THE UNREADEN TALES OF HISTORY

NATIONALISM IN INDIA [PART-2]

→Rebellion in the Countryside

From the cities, the Non-Cooperation Movement spread to the

countryside. It drew into its fold the struggles of peasants and tribals which were developing in different parts of India in the years

after the war.

In Awadh, peasants were led by Baba Ramchandra – a sanyasi who

had earlier been to Fiji as an indentured labourer. The movement

here was against talukdars and landlords who demanded from

peasants exorbitantly high rents and a variety of other cesses. Peasants

had to do begar and work at landlords’ farms without any payment.

As tenants they had no security of tenure, being regularly evicted so

that they could acquire no right over the leased land. The peasant

movement demanded reduction of revenue, abolition of begar, and

social boycott of oppressive landlords. In many places nai – dhobi

bandhs were organised by panchayats to deprive landlords of the

services of even barbers and washermen. In June 1920, Jawaharlal

Nehru began going around the villages in Awadh, talking to the

villagers, and trying to understand their grievances. By October, the

Oudh Kisan Sabha was set up headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Baba

Ramchandra and a few others. Within a month, over 300 branches

had been set up in the villages around the region. So when the Non-

Cooperation Movement began the following year, the effort of the

Congress was to integrate the Awadh peasant struggle into the wider

struggle. The peasant movement, however, developed in forms that

the Congress leadership was unhappy with. As the movement spread

in 1921, the houses of talukdars and merchants were attacked,

bazaars were looted, and grain hoards were taken over. In many

places local leaders told peasants that Gandhiji had declared that

no taxes were to be paid and land was to be redistributed among

the poor. The name of the Mahatma was being invoked to sanction

all action and aspirations. Tribal peasants interpreted the message of Mahatma Gandhi and

the idea of swaraj in yet another way. In the Gudem Hills of Andhra

Pradesh, for instance, a militant guerrilla movement spread in

the early 1920s – not a form of struggle that the Congress could

approve. Here, as in other forest regions, the colonial government

had closed large forest areas, preventing people from entering

the forests to graze their cattle, or to collect fuelwood and fruits.

This enraged the hill people. Not only were their livelihoods

affected but they felt that their traditional rights were being denied.

When the government began forcing them to contribute begar

for road building, the hill people revolted. The person who came

to lead them was an interesting figure. Alluri Sitaram Raju claimed

that he had a variety of special powers: he could make correct

astrological predictions and heal people, and he could survive

even bullet shots. Captivated by Raju, the rebels proclaimed that

he was an incarnation of God. Raju talked of the greatness of

Mahatma Gandhi, said he was inspired by the Non-Cooperation

Movement, and persuaded people to wear khadi and give up drinking.

But at the same time he asserted that India could be liberated only

by the use of force, not non-violence. The Gudem rebels attacked

police stations, attempted to kill British officials and carried on

guerrilla warfare for achieving swaraj. Raju was captured and

executed in 1924, and over time became a folk hero.

→Swaraj in the Plantations

Workers too had their own understanding of Mahatma Gandhi

and the notion of swaraj. For plantation workers in Assam, freedom

meant the right to move freely in and out of the confined space in

which they were enclosed, and it meant retaining a link with the

village from which they had come. Under the Inland Emigration

Act of 1859, plantation workers were not permitted to leave the

tea gardens without permission, and in fact they were rarely given

such permission. When they heard of the Non-Cooperation

Movement, thousands of workers defied the authorities, left the

plantations and headed home. They believed that Gandhi Raj was

coming and everyone would be given land in their own villages.

They, however, never reached their destination. Stranded on the way

by a railway and steamer strike, they were caught by the police and

brutally beaten up. The visions of these movements were not defined by the Congress

programme. They interpreted the term swaraj in their own ways,

imagining it to be a time when all suffering and all troubles would

be over. Yet, when the tribals chanted Gandhiji’s name and raised

slogans demanding ‘Swatantra Bharat’, they were also emotionally

relating to an all-India agitation. When they acted in the name of

Mahatma Gandhi, or linked their movement to that of the Congress,

they were identifying with a movement which went beyond the limits

of their immediate locality.

•Towards Civil Disobedience

In February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi decided to withdraw the

Non-Cooperation Movement. He felt the movement was turning

violent in many places and satyagrahis needed to be properly trained

before they would be ready for mass struggles. Within the Congress,

some leaders were by now tired of mass struggles and wanted to

participate in elections to the provincial councils that had been set

up by the Government of India Act of 1919. They felt that it was

important to oppose British policies within the councils, argue for

reform and also demonstrate that these councils were not truly

democratic. C. R. Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Swaraj Party

within the Congress to argue for a return to council politics. But

younger leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose

pressed for more radical mass agitation and for full independence.

In such a situation of internal debate and dissension two factors

again shaped Indian politics towards the late 1920s. The first was

the effect of the worldwide economic depression. Agricultural prices

began to fall from 1926 and collapsed after 1930. As the demand

for agricultural goods fell and exports declined, peasants found it

difficult to sell their harvests and pay their revenue. By 1930, the

countryside was in turmoil.

Against this background the new Tory government in Britain

constituted a Statutory Commission under Sir John Simon. Set up

in response to the nationalist movement, the

commission was to look into the functioning of

the constitutional system in India and suggest

changes. The problem was that the commission

did not have a single Indian member. They were

all British.

When the Simon Commission arrived in India in

1928, it was greeted with the slogan ‘Go back

Simon’. All parties, including the Congress and the

Muslim League, participated in the demonstrations.

In an effort to win them over, the viceroy, Lord

Irwin, announced in October 1929, a vague offer

of ‘dominion status’ for India in an unspecified

future, and a Round Table Conference to discuss a

future constitution. This did not satisfy the Congress

leaders. The radicals within the Congress, led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, became more assertive.

The liberals and moderates, who were proposing a constitutional

system within the framework of British dominion, gradually lost

their influence. In December 1929, under the presidency of Jawaharlal

Nehru, the Lahore Congress formalised the demand of ‘Purna

Swaraj’ or full independence for India. It was declared that 26 January

1930, would be celebrated as the Independence Day when people

were to take a pledge to struggle for complete independence. But

the celebrations attracted very little attention. So Mahatma Gandhi

had to find a way to relate this abstract idea of freedom to more

concrete issues of everyday life.

→The Salt March and the Civil Disobedience Movement

Mahatma Gandhi found in salt a powerful symbol that could unite

the nation. On 31 January 1930, he sent a letter to Viceroy Irwin

stating eleven demands. Some of these were of general interest;

others were specific demands of different classes, from industrialists

to peasants. The idea was to make the demands wide-ranging, so

that all classes within Indian society could identify with them and

everyone could be brought together in a united campaign. The most

stirring of all was the demand to abolish the salt tax. Salt was

something consumed by the rich and the poor alike, and it was one

of the most essential items of food. The tax on salt and the

government monopoly over its production, Mahatma Gandhi

declared, revealed the most oppressive face of British rule.

Mahatma Gandhi’s letter was, in a way, an ultimatum. If the

demands were not fulfilled by 11 March, the letter stated, the

Congress would launch a civil disobedience campaign. Irwin was

unwilling to negotiate. So Mahatma Gandhi started his famous

salt march accompanied by 78 of his trusted volunteers. The march

was over 240 miles, from Gandhiji’s ashram in Sabarmati to the

Gujarati coastal town of Dandi. The volunteers walked for 24 days,

about 10 miles a day. Thousands came to hear Mahatma Gandhi

wherever he stopped, and he told them what he meant by swaraj

and urged them to peacefully defy the British. On 6 April he reached

Dandi, and ceremonially violated the law, manufacturing salt by

boiling sea water.

This marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience Movement.

How was this movement different from the Non-Cooperation

Movement? People were now asked not only to refuse cooperation with the British, as they had done in 1921-22, but also to break

colonial laws. Thousands in different parts of the country broke

the salt law, manufactured salt and demonstrated in front of

government salt factories. As the movement spread, foreign cloth

was boycotted, and liquor shops were picketed. Peasants refused to

pay revenue and chaukidari taxes, village officials resigned, and in

many places forest people violated forest laws – going into Reserved

Forests to collect wood and graze cattle.

Worried by the developments, the colonial government began

arresting the Congress leaders one by one. This led to violent clashes

in many palaces. When Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a devout disciple of

Mahatma Gandhi, was arrested in April 1930, angry crowds

demonstrated in the streets of Peshawar, facing armoured cars and

police firing. Many were killed. A month later, when Mahatma

Gandhi himself was arrested, industrial workers in Sholapur attacked

police posts, municipal buildings, lawcourts and railway stations –

all structures that symbolised British rule. A frightened government

responded with a policy of brutal repression. Peaceful satyagrahis

were attacked, women and children were beaten, and about 100,000

people were arrested.

In such a situation, Mahatma Gandhi once again decided to call off

the movement and entered into a pact with Irwin on 5 March 1931.

By this Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Gandhiji consented to participate in a

Round Table Conference (the Congress had boycotted the first Round Table Conference) in London and the government agreed to

release the political prisoners. In December 1931, Gandhiji went to

London for the conference, but the negotiations broke down and

he returned disappointed. Back in India, he discovered that the

government had begun a new cycle of repression. Ghaffar Khan

and Jawaharlal Nehru were both in jail, the Congress had been

declared illegal, and a series of measures had been imposed to prevent

meetings, demonstrations and boycotts. With great apprehension,

Mahatma Gandhi relaunched the Civil Disobedience Movement.

For over a year, the movement continued, but by 1934 it lost

its momentum.