Kama Maclean
Penguin
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 9780143426332
Pages: 305
price: Rs 599
Ask any ordinary Indian about Bhagat Singh and Mahatma Gandhi and perhaps the first thing that they’ll tell you is that while the former belonged to the Garam Dal or the extremist stream of Indian freedom struggle, the latter was the leader of the Naram Dal or the moderate stream. In simpler terms, this implies that while Singh and his comrades chose the path of violence, Gandhi and his followers opted for non-violent means of struggle. The majority of them will also tell you that it was essentially the efforts of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, based on the ideas of peace and a non-violent struggle, that led to the independence of India in 1947. Which, in other words, would mean that the ideology of Bhagat Singh and his comrades was totally antagonistic to the Indian National Congress and that they were poles apart; there was hardly any meeting point. What is noteworthy is that this simplistic understanding is not just limited to the general masses but a lot of academic and popular literature has been produced over the years, which reiterates these general perceptions.
The book under review demolishes the above stated binary and establishes the fact that while there were differences between the two streams, the claim that both were antagonistic is totally incorrect. According to the author, who is an associate Professor of South Asian and World History at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, there is much to suggest that, “Gandhi and his closest followers aside, support for anticolonial activities was not so neatly compartmentalised in to rival camps, ‘violent’ and ‘non-violent.’ In order to substantiate her arguments and conclusion, the author relies on a range of evidences, including the recently declassified government files, memoirs and interviews with former revolutionaries as well and also what is available there in the cultural domain, such as photographs and visual arts. “Many remembered the exhilaration of the time when each spilled into and reinforced the other – together presenting the British with a formidable challenge,” notes the author.
Explaining this further, she writes, “The HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, which Bhagat Singh and his comrades were part of) did not entirely abhor nonviolence, but they saw a dialogical relationship between it and violence, in which the latter was regrettably indispensable, but to be used sparingly. By the same token, while Gandhi strove to eliminate violence altogether, many of his followers were more pragmatic, seeing nonviolence as a tactic rather than a moral imperative.”
To illustrate this, there is a very interesting instance that is quoted in the book about Jawahar Lal Nehru. We are hardly told about Nehru’s participation in revolutionary politics, or at least about its impact. It was so ‘intense’ that at one point of time, Nehru’s father and leading Congress leader, Motilal Nehru got very worried about Nehru’s growing radicalism. In fact, due to this, there developed a situation of conflict between the two on the issue of Purna Swaraj. It’s another matter that after Independence, Nehru disowned his involvement in revolutionary politics citing his role as a Prime Minister. Writes the author, “In 1949, he declined an invitation to lay the foundation stone for a memorial in honour of Khudi Ram Bose being erected in Muzaffarpur on the basis that ‘the principle of non-violence’ was involved.” Later when confronted by Durga Das Khanna, a close associate of Bhagat Singh and Khudi Ram Bose, Nehru explained that “it was impolitic for a Prime Minister, ‘even if he was in the thick of the revolutionary movement’ in his youth, to publically own it.” How proper was it on the part of Nehru to have said this can be a matter of dispute. However, what is certain is that this instance serves a much nuanced understanding and description of the Indian freedom struggle than the popular ones, which often end up demonising ‘the other’ in order to prove oneself correct.
Throughout the book, bit by bit, the author systematically establishes her core argument that “the presence of the revolutionaries on the political land scape during the crucial interwar years served to radicalise the Congress which, in turn, injected a fresh urgency into the slow British project of Constitutional reform.”
She goes on to note that “the revolutionaries were not engaged in the drafting of the resolution, but their politics and fate helped to create the conditions for its acceptance by the Congress in the face of some determined opposition. The resolution not only injected a socialist tinge to Congress objectives, but served to provide a powerful stimulus to the growth of the socialist movement in the country.”
In short, the book presents a fresh perspective and forces us to rethink our understanding of the Indian freedom struggle and the role played by revolutionaries in it. Apart from students of history and political science, political activists would find the book an unmissable treatise, if not for anything else but for insights for future struggles.
Mahtab Alam
(The reviewer is a Delhi based activist and writer. He tweets @MahtabNama)
