledged to non-violence, and, unless, people
observe it in thought, word and deed, I cannot offer mass Satyagraha.” Almost
the same words would be repeated after the fateful Chahri Chaura incident,
which led Gandhi to suspend the Non-cooperation movement.
He broke his fast on 13 April 1919, the same day General Dyer ordered fire on
an unarmed gathering at a park called Jallianwala Bag, with one entry-exit gate,
in Amritsar. The casualties as admitted by the Government were 400 killed and
between 1,000 and 2000 wounded. But the public inquiry conducted by Gandhi
himself estimated 1200 killed and 3600 wounded. The Jallianwala Bag massacre
shook the history of Indo-British relationship. Tagore surrendered his
Knighthood. Gandhi shaken by this revelation started a new all-India campaign
for an all-out non-cooperation with the British. But in the mean time a new crisis
cropped up among the Muslim community. The Turkish Sultan, who was also
the Caliph of Islam, had been defeated and dislodged by the British in the war.
Two Indian Muslims - the Ali brothers (Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali)
campaigned against this move by the British and formed an all-India Khilafat
Committee.
Questions were -raised, even by Gandhi’s followers, regarding the
appropriateness of the Khilafat movement. The Turkish Sultan, who was the ex-
officio Caliph, was a tyrant in the true sense and he obstructed the development
of Turkey'as a modern state. But Gandhi’s assimilatory mind saw it as a chance
to foster a Hindu-Muslim unitedfront against the British. He persuaded both the
Khilafat Committee and the Congress to accept his programme of Non­
cooperation against the Government. The Congress at the Nagpur Session
adopted it.
The programme67 sponsored by Gandhi consisted of a) surrender of titles, b)
refusal to attend Government functions, c) withdrawal of children from
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educational institutions connected with the Government, d) gradual boycott of

courts, e) refusal of the military, especially to serve in Mesopotamia, f) a
complete .boycott of the Reformed Council and g) boycott of foreign goods.
Earlier, at the Calcutta Session, Gandhi declared that if there was sufficient
response to his programme, Swaraj could be attained within a year. He argued
that Swaraj was not only the attainment of certain constitutional rights and
reforms - rather it represented a state of Mind. ‘ The British cannot rule us by
mere force... if we refuse to supply them with men and money, we achieve our
goals, namely Swaraj, equality, manliness.’68
But the slogan - ‘Swaraj within a year’ - had been much criticised and proved
to be detrimental when after a year the movement could not produce a
spectacular result. Although several spectacular hartals and the bon-fire .
programmes were organized, the initial excitements seemed to have died down.
Raising of this kind of a ‘magic-slogan’ had been criticized by many including
Tagore as a ‘short-cut’ way to lure the people. But more serious criticisms were
in store for Gandhi. Tagore raised69 the important objections to a cult of
obedience under Gandhi’s leadership leading to curbing of individual-mind’s
liberty; to the boycott programme of educational institutions, which lead to the
closure of the minds; to the programme of imposition of charka over machines,
curbing the spirit of modem innovations; the bon-fire of foreign cloths on moral
ground (that foreign cloths were ‘impure’) leading to profits of the Bombay
mill-owners; and to fostering of an overall negative mentality as the foundation
of Swara/'/nationalism.
In reply70, Gandhi tried to dispel the fear of the poet that “non-co-operation is
intended to pave the way to real, honourable and voluntary co-operation based
on mutual respect and trust. The present struggle is being waged against one­
sided combination, against the armed imposition of modem methods of
exploitation masquerading under the name of civilization.” The withdrawal of
students from the government run institutions was justified on this point. Gandhi
did not answer the charge of spreading a cult of obedience. However, he pointed
out that Tagore had “a horror of everything negative.” But quoting the poet’s
favourite religious text, Upanishads, Gandhi argued that “final word of the
Upanishads (Brahmavidya) is Not. Neti [i.e. ‘Not This.’] was the best
description the authors of the Upanishads were able to find for Brahman.”
(Emphasis added.)
On the other hand, many objected to the ways that Gandhi discouraged and
admonished the enthusiastic participants and even disowned several movements
in the economic fields - agricultural as well as industrial - which spread
sporadically in the rise, of the Non-Cooperation, in the name of a united national
front. B. R. Nanda referred to the series of strikes in Assam and the Eastern
Bengal among the tea-garden labourers, staff of the river steamers and Assam
Bengal Railways, in which a Congress-leader like J. M. Sen Gupta took a
prominent role. Gandhi disapproved of such an action in the following words,
“In India we want no political strikes. We do not need an atmosphere of
 100

unsettled unrest. It hampers our progress towards final stages of our

programme.”71 (Emphasis added.)
And Gyanendra Pandey72 referred to the 19-point Instructions issued by
Gandhi, in February 1921, to the rebellious peasants of Awadh of the United
Provinces. A sporadic non-payment of tax movement as well as spontaneous
looting of the local landlords’ houses and battles with the police took place
under an itinerant preacher Baba Ramchandra. The first 9 points of Gandhi’s
instructions, if one follows closely, stressed on not to take any independent
decision and maintaining absolute non-violence and even cooperation when
dealing with the landlords, i.e. the Zamindars: ‘It should be borne in mind that
we want to turn zemindars into friends.’ (Emphasis added.) The rest of the
points could have been applied to any place of Satyagraha, which included
promotion of Hindu-Muslim unity, boycott of foreign cloths and law courts,
removal of untouchability, treatment of the women with dignity, compulsion of
spinning and several other self-disciplinary measures.
Gandhi, however, had assumed the role of an expert miner, who had been
working through a mine full of explosive gases. “I am moving in a coal mine
full of explosive gases with a safety lamp, with a due sense of responsibility, and
with the full knowledge, that in spite of the apparent safety of the lamp, the
gases may, by some mysterious process, any moment explode. If they do, I shall
not shirk responsibility.”3 (Emphases added.) So ‘explosions’ were anticipated
even before the Chauri Chaura violence. And the dangers of ‘explosion’ always
came from the ‘masses’ - peasants, workers and low-caste poor-illiterates -
who, by contemporary terminology, are known as the ‘subalterns’, without
whose participation, such a huge-scale movement could never be possible.
In contrast, Gandhi relied heavily on the educated middle-class to lead the
movement. ‘It was on this class’, wrote Nanda, ‘that he depended for the success
of his programme of boycott of British-controlled legislatures, courts, schools
and foreign cloths; it was from this class that he wanted sacrifices and sought
workers to gradually initiate the urban and rural masses into the discipline of
Satyagraha.’233' It was for this reason perhaps that he urged the peasants of
Awadh not to take any hasty step against the landlords and if there were real
grievances, “hey should be reported to Pandit Motilal Nehru and his advice
followed.”4
The outcome of the Non-Cooperation, despite its abrupt suspension after the
Chauri Chaura incident, was a mixed one, which had a direct impact on the
future course of Indian national struggle. Although the Government began to
regain its authority, after a year, it was never able to regain its prestige that it
used to command from the educated classes. Like the Swadesi period, this time
too, the educated Hindu middle class, in most cases, took the mantle of
leadership, in a bigger movement participated by various sections of the masses.
However, unlike the Swadesi period, as pointed out by Nirmal Kumar Bose75,
“One heard less about the glories of ancient India...and its cultural sequel.”
(Emphasis added.) But in contrast, argued Bose, the Muslims drifted towards a
 101

form of cultural nationalism - especially, the educated Muslims sought for a

distinct identity and certain religious rights.
Thus the Non-Cooperation/Khilafat saw a never-before-conscious-
consolidation among the Muslims and also a decline in the Orientalist type of
so/l-revivalist Hindu nationalism. However, a new kind of communal politics
and organizations emerged soon, in the 1920’s, among the Hindus. Moreover,
the Congress headed for a new split between the ‘pro-changers’, i.e. who sought
to lift the ban on participating in the elections for the Reformed Council - led by
C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru, and the ‘no-changers’, i.e. the Congressmen, who
stuck to the policy of Non-Cooperation. Gandhi, on the other hand, in the
Belgaum session, in 1924, unsuccessfully moved a proposal that the Congress-
membership should be based not on property or educational background, but on
manual labour - to be measured on a stipulated quantity of cotton yarn spun by
the member. After this failure at Belgaum, he favoured the formation of an All-
India Spinners’ Association and concentrated on the organization a number of
small-scale Satyagrahas and somehow withdrew from public politics.

After five years, he rose again to lead a countrywide movement - the Civil
Disobedience - with the demand of Puma Swaraj, i.e. the Complete
Independence. The situation of the country was changing fast. Trade disputes
became frequent between 1928 and 1930 leading to industrial strikes and the rise
of Leftism. Communalism among both the Muslims and the Hindus was heading
towards the point of no return. Also the militant nationalism continued to assert
itself more aggressively in different parts of the country. The leaders of different
political shades formed an All-Parties Conference, which, rejecting the reforms-
proposal of Sir John Simon, entrusted a committee to consider and determine the
principles of the Constitution of India, under the chairmanship of Motilal Nehru,
in May 1928.
However, the Nehru Committee Report could not satisfy the pan-Islamic
Muslim leaders like Mohammad Ali. Also the young socialists within the
Congress were unhappy with the Report. The first All-India Socialistic Youth
Congress, under the chairmanship of Jawaharlal Nehru rejected the Report of the
Nehru (Sr.) Committee in the following terms:.
“In the opinion of this Congress complete Independence and not Dominion
Status is the immediate political objective of India not as an ideal but as
necessary preliminary to a communistic society and rejects altogether the Nehru
Committee Report for the following among other principles, viz.:
“That it allows the bourgeoisie to compromise with the British Imperialists by
establishing the so-called Dominion Status which involves the safeguard of the
vested interests, landowning, the feudal and capitalist, and sacrifice the interests
of the masses.”76
In this background, at the Lahore session in 1930, Gandhi himself moved the
resolution of Puma Swaraj, which was accepted by the Congress. Here we must
remind that an amendment to Gandhi’s proposal, proposed by Subhas Bose for
making preparation for the establishment of a parallel government had not been
 102

accepted because, as explained by Gandhi, the organization was not yet ready
for such a step and the country had to move with caution rather than be swayed
by immediate emotions.
Thus, once again, we get a cautious nationalist here, who would not jeopardize
his priorities by responding to immediate impulses, yet he would not completely
ignore the demands of the time. And like the movement of 1920-22, he would
harp on a common issue that touched the common masses, Hindus and Muslims
alike. But this time the ‘issue’ would be a secular one, not religious: Civil
Disobedience by a breach of the Salt Law that barred Indians to produce salt
without paying taxes. For many years, Gandhi had considered, taxation of one of
the vital daily needs like salt to be an immoral law. But he knew there was a
chance of an outburst of mass violence in. the wake of the movement. Worried
about the tensions in the industrial and communal scenario, he was concerned
also with the growing popularity of militant nationalism among the urban youth.
“There is”, he observed, “undoubtedly a party of violence in this country. It is
growing in strength... I have in mind that secret, silent persisting band of young
men and even women who want to see the country free at any cost... They will
not listen to no argument.. .unless they are convinced that there is a programme
before the country which requires at least as much sacrifice as the tallest among
them is prepared to make.” (Emphasis added.) So Gandhi, who, throughout his
life, opposed of adopting any immoral (violent) means to reach a moral goal,
had to offer a moral programme in which the spirit of sacrifice of the
revolutionaries is quenched satisfactorily, without sacrificing their basic
objective. And the Civil Disobedience was a panacea. “Civil disobedience is a
sovereign remedy of transmuting the undisciplined life-destroying latent energy
into disciplined life-saving energy whose use ensures absolute success.”77
(Emphasis added.)
On 12 March 1930, Gandhi, with a chosen band of 79 associates embarked on
a 241-mile march to Dandi on the sea from Sabarmati Ashram and breached
successfully the Salt Law on 6 April. The whole country plunged into the
campaign with an unprecedented enthusiasm. Nearly one lakh of people suffered
imprisonment during the span of the movement, while during Non-Cooperation
it had been about 30,000. However, Gandhi was released to participate in the
Round Conference Talk in London. Although there had been no concrete
political outcome, Gandhi had utilized the situation for clearly voicing some of
his radical economic as well as political ideas. The movement, temporarily
suspended for the Conference, resumed again, on Gandhi’s return. He was jailed
again. And the movement too, after the completion of two years began to wane
appreciably. On 7 April 1934, almost a year after from his release, Gandhi
eventually decided that Civil Disobedience should be withdrawn. He made the
following statement:
“ It is claimed for Satyagraha that it is the complete substitute for violence or
war. It is designed, therefore, to reach the heart of both the so-called Terrorists
and of the rulers... But indifferent civil resistance of many, grand as it has been
in its result, has not touched the hearts either of the Terrorists or of the rulers as
 103

a class.... I must advise all Congressmen to suspend Civil Resistance for

Swaraj... They should leave it to me alone. It should be resumed by others in my
lifetime only under my direction, unless one arises claiming to know the science
[of Satyagraha] better than I do and inspires confidence.”78 (Emphasis added.)
Was this an expression of a self-conscious Supreme Commander (an
Adhinayak that Tagore was looking for), who would, like the proverbial King
Canute, would like the tides of a nation-wide movement listen his diktats? One
can hardly ignoret5he fact that he did not want to leave the matter to a political
party or a committee of collective responsibility. We know, he was not of very
high opinion about political organizations including the State and the political
parties: his ideal ‘SarvodaycT would be based on party-less democracy as party-
system symbolized centralized control. But did not the above statement reflect
the will of a person to control the nation beyond the structure of the party? Or
did he fear that the emerging radical youth leadership within the Congress would
no longer agree on every point with the Mahatma? Or was it, as the left
historians (like Sumit Sarkar) suggested79, he was anxious about the worries of
the industrialists, who would no longer support an indefinite unrest?
Anyway, serious disagreement again took place between Gandhi and the
Congress, giving the former a chance to withdraw from the party and launch a
‘Constructive Programme’. The issues like decentralization - of economics and
politics and anti-untochability programme would now become his priority. In
order to support the whole-time constructive workers, a new organization,
Gandhi Seva Sangh came into being. The members of the Sangh were not to
take part in ‘active politics’ but devote themselves wholly to the economic
regeneration of the villages.
But he could not remain aloof for long and the issue of taking part in the
Constituent Assembly, proposed by the Government of India Act, 1935, came
before him. His address, in the Faizapur session of the Congress (1936), is worth
quoting: “the decision of a Constituent Assembly can be taken only when you
have Swaraj at your door. You can call a Constituent. Assembly when you have
got foil strength. It cannot meet in Delhi but in the remotest village.”80
(Emphasis added.) Thus despite his address, he reaffirmed his position of a ‘no­
changer’ and reflected his current ideal of the Gram Swaraj. However, this
position also took a radical change as he argued in an article entitled ‘Congress
Ministries’ in Harijan, on 17 June 1937, “Tire Government of India Act is
universally regarded as wholly unsatisfactory for achieving India’s freedom. But
it is possible to construe it as an attempt, however limited andfeeble, to replace
the rule ofthe sword by the rule ofthe majority.”81 (Emphasis added.)
Bose found that “Gandhi was evidently speaking here as a ‘Constitutionalist’,
nearer to the Liberals, whose stand was identical. And in taking this stand,
Gandhi had moved as far away from anarchism as possible. This elasticity of his
stand made it possible for him to work with adherents of different political
views, so long as he considered that his fundamentals have not been
compromised.” Thus for Bose, Gandhi could work with people of different, even
opposing ideas (earlier, we have seen, he could talk in different voices like a
 104

ventriloquist to different communities), but, and this is a 6/g-but, he would do so

without compromising his fundamentalsP Thus following Bose’s analysis one
could argue that anarchism was not a fundamental ideal for Gandhi but non­
violence definitely was. Thus he warned the Congress Ministries not to use
police or military under any circumstances. “If they find that they cannot run the
State without the use of the police and military, it is clearest possible sign, in
terms of non-violence, that congress should give up office...”83

However, this supreme position of non-violence in Gandhi’s political

philosophy including nationalism had been, to some extent, compromised in the
ensuing years of the Quit India movement. Bhattacharyya referred to Gandhi’s
description (when he was under house arrest at the Aga Khan Palace) of the
brutal repression as ‘leonine violence’ and compared the violence of the people
with the violent resistance of the Poles against the Germans and regarded it as
‘almost non-violent.’ “If the Government grow mad out of anger and perpetrate
unprecedented frightfulness against weak, unarmed men and women, and if in
consequence the people out of sheer desperation are seized with frenzy and
thoughtlessly commit untoward acts, history will pronounce their violence to be
non-violent...”84
In fact, the preceding months of the Quit India (August 1942) saw a new-
Gandhi, who could not wait for an ideal development of the principles of non­
violence to launch a new nation-wide movement, in the middle stage of the
World War II, when Sir Stafford Cripps failed to achieve the support of the
Indian political parties to help defend the Indian empire from the Japanese
aggression. But would, under the prevailing situation, the proposed movement
lead to a worst kind of anarchy in place of an ‘ordered anarchy’ of the British?
‘That is the consideration’, Gandhi replied, ‘ which has weighed with me all
theses 22 years. I waited and waited until the country should develop the non­
violent strength necessary to throw off the foreign yoke. But my attitude has
now undergone a change. I feel that I cannot afford to wait. If I continue to wait
I might have to wait till doomsday. For the preparation that I have prayed for
and worked for may never come, and in the mean time I may be enveloped and
overwhelmed by the flames that threaten all of us. That is why I have decided
that even at the risks that are obviously involved I must ask the people to resist
slavery... the people have not my ahimsa, but mine should help them.’85
However, the Congress leadership was not for the movement. Even the ever-
enthusiastic Jawaharlal Nehru was initially hesitant. “His [Nehru’s] personal
contacts make him feel much more the misery of the impending ruin of China
and Russia than I can... In that misery he tried to forget his old quarrel with
imperialism. He dreads much more than I do the success of Nazism and
Fascism. I argued with him for days together. He fought against my position
with a passion, which I have no words to describe. But the logic of facts
overwhelmed him. He yielded when he saw clearly that without the freedom of
India that of the other two was in great jeopardy.”8
 105

This observation certainly highlighted the differences between Gandhi and

Nehru on launching of a new nation-wide movement at a critical moment of the
World War I, when the Axis forces were not only attacking the British and the
French forces, but also made the Soviet Union a target and China fell prey to the
aggressive Japan. Here Nehru’s position almost tallied with that of the Indian
Communists, who began to treat the erstwhile '‘imperialist'' war as the ‘people’s’
war, after Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Also in this observation there
was a teasing admonish when Gandhi remarked, “In that misery he tried to
forget his old quarrel with imperialism.” (Emphasis added.) He also confessed
that his fear for the Nazism and Fascism was less than Nehru’s. By implication,
it showed Gandhi’s priority of nationalism over the prevailing international
situation and that he did not evaluate (as Nehru did) the Nazism as something
worse than the British imperialism. Not only Gandhi, many Congressmen of that
time, shared this view. That is why, in the Tripuri Session many delegates were
heard shouting: ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’ (Hail to Mahatma Gandhi) -
‘Hindustan Ki Hitler ki jai’87 (Hail to the Hitler of Hindustan, i.e. India).
The August Movement was unprecedented in the history of the freedom
struggle. Almost all the important leaders were behind the bars and leadership
rested on the inexperienced younger leadership. In many cases people organized
spontaneous movements - some times these became violent and included the
programmes like sabotage by tearing of railway tracks. Although Gandhi was
detained away, but in spirit, as Bose put it, “It was Gandhi and Gandhi
everywhere.”88 The feeling of the helplessness of Japanese successes, which had
been deep rooted in the public mind, had to a great extent disappeared. Many
‘National Governments’ were formed in different parts of the country.
But the situation worsened. With the progress of war, India was put under
severe economic strain and a worst kind of famine broke out in Bengal taking a
toll of 1 !4 million lives according to official sources. After the fall of the South
East Asia, the British also wanted to end the political deadlock in India. About
this Gandhi wrote a letter (27 July 1944) to the Viceroy, Lord Wavell and made
this offer, “...[I]n view of the changed conditions mass civil disobedience
cannot be offered and that full co-operation in the war effort should be made by
the Congress, if a declaration of immediate Indian independence is made and a
National Government responsible to the Central Assembly... If there is a desire
on the part of the British Government for a settlement, friendly talks should take
the place of correspondence.”89 (Emphases added.) Thus the call for'‘Do or Die’
ended in an offer of cooperation in exchange of the most coveted goal.
In the mean time, in July and September 1944, Gandhi met Jinnah to work out
a ‘solution’ (based on a plan, drafted by Rajagopalachari) to form first an
interim ‘united’ government (of Congress and the Muslim League) and then,
after the removal of the British, the issue of plebiscite for Pakistan to be settled.
However, the meetings and correspondences between Jinnah and Gandhi could
not bring about any ‘positive’ result.90 And India, through the stormy and last
phase of the post-war Anti-British struggle (November 1945 to February 1946),
and finally, through a ghastly phase of communal riots, had moved to Partition.
 106

VII

Thus, in reality, Gandhi’s dream of an assimilatory anti-modem Independent

Indian nation almost fell apart. The prospect of Hindu-Muslim unity, which he
had always considered to be the core of this assimilation process, crushed in
such a violent way that Partition of India became imminent: independence sans
unity - both politically and civil-society-wise - had been the ‘fate’ of the Indian
nation. Another plank, his anti-modernity principle, in terms of decentralization
of economy and politics - had been by-passed by the new Indian state. Yet,
despite such monumental failures, Gandhi’s importance in the Indian national
struggle can hardly be overemphasized. And he raised some unique questions
about nationalism, in the realm of political thought.
Although Gandhi’s concept of Nationalism should be read as an evolutionary
concept, it had certain constant elements. Many writers - in Gandhi’s
contemporary times and afterwards - had described/criticized him as an
exclusivist nationalist. The intensity, pitch and fervour with which he had
launched his anti-British campaigns, led, even many of his admirers (like
Tagore) take him as a narrow-minded leader indifferent to the world outside. It
is true that on most occasions, he focused on his objectives (especially the
question of Swaraj) and the means to achieve them with such an adamant and
single-track way and imposed these on his followers that the above image easily
gained ground.
Gandhi, it is interesting to note, was aware of this image. And he consistently,
almost throughout his career, tried to dispel it. In the beginning of the Non­
cooperation, he wrote, ‘But I am free to confess that in the present state of
feeling, an Englishman may easily interpret the motive of the letter [to the Sikhs,
in which Gandhi appealed to forgive the murders as ‘their punishment cannot
recall the dead to live’]. For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am
patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt
England or Germany to serve India. ’'1 (Emphases added.) The question is why
was he so anxious to present himself as a non-exclusivist? Gandhi, as we have
seen, had no wish to pretend as an internationalist - above nationalism - rather,
when Fascism was criticised throughout the world and in India by the
‘progressive’ section of the people, he confessed that he could not but launch a
movement (the Quit India) even if it caused to disturb the British in its fight
against Fascism.
Thus one cannot just undermine the above statement as a pretentious and
image-building effort. Not only during the Non-cooperation, but also at many
other times he used to repeat this spirit and one could hardly ignore a
transcendental understanding of Nationalism (to some extent like Tagore’s) in
Gandhi’s thought. We may consider these words, written almost a year after the
above statement: “Though there is repulsion in Nature, she lives by attraction.
Mutual love enables Nature to persist. Man does not live by destruction. Self-
love compels regard for others. Nations cohere because there is mutual regard
 107

among individuals comprising them. Some day we must extend the national law
to the universe even, as we have extended the family laws to form nations - a
large family.”92 (Emphasis added.)
Five years after the launching of the Non-cooperation, he continued with the
same spirit: “Let us understand what nationalism is. We want freedom for our
country, but not at the expense or exploitation of others... I do not want the
freedom of India if it means the extinction of England or the disappearance of
Englishmen. I want freedom of my country so that other countries may learn
something form my free country... Just as the cult of patriotism teaches us today
that the individual has to die for the family, the family for the village, the village
for the district, the district for the province, the province for the country, even so
a country has to be free in order that it may die, if necessary, for the benefit of
the world... my idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if
need be the whole country may die so that the human races may live... Let that
be our nationalism.”93 (Emphasis added.)
Thus India’s freedom was not for its exclusive growing into powerfulness (as
Tagore suggested in Nationalism or about the Gandhian nationalism during the
Non-Cooperation) - rather it was for the spirit of voluntary sacrifice that could
be decided only by a free country. It also shows that there had been a hierarchy
in his priority: India’s freedom always stood first before the international issues.
And the logic was that of a free/voluntary participation of the Indian nation,
which could not be achieved without independence. But that does not mean that
he was unconcerned about the world, for him it was a matter of priority.
Again, five years later, just before the Salt-Satyagraha, he quoted a favourite
legal maxim: Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. Which meant, “Use thy own
property so as to injure thy neighbour’s.”94 “It has been well said that the
universe is compressed in the atom. There is not one law for the atom and
another for the universe.” This position had led many scholars like
Bhattacharyya to argue that “For Gandhi, there was no antithesis between
nationalism and internationalism.” Indeed, in 1925, Gandhi wrote, “It is
impossible for one to be internationalist without being a nationalist.
Internationalism is possible only when nationalism becomes a fact... It is not
nationalism that is evil, it is narrowness, selfishness, exclusiveness which is the
bane of modern nations which is evil.”95 (Emphasis added.) Here clearly the
reference of the ‘evil’ qualities were attached to modern nations.
But the Indian nation was a different one, as it was riot organized on the basis
modem civilization. Rather the distinctive feature of the Indian nation was its
principles of non-violent Satyagraha, founded on anti-modern values. That is
why, regarding the question of defence of a nation in case of an outside
aggression, Gandhi referred to the defending nation (he had a picture of future
India in mind) as the ‘satyagrahV country. Thus his nationalism was not a
simple nationalism it was a Satyagrahi nationalism96.
Gandhi rarely used the term ‘independence’ or ‘nation’, preferring concepts
such as Swaraj, Swadeshi and ‘Indian Civilization’. This different background
of Gandhi’s nationalism had led Bhikhu Parekh to argue, “Since the civilisation
 108.

Gandhi wanted the Indian state to nurture was sympathetic, tolerant, spiritual
and open, his vision of India had little common with collectivist, monolithic,
aggressive and xenophobic nationalism of some of the Western and central
European countries.” 7 (Emphasis added.)
David Hardiman also held a similar view, “Gandhi’s nationalism was thus
broad and catholic. He hardly regarded India as a nation in a narrow sense;
rather it was a civilisation with its particular qualities. He did not condemn
Europe in any blanket fashion - in contrast to those demagogic nationalists who
whip up support by playing on popular ethnic and racial antagonism. To often,
the critique of the later of Europe and ‘eurocentricity’ is deployed to condemn
anything which they dislike in the modem world - e.g. human rights, women’s
assertion, democracy, socialism, secularism and religious toleration - while the
modem technologies of organisation and disciplinary control which are of use to
them - e.g. the authoritarian state, new form of surveillance, policing, torture
and armaments - are all absolved from being eurocentric or antinational... He
was not interested in chauvinistic nationalism - he aspired to a universalism
that soared above narrow political goals.” (Emphases added.)
Thus, Gandhi, according to Hardiman, was not, at least theoretically, a critique
of modernity to satisfy his whims or for opportunistic reasons. Yet, Hardiman
held, “Gandhi sought to define Indian nationhood in terms of certain cultural
markers of an antiquity. This exercise entailed a series of inversion of colonial
epistemologies of Knowledge/Power. For example, the colonial depiction of an
Orient steeped in religion and superstition was inverted into a statement of the
cultural superiority of an ancient civilisation that was based on a soaring
spirituality... Gandhi advanced highly essentialist arguments about the culture
of each nation.”99
Nigel Harris had also observed this problem in Gandhi’s notion of assimilatory
nationalism. “Gandhi attempted to solve the same [i.e. the communal] problem -
the creation of almost a new religion, founded in toleration and love - had little
real following. Religion for most people was not a philosophy, but a set of
conservative social practices. Gandhianism was no more than a tolerated
sentimentality for much of the Congress leadership...’100 (Emphasis added.)
Harris moved further taking a position nearer to that of Partha Chatterjee. “Yet”,
argued Harris, “it was Gandhi who selected the thoroughly anglicised and
secular Nehru to be his heir, and thus predetermined the nature of the leadership
of independent India. By implication, Gandhi accepted that his objectives were
utopian, incompatible with the world of competing states ”m (Emphasis added.)
Thus Gandhi’s nationalism enters the labyrinth of the Third World nationalism:
trying to strip off the modem-western cloak yet living under the compulsion of
the modem world. In this discourse the peasants, bearer, of the anti-modem
values, are mobilized as a nation yet distanced from the national state. “And so
we get”, argued Chatterjee, “in the historical effectivity of Gandhism as a whole,
the conception of a national framework of politics in which peasants are
mobilized but do not take part, of a nation of which they are part but a national
state from which they are forever distanced... [I]t will remain a task of modem
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Indian historiography to explain the historical process, in its specific regional

organizational forms, by which these political interventions inherent in
Gandhian ideology became the ideological weapon in the hands of the Indian
bourgeoisie in its attempt to create a new state structure. The ‘message of the
Mahatma’ meant different things to different people... It is not surprising,
therefore, that in the unresolved class struggles within the social formation of
contemporary India, oppositional movements can still claim their moral
legitimacy from the message of Mahatma.”102 (Emphasis added.)
A contrary view on this point had been developed by Ashis Nandy. Unlike the
arguments of Chatterjee and Harris, which took Gandhi almost as a tragic hero,
who had to organize the nation on the basis of anti-modernity and yet had to, as
the final moment came, bury his ideology in the wake of a modern state - to
fulfil his role in the scheme of the ‘passive revolution’, Nandy saw103 a cognitive
conviction (beside ‘ethical’ choice) of Gandhi behind his anti-modem position.
“Gandhi’s mid-Victorian Puritanism and almost panicky fear of sexuality have
popularised the idea that he primarily rejected the ethics of modernity and the
tinsel glitter and ‘immorality’ of the city. Similarly, the occasional serious
gestures he made to elements of the modem world (such as the testimonial he
gave to the Singer sewing-machine company and the personal closeness he
maintained with some industrial tycoons in India) prompted many of his
political heirs to believe that he took an instrumental view of everything
modem. They tried therefore to realize Gandhi’s ethical goals through modem
statecraft and social engineering. Others took such gestures to be final proof that
Gandhi was a flawed, unconscious modernist. They saw Gandhi’s ethics as an
aspect of an unrealisabie utopia and his concept of a decent society as an
individual oddity...
“Such attempts to contain Gandhi by praising his ethics and devaluing his
thought, though common enough, flout the first principle of Gandhi’s critique of
modernity. Gandhi rejected modernity not on grounds of ethics alone but also of
knowledge; the two reasons were intertwined. He would have been horrified by
any plea for non-violence which was not informed with the belief that non­
violent methods were superior to Machiavellianism, morally and strategically.
Traditional technology, too, was for him an ethically and cognitively better
system of applied knowledge than modern technology... that is why attempts to
contextualize by referring to the relatively humane conduct of the British in
India fail after a point. He was not a saint whose methods accidentally
succeeded under a benign regime which recognized his saintliness, rather, the
methods had a built-in awareness of the nature of man-made suffering of our
times: they had evolved in a proper police state which had racism as its declared
ideology, South Africa.” (Emphases added.)
Hardiman also seemed to share this view to a great extent. He showed that not
only the ‘oppositional movements’ in India, along with the national state, drew
their moral legitimacy from the message of Gandhi but a number of different
movements in different countries drew their inspiration from the methods of
Satyagraha of Gandhi. It included the Pacifist Movement in Europe and
 110

America - before and after the World War II, the African-American Struggle in
the USA (led By Martin Luther King), the movement against apartheid in South
Africa and the Green Movement in Germany. The power of Gandhi’s non­
violence, after India’s independence, was recognized in most parts of the world,
because “armed struggle against authoritarian states was hardly an option, due to
massive discrepancy between the military might of the rulers and people.”
Bhattacharyya also held the same view and argued that after the implementation
of the Indian Arms Act, 1878, it became almost impossible for the Indians to
organize an armed movement against the British. Therefore, Gandhi’s
movement was not only an ethical movement but also a practical one (as argued
by Nandy).

We can also approach the importance of non-violent Satyagraha in Gandhi’s

concept of nationalism from another angle. We know that Gandhi’s unrealisable
ultimate goal of ‘philosophical anarchism’, could be implemented only through
the establishment of a non-violent (as far as practicable) decentralized state -
both economically and administration wise. It would be a state based on the
principles of Sarvodaya or Village Swaraj, in which the self-sufficient village
would be “a complete republic, independent of its neighbours for its vital wants
and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity...”104
(Emphasis added.)
Thus we see that Gandhi’s nation and nationalism moved on two planes: social
assimilation or integration (multi class-caste-community spirit) as
political/national unity and administrative as well as economic decentralization
as the form of state. But how to reconcile these two planes - social integration
that symbolized national unity, on one hand, and decentralization that
symbolized proto-anarchy on the other? Would not the element of
decentralization jeopardize the integrity of a nation and worse, would not that
lead to serious indiscipline that Gandhi had always feared of? Hardiman
reminded us that “For Gandhi swaraj entitled above all what he called a
‘disciplined rule from within’.”105 Therefore, Gandhi did not at all opt for a
movement by a band of unruly/undisciplined Indians. We know, he bore an
abhorrence for violent indiscipline, though throughout his life, he had to risk it
in the course of launching mass-scale civil disobedience. Thus the main problem
of Gandhi’s theory and practice of nationalism had been how to encourage the
masses to organize themselves under decentralized village-swaraj and yet bound
them in the thread of national unity; how to call them to disobey law and
authority and yet restrict them for committing any act of gross violence?
The means, which would enable Gandhi to do this miracle, to discipline the
masses and bound them as a nation was satyagra-as-non-violence. This had
been indeed a unique disciplinary technique invented by Gandhi. In 1931,
during the Round Table Conference in London, Gandhi wrote, “It takes a fairly
strenuous training to attain to a mental state of non-violence. In daily life it has
to be a course of discipline though, one may not like, for instance, the life of a
 Ill

soldier... The perfect state is reached only when mind and body and speech are
in proper coordination .”106 (Emphases added.)
Thus the success of non-violence rested on disciplining body and mind like that
of a soldier. Gandhi, we know, from his youth had been experimenting with self­
imposition of various kinds of discipline in dietetics, sex, love for possession
etc. Such a self-discipline or self-restraint would lead to ‘renunciation’.
Punctuality was another instrument of discipline. Gandhi had, it may be noted,
among a few things, praised the Western value of punctuality and as a symbol
always kept a pocket watch with him. In this regard he held, “It would be a
distinct gain to the national cause if the leaders and workers strictly keep their
hours. No man is expected to do more than he can. If at the end of the day there
is surplus work left or he cannot get through it without missing a meal or
encroaching upon the hours of sleep or recreation, there is mismanagement
somewhere.”107 (Emphasis added.)
Thus discipline leads to management and construction. We have noted that
before the commencement of the Salt Satyagraha Gandhi was much concerned
about the violent acts of the national revolutionaries and. held, ‘Civil
disobedience is a sovereign remedy of transmuting the undisciplined life-
destroying latent energy into disciplined life-saving energy whose use ensures
absolute success.’ So Civil Disobedience based on non-violence was a
remedy/means to channel the undisciplined (i.e. violent) forces into a disciplined
energy for a positive/constructive (‘life-saving’) programme.
Therefore, if there was truth (satya) in the concept of decentralization and
empowerment of the village/individual, then the basis of such a decentralized
nation/state should be non-violence-as-discipline. It should also act as an
instrument of coordination and control without which no modem state can be
run. In this light the Satyagraha becomes a curious word. On one hand it
signifies insistence or urge for whatever ‘positive’ - freedom from foreign rule,
simple and self-reliant life, non-dependence on modem machines, absence of
physical coercion and exploitation, democracy from below etc - in short,
whatever he associated with the concept of Swaraj or Self-Rule. This doctrine, if
extended radically, not only stands for decentralized state and economy but also
connotes individual liberty to a great extent.
On the other hand,, the word ‘Self-Rule’ literarily means, besides Rule of the
Self, Rule over the Self and by the Self or Self-restraint, which precisely means
discipline. Thus the apparently utopian - extremely decentralized Gandhian
state and economy, including Trusteeship, could be a well operative system, if
the citizen learns and practises by heart the principles of non-violence. Only this
could ensure the automatic functioning ofpower with a least amount of coercion
by the state. Or, differently put, the decentralized state would face no difficulty
to impose control and ensure coordination, since the people, trained like the
soldier, would act responsibly in harmony based on love, and resolve the
conflicts by moral persuasion that would convert the heart of the adversary or
would compel him to accept the point of view of others without any application
of violence. That would be something nearer to Gandhi’s ideal of ‘enlightened
 112

anarchy’, because enlightenment, in any form, signifies a disciplined order built

on cognitive understanding. And the foundation of such a state would be an
assimilatory anti-modem nation bound by the same principle of non-violence-
as-discipline.

Notes & References

1. Krishna Kripalani, ‘Gandhi, the Modem Mahatma’, in Sisirkumar Ghose (ed), The
Visvabharati Quarterly, (Gandhi Number) Vol. 35, Nos. 1-4, Santiniketan, 1969-70, p.
107.

2. R.C. Majumdar, ‘Gandhiji’s Place in the History of Freedom Struggle’, in Sisirkumar

Ghose (ed), Op.Cit. p.l 18.
3. Buddhadeva Bhattacharyya, Evolution of the Political Philosophy of Gandhi, Calcutta
Book House, Calcutta, 1969, p. 480
4. Gandhi, Political and National Life and Affairs, compiled and edited by B.G. Kher,
(hereafter, PNLA), Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1967, vol. 1, p.10
5. Ibid.
6. PNLA 1, p.l 5.
7. PNLA 1, p.23.
8. Gandhian Outlook and Techniques, Ministry Of Education, Government of India, 1953,
p. 123.
9. PNLA\,?2\.

10. Vincent Sheen, Lead, Kindly Light, Random House, Random House, New York, 1949,
p. 187.
11. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story ofMy Experiments With Truth (hereafter,
Autobiography), Navajivan, Ahamedabad, 1959,p.25.
12. Ibid. p. 16.
13. Ibid.
14. For a detailed discussion, seePartha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thoughtand the Colonial
World: A Derivative Discourse, Oxford University Press, London, 1986, pp.54 - 81.
15. Rabindra Rachanavali, Achalita Sangrha (A Collection ofTagore’sAntiquated
Writings), Vol. 1, Visva-Bharati, Calcutta, 1940, pp.348-49.
16. Autobiography, pp. 15-16.
17. Geoffrey Ashe, Gandhi: A Study in Revolution, Asia Publishing'House, Bombay,
Calcutta etc. 1968, p. 43.
18. David Hardiman, Gandhi: In His Time and Ours, Permanent Black, Delhi, p. 12.
19. Autobiography, pp. 71-72.
20. Hardiman, Op. Cit. p. 13.

21. Anthony j. Parel, in the ‘Introduction’, in Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, edited by Anthony J.
Parel, (hereafter, Hind Swaraj) Cambridge University press, [ South Asian Edition:
Foundation
Books] New Delhi, 1997, p. xxxiii.
22. Hardiman, Op. Cit. p. 13.
23. Autobiography, p. 101.
24. For a detailed daily account of the South African experience, see, Gandhi, Satyagraha
in South Africa, (hereafter, Satyagraha) Navajivan,, Ahamedabad, 1959
25. Ashe, Op. Cit. p. 56
26. Autobiography, pp. 110-12
 113

27. Ibid. p. 221

28. Ashe, Op. Cit. p.83
29. Harijan, 27/06/1942.
30. Autobiography, p.l 56.
31. Ibid.
31a. See CW, Vol. XXIX, for a detailed discussion.
32. Ibid, p.235.
33. Hind Swaraj, p. xiv.
34. B. R. Nanda, Gokhale, Gandhi and the Nehrus, Oxford University Press, London, 1974,
p. 66.
35. Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Non-Violent Power in Action, New York, 1993, p.
xiii.
36. As quoted in Partha Chatterjee, Op. Cit, p. 85.
36a. Raghavan N. Iyer, The Moral and Political Thought ofMahatma Gandhi, Oxford
University Press, New York, 1973, p. 24.
37. Ibid
38. Hind Swaraj, p. 120.
39. Ibid. ‘Introduction’, p. 1.
40. Hind Swaraj, p. 14.
41. Ibid. pp. 19-23.
42. Ibid. p. 112.
43. Ibid
44. Ibid
45. Ibid, p.l 13
46. Ibid. p. 41.
47. Ibid. pp. 39-40.
48. Ibid. p.28.
49. Ibid. p. 35.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid. pp. 30-33.
52. Ibid. pp. 52-53.
53. Ibid. p. 53.
54. Young India, 12/1/28.
55. Parel, Op. Cit. p. 1.
56. Bhattachrayya, Op. Cit. p. 222.
57. Gopinath Dhawan, The Political Philosophy ofMahatma Gandhi, Navajiban,
Ahmedabad, 1951, pp. 5,317.
58. Partha Chatterjee. Op. Cit.
59. Ashe, Op. Cit. pp. 152-56.
60. Autobiography, pp. 298-99.
61 Ibid. pp. 298-99.
61a. For a detailed discussion, see D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, The Publication Division, Government of India, 1961, Vol. Ill &
Ashe, Op. Cit.
62. As quoted in Ashe, Op. Cit, p. 103.
63. As quoted in B. R. Nanda, Gandhi and His Critics, Oxford, New Delhi, 1985, p. 21.
64. Krishnaial Sirdhami, War Without Violence, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1962,
p. 264.
65. Bhattacharyya, Op. Cit. p. 337.
66. Krishna Kripalani, Gandhi: A Life, National Book Trust, India, New Delhi, 1992
(Reprint), p. 106.
66a. Ibid. 108-09.
67. Nirmal Kumar Bose, Studies in Gandhism, Calcutta, 1962, p.149.
 114

68. Young India, 22/09/1920.

69. Tagore, ‘The Call of Truth’, in Ronald Duncan (ed), The Selected Writings ofMahatma
Gandhi, Fontana/Collins, London, 1971, pp. 100-19.
70. Zb/</.pp.l21-22.
71. B. R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism, Oxford University
Press, Bombay, 1989, p. 274.
72. Gyan Pandey, ‘Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement In
Awadh, in 1919-22, in Ranajit Guha (ed), Subaltern Studies I, Oxford University Press,
New Delhi, 1986, pp. 152-61.
73a. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism, p. 403.
75. Bose, Op. Cit. p. 157.
76. Ibid. p. 176.
77. Ibid. p. 179-80.
78. Ibid. p. 185.
79. Sumit Sarkar, A Critique of Colonial India, Papyrus, Calcutta, 1985.
80. For a detailed discussion, see Tendulkar, Op. Cit. Vol. VI.
81. Harijan, 17/06/1937.
82. Bose, Op. Cit. p. 190.
83. Ibid. p. 191.
84. Bhattacharyya, Op. Cit. p. 315.
85. Bose, Op. Cit. p. 233.
86. Ibid. p. 234.
87. Nepal Majumder, Nepal Majumder, Rabindranath O Subhaschandra, (On Tagore and
Subhas Bose in Bengali) Sarswat Prss, Calcutta, 1968, p. 165.
88. Bose, Op. Cit. p. 238 passim.
89. H. N. Mitra & N. K. Mitra (ed) Indiait Annual Register (1919-47), Calcutta, 1944, Vol.
II, p. 182.
90. See for a detailed discussion, Amalendu De (ed), Gandhi-Jinnah Correspondence and
Communal Question, Ratna Prakashan, Calcutta, 1999.
91. PNLA /, p. 20.
92. Young India, 2/03/1922,p. 130.
93. Young India, 10/09/1925,p. 314.
94. PNLA /, p. 22.
95. Ibid. p. 23.
96. Bose, Op. Cit. p 119-20.
97. Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi's Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination, Delhi, Ajanta
Publications, 1995, p. 194.
98. David Hardiman, Op. Cit. pp. 16-17
99. Ibid.pAZ.

100. Nigel Harris, National Liberation, Penguin, London, 1990, p. 185.

101. Ibid.
102. Chatterjee, Op. Cit. p. 125.
103. Ashis Nandy, Traditions, Tyranny, and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness,
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1987, pp. 159-60.
104. Harijan, 26/07/1942, p. 238.
105. Hardiman, Op. Cit. p. 26.
106. Young India, 1/10/1931, p. 287.
107. Harijan, 24/09/1938, p.266.