Gandhian Nationalism After 1919 Ideas and Movements

Gandhian nationalism after 1919: ideas and movements

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Institute of lifelong learning, University of Delhi

Subject :History

Lesson: Gandhian nationalism after 1919: ideas and movements

Course Developers

The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi Dr. Dilip Simeon

Independent researcher and writer

and

Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of Indian

nationalism Prof. Sumit Sarkar

Professor (retired), Department of History, University of Delhi

and

Nationalism and culture

Dr. Vasudha Pande Associate Professor, Lady Sri Ram College,

University of Delhi

Language Editor: Swapna Liddle

Formating Editor: Ashutosh Kumar


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Table of contents

Chapter 9: Gandhian nationalism after 1919: ideas and movements

9.1: The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi

9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of Indian

nationalism

9.3: Nationalism and culture

Summary

Exercises

Glossary

Further readings


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9.1: The legacy of Mahatma Gandhi

Introduction

On January 13, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi went on a fast. It was to be his thirty-first fast in

public life, and as it so happened, his last. (Desai 2009, 472). He called it his yagna, and

his greatest fast. Throughout the fast, he spoke (although with diminishing energy) to

the crowds at his daily prayer meetings, dictated letters and talked to political

colleagues, friends and community leaders who came to see him. Seventeen days later

he was dead, gunned down by an assassin at a prayer meeting. Gandhi‘s utterances and

deeds in the last weeks of his life, especially during this fast are of great significance.

They are a message about the tragic events surrounding the partition of India, mixed

with foresight and advice about their consequences and how to cope with them. He

sensed that his life was about to come to a close, so this was also his farewell. Reading

these utterances today, we get the feeling that he was speaking across the boundaries of

time and space, and not only to Indians. He refused to consider Pakistanis as aliens and

enemies. ―Both India and Pakistan are my country,‖ he said in June 1947, ―I am not

going to take out a passport for going to Pakistan.‖

Gandhi was also speaking to people the world over affected by war, displacement and

massacres. In the years immediately following the second world war, there were millions

of such people. In addition to the issues raised by Gandhi in his last fast, his views on

two major events in the global arena deserve more attention than they have received.

These are the atomic bombardment of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by

the USA in August 1945; and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in 1948.

(The second issue is covered in the lesson on Communalism).

War and nuclear weapons

Gandhi first spoke about the atom bomb in February 1946. One historian has suggested

that he delayed speaking out because he was concerned that India‘s independence might

be affected by an atomic threat from the USA (Rothermund 1991, 112). It should be

remembered that Britain‘s wartime leader was the staunch colonialist Winston Churchill.

Even after Gandhi‘s fear of an atomic threat to India‘s freedom receded, he warned of

the dangers of colonialism. Britain was one of the Big Three powers of which one was

armed with atomic weapons; and the atom bomb was ―the last word in violence today‖

(CWMG 89:402). Thus, commenting on the communal killings in Bihar in November

1946, Gandhi said that they had set back the clock of independence. ―Before long India

will pass under the yoke of the Big Three with one of them probably as the mandatory

power‖ (CWMG 93:4). These statements remind us that Gandhi remained a steadfast

opponent of imperialism till the end of his life. He reminded all ―oppressed races of the

earth‖ that ―unless we can have a new way of fighting imperialism of all brands in the

place of the outworn one of a violent uprising,‖ there would be no hope left for them

(CWMG 89:103). In May, responding to people who believed that the bomb would put an

end to war, he said, ―The atom bomb has not stopped violence. People‘s hearts are full

of it and preparations for a third world war may even be said to be going on‖ (CWMG

90:374).


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In July 1946, Gandhi answered some American friends who were arguing along similar

lines. He insisted that the bomb had deadened the finest feelings of humanity. ―There

used to be so-called laws of war which made it tolerable. Now we know the naked truth.

War knows no law except that of might. The atom bomb brought an empty victory to

Allied arms but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has

happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see‖ (CWMG 91:221).

In September, he said, ―I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale

destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science.‖ When

asked whether the bomb had made non-violence useless, he said, ―No. It is the only

thing the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the

atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, unless now the

world adopts non-violence it will spell certain suicide for mankind‖ (CWMG 92:234). In

June 1947, he commented on science, ―There are two kinds of shastras in the world, one

satvik and the other rajasik, one conforming to dharma and the other not conforming to

dharma. The shastra of the atom bomb does not conform to dharma. It does not show

faith in God. It usurps the place of God‖ (CWMG 95:221).

Gandhi during partition

In early September 1947, just after Independence, Gandhi had fasted in Calcutta to

change the hearts of the people and politicians of Bengal. The background to this was as

follows. 1946 had seen the worst communal massacre in the decade before partition. It

took place in Calcutta as a result of Jinnah‘s call for Direct Action on August 16. (The

Muslim League controlled the provincial government under Chief Minister Husain

Suhrawardy). There were reports of five to ten thousand people being killed and fifteen

thousand injured between August 16 and 19. Suhrawardy‘s extremist speeches in the

run-up to August 16 led many to suspect deliberate political instigation of the massacre.

This event came to be known as the ‗great Calcutta killing‘ (Markovits 2007). It severely

embittered communal relations and the political atmosphere. The months that followed

were extremely tense. The province was engulfed in fear. In October there was violence

in Noakhali, north Bengal, a Muslim majority area soon to become part of East Pakistan.

Here Hindu villagers were the main victims. Soon afterwards, riots erupted in Bihar that

resulted in over 7000 Muslims being killed. Gandhi severely criticised Bihar‘s Congress

government and demanded that senior Congressmen do their utmost to stop the

violence. From November 1946 till February 1947, he walked through the villages of

Noakhali. This pilgrimage for harmony became legendary, as his prayer meetings healed

the public psyche, encouraged Hindus to return to their villages and Muslims to discard

their animus. The area has a GandhiMuseum, and legends of his visit are still repeated

among the elderly. (Gandhi 2006, 591-593)

Five months later, when India and Pakistan emerged as newly independent nations,

Gandhi was back in Bengal. Contemporary observers thought it a miracle that thousands

of Hindus and Muslims celebrated Eid together on August 18, 1947. For once, British

officialdom was happy with Gandhi‘s presence. On August 26, Viceroy Mountbatten sent

him a telegram stating: ―My dear Gandhiji, in the Punjab we have 55 thousand soldiers

and large-scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man, and there

is no rioting… As a serving officer may I be allowed to pay my tribute to the One Man

Boundary Force.‖ And the Muslim League fraction in the Constituent Assembly in Delhi

passed a resolution expressing its "deep sense of appreciation of the services rendered


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by Mr Gandhi to the cause of restoration of peace and goodwill between the communities

in Calcutta‖. (Dalton1970, 234). Gandhi now decided to visit the Punjab.

But the peace did not last. On August 31, renewed violence in Calcutta prompted Gandhi

to change his travel plans. On September 1, he announced his decision to fast against

violence. He stayed in the abandoned HydariMansion in a Muslim part of the city. Within

a day, students began to take out peace processions, and even the European and Anglo-

Indian officers of the north Calcutta police force wore arm-bands and fasted on duty in

sympathy with Gandhi. The following day bands of hooligans came to him to surrender

their weapons and pleaded with him to end his fast. Gandhi said it was the first time he

had seen a sten gun. (Gandhi 2006, 636-637; and Dalton 1970, 235-238). On

September 4, 1947, he received a delegation including businessmen, the Muslim

League-led Seaman‘s Union, the Hindu Mahasabha, and Chief Minister Suhrawardy. He

made them swear they would risk their own lives before allowing another outbreak of

communal violence. This unprecedented oath was then written and signed by the entire

delegation. Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, independent India‘s second Governor General,

remarked that not even the struggle for Independence was ―as truly wonderful as his

victory over evil in Calcutta.‖ (The Statesman, 06/09/1947). In his editorial of

September 1, the English editor of The Statesman announced that henceforth ‗Mr

Gandhi‘ would be referred to in his columns as the Mahatma.

Earlier, at a prayer meeting in Bombay in March 1946, Gandhi had said, ―It has become

the fashion these days to ascribe all such ugly manifestations to the activities of

hooligans. It hardly becomes us to take refuge in that moral alibi. Who are the hooligans

after all? They are our own countrymen, and so long as any countryman of ours indulges

in such acts, we cannot disown responsibility for them consistently with our claim that

we are one people. Mankind is at the crossroads. It has to make its choice between the

law of the jungle and the law of humanity.‖ (CWMG 90: 64). And at the height of the

violence of 1947 he said, ―it is time for peace-loving citizens to assert themselves and

isolate goondaism. Non-violent non-cooperation is the universal remedy. Good is self-

existent, evil is not. It is like a parasite living in and around good. It will die of itself

when the support that good gives it is withdrawn.‖ (CWMG 96: 335). In Gandhi's way of

thinking, the struggle between good and evil took place in every soul, and was not

merely demarcated by the social distance between goondas and polite society.

Politics and ethics

Gandhi's ideas are sometimes misunderstood because of his refusal to separate religion

from politics. One reason for the confusion is the fact that religion nowadays is treated

more as a flag to identify ourselves as members of a community, rather than as a source

of philosophical and moral standards, which is what it was for Gandhi. It is easier to

understand this matter if we substitute ‗ethics‘ for ‗religion, and ‗power‘ for ‗politics‘.

Does anyone believe that power should be free of moral guidance? Gandhi saw himself

as a karmayogi. He regarded selfless action towards self-knowledge and human

salvation as his spiritual duty. He saw political activity as the highest sphere of social

action, and insisted on informing this action with moral guidelines such as ahimsa and

the abolition of untouchability. Since he was searching not for personal power but swaraj

for Indians, he exercised tremendous moral influence arising out of his avoidance of


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selfish goals. Truth for him included spiritual goals such as moksha and self-knowledge;

and earthly ideals such as justice and social integrity. His motives were at once spiritual

and political because he saw political activity as a form of spiritually inspired social

service. Very often even the high-priests of religion could use the separation of religion

and politics as a convenient excuse to overlook crimes committed by their co-religionists.

Gandhi challenged them to translate their fine-sounding doctrines into reality. This is

why he refused to separate means and ends – evil means, he said, would end up

corrupting even the best of ends. Religion and spirituality were not instruments for the

pursuit of political power, rather, political activity had to be informed by the best

spiritual ideals.

Gandhi was not a hopeless idealist. He recognised that complete non-violence would lead

to the total cessation of all human activity. Violence in his definition, meant causing

―suffering to others out of, or just for the sake of doing so‖ (Parekh 1989, 117). He

distinguished between self-interest and selfishness. Self-interest meant securing the

conditions necessary for leading a dignified life; selfishness meant putting oneself above

others and pursuing one's interests at their expense. Violent ideas were dangerous, since

they created conditions for real violence. Humiliating others was also a form of violence.

Gandhi recognised that the machinery of the state was a concentrated form of violence,

an instrument for the maintenance of an unjust social system. He also made a distinction

between the violence of the oppressors and that of the oppressed - defensive violence,

in his view, was morally superior to the offensive variety (Parekh 1989, 133-35). In

extreme situations, he argued, violence was preferable to cowardice. He was against

using ahimsa as an excuse for passive acceptance of injustice. He favoured physical

resistance by victims of rape if there was no possibility of resisting non-violently.

Gandhi was convinced that ―the reign of violence could not be overthrown by adding to

it‖ (Parekh 1989, 134). Great danger lay in using common-place justifications for

violence, such as the violation of nature for human self-interest; the need to maintain

the coercive apparatus of the state; and revolutionary violence in the name of resistance

to oppression. He was ―deeply worried about the way in which the limited legitimacy of

violence in human life was so easily turned into its general justification,‖ making it the

rule rather than the exception. Once this happened, ―men kept taking advantage of the

exceptions and made no effort to find alternatives‖ (Parekh 1989, 128). This was why

activists needed to train themselves as non-violent warriors for justice. Ahimsa in his

definition was not merely the absence of violence but included the positive value of

karuna or compassion. By elevating ahimsa to the level of a moral ideal, he hoped to

minimise the violence which was inevitable in the process of social and political

transformation. Even if it could never be fully realised, ahimsa functioned as an ideal,

without which human society would have no standards of perfection with which to judge

our actions. A critical discussion of Gandhi‘s views on violence and ahimsa may be read

in Parekh, 1989, chapters 4 & 5.

Unexpected converts to ahimsa

Among those powerfully influenced by Gandhi's message were two communities

traditionally considered the most militant in India, the Sikhs and the Pathans. Today, few

remember that the Akali party originated in a satyagraha to liberate gurudwaras from

pro-British mahants. The Guru-ka-Bagh agitation in 1922 involved the peaceful violation


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of a ban on woodcutting for religious purposes by Akali jathas, whose members

(including ex-soldiers who had fought for the British Empire in the First World War) were

beaten with metal-capped lathis by English police officers and Indian policemen. About

1500 Sikhs were injured and 5000 imprisoned in a campaign which shook the country.

Gandhi's associate Reverend C. F. Andrews witnessed this "ultimate moral contest". The

sight of the brutalities, he reported, was ―incredible to an Englishman…each blow (was)

turned into a triumph by the spirit with which it was endured.‖

Value addition: from the sources

Eye-witness account of the Guru ka Bagh satyagrahaby the Christian

missionary, Gandhi’s confidante Reverend C. F. Andrews dated

September 12, 1922

When I ... stood face to face with the ultimate moral contest I could understand

the strained look and the lips which silently prayed. It was a sight I never wish to

see again, a sight incredible to an Englishman. There were four Akali Sikhs with

their black turbans facing a band of about a dozen police, including two English

officers. They had walked slowly up to the line of the Police.. and were standing

silently in front of them.. Their hands were placed together in prayer. Then

without the slightest provocation on their part, an Englishman lunged forward the

head of his lathi which was bound with brass.. The blow which I saw was

sufficient to fell the Akali Sikh and send him to the ground. He rolled over, and

slowly got up once more and faced the same punishment over again. Time after

time one of the four..was laid prostrate by repeated blows, now from the English

officer and now from the police... the police committed certain acts which were

brutal in the extreme - I saw with my own eyes one of these police kick in the

stomach a Sikh who stood helplessly before him... when one of the Sikhs..was

lying prostrate, a police sepoy stamped with his foot upon him, using his full

weight.. The brutality and inhumanity of the whole scene was indescribably

increased by the fact that the men who were hit were praying to God and had

already taken a vow that they would remain silent and peaceful in word and

deed. The Akali Sikhs who had taken this vow, both at the Golden Temple and

also at the shrine of Guru Ka Bagh, were...largely from the Army. They had

served in many campaigns in Flanders, in France, in Mesopotamia and in East

Africa... Now they were felled to the ground at the hands of English officials

serving in the same government which they themselves had served... But each

blow was turned into a triumph by the spirit with which it was endured... The vow

they had made to God was kept to the letter. The onlookers too..were praying

with them...and for them.. It was very rarely that I witnessed any Akali Sikh who

went forward to suffer, flinch from a blow when it was struck. The blows were

received one by one without resistance and without a sign of fear..

There has been something far greater in this event than a mere dispute about

land and property. It has gone far beyond the technical questions of legal

possession or distraint. A new heroism, learnt through suffering, has arisen in the

land. A new lesson in moral warfare has been taught to the world..‖

Source: Ralhan, O. P. and Suresh K. Sharma. 1994. Documents on

Punjab, vol 7, Sikh Politics (Guru-ka-Bagh Morcha). New Delhi: Anmol

Publications.


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The Khudai Khidmatgar, or Servants of God movement in the North

WestFrontierProvince (also known as Pakhtunistan) is another example of a Gandhian

campaign for independence and social uplift in colonial India. Their leader Abdul Ghaffar

(Badshah) Khan came to be known as the Frontier Gandhi. He preached a version of

Islam that emphasised forgiveness and self-restraint. (For a short biography see Gandhi

2004). The red-shirted Khidmatgars led the civil disobedience campaign in 1931. They

seized control of Peshawar and ran a parallel administration for a few days. This

happened after a regiment of the Garhwal Rifles (all Hindus) refused to open fire on

Pathan satyagrahis. The slogans heard in Peshawar‘s Kissa Khani Bazaar included ‗Allah

ho Akbar‘ and ‗Mahatma Gandhi ki jai‘. The platoon commander, Chander Singh

Garhwali, reportedly told his English officer that a soldier of the Indian Army could not

ask his men to shoot unarmed civilians. Chander Singh was sent to jail and became a

hero of the national movement. A Turkish scholar who visited the Frontier in the 1930's

suggested that the Pathans had developed a new interpretation of force. In her words,

―non-violence is the only form of force which can have a lasting effect on the life of

society... And this, coming from strong and fearless men, is worthy of study‖ (Bondurant

1965, 138).

Value addition: did you know?

Gandhi, Badshah Khan and the Pathans

The Turkish scholar Halide Edib, who visited the Frontier in the 1930's wrote of

Badshah Khan‘s achievements: ―Although he based his simple ideology on

religion, his interpretation of it was so universal, that instead of separating the

Muslims from the rest of the world, he tried to make them so that they could co-

operate with their fellow-men for the good of all...his supreme importance lies in

his having brought the simplest and truest conception of Islam into the lives of a

most elemental people..‖ (Bondurant 1965, 143)

Gandhi‘s exhortations to the Pathans spoke the language of courage, but in a

strange new way: ―At every meeting I repeated the warning that unless they felt

that in non-violence they had come into possession of a force infinitely superior to

the one they had and in the use of which they were adept, they should have

nothing to do with non-violence and resume the arms they possessed before. It

must never be said of the Khudai Khidmatgars that once so brave, they have

become or been made cowards under Badshah Khan‘s influence. Their bravery

consisted not in being good marksmen but in defying death and being ever ready

to bare their chests to the bullet.‖ (Tendulkar 1961, 303-304).

The commitment of the Khudai Khidmatgars to non-violence was based on the

culture of Pukhtunwali and Islam. The Congress leadership believed the

stereotypes about Pathan ferocity and were anxious about the Red Shirts‘

commitment to ahimsa. Yet in 1942 the Khidmatgar‘s non-violent struggle forced

the government to station 30,000 troops in NWFP (a three-fold increase over

1941) - this served to lessen the burden upon the rest of India. When it came to

the Pathans, the British excelled themselves in cruelty and psychologically

designed torture including forcing activists to make counter-oaths upon the

Koran, violating the sanctity of the womens‘ quarter in Pathan homes; public


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exposures of private parts and even sexual mutilation. The Peshawar massacre in

April 1930 (over 200 killed) and the Bannu shooting in August (70 dead) shocked

the country, whilst arousing admiration for the Pathans‘ patriotism and non-

violent spirit. After touring the Frontier, British journalist Robert Bernays wrote

that ―some of the stories of the wholesale shootings and hangings made me hang

my head in shame‖ (Bondurant 1965, 138). All the while Badshah Khan insisted

on restraint as the greatest Koranic virtue, asking the Pathans to abstain from

violence, not to defame their nation, because the world would marvel to see

―such a barbarous nation observing patience‖ (Bannerjee 2001, 156). The

Khidmatgar movement grew from a thousand members in 1930 to 25,000 in

1931, with women entering public life for the first time. It was not lost on the

nationalist public that the Englishmen on a civilising mission were behaving like

mad dogs, and the volatile Pathans were teaching their rulers a lesson in civility. Sources: Banerjee, Mukulika. 2001. The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and

Memory in the North West Frontier. New Delhi: Oxford University Press;

Bondurant, Joan. 1958, 1965. Conquest of Violence: the Gandhian

Philosophy of Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press;

Tendulkar, D. G. 1961. Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi;

v. 4. New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and

Broadcasting, Publications Division.

The question of truth

Gandhi called himself a sanatani Hindu. However, it is clear that he placed both tradition

and the opinions of spiritual authorities to the test of his own conscience. He believed

that the individual had to apply his or her reason and intuition to religious tradition. He

was not a slave of religious doctrines. Rather, he used his knowledge of them to

strengthen his convictions. When reading the shastras, he said, ―one should not stick to

its letter, but try to understand its spirit, its meaning in the total context. Tulsidas‘s

Ramayana is one of the greatest works because its spirit is that of purity, compassion

and devotion to God. An evil fate awaits one who beats his wife because Tulsidas has

said in his work that a Sudra, a dull-witted person, a beast and a woman merit

chastisement. Rama not only never raised his hand against Sita, he did not even

displease her at any time. Tulsidas merely stated a common belief… in any case, his

Ramayana was not composed in order to justify men beating their wives.‖ (Gandhi 1993,

11-12). And despite the scenes of carnage described in the Mahabharata, Gandhi insists

that Vyasa wrote his epic "to depict the futility of war", and that it symbolised the inner

struggle between good and evil encountered by all human beings. If the purest form of

action was devoid of desire for reward, then violence and untruthfulness were taboo, for

selfishness was implied in them. Language and meaning changed and expanded over the

centuries, and ―it is the very beauty of a good poem that it is greater than its author.‖

Despite the warlike metaphors of the Gita, he insisted that ―after forty years‘ unremitting

endeavour to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life, I have in all humility felt

that perfect renunciation is impossible without perfect observance of ahimsa in every

shape and form.‖

Gandhi's conscience impelled him towards human equality and the resolution of political

and social conflict. He rejected the violence of caste-oppression and the justifications for


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violence contained in religious traditions. He managed to speak in a conservative voice

while advocating a break from traditional practices. In that sense he was a law-giver, not

a mere follower of religious commandments. He used tradition to make people think

about their situation in an idiom they were familiar with. And he did this without deceit.

He acknowledged the ambivalent character of these traditions while respectfully

challenging them from within. Instead of using religious identity to demarcate himself

from others, he used it to build bridges with them, by studying their traditions and

drawing out a common message of truth, love and non-violence. His method was to

treat myths and legends symbolically rather than literally. As he once said, ―The

immortal but unknown author of the Mahabharata weaves into his story sufficient of the

supernatural to warn you against taking him literally.‖ Again, ―I do not believe that the

Gita advocates violence for self-defence. I understand the Gita differently. If the Gita or

some other Sanskrit work advocates this I am not prepared to accept it as Shastra. An

utterance does not become scriptural merely because it is couched in Sanskrit.‖ These

remarks show that that he used religion as a moral guide, and did not surrender his own

powers of individual judgement. His approach indicates that he was both a deeply

religious person and one who was prepared to challenge religious scriptures when he

thought they went against his conscience. He believed all human beings possessed such

an inner voice and appealed to them to consult it. Different religious traditions were but

differently evolved paths to the same goal.

It is useful to contrast Gandhi‘s approach to this issue with that of his assassin Nathuram

Godse, a self-proclaimed Hindu nationalist, for whom sin or moral correctness had to be

sought not in a man‘s act but in his motives. Godse‘s statement at his trial made it clear

that for him, right intention coupled with infallible knowledge were sufficient grounds for

him to murder Gandhi (Payne 2003, 637-41). To this day, a similar line of reasoning is

adopted by political groups who adopt murder as a means to achieve their ends. Their

politics may be different from Godse‘s but their moral reasoning is the same: they are

sure that their view of things is absolutely correct, and that their intentions are pure. In

their view, these two grounds give them a right to kill. We are speaking here not of

random acts of violence or crimes of passion, but of political assassination, whether of

single persons or entire groups. Extremist political programmes have the colour of

unquestioned faith that gives their followers the strength to perform violent unilateral

actions in the name of ‗the people‘. Gandhi‘s position is radically different, and modest.

He argued that we do not have irrefutable knowledge, and hence we cannot assume the

right to commit irrevocable acts such as killing other human beings.

Gandhi’s last fast

From September 1947, the communal situation in north India became grievous.

Massacres were taking place in Punjab, Sindh and what is now Haryana, sparking off the

migration of over ten million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims moving in opposite directions. In

September, hundreds of Muslims of Delhi had been killed in localities such as Karol Bagh,

Subzi Mandi and Paharganj. Tens of thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees from Punjab

were crammed into Diwan Hall, Chandni Chowk and Kingsway Camp; while thousands of

Muslims, including Meos from Alwar and Bharatpur, were living in fear in Jamia Millia,

Purana Qila and Humayun‘s Tomb. The Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia and president of

the Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Dr Zakir Husain, who later became President of India,


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barely escaped with his life. He had been saved by a Sikh army captain and a Hindu

railway official. The senior Congressman Saifuddin Kitchlew was obliged to flee to

Kashmir. Upon arrival in Delhi on September 9, Gandhi was asked to detrain in Shahdara

for reasons of safety. The same reasons motivated Sardar Patel to arrange for his stay

not in the sweepers colony which was his preferred residence in the city, but in Birla

House. Once in Delhi, Gandhi plunged into the ongoing turmoil around him, travelling to

nearby places such as Gurgaon and Panipat, talking to refugees, community leaders and

cadres of social organisations. On December 22, he made this announcement at his

prayer meeting:

―Some eight or ten miles from here, at Mehrauli, there is a shrine of Qutubuddin

Bakhtiyar Chisti. Esteemed as second only to the shrine at Ajmer, it is visited every year

not only by Muslims but by thousands of non-Muslims too. Last September this shrine

was subjected to the wrath of Hindu mobs. The Muslims living in the vicinity of the

shrine for the last 800 years had to leave their homes. I mention this sad episode to tell

you that, though Muslims love the shrine, today no Muslim can be found anywhere near

it. It is the duty of the Hindus, Sikhs, the officials and the Government to open the

shrine again and wash off this stain on us. The same applies to other shrines and

religious places of Muslims in and around Delhi. The time has come when both India and

Pakistan must unequivocally declare to the majorities in each country that they will not

tolerate desecration of religious places, be they small or big. They should also undertake

to repair the places damaged during riots.‖ (CWMG, vol 98, p 98-99).

This was the background to his last protest. There was also the matter of the

Government‘s decision to withhold payment of Pakistan‘s share of undivided India‘s

sterling balance, which amounted to Rs 55 crores. We may take it that the fast was

undertaken both to restore the shrine and to convey to the public his feelings about

ongoing events. It began on January 13, 1948 and was announced by Gandhi at his

prayer meeting that evening. He said: ―Now that I have started my fast many people

cannot understand what I am doing, who are the offenders – Hindus or Sikhs or

Muslims. How long will the fast last? I say I do not blame anyone. Who am I to accuse

others? I have said that we have all sinned.‖

He continued: ―I shall terminate the fast only when peace has returned to Delhi. If peace

is restored to Delhi it will have effect not only on the whole of India but also on Pakistan

and when that happens, a Muslim can walk around in the city all by himself. I shall then

terminate the fast. Delhi is the capital of India. It has always been the capital of India.

So long as things do not return to normal in Delhi, they will not be normal either in India

or in Pakistan. Today I cannot bring Suhrawardy here because I fear someone may insult

him. Today he cannot walk about in the streets of Delhi. If he did he would be assaulted.

What I want is that he should be able to move about here even in the dark. It is true

that he made efforts in Calcutta only when Muslims became involved. Still, he could have

made the situation worse, if he had wanted, but he did not want to make things worse.

He made the Muslims evacuate the places they had forcibly occupied and said that he

being the Premier could do so. Although the places occupied by the Muslims belonged to

Hindus and Sikhs he did his duty. Even if it takes a whole month to have real peace

established in Delhi it does not matter. People should not do anything merely to have me

terminate the fast. So my wish is that Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Muslims who


12


are in India should continue to live in India and India should become a country where

everyone‘s life and property are safe. Only then will India progress.‖

The people’s reaction

On the second day of Gandhi‘s fast the government took the formal decision to release

the money due to Pakistan. Meanwhile Delhi was visibly affected. Addressing a gathering

of three hundred thousand people on January 17, Maulana Azad announced seven tests

given him by Gandhi to be fulfilled and guaranteed by responsible people. They included

freedom of worship to Muslims at the tomb of Khwaja Bakhtiar Chishti, non-interference

with the Urs festival due to be held there within a week; the voluntary evacuation by

non-Muslims of all mosques in Delhi that were being used for residential purposes or

which had been converted into temples; free movement of Muslims in areas where they

used to stay; complete safety to Muslims while travelling by train; no economic boycott

of Muslims; and freedom to Muslim evacuees to return to Delhi.‖ That evening a

procession of citizens shouting peace slogans walked to Birla House where Jawaharlal

Nehru addressed them. Gandhi‘s speech was read out at the prayer meeting, attended

by some four thousand people. He said:

―The number of telegrams coming from Rajas, Maharajas and common people continues

to increase. There are telegrams from Pakistan too. They are good as far as they go. But

as a friend and well-wisher I must say to all those who reside in Pakistan and mould its

fortunes that they will fail to make Pakistan permanent if their conscience is not

quickened and if they do not admit the wrongs for which Pakistan is responsible. This

does not mean that I do not wish a voluntary reunion, but I wish to remove and resist

the idea that Pakistan should be reunited by force of arms. I hope that this will not be

misunderstood as a note of discord, whilst I am lying on what is truly a death-bed. I

hope all Pakistanis will realize that I would be untrue to them and to myself if out of

weakness and for fear of hurting their feelings, I failed to convey to them what I

truthfully feel. If I am wrong in my estimate, I should be so told and if I am convinced, I

promise that I shall retract what I have said here. So far as I know, the point is not open

to question. My fast should not be considered a political move in any sense of the term.

It is in obedience to the peremptory call of conscience and duty. It comes out of felt

agony. I call to witness all my numerous Muslim friends in Delhi. Their representatives

meet me almost every day to report the day‘s events. Neither Rajas and Maharajas nor

Hindus and Sikhs or any others would serve themselves or India as a whole, if at this,

what is to me a sacred juncture, they mislead me with a view to terminating my fast‖

(CWMG 98:248).

On January 18, Gandhi ended his fast. Over a hundred representatives of various groups

and organizations including the Hindu Mahasabha, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and

Jamiat-ul-Ulema who had assembled at Rajendra Prasad‘s residence, called on Gandhiji

at 11.30 a.m. Those present included Jawaharlal Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad, Rajendra

Prasad, INA General Shah Nawaz Khan, Hifzur Rahman and Zaheed Hussain, Pakistan‘s

High Commissioner. Dr. Rajendra Prasad reported that even those who had some doubts

on the previous night were confident that they could ask Gandhiji with a full sense of

responsibility to break the fast. As the President of the Congress, Rajendra Prasad said

that he had signed the document in view of the guarantee which they had all jointly and

severally given. Khurshid, the Chief Commissioner and Randhawa, Deputy Commissioner


13


of Delhi, had signed the document on behalf of the administration. It had been decided

to set up a number of committees to implement the pledge. Rajendra Prasad hoped that

Gandhiji would now terminate his fast. Deshbandhu Gupta described scenes of

fraternization between Hindus and Muslims which he had witnessed when a procession of

Muslims was taken out that morning in Subzi mandi and was received with ovation and

offered fruit and refreshments by the Hindu inhabitants. A seven-point declaration in

Hindi was read out solemnly affirming the people‘s desire for communal harmony and

civic peace. This read as follows:

SEVEN-POINT DECLARATION OF JANUARY 18, 1948

―We wish to announce that it is our heart-felt desire that the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs

and members of the other communities should once again live in Delhi like brothers and

in perfect amity and we take the pledge that we shall protect the life, property and faith

of Muslims and that the incidents which have taken place in Delhi will not happen again.

―We want to assure Gandhiji that the annual fair at Khwaja Qutub-ud-Din Mazar will be

held this year as in the previous years.

―Muslims will be able to move about in Subzimandi, Karol Bagh, Paharganj and other

localities just as they could in the past.

―The mosques which have been left by Muslims and which now are in the possession of

Hindus and Sikhs will be returned. The areas which have been set apart for Muslims will

not be forcibly occupied.

―We shall not object to the return to Delhi of the Muslims who have migrated from here

if they choose to come back and Muslims shall be able to carry on their business as

before.

―We assure that all these things will be done by our personal effort and not with the help

of the police or military.

―We request Mahatmaji to believe us and to give up his fast and continue to lead us as

he has done hitherto.‖ .‖ (CWMG, vol 98, p 249, 253).


Gandhi’s speech on the Delhi Declaration; January 18, 1948

In his reply, Gandhi said: ―I am happy to hear what you have told me, but if you

have overlooked one point all this will be worth nothing. If this declaration means

that you will safeguard Delhi and whatever happens outside Delhi will be no

concern of yours, you will be committing a grave error and it will be sheer

foolishness on my part to break my fast. You must have seen the Press reports of

the happenings in Allahabad, if not, look them up. I understand that the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Hindu Mahasabha are among the

signatories to this declaration. It will amount to breach of faith on their part if

they hold themselves responsible for peace in Delhi, but not in other places. I

have been observing that this sort of deception is being practiced in the country

these days on a large scale. Delhi is the heart - the capital of India. The leaders


14


from the whole of India have assembled here. Men had become beasts. But if

those who have assembled here, who constitute the cream among men cannot

make the whole of India understand that Hindus, Muslims and followers of other

religions are like brothers, it bodes ill for both the Dominions. What will be the

fate of India if we continue to quarrel with one another?... Let us take no step

that may become a cause for repentance later on. The situation demands courage

of the highest order from us. We have to consider whether or not we can

accomplish what we are going to promise. If you are not confident of fulfilling

your pledge, do not ask me to give up my fast. It is for you and the whole of

India to translate it into reality. It may not be possible to realize it in a day. I do

not possess the requisite strength for it. But I can assure you that till today our

face was turned towards Satan, we have now resolved to turn towards God. If

what I have told you fails to find an echo in your hearts or if you are convinced

that it is beyond you, tell me so frankly.

What greater folly can there be than to claim that Hindustan is only for Hindus

and Pakistan is for Muslims alone? The refugees here should realize that things in

Pakistan will be set right by the example set in Delhi. I am not one to be afraid of

fasting. Time and again I have gone on fasts and if occasion arises I may again

do so. Whatever therefore you do, do after careful thought and consideration. The

Muslim friends frequently meet me and assure me that peaceful atmosphere has

been restored in Delhi and Hindus and Muslims can live in amity here. If these

friends have any misgivings in their hearts and feel that today they have perforce

to stay here - as they have nowhere else to go to - but ultimately they will have

to part company, let them admit it to me frankly. To set things right in the whole

of India and Pakistan is no doubt a Herculean task. But I am an optimist. Once I

resolve to do something I refuse to accept defeat. Today you assure me that

Hindus and Muslims have become one but if Hindus continue to regard Muslims

as Yavans and asuras, incapable of realizing God, and Muslims regard Hindus

likewise, it will be the worst kind of blasphemy. A Muslim friend presented me

with a book in Patna. Its author is an eminent Muslim. The book says: ―God

ordains that a kafir - and a Hindu is a kafir - is worse than a poisonous creature.

He should be exterminated. It is one‘s duty to be treacherous to him. Why should

one treat him with any courtesy?‖ If Muslims still harbouring such thoughts

assure Hindus about their good behaviour, they will only be deceiving Hindus. If

you betray one you betray all. If I truly worship a stone image I deceive no one.

For me God resides in that stone image. I feel that if the hearts of both Hindus

and Muslims are full of deceipt and treachery, why need I continue to live?

The telegrams I have received today include some from prominent Muslims. They

have made me happy. It seems they have realized that the method adopted by

them so far was not proper to run a government. After listening to all that I have

said, if you still ask me to end my fast I shall end it. Afterwards you have to

release me. I had taken the vow to do or die in Delhi and now if I am able to

achieve success here I shall go to Pakistan and try to make Muslims understand

their folly. Whatever happens in other places, people in Delhi should maintain

peace. The refugees here should realize that they have to welcome as brothers

the Muslims returning from Pakistan to Delhi. The Muslim refugees in Pakistan are

suffering acute hardships and so are the Hindu refugees here. Hindus have not


15


learnt all the crafts of Muslim craftsmen. Therefore they had better return to

India. There are good men as well as bad men in all the communities. Taking into

consideration all these implications, if you ask me to break my fast I shall abide

by your wish. India will virtually become a prison if the present conditions

continue. It may be better that you allow me to continue my fast and if God wills

it He will call me.‖ (CWMG Vol 98, p 254-257)

Maulana Azad said that the remarks about non-Muslims to which Gandhiji had

referred were abhorrent to Islam. They were symptoms of the insanity that had

seized some sections of the people. Maulana Hifzur Rahman insisted that Muslims

wanted to remain in India as citizens with self-respect and honour. He welcomed

the changed atmosphere in the city as a result of Gandhi‘s fast and appealed to

Gandhi to break the fast. On behalf of the R.S.S. and Hindu Mahasabha, Ganesh

Datt reiterated the appeal. Pakistan‘s High Commisioner Zaheed Hussain

addressed a few words to Gandhiji. He said he was there to convey the deep

concern of the Pakistani people about him and the anxious inquiries they made

every day about his health. It was their hearts‘ desire that circumstances might

soon enable him to break the fast. If there was anything that he could do towards

that end he was ready and so were the people of Pakistan. Zaheed Hussain was

followed by Khurshid and Randhawa who on behalf of the administration

reiterated the assurance that all the conditions mentioned in the citizens‘ pledge

would be implemented, and no effort would be spared to restore the Indian

capital to its traditional harmony and peace. Sardar Harbans Singh endorsed the

appeal on behalf of the Sikhs. When Rajendra Prasad said: ―I have signed on

behalf of the people, please break your fast,‖ Gandhi replied: ―I shall break my

fast. Let God‘s will prevail. You all be witness today.‖ Source: Gandhi, M. K. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online.

(CWMG) http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html.

His last testament?

In the last weeks of his life Gandhi spoke his mind to Indians and Pakistanis. As was his

habit, he spoke freely, not sparing anyone, but always with respect and an appeal to

their better side. He asked Pakistan‘s rulers to ensure the safety of minorities and

predicted that Pakistan would be an impermanent entity unless it evolved a secular

polity. He warned those who were pained by partition that Akhand Bharat, or a united

India could only be established by love and mutual respect, never by force. He spoke to

community leaders whose utterances pained him, including Muslim leaders who had

called him a kafir; and the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha who hated him for the respect he

showed towards Islam and Muslims. He discussed the matter of the SomnathTemple in

Kathiawad, insisting that its restoration could not be paid for by the Union of India,

which was a secular state, but only by private donations from devout Hindus. ―After all,

we have formed the Government for all. It is a ‗secular‘ government, that is… it does not

belong to any particular religion. Hence it cannot spend money on the basis of

communities‖ (CWMG 97: 413-14). He addressed Sikh refugees in the company of

Sheikh Abdullah, and hailed the example of Kashmiri Muslims in maintaining communal

harmony. He spoke to Sikhs, warning them never to misuse the kirpan. The day he

ended his fast was Guru Gobind Singh‘s birthday. Gandhi sent Sikhs a message

congratulating them for their victory over anger, and ending with the slogan Wahe Guruji

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg.html


16


ki Fateh. He sent a special message to fellow Gujaratis. He discussed the issue of a

national language and his preference for Hindustani. He spoke to caste Hindus about the

evil of untouchability. After recounting the painful experiences of the oppressed castes of

Rohtak, he admonished Jats and Ahirs for tormenting them and treating them as slaves.

He talked about the Meos, named ‗criminal tribes‘ by the colonial administration, who

had been forcibly evicted from vast areas in Delhi‘s hinterland, and called for their

rehabilitation. He severely criticised those Congressmen who had begun using power for

personal benefit. He spoke to social organisations such as the Hindustani Talimi Sangh,

the Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust and the Harijan Sevak Sangh about their

role in building independent India. He raised philosophical issues about the crucial role of

individual conscience and about ahimsa.

Most of all, he spoke words of comfort to refugees crazed by grief, calmly listening to

their abuses, even hatred. ―Let Gandhi die‖ were the slogans raised by some people

during his fast. After the fast, he continued with his daily prayer meetings and his

custom of reading from all religious texts. The significance of this custom was brought

out in April 1947, when, during his stay at the sweepers‘ colony in Delhi, he was

prevented from reading the Koran by a small group of protestors. Gandhi had refrained

from praying, asking the objectors to either withdraw their objection or leave the

meeting. On the fourth attempt, he succeeded in reading the Sura al-Fatheha without

protest. This was his way of showing Indians that all religions contained something of

universal value, recognisable by every decent person, and that Islam was no different.

At these meetings he asked everyone to see reason, to give up the ways of Satan, to

remember the best part of their traditions, to be brave in the face of tragedy and

adversity, not to seek revenge but to forgive. There was not a single issue of social,

political and moral concern to which he did not refer. His utterances were scattered over

some weeks, but they were undoubtedly his last will and testament. The assurance given

to Gandhi on January 18 by various individuals and organisations was a solemn

(although not legal) commitment to maintain communal harmony in independent India.

It was also a re-iteration of the AICC resolution on Minority Rights in independent India,

adopted in November 1947 at Gandhi‘s insistence. (CWMG 97: 476)

The end

But Gandhi was also a man in pain. In his prayer meeting of November 25, 1947, he had

spoken about those who had been deprived of their homes: ―If we come to our senses

here today, everything will be well tomorrow; I too will be free. Today I am very much

disturbed. My life has become a burden to me. I wonder why I am still here. I could

become strong if Delhi were restored to sanity, and then I would rush to West Punjab

and tell the Muslims who have gone away from here that I have prepared the ground for

them and they could come back any time they wanted and live wherever they chose…

Today I have become a sort of burden. There was a time when my word was law. But it

is no longer so‖ (CWMG 97: 393). One scholar has written about the climate of hatred in

those days, a climate in which many people wished for Gandhi to die (Nandy 1993).

Perhaps he sensed this wish.

On January 20, a bomb exploded 75 feet away from the dais at Gandhi‘s prayer meeting.

One Madanlal Pahwa was arrested. Six other men escaped in a taxi. This was the fifth

attempt on his life since 1934, and all of them were made by extreme Hindu nationalists.


17


Gandhi was unruffled. Upon being asked by the DIG to agree to additional policemen for

his prayer meetings, he refused, saying that his life was in the hands of God, that if he

had to die, no precautions could save him. He would not agree to restricted entry to his

prayer meetings or to anybody coming between his audience and himself. At the next

day‘s meeting he said that ―the man who exploded the bomb obviously thinks that he

has been sent by God to destroy me… He had taken it for granted that I am an enemy of

Hinduism. When he says he was doing the bidding of God he is only making God an

accomplice in a wicked deed. But it cannot be so… those who are behind him or whose

tool he is, should know that this sort of thing will not save Hinduism. If Hinduism has to

be saved it will be saved through such work as I am doing. I have been imbibing Hindu

dharma right from my childhood‖ (CWMG 98: 279-81). On January 30, soon after he

arrived at his prayer meeting, Nathuram Godse, editor of a Poona-based Marathi journal

called Hindu Rashtra, fired three bullets at him at point-blank range and killed him.

The story of this crime is complex (Payne 2003, 609-35). On February 4, the

Government of India declared the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh to be unlawful, noting

that its members had ―indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoity and

murder.. carried on under a cloak of secrecy.‖ It accused the Sangh of ―exhorting people

to resort to terrorist methods.‖ The communique went on to state that ―the cult of

violence sponsored and inspired by the activities of the Sangh has claimed many victims.

The latest and the most precious to fall was Gandhiji himself‖ (Goyal 1979, 202). The

trial of eight conspirators including V. D. Savarkar took place through 1948. Godse made

a speech stating his belief in in Savarkar‘s ideal of Hindu nationalism, and his conviction

that Gandhi was ―a political and ethical imposter… a traitor to his faith and his country, a

curse to India, a force for evil.., and the greatest enemy not only of Hindus, but of the

whole nation‖ (Payne 2003, 637-41). Parts of the speech suggest that Godse saw

himself as an agency of Lord Krishna. The speech remains popular with a certain section

of political opinion. Godse and Narayan Apte were sentenced to death in February 1949

and hanged in November. They went to the gallows shouting ‗akhand bharat amar rahe‘,

not realising that a united India was also Gandhi‘s dearest ideal. Unlike them, however,

he did not believe that united India could be a Hindu Rashtra. Five conspirators were

sentenced to life imprisonment, which in India those days meant fourteen years.

Savarkar‘s links with the murderers was clear, but he was acquitted for lack of

corroborative evidence.

However, doubts remained about the extent of the conspiracy; the behaviour of the

Bombay and Delhi police between January 20 and 30; and the evidence of V. D.

Savarkar‘s involvement. In 1965, the Government of India set up a commission of

inquiry into the conspiracy to murder Mahatma Gandhi, headed by Justice Jivanlal Kapur

of the Supreme Court. It examined evidence not produced during the trial, including the

testimony of Savarkar's bodyguard Appa Ramachandra Kasar, and his secretary Gajanan

Vishnu Damle. Had they testified in 1948, Savarkar might have been convicted. The

evidence confirmed Godse and Apte's visits to Savarkar on January 14 and 17, 1948.

Kasar told the Commission that they visited Savarkar again on or about January 23,

upon their return from Delhi after the bomb incident. Damle stated that Godse and Apte

saw Savarkar ―in the middle of January and sat with him in his garden.‖ Justice Kapur's

findings were clear. He noted the deadly negligence of the police. And he concluded that

the facts taken together undermined ―any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by

Savarkar and his group.‖ (Noorani, March 2003).


18


Gandhi died standing up, with God‘s name on his lips, just as he had wanted to. He had

always said that he was prepared to die for his beliefs. His death could have been

prevented. Who can say what would have happened if he had been allowed to perform

his padyatra to Pakistan? But it was not to be. ―In the eyes of too many officials, he was

an old man who had outlived his usefulness: he had become expendable. By negligence,

by indifference, by deliberate desire on the part of many faceless people, the

assassination had been accomplished. It was a new kind of murder – the permissive

assassination, and there may be many more in the future‖ (Payne 2003, 647).

Gandhi’s charisma

Gandhi appears far removed from us. He seems to be from another era, someone who

dislikes modern science and technology, who upholds sanatan dharma and the caste

system, who insists that religion cannot be separated from politics. It is better to avoid

placing Gandhi within political camps or to see him as a Rightist or Leftist. Gandhi

encourages us to question these concepts, to overcome the confusion into which they

often throw us. Nowadays he is portrayed as a ‗man of peace.‘ Actually he was a fighter.

He democratised the national movement and infused it with popular energy. His

message to Indian peasants was that ―they were part of the nation and that it could not

be built to their exclusion. He gave them a dignity which no other politician had done.‖

This recognition of their humanity and their citizenship earned him their immense

gratitude. (Markovits 2003, 141).

That is why the British rulers considered him a dangerous anarchist and repeatedly put

him in jail. Despite this he always proclaimed his friendship for the British people. When

he was in London for the Round Table Conference in 1931, he decided to visit the mill

areas of Lancashire. He was warned by the police not to go there, for he would be

mobbed by thousands of angry workers who had lost jobs due to the swadeshi boycott of

English cloth. But he insisted on going because he wanted to explain India‘s case to

them. The American journalist William Shirer reported the workers‘ reactions to Gandhi‘s

arrival in the mill town of Darwen. They instinctively recognised in him ―a man who had

devoted his life to helping the poor. They gave him a tumultuous welcome.‖ Gandhi was

mobbed, but by people filled with admiration, not anger (Shirer 1979, 180). An unknown

person took a photograph showing a smiling Gandhi in his dhoti surrounded by joyous

women workers whose faces shine with love. Other photographs from this trip show

similar images of the common people‘s love for the man whom their government

portrayed as the Empire‘s chief trouble-maker. There are few, if any examples of the

leader of an anti-colonial struggle whom the citizens of the colonial power held in such

affection.


19


Figure 9.1.1.1: Gandhi in Darwen, Lancashire, 1931

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhi_at_Darwen.jpg

Gandhi did not build a systematic political ideology or ‗ism‘. ‗Isms‘ deserve to be

destroyed, he said, they were useless things. He often made pragmatic adjustments to

his political strategies and ideas, some of them in response to public criticism. It could

be said that he was in a continuous debate, not only with his compatriots, but with

friends and critics all over the world – his writings were not shastras, but a prolonged

conversation. He declared that he since he was always growing intellectually, he was not

concerned with consistency. At most, we could say that his attitude and approach were

consistent. If his actions and ideas carry different meanings for people across space and

time, this is not surprising. It explains the immense range and magnetism of his appeal.

As the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess reminds us: ―There can be no rule-books of

Gandhian policy. There are no easy Gandhian formulae. This, however, does not

necessarily reduce the value of Gandhi‘s teaching in the contemporary political situation.

After all, the indication of direction that a compass-needle gives is of some value in

itself, even if it takes no consideration of the terrain through which we must pass.‖

(Naess, 130.)

Once, in the face of hostile sloganeering in Bengal in 1940, Gandhi remarked, ―I love to

hear the words ‗Down with Gandhism‘. An ‗ism‘ deserves to be destroyed. It is a useless

thing. The real thing is non-violence. It is immortal. It is enough for me if it remains

alive. I am eager to see Gandhism wiped out at an earlier date. You should not give

yourselves over to sectarianism. I do not belong to any sect. I have never dreamt of

establishing any sect. If any sect is established in my name after my death my soul

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhi_at_Darwen.jpg


20


would cry out in anguish‖ (Hardiman 2003, 8). Gandhi‘s reference to immortality makes

us think about our experience of time. Time is another name for life. All of us live within

a certain time-frame. This does not make us prisoners of time. We are free to go beyond

our immediate circumstances to greater or lesser extent - the most deprived persons

may be seen exercising this freedom. Chander Singh Garhwali was a humble soldier. But

he left a positive mark upon history. The mark of greatness is the extent to which our

actions express truths recognisable after our time; truths that in Gandhi‘s words, are

immortal.

Figure 9.1.1.2: Gandhi with the Khan brothers at Utmanzai, 1938

Source: http://www.nuvs.com/ashram/gallery/large/06.1.jpg

Epilogue

Until the mid 1940‘s, the cycle of partition-related communal massacres had not begun.

Yet in the twilight of British power in India, certain political groups and leaders threw

away the chance of mutual accomodation despite the opportunities available. But Gandhi

spoke of love and mutual respect in the midst of hatred and carnage. Some were

pessimists even when there was hope. Gandhi gave people hope in the midst of despair;

he appealed to their better instincts at the worst of times. This is the message of his fast

in January 1948. It is a message from a man of extraordinary strength and courage.

After he died, politicians argued about whether he was the father or the son of the

nation. It would be more accurate to say that the Mahatma‘s last sacrifice became the

foundation of India‘s secular constitution.

The history of the sub-continent since the death of Gandhi is beyond the scope of this

lesson. It is enough to recall that Jinnah‘s Pakistan lasted for twenty-four years after

partition, at which point (1971) it disintegrated. India played a role in this, but it is


21


noteworthy that the bulk of the people of Pakistan (East Pakistanis were 55% of

Pakistan‘s population) preferred to lead a separate existence. The logic of partition did

not end in 1947, nor did the logic of communal strife. As for Gandhi‘s prediction that

without communal harmony India and Pakistan would once again become slaves of

foreign powers, only time will tell.

Two symbolic events tell us something about how India has treated the legacy of the

Mahatma. In 1998, nuclear devices were exploded in the Rajasthan desert at a place

called Pokharan. With this, India announced its wish to emerge as a nuclear weapons

state. And in February 2003, the Indian Union‘s highest officials unveiled a portrait of V.

D. Savarkar in the Central Hall of Parliament.

For a link to the debate regarding the NDA government‘s attempt to alter the contents of

Mahatma Gandhi‘s Collected works, visit the link

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg_controversy.html. For more photos of

Mahatma Gandhi visit the link http://www.nuvs.com/ashram/gallery/index.html.

Albert Einstein had famously said of Gandhi, that generations to come would ―scarce

believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.‖ Perhaps

less well-known is the fact that a millennium poll conducted in 2000 by global readers of

the BBC News website voted Mahatma Gandhi the greatest man of the past thousand

years (BBC, 2005).

9.2: Leaders and followers: Gandhi and the making of

Indian nationalism

Shifting approaches

Historiographical approaches to Indian nationalism in the Gandhian era have inevitably

varied and shifted across time. Initially, there were contrasting pro-colonial and Indian

nationalist readings of colonial and Gandhian nationalist politics: the first trying to justify

what was sometimes declared to be ‗England‘s work in India‘, the second tending to

glorify anti-colonial nationalism, and particularly Gandhi. This earlier work took the form

of general surveys based on published material: biographies, autobiographies,

collections of letters.

A major historiographical breakthrough came about from the 1960s with the opening up

of unpublished official reports and correspondence (archival material) and letters and

diaries of Indian activists as well as of British official and non official persons (private

papers). Such research was pioneered in Cambridge (hence known as the

CambridgeSchool of history) by scholars like Anil Seal and C. A. Bayly. They tended to

highlight internal factional disputes among nationalists and, so presented a less starry-

eyed view of nationalists as well as of British officials. Historians with nationalist leanings

often criticized such work for its neglect or down-playing of patriotic aspirations as well

as of moments of mass agitations.

In the 1970s- 80s there occurred a second major transformation, with the emergence of

what came to be called the ‗Subaltern School‘, pioneered by Ranajit Guha and his

colleagues. This school emphasized the importance of ‗histories from below‘: struggles of

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ordinary peasants and tribal people, and not just the leading role of great nationalists.

The Congress leadership was, in fact, criticized for trying to make popular movements

very tame and moderate. These historians pointed out Gandhi‘s ‗betrayals‘ or sudden

retreats from popular upsurges, as for instance, after an occasion of spectacular violence

at Chauri-Chaura, during the Non-cooperation movement.

Subalternist historians introduced an interesting emphasis on popular constructions of

images of Gandhi, through the spread of rumours. Such rumours tended to create

autonomous images of leaders or politicians, making them out to be often more radical

than they actually were. Peasants and tribals would imagine Gandhi in ways that were

very different from what he actually was. They would then draw inspiration from this

imagined Gandhi and his commands in order to start struggles that were important to

them but were not really a part of the Gandhian or Congress strategies. Such rumours

sometimes declared that he would end landlord oppression and give lands to peasants.

Or that he had asked Indians to prepare liquor at home, in order to avoid imported

drinks.

More recently, the emphasis of some of these scholars has shifted from studies of

popular initiatives to critiques of Western cultural domination and efforts to overcome it

through indigenous cultural alternatives. Such scholars valorize Gandhi as a leader who

broke free of all western influences and who lived and thought like an Indian peasant.

The change, in other words, has been to some extent from political histories to cultural

studies.

Rowlatt satyagraha, Khilafat, non-cooperation

In the 1920s and 30s, Indian political and social life was radically transformed by the

Non-cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements, inspired and led by Mohandas

Karamchand Gandhi. After the bloody suppression of the military and popular rebellions

of 1857, Indian political life had become confined to small groups of educated middle

class men petitioning and pleading for administrative and constitutional reforms. These

‗Moderate‘ politicians had developed critiques of what they called drain of wealth,

excessive revenue burdens, and decline of traditional handicrafts enforced by

competition from cheap machine-made Lancashire goods. They pointed out that the

British refused to give any tariff protection to Indian commodities, and hindered efforts

to develop indigenous industries. These criticisms remained standard throughout the

nationalist era, but not much was done about their demands before the rise of mass

nationalism.

What the Gandhian era achieved was a major breakthrough to other social groups

beyond the educated middle classes, particularly peasants and business groups. Some

methods that had been pioneered during the struggle against the partition of Bengal in

1903-1908 - boycott of foreign cloth, national education, and peaceful passive

resistance, the success of which required active participation by vast numbers of people

- now became effective for the first time in the Gandhian era. The breakthrough was

related to the impact of the First World War on India. Thousands of Indian soldiers were

killed in a war in which they had no interest, and discontent was enhanced by the sharp

rise in prices and wartime shortages. War and immediate post war years were marked

by an accumulation of grievances, but also by moods of growing strength and

confidence. Business groups had profited as Lancashire imports declined due to lack of


23


shipping space. The working class grew in size. Hit by high prices and shortages, factory

workers participated in a massive strike wave in the immediate post war years.

But what explains the sudden rise of Gandhi, a newcomer to Indian politics up until

1915, to a position of supreme leadership in the Indian National Congress by 1919?

Gandhi returned to India fresh from a partial victory in a struggle against white racism in

South Africa. This had brought him into contact with settlers from many regions,

communities and religions of India, giving him a potential reach much beyond that of

other political leaders in India. Balgangadhar Tilak or Bipin Chandra Pal had mainly

provincial bases. (Maharashtra in the case of Tilak, Bengal with regard to Pal). Unlike

early Congress leaders, Gandhi had also worked with social groups not confined to the

middle classes: coolies, traders, soldiers. He returned to India with a mastery over

techniques of mass mobilization and political organization that had already been tried

and tested in South Africa. These included careful training of disciplined volunteers,

peaceful violation of specific laws, mass courting of arrest, occasional hartals and huge

demonstrations. Gandhi‘s insistence on peaceful methods and total non violence even

when faced with repression sometimes led him to abruptly call off movements. Clearly,

non violence was a profoundly important moral compulsion for Gandhi, far more

meaningful than political success. Moreover, unrestrained mass movements would not

have been in the interest of business groups and the propertied sections of the

peasantry, as both were afraid that classes subordinate to them would become too

confident and aggressive once they became a part of political struggles. Gandhi had to

tread a delicate line between huge and intense mass movements, and the maintenance

of certain restraint. Non violence helped to combine popular upsurge with maintenance

of controls.

During his stay in South Africa, Gandhi also developed a specific philosophy which was

embodied in Hind Swaraj (1909). Here he argued that the real evil was not British

political rule but the domination of industrial civilization. He attacked railways which

pumped out resources from the country through exports, lawyers whose fees burdened

the poor, and even hospitals which were very costly and whose western medicines were

often harmful. Much of this seems unrealistic and obscurantist. One has to realize,

however, that the anti-modern message did have an appeal for many peasants, artisans

and poor people in general who had not really benefited from the spread of colonial

modernity.


Gandhi on western modernity

―It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockefeller would be better than the

American Rockefeller…India‘s salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt

during the past 50 years or so. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors,

and all such like have to go, and the so called upper classes have to learn to live

consciously and religiously and deliberately the simple life of the peasant.‖

A very extreme statement, but an interesting and important one. We have to

understand that such an apparently obscurantist statement did have an appeal to

many peasants, artisans and lower middle classes who had benefited little from such

manifestations of colonial modernity. The rejection of modernity has remained


24


influential in some quarters, to a greater or lesser extent, both in India and else

where.

Source: Hind Swaraj, 1909, with author’s comment

The specific style of presentation in Hind Swaraj, the central text of Gandhian thinking

needs to be kept in mind. It is written in the form of a dialogue between the ‗Editor‘

(Gandhi himself) and the ‗Reader‘ (Gandhi‘s prospective audience). Such a form of

presentation for a key political and philosophical text is unusual, but not unique. One

may cite, as texts which must have been familiar to Gandhi, Plato‘s Republic or, to cite

an Indian precedent, the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna in the Gita in

Mahabharata. It still remains a very interesting format; particularly since Gandhi‘s

political thinking does have a dialogic character in general. This is a point that has been

interestingly developed in David Hardiman‘s recent work ‗Gandhi in His time and Ours‘.

Other aspects of the Gandhian appeal included his cult of peasant simplicity- wearing the

loin-cloth, traveling third class on trains, speaking simple Hindustani and not

Sanskritized Hindi. Gandhi‘s appeal was enhanced by his use of Hindu religious language

and imagery. However, there were evident problems with this kind of language so far as

Muslims were concerned. At the same time, Hindu-Muslim unity was and remained a life-

long passionate belief and aspiration for Gandhi, a cause for which he eventually had to

die.

Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 having won a partial victory there. Smuts‘

Indian Relief Act of June 1914 abolished the £ 3 tax and recognized Indian marriages,

though discrimination certainly did not end and the broader question of white racist

exploitation of Africans and Indian alike had hardly been touched upon as yet. After his

return to India he travelled through large parts of the country by train. Between 1917

and early 1918 Gandhi acquired the reputation of a man who would take up specific local

grievances and usually manage to redress them to some extent. Thus, he took up the

grievances of oppressed Champaran indigo cultivators in Bihar, Kheda peasants in

Gujarat burdened by excessive revenue demands, and Ahmedabad textile workers who

were facing a wage-cut. His excellent relations with fellow-Gujarati mill owners helped

him to settle this last dispute. Though these were only specific local matters, rumours

had already started spreading about Gandhi which made him into a much more radical

and transformative figure. He would end zamindari oppression, it came to be believed by

the poor, give peasants and landless labourers land: a hope which made many grossly

exploited tea-garden labourers in Assam start flocking back to their homes in Bihar and

other parts of Northern and Central India during Non-cooperation. Gandhi‘s promise of a

vaguely-defined ‗Swaraj‘ within a year also stimulated wild hopes of a sudden total

change.


25



Official assessments of Gandhi

―Gandhi is daily transfiguring the imagination of masses of ignorant men with visions

of an early millennium‖.

―The currency which Mr. Gandhi‘s name has acquired even in the remotes villages is

astonishing no one seems to know quite who he is…but it is an accepted fact that what

he says is so, and what he orders must be done…the real power of his name is

perhaps to be traced back to the idea that it was he who got be-dakhli (illegal

eviction) stopped in Pratapgarh‖.

These extracts from contemporary official sources illustrate the kind of rumours that

circulated in the early days of the Gandhian movement, and the ways in which

rumours helped to create, ‗from below‘ as it were, a more radical image of Gandhi.

Source: A sub-divisional officer from Champaran 29 April 1917; A C.I.D

report, Government of India Home Political Deposit 19th February 1921, No

13. With author’s comments.

In 1919, Gandhi launched his first all-India movement directed against the Rowlatt Act

which had sought to extend time restrictions on civil liberties even after the war was

over. This included provisions for special courts and detention without trial for a year.

The other major grievance, which directly concerned Muslims, was the imposition of very

harsh peace terms on Ottoman Turkey which had been on the losing side in the War.

This became the basis of the Khilafat movement in defense of the Ottoman sultan (who

had the prestigious title of Khalifa, the head of the global Muslim world). Muslims of

course also shared the other grievances of Indians and the result was an unprecedented

degree of Hindu-Muslim unity during the Khilafat-Non-cooperation movement of 1919-

1922.

The arbitrary extension of wartime restrictions on civil rights by the official committee

headed by Rowlatt was bitterly opposed by all sections of Indian political opinion. It was

Gandhi, however, who suggested the methods for an effective and peaceful form of

protest that would draw in all categories of Indians. The initial suggestion was a fairly

mild one, of volunteers courting arrest by publicly selling pamphlets declared to be illegal

by the British - hence the term commonly used for the movement, ‗Rowlatt

Satyagraha‘. Gandhi soon added a suggestion of an all India hartal which implied

closing of shops and other business establishments. It was fixed for a Sunday and

Gandhi was careful to stipulate that workers who might have jobs to do on that day

should ask the permission of their employers before they stopped work. As always he

was very careful about keeping controls on workers.


26


What happened afterwards, however, was an unprecedented popular upsurge,

particularly in cities and towns, especially in Delhi, Punjab and some other areas.

Nothing like this had been seen after 1857. The British were particularly frightened by

the many instances of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh unity. They reacted with vicious repression

and brutality.

On 13 April 1919, large crowds had come to attend a fair in an enclosed park called

Jallianwalla bagh at Amritsar. There was nothing political or violent about this crowd, but

the British had been made nervous by the unusual degree of Hindu- Muslim unity in the

previous movement: members of the two communities even drank from the same cups

demonstratively to signify the end of the purity-pollution taboos that had separated

them. Suddenly and without warning, General Dyer, the British commander, opened fire

on the crowds who had gathered peacefully in Jallianwalla bagh. Official figures reported

that 379 were killed. Unofficial estimates were much higher. It was followed by weeks of

brutal repression. Indians were made to crawl down a lane in Amritsar where an English

woman had been insulted.


27


Figure 9.2.1: Title page of Rashtriya Sangit Julmi Daayar – Jallianwalla Bagh, in Hindi, by

Manohar Lal Shukla, Kanpur, 1922

Source: Reprinted in Metcalf, Barbara D. and Thomas R. Metcalf. 2008. A Concise History

of Modern India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 170.


28


Figure 9.2.2: An artist‘s impression of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13.

1919

Source: Nehru Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

The Indian response was the Non-cooperation- Khilafat movement of 1919-1922. Gandhi

called for this all India protest against what he branded as ‗the Punjab wrong‘ and the

Khilafat wrong. This involved boycott of British imports, titles, schools and colleges, law

courts and elections. The response was patchy. Not many lawyers, for instance, gave up

their professions, and many of the students who had initially gone out of government

schools and colleges went back after a time. The educational boycott was associated with

the organization of alternative national schools and colleges. Thus emerged, for instance,

the Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi as a nationalist alternative to the pro-British Anglo-

Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh.


29


Figure 9.2.3: Gandhi with Ali brothers

Source: Nehru Memorial Museum Library, Photo Archives, New Delhi

But once again the radical hopes which had been aroused by Non-cooperation – Khilafat

found their most militant expression in the numerous movements with which Gandhi and

the Congress had little to do: working class strikes, peasant‘s agitations, adivasi

movements. Poor people fervently believed that Swaraj would definitely come in a year if

they obeyed Gandhi‘s commands and that Swaraj would resolve all their problems.

Women participated on a large scale, courting arrest and going to prison in an

unprecedented manner. The economic boycott proved particularly effective, and imports

of Lancashire goods went down sharply.

Gandhi hesitated for a long time about extending the boycott of foreign goods to non-

payment of taxes. He was afraid that if landlords refused to pay revenue to the state,

their tenants might stop paying rent to landlords. This would usher in agrarian class

conflict. While he wanted to economically punish the colonial state and British business

groups, he did not want any upset in Indian agrarian relations. He was, nonetheless,

moving towards a selective use of a no-revenue movement, however, when he ordered

an abrupt calling off the entire movement following a terrible incident. In February 1922,

in a village called Chauri-Chaura in Gorakhpur in the United Provinces (present day Uttar

Pradesh) a crowd provoked by official oppression surrounded and burnt the local police-

station, burning alive twenty-two Indian policemen. A horrified Gandhi immediately

called off the entire movement, and Non-cooperation came to an abrupt halt. Even if

other Congress leaders and political activists did not like the retreat, they obeyed

Gandhi‘s decision, as did masses of ordinary participants. This was the other side of the


30


cult of the Mahatma. Rumours had spread about Gandhi, making people believe that

since he was a great and holy man, whatever he said and ordered needed to be obeyed.

Figure 9.2.4: Cartoon in Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 15 August 1947

Source: Amin, Shahid. 2006. Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992.

New Delhi: Penguin.

The movement showed how successfully Gandhi had reorganized the Congress: with his

drive for mass membership, rural bases with welfare programmes and the use of the

spinning wheel to create small scale livelihoods, along with his personal charisma. It was

now a vast but strongly organized body with a centralized working committee and local

and provincial bodies, capable of running disciplined and non violent mass movements

all over the country.

Despite its wide reach during its peak, the appeal of the movement did have certain

limits. Untouchable Dalits (whom Gandhi would later rename as Harijans) for instance

were not always enthusiastic, for they felt that their immediate oppressors were upper

caste Hindus against whom the British could even provide occasional support. Gandhi

from the beginning did condemn untouchablility, but for a long time he did not attack the

caste system as a whole. In some of his speeches in the late 1920‘s in South India, he

even praised it. Here lay major problems for the future.

The sudden calling off of Non-cooperation came as a deep disappointment to many and

resulted in a variety of internal tensions. Hindu-Muslim conflicts which had stopped

during the height of Non-cooperation- Khilafat movement began on an enhanced scale in

the mid-1920s. But there were also more positive alternative tendencies that emerged in

this political vacuum that the calling off of Non cooperation had left. The labour

movement, for instance, gathered strength in the mid and late 1920‘s. Internationally,

too, the post war years were a period of radicalization, particularly with the Russian

Revolution of 1917 attracting many in India. The early years of the Soviet Union were

inspiring for them. They began with the abrogation of unequal imperial treaties which


31


Tsarist Russia had signed to enhance its territories and power. Such a voluntary

abdication of imperial gains won the hearts of many colonized Indians. Socialist and

Communists groups started to develop in various parts of India and, there was a

massive - and initially successful - strike of Bombay textile workers in 1928. They were

led by the Girni Kamgar ‗Lal Bavta‘ (Red Flag) Union. This new and growing Left pressed

for an uncompromising struggle against colonial rule with which it combined social and

economic demands in the interest of workers and peasants.

The Congress led national movement had come to a standstill after Chauri-Chaura. The

period of stagnation was marked by communal riots in many parts of the country. Even

at the time of Non-cooperation-Khilafat itself, there began an anti-landlord peasant

movement in the Malabar district of Kerala which was initially directed against

oppressive Hindu money lenders and traders. This was the Mapila uprising. It then

turned into a violent rebellion which developed communal dimensions. As always, Hindu

and Muslim communalism kept pace with each other. In the mid 20‘s for instance, an

aggressive Hindu outfit called the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in

Nagpur with a bitterly anti- Muslim programme.

A revival of the national movement began in the late 1920s. The British began to plan a

fresh round of constitutional changes. In 1919, in the context of the British promise of

self-government in the near future, a system of dyarchy had been instituted. This had

made certain ministries at the provincial level responsible to elected legislatures. The

reforms promised that a review of this system would be done after a decade. To enable

this, a commission was appointed in 1927 to consider a new round of constitutional

reforms. Headed by Sir John Simon, it, however, did not include a single Indian member.

Indian politicians were furious. There were huge demonstrations in many towns, calling

for the boycott of the Simon Commission, and chanting the slogan of ―Go back Simon‖.

As the boycott movement spread, the Congress began to prepare itself for another spate

of mass struggles.


32


Figure 9.2.5: Simon Commission boycott


There were other kinds of anti colonial initiatives that lay outside Gandhi‘s control and

defied his mandate of non violence. There was a revival of revolutionary terrorism

among radical minded youth. Interestingly, some of these terroristic groups also began

to draw close to socialist ideals. The key figure among them was Bhagat Singh who, in

1928, founded the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The revolutionary

terrorists of the Swadeshi era had been markedly Hindu in their ideas and language.

Bhagat Singh, however, marked a major departure here. Condemned to death and

awaiting execution for his assassination of a British official, he had come to some extent

under the sway of Marxists ideas. One of his last writings was called: Why I Am An

Atheist. It broadened the scope of revolutionary thinking beyond secret assassination

and questioned social power and domination by religion.

Civil disobedience and Gandhi, 1930-34

By the late 1920s, therefore, pressures began to mount, asking for a fresh round of

nationalist struggle with more radical political and socio economic demands. The earlier

Gandhian slogan of Swaraj had been deliberately ambiguous. It could range from self

government within the British Empire to complete independence. But Gandhi had not

precisely spelt out its exact meaning, leaving different groups free to imagine it in

different ways. After much hesitation and pressure from his more radical associates like

Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi finally accepted the demand for

complete independence - Purna Swaraj - at the Lahore Congress in late December


33


1929. A decision was taken to adopt this resolution along with the hoisting of what had

been chosen as the national tri-colour flag. It was hoisted at meetings all over the

country on 26 January, 1930. That is why the latter date is still observed as Republic

Day.

But what would be the methods of the new movement, which was to hopefully culminate

in the winning of complete independence? Gandhi thought for a long time about possible

methods. Eventually, he came forward with a decision which seemed to many to be an

anti- climax, but which eventually proved brilliantly effective. This was the salt

satyagraha. The British had made the production of salt a government monopoly,

thereby making it quite expensive because of the salt tax. Salt appeared a trivial issue

for average urban middle class Indians, but it meant something very different for the

poor. It was an essential item of food and the high price made it a great burden. Salt

was again something that could be manufactured very easily, collected without

additional cost from sea water. The making of it would violate the state law which

allowed only government agencies to produce salt. It would signify the peoples‘ defiance

as much as it would address the needs of the poor. Making and selling of illicit salt in the

open became the predominant form of the movement. In the famous Dandi March (12

March- 6 April 1930), Gandhi traveled from his Gujarat ashram down to the sea coast at

Dandi to collect salt from the beach and bands of volunteers grew larger and larger on

his way. His example was followed by Congress leaders and volunteers all along the

Indian coastlines. Contraband salt was sold in cities, towns and villages, as an act of

open, deliberate mass level provocation, but peaceful in its form.

The salt satyagraha marked the beginning of the Civil Disobedience movement. This was

in some ways more radical from the beginning than Non-cooperation. Unlike the latter, it

involved a deliberate violation of the law and was not just a refusal to render voluntary

services. In some areas, this was accompanied with non payment of village level

chowkidari taxes as well. The British met the movement with massive lathi charges,

arrests and brutal repression.


34


Figure 9.2.6: Gandhi breaking the salt law, Dandi, April 6. 1930


At the same time Civil Disobedience suffered from some inadequacies that were not

present in the earlier movement. It did not coincide with any major labour upsurge

unlike what had happened in 1919-1922. Muslim participation was considerably less than

before, except in the North West Frontier Provinces where Khan Abdul Gafar Khan, called

Frontier Gandhi, led a powerful yet peaceful mass movement. But many Muslims had

been alienated by Gandhi‘s unilateral decision to stop Non- Cooperation, and there was

now no parallel Khilafat Movement. Hindu-Muslim relations had been strained also by the

Congress insistence on a unitary form of governance in future independent India. Many

Muslims wanted a more federal set up where Muslim majority provinces would have a

greater autonomy. A second crucial limitation concerned the Dalits. An autonomous

political movement was gathering strength among them under the leadership of B.R.

Ambedkar. Despite gestures of occasional goodwill, upper caste Hindus had not

fundamentally changed their attitudes about purity-pollution taboos. Gandhi himself


35


condemned untouchablility, but still found much to praise in the caste system as a

whole.

Civil Disobedience, particularly in the form of non payment of taxes, gained enormous

popular support, particularly among many peasants, since Gandhi encouraged non

payment of revenue. What strengthened the movement was its coincidence with a very

sharp fall in the prices of agricultural products due to the world economic depression of

the early 1930‘s. The fall hit hard particularly the relatively better off peasants who had

a surplus to sell in the market to meet the heavy burdens of revenue and rent payments.

This was in contrast to the post World War rise in prices, which had hit the poorer

peasants and the labourers the hardest. Gandhi, however, refused to go in for no rent

movements as he did not want to sharpen in any way class tensions within Indian

society between landlords and tenants.

Figure 9.2.7: A batch of Satyagrahis of Pratapgarh, June 1930


Another point of contrast with the previous movement was that this time Gandhi did not

call any halt due to individual or local cases of violence. The movement was by and large

peaceful though there were stray cases of attacks and conflicts. There were violent

upsurges outside the Congress movement. In April 1930, for instance, a revolutionary

group headed by Surya Sen carried out a daring raid on the armory of Chittagong in East

Bengal. There were also more or less violent mass upheavals in Peshawar and Sholapur.


36


Apart from peasants, Civil Disobedience also involved large numbers of urban students.

The presence of women was notable and they would become local ‗dictators‘ in Civil

Disobedience when the men were put behind bars. Boycott of British goods, particularly

Lancashire imports, proved very effective. Civil Disobedience did not quite have the

spontaneous mass appeal of its predecessor, for Gandhi now was a well known figure.

The earlier process of radicalization of mass movements through rumours about Gandhi

could no longer operate so powerfully. The Congress was much more organized now,

creating the possibility of effective but also tightly controlled mass movements.

Mass courting of arrest by volunteers, women as well as men, led to a flooding of the

prisons. The Government got seriously worried and Viceroy Irwin sent out feelers for

talks in early February 1931. Somewhat surprisingly, Gandhi quickly accepted the offer

and concluded what is called the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in March 1931. A somewhat uneasy

truce began which continued till the end of 1931. Some detailed research has indicated

that as the movement seemed to be gathering strength, business groups had become

restive due to frequent hartals and the general disruption of normal commerce. The

Congress agreed to a fresh round of negotiations, which took the form of a Round Table

Conference in London in early 1931, where Indian leaders of all political groups

participated along with British officials and politicians. The Conference however failed,

mainly because of sharp disagreements among Indian leaders. Not only Muslim leaders

but notably also Ambedkar refused to accept the Congress and Gandhi as the sole

spokesman for the country. The story goes that when Gandhi made an appeal to

Ambedkar to unite with the Congress in the name of the country, Ambedkar responded

with the statement, ―Mahatmaji I have no country‖. An angry but understandable reply,

given the conditions of extreme oppression and inequality in which masses of Dalits had

to live.

The breakdown of the Round Table Conference was followed in 1932 by a second round

of Civil Disobedience. Here the British were clearly on the offensive, the Congress was

declared illegal and massive repression was unleashed. Even though the movement was

not formally called off, Gandhi had shifted attention after the mid 1930s to what he

called his Harijan programme, trying to meet Dalit grievances through minor reforms like

the opening of wells and other facilities to untouchables without, however, very much

success.

In a sense, then, the Civil Disobedience movement failed, for British political structures

of domination remained as before. But, underneath, Gandhian movements had firmly

established the Congress as the real political authority in the minds of people. When

elections were called in 1935, the Congress won an overwhelming victory in most

provinces, benefiting evidently from memories of Civil Disobedience and the halo of

martyrdom and suffering that the non violent struggle led to. In 1935, a new

constitution had come into effect under which the provinces got somewhat greater

autonomy and ministries responsible to elected legislatures were constituted. The

Congress was able to form ministries in most parts of the country.

The developments of the 1920s and 30s had stimulated a variety of radical movements

and pressures within and outside the Congress. Socialism, for instance, was no longer a

creed espoused only by a handful of extreme radicals. Pressure groups had emerged

within the Congress demanding more Left-oriented politics, and these were occasionally


37


stimulated by younger leaders within the Congress, notably Jawaharlal Nehru and, to

some extent, Subhas Chandra Bose.

August 1942 and ‘Quit India’

The Quit India movement of August 1942 is often seen as the peak point of Gandhian

nationalism. In many ways it marked a significant departure from the preceding

decades. It developed in the very specific context of a particular phase of the Second

World War, when Britain seemed to be on the point of losing the war against the Axis

powers. Japan seemed poised to invade India. Subhas Chandra Bose, the left leaning

dissident within the Congress, had secretly left the country, contacted and visited Axis

leaders and had set up a government in exile in alliance with Japan. He recruited from

Indian prisoners of war and built up the Azad Hind Fauj. Gandhi, too, was in a rather

new mood at this time. For once he was apparently less worried by possibilities of

violence within his movement, calling heroic resistance against the state leonine even if

it turned violent.

A number of efforts were made by the Congress just before 1942 to negotiate with the

British, offering wartime cooperation in exchange for the promise of post war

independence. All such negotiations, notably the Cripps Mission of 1942, had failed. The

British wanted to use the war situation, with a large Allied army situated on Indian soil,

to crush the Congress and nationalism once and for all. There was much provocation,

then, for the famous Quit India Resolution passed by the Congress on 8/9 August 1942.

An additional factor may have been a feeling in wide circles among nationalists that

Britain was on the point of losing the war, and Japan might well successfully take over

India. To forestall it, the Congress should make a bid for immediate independence at all

costs.

The unprecedented scale, as well as considerable mass and individual violence of the

1942 upsurge had their roots also in general suffering and discontent. War had once

again brought in new miseries, especially for the ordinary people. There were shortages

of essential goods, a massive rise in prices and, the misbehavior at times of British and

Allied soldiers added to the discontent. All this created a fertile soil for a huge uprising.

Immediately after the Congress resolution of August 1942, the British unleashed

massive repression, arresting Gandhi and a very large number of Congress activists all

over the country. The Indian reaction was equally extreme, and quite often violent.

Students and other middle class groups, along with peasants were the most prominent.

Parallel governments were set up in some parts of the country, notably in some regions

of Bihar, UnitedProvinces, Satara in Maharashtra, and Midnapur in Bengal. Workers were

also active in many places, particularly in Bombay and Jamshedpur. Even capitalists

seemed at times to be quite sympathetic, no doubt thinking, like others, that Britain

would lose the War. Left leaning Congress groups, notably the Congress Socialists led by

Jaya Prakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia were particularly militant. Communists

kept away from this upsurge. They were afraid of doing anything that would in practice

help the Fascist powers in a war in which the Soviet Union seemed to be in mortal

danger.


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Taking full advantage of the war situation, the British unleashed enormous repression,

and were able to suppress the Quit India upsurge in a matter of weeks, except in some

scattered pockets of the country, especially where parallel governments did function for

a time.

1942 was accompanied and followed by enormous problems and crises. This reached its

climax in the devastating Bengal Famine of 1943. This was rooted not so much in

absolute scarcity, as in profiteering, and enormous black markets, and general official

indifference and inefficiency. British rule seemed to be ending amidst enormous mass

suffering. It would also leave behind a deeply divided people as its legacy.

Figure 9.2.8: Protest during Quit India movement


For despite its enormous scale, the Quit India movement did have one major limitation

as compared with its predecessors. Muslim participation on the whole remained low.

Many Muslims had been upset by the way the provincial governments, most of them

dominated by the Congress, seemed to often favour Hindu groups and discriminate

against Muslims. The demand of many Muslim political groups for greater provincial

autonomy within a loose federal structure consequently gathered strength. The

resolution passed by the Lahore session of the Muslim League in March 1940 needs to be

seen in this context. It demanded that Muslim majority areas in the North-western and

Eastern parts of India should be grouped together to constitute ‗Independent States‘.

The resolution did not really use the terms ‗Pakistan‘ or ‗Partition‘, but it soon began to

be widely called the Pakistan resolution. The ban and repression unleashed on the


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Congress in the wake of the Quit India movement left the political field for some years

open to the Muslim League. The Pakistan demand did become very popular among large

number of Muslims. As always, Muslim and Hindu communalisms fed into each other.

The mid 40s saw a climax in communal violence symbolized by the Calcutta riots of

August 1946.

1942 had apparently ended in British victory, for repression had crushed the nationalist

rebellion. But subsequent events were soon to show that this was only a temporary

British victory. British leaders by and large realized that a negotiated transfer of power

to Indians was more or less inevitable after the War ended. The exceptional measures of

repression through which August 1942 had been crushed would be impossible to sustain

in the post war world. The British economy had been exhausted by the war. In addition,

anti-imperialist sentiments were riding high worldwide in the years immediately after

1945. So, colonialism did have to come to an end, leaving behind a divided India and a

people at war among themselves.

Gandhian movements: aspects and tensions

The historical significance of Gandhi on not just an Indian but on a world scale goes

beyond his role – often controversial - as the leading figure in a series of anti-colonial

movements. The figure of Gandhi remains relevant to many movements down to our

own times.

Gandhi, at times, has been portrayed as a spokesman of struggle against Western

cultural domination. Hind Swaraj,for instance, can be read as a tirade against Western

materialist civilization: with its denunciation of railways, lawyers, even doctors and

hospitals. But it would be an oversimplification which presents Gandhian ideals as part of

a simple dichotomy between West and non-West. Hind Swaraj, in fact, also includes

much praise of Englishmen, and the rejection of railways for instance, cannot be taken

too literally. Gandhi, it may be noted, did not hesitate to travel frequently on trains or

use other modern means of communication like journalism which he abused in his book.

His was not a simple, obscurantist rejection of the West.

Yet the cultural critique developed by Gandhi does have a contemporary relevance, if it

is seen as a renunciation of a blind worship of machines and material success. Here,

Gandhian criticism links up with contemporary environmental and ecological radicalism

and alternative models of sustainable development which are oriented towards welfare of

people and environment and not just the growth of commodity production. Non violent

mass satyagraha, as a tool for action, also remains relevant to many. One may cite the

Chipko movement of the 1970s in which peasants and women in the western Himalayan

hills defended tress against deforestation by literally hugging them: or the Narmada

Bachao Andolan, especially in Madhya Pradesh which was directed against the

construction of huge dams which threaten floods and take away the land held by

peasants for many generations and lead to large scale destruction of forests.

Internationally, the best known examples would include the anti apartheid and liberation

struggles in South Africa under Nelson Mandela which began with quasi-Gandhian non-

violence but later was forced to take up arms. Or the Afro-American movements for civil

rights in the USA led by Martin Luther King. There have also been numerous

environmental movements with some affinities with Gandhian ideals and methods: the


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so called Green Movements in many parts of the West, notably, the Green Party in

Germany led by Petra Kelly which for some time became a significant electoral force.


Non-violence

―When a person claims to be non-violent, he is expected not to be angry with one who

has injured him. He will not wish him harm; he will wish him well; he will not swear at

him; he will not cause him any physical hurt. He will put up with all the injury to which

he is subjected by the wrongdoer. Thus non-violence is complete innocence. Complete

non-violence is complete absence of ill will against all that lives. It therefore embraces

even sub-human life not excluding obnoxious insects or beasts. They have not been

created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator,

we should find their proper place in His creation. Non-violence is therefore, in its active

form, goodwill towards all life. It is pure Love. I read it in Hindu scripture, in the Bible,

in the Koran‘‘.

This extract indicates some of the wider dimensions of Gandhian non-violence. Its

extension to all forms of life indicates some of Gandhi‘s affinities with notions of

environmental conservation which has become an increasingly central issue worldwide.

Source: Young India, 9-3-1922

With author’s comment.

So far, we have looked at the broad sweep of the Gandhian movements and ideologies.

It may be useful now to analyze these in terms of the specific social groups that were

involved and the tensions that emerged in their mutual relationships. A recurrent pattern

was the dual dimension within Gandhian ideology and movements. Gandhi without doubt

inspired and energized massive movements but he also repeatedly restrained or even

halted them abruptly. He staunchly discouraged class conflict among Indians even when

there were abuses of power by the upper classes. The contradictions here, at once

inspiring and curbing movements, frequently led to pressures from below, some of which

at times sought to go beyond the limits of the Gandhian leadership.

We may now look briefly at five dimensions within this contradictory phenomenon, in

terms of industrial workers, peasants, caste, gender, communalism and nationalism.

Labour

One of the earliest movements led by Gandhi concerned industrial workers: the

Ahmedabad textile workers strike of 1918. Yet in some ways Gandhi seems always to

have been nervous and hesitant about encouraging labour unrest. The hesitation no

doubt was related to his fear of contributing to internal tensions within Indian society.

Yet the way in which he sought to tackle such issues generally tended to have a tilt

towards the more dominant groups within such relationships.


41


A striking example here was the way in which he backed no tax or no revenue

movements, but had enormous hesitation about calling for non-payment of rent. Non-

payment of revenue would hit the colonial rulers, but the recurrent problem for Gandhi

seems to have been the fact that no rent movements would hit the interest of indigenous

landlords or locally dominant groups in the countryside. So he was prepared to

countenance non-payment of rent rarely, and always with great hesitation and delays.

The abrupt halts which he sometimes called for in movements, as we have seen were

often related also to such class dimensions.

The Ahmedabad textile strike of 1918 provides one example. It made clear Gandhi‘s

refusal to support class struggle between workers and employers - a hesitation enhanced

in the Ahmedabad case as mill-owners like Ambalal Sarabhai and Kasturbhai Lal Bhai

were personally close to Gandhi. More generally, Gandhi developed a theory of

trusteeship. i.e. that capitalists, possibly landlords too, hold their properties in trust for

workers and peasants subordinated to them. Wealth belongs to them only because they

will contribute to the uplift of the producers. This was Gandhi‘s alternative to theories of

class struggle, which became increasingly influential from around the 1920s and 1930s

among Left leaning groups in India. It did prove on the whole effective in Ahmedabad. In

the wake of the 1918 strike, the Textile Labour Association that was set up followed

Gandhian lines of class peace rather than class struggle. As a result this organization

never joined the All India Trade Union Congress that was set up in 1920 and which came

to include a large variety of groups with different leanings, Congress as well as Socialists

or Communists. Gandhi divided the Association into different craft groups and allowed

for arbitration of disputes, generally under his personal instruction.

Gandhi discouraged strikes against employers which would include European as well as

Indian industrialists. He was critical of industrial production but he did not want workers

to disrupt it in any way. Even during peak points in nationalist movements, he was not in

favour of political strikes among workers in sympathy with nationalist demands and

grievances.

Peasants

As said earlier, Gandhi would, on occasion, allow and organize no revenue movements,

where landowners stopped paying taxes to the state. One of the most effective of these

no revenue movements was the Bardoli satyagraha of 1928 in Gujarat. Excessive land

revenue demands from peasants led to a very successful movement which withheld such

payment, even when peasants were deprived of their holdings. But even at the height of

the Depression in the 1930s, when agrarian prices crashed, leading to peasant

bankruptcy, Gandhi would not allow peasants to stop rent payments to landlords, nor

would he try to enlarge the rights of agricultural workers or sharecroppers.

Despite his evident hesitation on issues of no rent movements and his tendency to call

off movements at points where they seem to be turning not just or necessarily violent

but socially radical, Gandhi was able to mobilize peasants on an unprecedented and

unequalled scale throughout his life. To some extent, even his hesitations and restraints

may have helped, for they did contribute to unity in the countryside, where class

tensions were often less clear cut, and elements of paternalism were sometimes present

in relations between landlords and tenants, peasants and agricultural labourers, high and

low castes. Moreover, his followers set up ashrams in rural areas, setting up arbitration


42


courts to help resolve rural disputes, and organized small scale income generating

projects. Khadi did augment peasant livelihoods, in however small a way.

Yet the breaks, hesitations, and compromises did stimulate criticism and resentment. In

a recurrent pattern, radical groups that were critical of the Gandhian message of class

peace and trusteeship began to spring up to address issues of landlord exploitation

which Gandhi would not touch. Organizations like Kisan Sabhas developed from the

1920s onwards in many parts of the country, pressing for greater tenancy rights and

critical of Gandhian ideology and methods from a Left perspective.

Dalits and caste

Gandhi was consistent in his condemnation of untouchablility from the beginning. But

about caste in general he tended to be much more hesitant and statements are not rare,

particularly in his earlier phases, that were or could be read as praise for caste as a

whole. Varnashramaor the four fold division of society into hereditary occupations,

carrying strong purity-pollution taboos, was described as a structure that helped to

maintain social peace and reduce social conflict. He went so far as to occasionally praise

Brahmans as the finest flowers of Hindu and Indian civilization. He discouraged inter

caste marriages or change of caste based occupation.

At the same time, in what can be seen as an overall pattern, there seems to be a

tendency towards greater radicalism over time. Here the development of the Ambedkar

alternative provided both a threat as well as a stimulus for Gandhi‘s thinking. It became

increasingly clear from the 1920s that among the untouchables there was a growing

appeal of such more radical condemnation of caste as a whole, as an alternative to

Gandhian or Congress ideology. Gandhi liked to call the untouchables Harijans or

children of God. They themselves began to name themselves Dalits, the most oppressed.

This was a deliberate break with Gandhi‘s efforts. The Gandhian Congress developed

over time a complex pattern of relationships with Ambedkar and other radical Dalit

leaders. It included both conflict and compromise or even partial unity.

In 1932, the Congress determinedly opposed Ambedkar‘s demand for separate

electorates for untouchables and Gandhi went on a fast unto death to oppose it. He also

stayed aloof from Ambedkar‘s militant struggles to reclaim, for Dalit access, public

spaces that lay alongside the temples from which Dalits were barred. Gandhi preferred

that upper castes should realize their guilt and abolish untouchability themselves, rather

than Dalits fight it with state help. Moreover, he insisted at the Round Table Conference

that he and the Congress represented Dalits adequately and they needed no other

organization or leader outside the Congress.

However, things changed as Gandhi increasingly realized that his hopes were not

realizable. In the mid-40s, the Congress supported Ambedkar‘s election to the

Constituent Assembly, and subsequently went on to put him in principal charge of

drafting the Constitution of independent India. This helped to make that basic document

much more socially radical than it otherwise would have been.


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Women and gender

Initiative and pressures critical of patriarchal domination had been the central theme of

so-called social reform initiatives and movements throughout the 19th century,

beginning with Ram Mohun Roy with his campaign against sati or widow immolation. In

the late 19th and early 20th century however, there was a tendency towards a certain

decline in such social reform movements, as many anti-colonial nationalists, notably

figures like Tilak and much of the Swadeshi movements against the partition of Bengal of

1905 thought that such reform meant seeking the support of the colonial state and

therefore should be postponed or abandoned, and priority had to be given to the anti-

colonial struggle. There was thus a wave of Hindu revivalist pressures, and praise of the

allegedly unique position of the chaste Hindu women and Hindu patriarchal values. There

was therefore even at times a hostile relationship between the more aggressive types of

anti-colonial nationalism and criticism of patriarchy and support of emancipation of

women. Some signs of a revival of more reformists attitudes could be seen however

from the 1910s, as for instance, in some of the writings of Rabindranath Tagore in the

immediate post-Swadeshi years. From the early decades of the 20th century, women

began to set up their own organizations and gradually came to lead the agenda of social

reform.

Gandhi‘s own attitudes towards women, gender and patriarchal values were highly

complex. He would ask women to be meek and submissive, to accept their sufferings

without confrontation or rebellion; yet, to remain morally pledged to the right values,

even if the family punished them for their rectitude. In this they would be the model for

his satyagrahis. He revered his mother‘s piety and modelled himself on her qualities,

thus learning to nurture, nurse and feed his associates and cultivating what are called

feminine virtues. His gentleness and non aggression made him a very different sort of

man and he encouraged his followers to be masculine in that different mode. At the

same time, he was authoritarian in his family life, often forcing his wife and children to

obey him despite their misgivings. His emphasis on perfect celibacy for satyagrahis

imposed a lot of emotional stress on his associates.

Yet, unlike the bulk of the social reformists of the 19th century Gandhi did call for the

active participation of women in political movements and the anti-colonial struggle in

general. In 1917 for instance, at a political conference in Godhra in Gujarat, he noticed

that there were no women in the audience and made the remark to the men assembled

there that they were walking on one foot. Women participated in all aspects of Gandhian

movements, picketing shops to impose boycott of foreign goods, courting arrest, facing

lathi–charges. Going to prison was previously considered a disgrace particularly for

women. It now became a symbol of patriotism. This can be seen both in the Non-

cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements, particularly in the latter when thousands

of women participated actively. It seems that the religious appeal which was evident in

many aspects of Gandhian nationalism was helpful in this context, for, political activism

was often projected as a religious duty. At the same time, a relatively negative aspect

should also be noted. Women who had played notably non- traditional roles in course of

the anti-colonial struggle sometimes slipped back to more conservative roles and values

when that era was over. Still the active public role of women including large number of

peasants and women from highly conventional middle class families needs to be

emphasized.


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Figure 9.2.9: Women participation in Salt Satyagraha, 1930


Communalism and nationalism

From his South African days onwards, Gandhi was and remained a passionate believer in

Hindu-Muslim unity. Possibly the fact that some of his earliest supporters of the anti-

racists struggles in South Africa had been Muslim lawyers and traders contributed to the

way in which anti-communalism became a part of his very being. Gandhi‘s life thus

ended in tragedy, often presented in terms of the acceptance of a partition of India. But

the real tragedy was not the acceptance of a separate Pakistan but the communal

holocaust that preceded, accompanied, and followed it. For Gandhi, political divisions

were much less significant than the division of hearts. The last years of his life were

devoted almost totally to the struggle against all forms of communalism, whether Muslim

or Hindu. Gandhi‘s interventions often took the form of going on a fast unto death. In

Calcutta in late 1946 and early ‗47, and in Delhi just before his murder, such fasts did

succeed remarkably in ending violence for the time being. But even these acts of

courage and self sacrifice did not bank the flames permanently, as is evident in his own

brutal murder on 30 January, 1948 in a conspiracy organized by Hindu communalist

groups.


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Figure 9.2.10: Refugees migration during partition


Gandhi spent the last weeks and months of his life desperately trying to end the

communal violence, Hindu as much as Muslim, that had begun with what is called the

Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946. Massive communal violence spread rapidly,

virtually all across the sub-continent: Noakhali in East Bengal, numerous cities, towns

and villages across Northern and Central India, Bihar, ultimately Delhi and Punjab.

Horrified particularly by the news of many cases of rape being reported from Noakhali,

Gandhi made his last major intervention, in what has been called the Mahatma‘s finest

hour. He went to riot- torn Noakhali refusing any police or military help, accompanied by

a group of young men and women. He moved through villages unprotected, moving

aside with his own hands sometimes the sticks and dirt which had been thrown on his

path by the rioters. While he walked he was singing what had become his favorite song,

―If no one heeds your call walk alone walk alone‖. He spoke of peace and love to

implacable Muslim communalists who gradually stopped their violence and began to

attend his prayer meetings.


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Talk to students

Calcutta, August 15, 1947.

Gandhiji explained in detail why the fighting must stop now. We had two states now,

each of which was to have both Hindu and Muslim citizens. If that were so, it meant

an end of the two-nation theory. Students ought to think and think well. They should

do no wrong. It was wrong to molest an Indian citizen merely because he professed a

different religion. Students should do everything to build up a new state of India which

would be everybody‘s pride. With regard to the demonstrations of fraternization he

said:

I am not lifted off my feet by these demonstrations of joy.

Source: Bose, Nirmal Kumar. My Days with Gandhi, 266.

On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot dead at a prayer meeting by Nathuram Godse, an

activist for many years of the extreme Hindu communalist organization, the Rashtriya

Swayam Sevak Sangh(RSS) which he left to join the Hindu Mahasabha. At his trial, in a

speech, entitled ‗May it please your honor‘, Godse acknowledged Savarkar, principle

ideologue of the entire Hindu Right, as his mentor. It is interesting that some scholars

think that Savarkar may have attended the group meeting in London where Gandhi first

presented Hind Swaraj. The murder of the Mahatma which deeply shocked the entire

country, and indeed the world, did stop for a time the communal riots. But communalism

has repeatedly revived and remains a terrible problem for the entire sub-continent.

9.3: Nationalism and culture

Introduction

The critical link between nationalism and culture was recognized when the idea of

nations and nation-states became the dominant organizing principle in Europe in the

19th century. The conventional understanding was that all cultural forms—literatures,

art, music, dance and folk traditions were aligned and expressed the unique genius of a

people, their national culture. National Culture then claimed for itself the sole right to

represent all people within a territory. National culture also created a cohesiveness and

unity which enabled the community to devise and demand its own modes of governance,

the political roof of the nation-state. The legitimacy granted to nationality, nationalism

and the nation-state resulted in the formation of the League of Nations and subsequently

the United Nations. Over the 20th century, colonized societies also staked their claims to

nationhood. Today, for all of us, nationality/national identity fulfils an imperative need.

E. Gellner noted this when he said - ―A man must have a nationality as he must have a


47


nose and two ears.‖ (Gellner 1983, 6).The paradox lies in the fact that everyone needs a

nationality and yet each nationality claims to be unique.

How did nationalism become so pervasive and powerful? It was this question which

triggered major debates on nationalism and national cultures in the second half of the

20th century. The understanding that national cultures are organic, natural, primordial

and perennial was subjected to criticism. Scholars working from the perspectives of

Modernism and Ethno-Symbolism have demonstrated that nations are products of the

modern world and are the result of human agency and intervention—nations and

national cultures are modern and constructed.

Ernest Gellner argues that nationalism is a necessary and functional response to the

modern world of industry and urbanism. His focus is on the process of homogenization

produced by industrialization which transforms the organization of labour and the pattern

of consumption. In the anonymous and impersonal context of urban living, cultural

communication is based on a shared linguistic culture. This linguistic community is

created by standardized mass public education supported by the state. The ‗high culture‘

of the academy is emulated by the new migrants to the city and gradually spreads to the

countryside - thus the new modern nation is invented and constantly renewed.

E. J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger lay emphasis on nationalism as invention. For them

nationalism is constructed by elites and supported by the nation-state for instrumental

ends, to manipulate the ‗masses‘. The state sponsors activities like primary education,

public ceremonies and mass production of monuments to create and sustain national

cultures. They remind us that the nation-state has an interest in sustaining nationalism

for its own legitimacy and coherence.

What about nationalism in societies that were not industrial and which were not

independent nation-states? Colonial societies also turned to nationalism and sought to

create modern national cultures. Their journey to nationhood was difficult because the

state was not supportive and the process of homogenization was limited. National

culture had to be recognizably classical and yet modern. It is in this context that

Benedict Anderson‘s idea of the nation as an imagined community is particularly

appealing. Anderson suggests that imagining the nation became possible in the era of

print capitalism. He says that print culture standardizes language, creates a large

reading public through the dissemination of books and newspapers in the vernacular and

creates a literary idiom - a national culture - with the power to represent the people.

Imagining a nation community based on a linguistic tradition inevitably requires a sense

of history and it is scholars likeAntony D. Smith who suggest that nations can be viewed

as ethno-symbolic constructs. National cultures may be invented, but modern nations

choose and are able to build on particular pasts because the inventing is structured by

pre-existing ethnic ties and loyalties. According to ethno-symbolism, national cultures

are derived from symbols, myths, memories, values and traditions, which constitute a

pre-existing cultural repertoire for the fashioning of modern cultural traditions. National

imagining draws upon the resources of the past by highlighting certain aspects and

repressing others.

A nation, therefore, denotes not only a political organization but also an entity which

produces meanings through a system of cultural representations. A nation can be seen

as a symbolic community, which is created and affirmed through rituals such as flag

hoisting, singing the national anthem, wearing certain kinds of garments, observing and

commemorating particular events. The importance of national culture lies in the fact that

it produces meanings with which we can identify. In the modern world, the national

culture into which we are born is one of the principal sources of our cultural identity. Yet,

this identity is neither natural nor given nor unitary, but is formed within and in relation


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to representations. To quote Stuart Hall ―People are not only legal citizens of a nation;

they participate in the idea of the nation as represented in its national culture….A

national culture is a discourse—a way of constructing meanings which influences and

organizes both our actions and our conception of ourselves.‖ (Hall 1995, 612).

Recent writings focus on the plural, contingent and contested aspects of cultural

traditions. By historicizing nationalism, scholars have unraveled its totalizing,

standardizing and homogenizing tendencies. They have contested its attempts to

marginalize and repress cultural traditions which do not conform to its standards of high

culture. They have shown how traditions which cannot be classicized are often sanitized

and doctored by dominant groups. These writings on national cultures recognize

contestation and stress the role of power politics in the formation of cultural identities.

The Indian context

Partha Chatterjee‘s critique of Benedict Anderson‘s Imagined Communities is probably

the best way to begin the debate about the fashioning of Indian cultural identities in the

age of colonial modernity. He rejects Anderson‘s argument that nationalist movements in

colonial countries chose to replicate modular forms of nationalism developed in Europe.

He argues that conventional political histories ofIndia may subscribe to Anderson‘s

formulations but a closer look at cultural developments does not corroborate

Anderson‘sargument. The critical point for Partha Chatterjee is the role of the colonial

state which, unlike the state in Western Europe, does not favour the articulation of an

Indian nationalist identity. The nationalist intelligentsia therefore has to create its

domain of sovereignty within colonial society before its political battle with the imperial

power. ―It does this by dividing the world of social institutions and practices into two

domains - the material and the spiritual……In this domain (the material) Western

superiority had to be acknowledged and its accomplishments carefully studied and

replicated. The spiritual, on the other hand is an inner domain bearing the ‗essential‘

marks of cultural identity.‖ This inner domain of national culture is ―where nationalism

launches its most powerful, creative and historically significant project: to fashion a

‗modern‘ national culture that is nevertheless not western‖. (Chatterjee 1996, 217). As

Lajpat Rai said in his work The Problem of National Education in India, ―We do not want

to be English or German or American or Japanese …..We want to be Indians, but

modern, up to date, progressive Indians.‖

What is this national culture and how is it produced? Cultural nationalism generates a

flowering of historical narratives and literatures as intellectuals establish cultural forums

to campaign for and ‗create‘ the idea of the nation as a living principle in the lives of the

people. It was primarily in the area of language, literary and aesthetic forms that

Indian-ness was formulated and was said to reside. In this context, Chatterjee‘s

argument about the search for autonomy from the colonial state has to be read with

caution because nationalism needs to articulate its distinctiveness and yetfollow

conventions which provide it with the legitimacy of being and presenting itself like other

nations. The experience ofcolonialismcould not be removed by willing, it structured the

very imagining of the nation.

Value addition: did you know?

The creation of national culture – the national flag and song

The song Vande Mataram was sung at the Calcutta session of the Indian National

Congress in 1896, by Rabindranath Tagore to music composed by him. It was

translated into Marathi in 1897, Kannada in 1897, Gujarati in 1901, Tamil in

1905, Hindi in 1906,Telugu in 1908, and Malayalam in 1909. Vande Mataram


49


became the rallying cry during the heady days of the Swadeshi Movement in

Bengal. The song caused resentment in some sections of the Muslim community

as early as 1905. A more elaborate critique emerged by the 1920‘s. Some

objected to the idolatrous nature of the song, others to the author Bankim

Chandra Chattopadhyay‘s hatred of Muslims. The Congress decided to take

Rabindranath‘s advice and recognize only the first two stanzas. Songs were very

important generally for the creation of a national culture –Bipin Chandra Pal and

Surendra Nath Banerjee both write that they became extremely emotional when

they participated in the processions singing nationalist songs. Songs were

composed by Sarla Chaudhuri in Bengali, by Anantarao Krishnaji Tekade in

Marathi, S. Bharati in Tamil,by Iqbal in Urdu. Harvansh Rai Bachan‘s first efforts

at composition in Hindi consisted of writing nationalist songs for the Salt

Satyagraha—a successful song was Sar jaye to jaye par Hind azadi paye –‗our

headsmay fall but Hind will win freedom‘.

Songs fostered nationalist sentiments, but remained confined to regional

traditions—it is in this context that the flag became an important symbol of the

nation. ―The particularity of this symbol and its political value lay in transforming

these temporary, short lived responses to events and information into more

permanent, shared feelings of loyalty to the nation. It socialized individual

sensations into national patterns of political behaviour.‖ (Virmani 2008, 213)

In May 1923, the Congress decided to institute a Flag Day for display and

veneration of the national flag. It was to be celebrated at 8.00 a.m. on the last

Sunday of every month. A manual was prepared by Dr. N.S.Hardikar with

illustrations and norms. ―From 1930 onwards Flag Day was observed all over

British India and even princely India. The flag‘s association with groups like

women and children communicated an additional emotive power to the symbol…

Indeed, it was the shift in emotional mood of these years (1930‘s and 1940‘s )

that constituted the deep psychological change many held to be necessary for the

emergence of the Indian nation.‖ (Virmani 2008, 213)

You are probably familiar with the story of the Indian national flag, how it evolved

along with the nationalist movement, but do you know that by the 1930‘s there

were groups who questioned its legitimacy? After 1937, the Muslim League

opposed the Congress strategy of mobilization around flag, nation and Congress.

In 1940 the green flag with a crescent and star was declared to be the national

flag of Muslim India.

The national flag made of khadi became the symbol of the Indian nation and

every individual who spun and wove became the producer of the nation. Gandhi

promoted khadi as freedom‘s fabric and many Indians subscribed to khadi and

chose to wear it.

―Khadi was political in the sense that a simple gesture of wearing it transformed a

person into a vehicle of assertion……Khadi was a visible shift in allegiance from

abstract empire to neighbourhood….it was not only national but also

personal…..the tale of personal empowerment.‖ (Ramagundam 2008, 232)


50


The significance of dress and the debates around it were also important for the

nationalists. Western dress denoted affiliation to empire—Gandhi‘s dress changed

over a period of time. Eventually his adoption of the loincloth was also a

statement about nationalism.

Source: Bhattacharya, S. 2003. Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song.

Delhi: Penguin; Virmani, A. 2008. A National Flag for India: Rituals,

Nationalism and the Politics of Sentiment. Ranikhet: Permanent Black;

Ramagundam, R. 2008. Gandhi’s Khadi: A History of Contention and

Conciliation. New Delhi: Orient Longman; Tarlo, E. 1996. Clothing

Matters: Dress and Identity in India. Delhi: Viking.

Vernacular literatures

Though India had developed a scribal manuscript culture in the classical and vernacular

languages, the introduction of print by the East India Company‘s state speeded up the

velocity and range of communication among existing communities of knowledge. Print

transformed the cultural landscape, because it facilitated standardization of languages

through dictionaries and grammars, publication of manuscripts and a conscious policy

adopted by voluntary associations to promote a particular script and establish a classical

canon. The colonial state initiated the process, but over the 19th century, the indigenous

elites were able to carve out an arena of institutional networks for themselves. These

consisted of printing presses, publishing houses, literary societies, newspapers,

magazines, public and lending libraries. Ulrike Stark refers to the ‗commercialization‘ of

print which made books cheap and easily available. The introduction of lithography and

chromolithography initiated the production of the mass produced manuscript. This new

technology permitted faster reproduction at lower costs and allowed small scale printers

to simultaneously produce works in several languages. It also facilitated Indian

participation in the book trade. Veena Naregal points out, print was a new

communicative technology that changed assumptions about language, literacy and the

literary.

Print culture and its development in colonial India was to a large extent shaped by the

writings of early British scholars generally known as Orientalists. Orientalists wrote about

‗Indian literature‘ and brought under its ambit all kinds of texts—Vedas, Puranas,

Mahabharata, Ramayana, Natyasastra and others. This perspective changed over the

19th century, but it had important consequences for the articulation of the nationalist

imagination. Nationalists were deeply influenced by Orientalist scholarship which

recognized the classical languages of India and the allied literary traditions. (Dharwadker

1993)

Print culture facilitated the establishment of an expanding educational system which

created a critical public. Partha Chatterjee emphasizes the importance of the autonomy

of the public domain which was no longer dependent on patrons and patronage, but

looked for appreciation and support from its readership. The formation of this public was

based on what Neeladri Bhattacharya calls the ―the contrary dialectic of homogenization

and segmentation (which) can be seen at play in the constitution of linguistic

publics…Inevitably, in each region, a new language of the elite was fashioned through a

process of exclusion and repression.‖ (Bhattacharya 2005, 142). This process is best

represented by developments in North India that witnessed a split in its vernacular

traditions with the emergence of two print cultures - Urdu and Hindi.


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Case studies: Urdu and Hindi

Pre-colonial India witnessed the flowering of plural classical/cosmopolitan and vernacular

traditions. Persian was the language of the court, the literati and the administration.

Persian too had its plurality with distinctions between Indian Persian and Iranian Persian.

Though attempts to regard Indian Persian as autonomous were not taken seriously, yet

as Muzaffar Alam suggests, Indian Persian diction, sabk-i-Hindi, signified a dialogue

between the Persian language and the Indian cultural ethos. (Alam 2003, 187). The

Indian style of Persian poetry was quite well developed by the 17th century. Sanskrit

was a cosmopolitan/classical trans-regional language, used by courts for public-political

expressions such as inscriptions and courtly literature till as late as the 14th century.

Sheldon Pollock says that between 900-1500 CE Sanskrit was gradually displaced by

regional/ vernacular literary traditions such asAvadhi, Brajbhasha, Hindi, Hindui, Marathi,

Kannada, Telugu etc.At the same time communities of Sanskrit scholars continued to

read and write in the language, and it continued to cast its shadow on the vernaculars

(Pollock 2006).

Persian in the Indian style can be traced back to the Ghaznavid era. It was developed

further by the Mughals who used it as the language of the court. The vernacular

traditions of Rekhtah/Hindi also developed and by the 17th century the literisation

(development of written form) and literarization (development of imaginative working

discourse) of these languages had begun. By the early years of the 18th century, the

poet Vali revolutionized the literary landscape. Vali demonstrated that great poetry could

also be composed in the vernacular. His poetry spread like wildfire and Rekhtah (another

name for Urdu) began to supplant Persian. Through the 18th century, poets influenced

by Vali continued with Persian but also composed poetry in vernacular languages. The

literarization of the vernacular necessitated the establishment of codes of conduct,

protocols of behaviour and performance. A system of mentoring –the institution ofustad

and shagird developed within this literary tradition. The affiliation to an ustad generated

a network and helped establish a patronage system. The mushairah or literary

gathering became the norm. The new system spread to various cultural centres:

Lucknow, Benaras, Allahabad, Patna, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Surat, Rampur, Madras

and others.

At the turn of the 18th century, almost at the moment of its inception, this literary

culture became obsessed with correctness. The aim was to provide the vernacular with a

pedigree and status at par with Persian. In the hands of Shah Hatim and others,

tatsama words were excised, Persian and Arabic words were privileged, and purism

prevailed. This new literary culture not only continued the tradition of the iham

(wordplay generated by the intent to deceive) but developed it further. There was an

elaboration of forms like kaifiyat, khyal, bandish, rabt, riayat and shor angez. In this

period, literature recognized various poetic forms and the anthology (tazkirah)

becamepopular. The tazkirah tradition elaborated a highly formalized and coherent vision

of poetry. Each anthologist chose the poets he considered worthy of the great tradition.

By the 1840‘s, Hindi/Rekhtah/Urdu literature was so rich that Sadat Khan Nasir could

write a tazkirah of the poets of Hind, with the details of their various lineages

(silsilahs). Urdu literature was now based on a shared resource pool of verse, practiced

and acquired through apprenticeship, (the ustad-shagird format) and performed at

regular gatherings – mushairahs. This change transformed a vernacular language into a

literary language and created a community through the process of reading, hearing,

performing and reproducing of texts.

Early names for the language now called Urdu, were Hindi, Hindvi, Dihlavi, Gujri, Dakani,

and Rekhtah. The term Urdu came into circulation in the 18th century, as a shortened

form of ‗zaban e Urdu e moalla e Shahjahanabad‘—‗the language of the imperial

court/city of Shahjahanabad‘. It was around this period that the Company publications


52


authored by J. Gilchrist and N. B. Halhed started differentiating between the linguistic

traditions of the Hindus and Muslims—by referringtoHindavi derived from Sanskrit as the

language spoken before the Muslim invasions, andHindustani (later Urdu)as the

language emerging after the establishment of Muslim rule.

The introduction of print in the last decades of the 18th century effected a major change

in the scribal, manuscript culture. In the 19th century, Urdu acquired print status, based

on an adaptation of the Persian script. Mohammad Taqi Mir became the first Urdu poet

whose complete works Kulliyat e Mir Taqi were published in 1811. Urdu tazkirahs were

also published. In 1837, Urdu replaced Persian as the official vernacular in the North

Western Provinces. Commercialization of Urdu print began with textbooks and

newspapers, eventually spreading to the sphere of books. Lithography facilitated the

reproduction of the nastaliq script and provided continuity with the manuscript tradition.

In 1859, the newspaper Avadh Akhbar started publication in Lucknow. By 1877, it had

become a daily. It was a popular newspaper, read across the sub-continent. One of its

famous readers and contributors was Mirza Ghalib. By 1900, the number of books in

Urdu was 548,030.

Though the sphere of Urdu expanded through the 19th century, the cataclysmic events

of 1857 transformed the world of Urdu literature. Asadullah Khan Ghalib was a poet who

wrote about and confronted the new post-1857 colonial order. Muhammad Husain Azad‘s

Ab–e-hayat, (1880) was also written in the aftermath of 1857 when the old patrons were

no more. It is the last tazkirah and also the first linguistic and literary history of Urdu. It

ends what literary critics refer to as the classical period of Urdu literature. The account

of Urdu poetry provided by this anthology followed western linear conventions of history

writing. Azad divided history into daurs/phases. Azad also recognized and responded to

the sensibility of the new rulers. He deleted and removed passages which could have

offended Victorian norms of behaviour. He was also reacting to a stringent critique of

Urdu mounted by the Hindi publicistsridiculing Urdu as a degenerate, coarse, vulgar,

sentimental, artificial and unmanly language.Urdu was being sanitized in order to carry

out modern literary and educational tasks. Poetry that celebrated the beauty of the

beloved beautiful young boy had to be removed and edited out of the anthology.

Literature had to conform to the norms of the colonial world and this was a prerequisite

for the generation of a modern national culture.

The shift in tradition is clearly evident in the works of S. A. Khan and A. H. Hali. In 1875,

Sayyid Ahmad Khan launched his campaign for reform of Urdu literature and the

necessity of education in the ‗language of the nation‘. In 1879, Hali, his close friend and

disciple wrote Madd o jazr e Islam, better known as the Musaddas. This text was

extremely popular because it depicted the contemporary and sad plight of Islam.

Christopher Shackle says that ―While specifically addressed to the Muslim community

(qaum) Hali‘s Musaddas is very much a poem which evokes a vision for the nation (also

qaum in Urdu). This was appropriate to the new circumstances of the colonial era in

which present humiliations may be overcome by looking to a future recovery inspired by

a sense of past achievements.‖ (Shackle 2010). Hali‘s style was modern and aimed to be

popular, national and contemporary. It achieved its purpose by eliminating Persian

literary conceits, including simple vernacular words, as well as English words like liberal

and nation. The popularity of the Musaddas among Muslims inspired Brij Mohan

Dattatreya Kaifi to write A Mirror for India in Urdu, a parallel address to the Hindus which

celebrated Vedic civilization and Hindu religion.

The development of Urdu prose (in contrast to poetry) has been attributed to the

introduction of print culture. The efforts of J. Gilchrist to get translators for FortWilliam

publications catalyzed this transition. The oral and performing traditions of dastans and

qissas were also published and found an eager audience. The development of the novel

started with Rajab Ali Beg Sarur‘s Fasana e Ajaib and Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar‘s


53


Fasana e Azad. The short story, drama and nazmproduced a literary culture which was

accessible and available to all. Fiction and prose created a real world, quite at odds with

the mannered and formal traditions of Urdu poetry. The everyday concerns and

negotiations with the colonial order were articulated and the sad plight of the colonized

was now visualized as cause célèbre. The community created by modernizers and

reformers of Urdu was not comfortable with its immediate classical past. A vision of the

future had to clearly follow current moral practices, but also needed to draw inspiration

from an idealized past. The past that Hali invoked reminded his co-religionists of the

universal civilizing mission of Islam.

The early decades of the 20th century witnessed greater mobilization for nationalist

politics and Hindi challenged Urdu on home turf. Both Urdu and Hindi adopted the Khari

Boli tradition for their articulation, but the scripts were different—Nagari for Hindi and

adapted Persian for Urdu. The trans-regional and inter-related textual aspects of these

literary traditions meant that there was much overlap, but gradually, both tried to

demarcate and identify separate audiences and establish distinctive historical trajectories

for themselves. This demarcation also affected creative writers. For example, Premchand

started his career in Urdu, but became a canonical figure in the Hindi literary tradition.

The identification of Urdu in the Persian script with Islam and Hindi in Devanagari with

Hinduism, was linked to the writing of a history of these languages. Azad and Hali chose

not mention any Hindu writers of Urdu in their anthologies, and historians of Hindi also

portrayed it primarily as the language of the Hindus.

Nationalist sentiments were expressed in Urdu in the early years of the 20th century. In

1908, Premchand published Soz-e-vatan (‗mourning the country‘)which was proscribed

by the colonial government. Another budding writer who chose a romantic and

nationalist theme was Mohammad Iqbal. His early poems celebrate the unity and

greatness of all Indians, irrespective of religious differences. Iqbal is famous for the song

Tarana-e-Hind (more popularly known by its opening words ‗Sare jahan se achchha‘).

Christopher Shackle observes that the power and beauty of Iqbal‘s poetry is a striking

testimony to the intrinsic advantage that Urdu poets working in a long established

tradition had over their Hindi contemporaries who had to forge a poetic language for

themselves from scratch. Gail Minault notes that ‗political poetry‘ was created in Urdu in

the first two decades of the 20thcentury, in response to global developments and

Khilafat nationalism.

M. A. Faruqi says that the modern movement led by Hali and Azad culminated in the

poetry of Iqbal. She points out that Iqbal invented new symbols and metaphors, created

new meanings from old metaphors, and lifted the language of poetry to the level of

concentrated discourse, which could also address political issues. Iqbal‘s patriotism and

understanding of community changed as he matured and the simple patriotism of his

early writings was replaced by a more complex and textured understanding of the word

community. He clearly recognized the importance of religion in creating communitarian

traditions and refused to accept the simplified understanding of secular as aggregative

rather than integrative.

Mohammad Iqbal has been celebrated as the poet of Pakistan and is now acquiring the

status of a trans-national poet of Islam. The tradition that Iqbal invoked was deeply

spiritual and rooted in a religious idiom. His self- reflexive religious faith articulated a

new concept of selfhood/khudi which inverted sufi notions, and engaged with the

problem of identity in the contemporary world. Javed Majeed explains Iqbal‘s discomfort

with the fiction of a secular, homogenizing nationalism, which was becoming popular in

India in the 1930‘s, which assumed that an amalgamation of communities could take

place in India, without accounting for religious differences (Majeed 2009). Nationalism

and culture intersect in ways that do not find easy resolutions in politics.


54


It is in this context that we have to locate the development of Hindi and its literary

culture. As noted earlier, Hindi is a Persian term for Indian and local Indian vernacular

languages. Print culture necessitated the choice of script. Colonial officials suggested

that all vernaculars be written in Roman script, but this was not acceptable to the

colonial Indian elite. The development of the new modern language called Hindi, written

in the Nagariscript, was the result of a movement which began in 1867 and gathered

momentum during the 1880s and 1890s. Bharatendu Harishchandra, in his famous

address Hindi ki unnati par vyakhyan, in 1877 outlined the agenda for Hindi; he asked

for ―better communication and more cohesiveness within the family; literate

mothers…..fostering pride in cultural heritage; a systematic appropriation of Western

knowledge, scientific and technical….; more newspapers and political consolidation,

together making for the progress not only of Hindi and its community but of the nation.‖

(Dalmia 2010, 39) Public orchestration for Hindi was conducted by the numerous Nagari

Pracharini Sabhas which had mushroomed all over North India. In 1900, the government

recognized Hindi in the Nagari script as an official language.

According to Harish Trivedi, ―This public demand on the British government was

accompanied by an internal literary development: the search for a form of Hindi suitable

for the writing of prose…..for which a growing need was acutely felt‖. (Trivedi 2003,

959). In his treatise, Hindi Bhasha, in 1883-4 Bharatendu had argued that Hindi existed

in a variety of forms and advocated the use of a Hindi which could be more

comprehensive in its scope and also more accessible. The form of Hindi selected was a

regional form- Khari boli, spoken in Western U.P., Haryana and Delhi. Other regional

forms, Brajbhasha and Awadhi, which had highly developed poetic traditions, were

considered unsuitable. The journals Nagari Pracharini Patrika, 1896 and Saraswati, 1900

(edited by Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi), facilitated the standardizing and shaping of Hindi

literature. The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1910 also fostered the growth of Hindi. The new

prose in Hindi—essays, novels and histories—continued to use poetry sourced from the

other regional forms, Brajbhasha and Avadhi. Here too, erotic poetry was censored and

poetry that generated high moral values was encouraged. In the 1920s, the Chhayavad

movement generated a poetic tradition for modern Hindi, and gave it fresh confidence. It

was in this period that the intelligentsia began to propagate Hindi as the national

language. The shift in the perception of Hindi from linguistic repertoire to national canon

occurred in a short span of six decades (1860-1920), during which Hindi was

standardized, Sanskritized, given the status of a discipline at the level of school and

university, provided with a historical pedigree and, also, recognized as a language of

administration.

Vasudha Dalmia refers to the process of the shift in the idea of Hindi as the ‗deshbhasha‘

to that of ‗rashtrabhasha‘ as ―nationalization of Hindu traditions‖. (Dalmia 1997). She

explains that this was made possible by historicizing Hindi, by deliberately Sanskritizing

the language and by emphasizing its Aryan roots. This was clearly visible in the large

number of Sanskrit–Hindi texts available in the market. Francesca Orsini in her book,

devotes an entire chapter to history and says, ―A linguistic and conceptual novelty

fashioned by Hindi historians and writers was the historical subject ‗we‘, which referred

to a cohesive well-defined nation.‖ (Orsini 2002, 240).This ‗we‘ traced its historical past

to the ancient period, constructed the Hindu golden age based on Orientalist /colonial

writings, and presented itself as the legitimate successor to Sanskrit. This historical

imagining had to confront the subject of the ‗oppressive present‘—the colonial

predicament (Chandra 1994). The explanation provided for decline was that the great

and splendid Indian/Hindu civilization became decadent as a consequence of Muslim

conquest. The classic text that articulated this position was Maithilisharan Gupta‘s poem

Bharat-Bharati (1912). This epic poem compares well with Hali‘s Musaddas, both were

able to convey the power of their linguistic traditions and also raise the issue of Hindu

and Muslim subjecthood. Bharat-Bharati stated its intent as explaining ―who we were,

are and shall be.‖ The identification of Hindi with Hindus and Hindustan remained an


55


important strand within the nationalist movement as it grew in depth and range from the

1920‘s.

Urdu and Hindi attempted to create communities based on language and culture which

inextricably linked them to particular religious traditions. There was a standoff between

Urdu and Hindi, yet to suggest that they constituted two emergent nations in the early

decades of the 20th century would be a-historical. In this period, in terms of circulation

of newspapers and books, Hindi was moving ahead. Hindi marched forward with the

support of Ek Lipi Vistar Parishad Calcutta which suggested one script, Devanagari, for

all the vernaculars. The idea of one script for all vernaculars though not feasible, gave

Hindi the status of a favoured language, supported by Nagari Pracharani Sabha, the Arya

Samaj, the Prayag Hindi Samaj, Hindu Mahasabha and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan.

Soon, the idea of a national language was mooted. In 1916, at a Conference on National

Language and Script, Hindi was declared suitable for the honour. The declaration that

Hindi would be the national language had wide ranging repercussions. Proclaiming Hindi

as the national language did not necessarily entail its use, in the public domain, even by

its own propagandists. Urdu publicists also petitioned against the use of Hindi in local

boards etc. and nationalists realized that this was becoming a divisive issue. In 1920,

the Congress declared Hindi-Hindustani the national language.

Gandhi‘s advocacy of Hindi-Hindustani was prompted by a desire to overcome the fault

lines between Hindi and Urdu. Hindustani, in this context, was the language spoken by

both Hindus and Muslims - written in Nagari it is Hindi and when written in the Persian

script, it is Urdu. The promotion of Hindustani was based on an attempt to develop a

national identity, which could bring together the Hindi and Urdu publics. The 1930‘s,

however, marked a shift, as communitarian positions became more explicit and also

more antagonistic because mobilization became more pervasive. At the Bhartiya Sahitya

Parishad, (a national organization) in 1936, Gandhi suggested the use of Hindi-

Hindustani by the organization. This created a storm because he had used the term

Hindi, not just Hindustani. This was read as Gandhi‘s support for the Nagari script.

Maulana Abdul Haq of the Anjuman Taraqqi e Urdu wrote, ―If he cannot let go of Hindi,

we cannot let go of Urdu either.‖ Hindustani could not bridge the gap between Hindi and

Urdu - a fact recognized by Iqbal, Premchand and eventually Gandhi. The attempt to

bring the two publics together and create an inclusive nationalism could not succeed.

In this section, we noticed how literary traditions were tailored to fit a particular

understanding of culture and nation. Both Hindi and Urdu created high cultural traditions

for themselves by harking back to classical canons; both excised and sanitized particular

trends to fit in with contemporary requirements and both emphasized historical

continuities and created communities of literary culture. Lastly, both constructions

looked for and found sustenance from religious practices, which were also reworked in

this period. It is interesting to find that Hindi gained ground and was conflated from

region to nation, thereby acquiring a clear and marked spatial dimension. As Charu

Gupta points out, in the last decades of the 19th century Hindi imagined the nation as

motherland with Hindi as the mother tongue. Even more significant was the fact that an

image of nation as mother took the shape of a detailed physical map. Eventually, the

Bharat Mata temple, begun in 1918, was completed in 1936. A sacred space and icon

had been created which was theoretically available to all, Hindu and Muslim, lower caste

and upper caste. (Gupta 2006). Yet, this cultural tradition, in its very conception

marked and formulated an identity which fore grounded particular religious practices and

therefore was in actual practice not representative of all the other cultural traditions that

continued to persist within colonial modernity. Urdu, on the other hand, would have to

find its spatial location as national community by confrontation, demanding a space

which was located outside the canonical forms prescribed by Hindi nationalism.


56


Attempts by nationalists like Gandhi to build bridges by arguing that both cultures

shared a spoken language were not persuasive and the parting of ways could not be

prevented. E. Gellner has remarked—―But nationalism is not the awakening of an old,

latent, dormant force, though that is how it does present itself. It is in reality the

consequence of a new form of social organization….It uses some of the pre-existent

cultures, generally transforming them in the process, but it cannot possibly use them all.

There are too many of them‖. (Gellner 1983, 48).Nationalism thus privileges some

traditions and consequently marginalizes others—and is invariably contested by the

marginalized cultures.

Figure 9.3.1: Sample of Urdu script: a poem about the outbreak of World War I,

Jangnama e Europe by Durga Prasad 'Nadir'

Source:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00xcallig/urdu/jangnamah/jangnamah.ht

ml

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00xcallig/urdu/jangnamah/jangnamah.html

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00xcallig/urdu/jangnamah/jangnamah.html


57


Figure 9.3.2: Urdu Calligraphy

Source: www.exoticindiaart.com

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/


58


Figure 9.3.3: Vande Matram in Nagari script

Source: www.indianetzone.com


Cultural-nationalist writings in Urdu and Hindi

Altaf Husain Hali (Urdu):

If anyone sees the way our downfall passes all bounds, the way that Islam, once

fallen, does not rise again,

He will never believe that the tide flows after every ebb, once he sees the way

our sea has gone out.

Shibli Nomani (Urdu - Reaction to police firing on the Kanpur Mosque):

But the truth cannot be denied

That in the blink of an eye death received general admission….

Bullets left their mark on the minbar and mihrab

For the mosque was in need of embellishment

Even now the mosque is beautified with henna-patterns of blood

This is that artwork which until Doomsday will remain.

Abdul Majid Daryabandi (Urdu):

Thus spake the mother of Muhammad Ali,

http://www.indianetzone.com/


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Son, give your life for the Khilafat.

And with you, too, Shaukat Ali,

Son, give your life for the Khilafat.

Even had I had seven sons,

I‘d sacrifice them all for the Khilafat.

This is the way of the faith of the Prophet,

Son, give your life for the Khilafat

Maithilisaran Gupta (Hindi):

Rise and decadence are a natural law:

It is the sun which rises first in the sky then falls

Thus decadence itself speaks of our past progress

How can anyone fall without having risen first?

Bharatendu Harishchandra (Hindi):

For the progress of our own language is the root of all true progress.

Without knowledge of our own language, can our searing pain regress…

Observe how they all unite, the Muslims and the Christians,

Only we live in discord, alas, though there is no reason why…

Our own language, own religion, own honour, works and social intercourse---

Make haste, get together, work to make them grow, call out to

Others…

Source: Hali, Altaf Husain. The Flow and Ebb of Islam or Musaddas.

(translated by C. Shackle, in Nijhawan 2010); Nomani, Shibli. You are not

Oppressors, by Any Means, but Still We Are Oppressed (translated by A.

Sean Pue, in Nijhawan 2010); Daryabandi, Abdul Majid. 1954.

Muhammad Ali, Zati Diary ke Chand Warq. (translated by Gail Minault, in

Minault, G. 2009. Urdu Political Poetry during the Khilafat Movement:

Gender, Language and Learning. Ranikhet: Permanent Black; Gupta,

Maithilisaran. Bharat-Bharati (translated by F. Orsini, in Nijhawan 2010)

Harishchandra, Bharatendu. A Discourse on the Progress of Hindi

(translated by Vasudha Dalmia, Nijhawan 2010).

Prose: narratives – histories and novels

The emergence of vernacular literary cultures during the colonial period witnessed the

greatest efflorescence in the writing of narratives in prose. Earlier most compositions

aspiring for attention and claiming intellectual seriousness were composed in verse

partly because they had to be memorized. The shift from a tightly controlled scribal

system to a written easily accessible form of knowledge acquisition gave prose an

advantage. The performing aspects of texts were no longer important as the culture of

the silent reader became the norm and modern criticism was no longer face to face (as

in a poetry reading session) but became more private and impersonal. The poetic

traditions of the pre-colonial world could not carry the burden of a modern culture which

required a vocabulary for law, science and administration. Prose emerged as the

standard bearer of modernity and culture. New genres also developed in the prose

form—history writing, historical novels, plays, short stories and the novel.


60


In Europe, the 19th century was preeminently the century for the writing of history.

Colonial scholars applied the European traditions of history writing to India and were

critical of Indian intellectual traditions for their lack of historical consciousness. The

Indian intelligentsia responded to this critique and took to history writing with great

enthusiasm. Appropriation of the past was essential for nationalism. As E. J. Hobsbawm

has noted, ―Nations without pasts are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is

the past.‖ (Hobsbawm 1996, 255). How was the past to be narrated, what conventions

were required to make history intelligible and acceptable, so that the Indian nation could

be represented? According to Sudipta Kaviraj, to the intelligentsia of colonial Bengal,

history became a symbol of the new age—of hope and despair. Of despair, because it

had to explain the subjection of the present, hope because the past was a way of talking

about the collective self, bringing it into existence and thus gifting to this ‗we‘ a modern

future. (Kaviraj 1995).

A number of scholars devoted themselves to the historical enterprise. The earliest works

were invariably translations from English, to be used as textbooks. For example, B. G. S.

Jambhekar adapted English history texts into Marathi for schools. History was also

produced outside colonial state sponsored institutions. History writing, in the vernacular,

followed the same conventions of research—use of primary sources, documentation,

footnotes and bibliography. For example, V. Chipulankar, set out to write in Marathi a

history which could reveal the special qualities of the Maratha people; he believed that

Marathi language needed to be classicized to enable it to express the truth of history. He

developed a passionate and emotional style of writing which came to be called

Chipulankari walan. Another scholar, V. K. Rajwade, realized the importance of sources

and contributed to Maratha history by publishing 22 volumes of documents in Marathi.

Thus we find that scholars chose to write, in the vernacular, histories that conformed in

style to the English discipline. The archive was consulted, journals were referred to,

sources were quoted, and indigenous records were also introduced. The veracity of the

narrative was attested to by the use of footnotes and bibliographies. The creativity of

these texts was evident in the manner Puranas, Vamsavalis, folksongs, ballads and other

oral traditions were yoked to the construction of temporal and spatial narratives which

fashioned identifiable communities in the present.

However, such writing was implicated in contemporary power structures, and was a

project for and by local elites—who explained through this history their dominance. For

example, Badri Dutt Pande‘s Kumaun ka Itihasa, cited theGazetteer, folklore,

genealogies and folk songs. It also claimed high ritual status for some families on the

basis of particular records. This history was inevitably contested by a number of groups,

but it represented the articulation of a modern Kumauni identity. In a similar manner,

the Marathi historical tradition also gave prominence to Brahmins and recognized them

as ‗natural‘ leaders. Chipulankar and Rajwade were explicit in referring the superior role

of the Brahmins; other historians, too, assigned Brahmins a central role in Maratha

history. This perspective was first criticized by Jotirao Phule who invoked Shivaji as the

Kulavadi Bhushan of the aboriginal community, the earliest claimants to the land of

Maharashtra. Keshav Sitaram Thackeray noted, ‖When only one particular group

emerges as glorious and self-reliant from this ancient history at the expense of all other

groups in society, its partisan nature is sharply revealed.‖ (Deshpande 2007, 176).

Yet, as Dipesh Chakravarty reminds us, other histories were also being produced, at

sites such as the news media, creative literature, art, theater and even in music. Fiction

and novel writing was one such location (Chakravarty 2006). Thenovel is widely

considered as the literary genre that narrates the national community. It was the new

symbolic form that the nation needed in order to be understood. The novel correlated

with the nation through the medium of the standardized vernacular languages in which

the novels were written. S. Kaviraj delineates the dilemma of Bankim Chandra

Chattopadhyaya who attempted to piece together a history of Bengal, but was unable to


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narrate these fragments. Since none of the pre-existing identities could become a

nation, the nation would have to be invented, not by a discourse of facts, of history but

by the mythic discourse of novels. Novels helped actualize the past of Bengal, they also

provided Bankim with the most powerful ground for the people/nation—the land - the

Matrabhumi. All those who lived here could have a sense of belonging and with

reverence lay claim to the motherland by declaring - Vande Mataram. Imaginary history

thus granted a powerful unity to the community which dreamt up the icon of the

nation—feminine, maternal, territorial and Hindu.

In Marathi literature, too, we find the discourse of imaginary history—in the historical

novel, historical plays and later on, in cinema. Historians like Chintaman Vaidya and

Dhanurdhari who had collected historical source materials also tried their hand at fiction.

These novelists filled in the gaps in historical writing, so as to make it easier to imagine

the nation. A novelist like Vitthal Vaman Hadap explained, ―The available historical

sources display so much bias, prejudice, superstition, lack of pride, and contradiction

that anyone who seeks the real historical truth in them has to use a fine-tuned and

conscientious intelligence. This is what I have tried to do in my Peshwai series.‖

(Deshpande 2007, 156). Fiction would provide an alternative and inspiring history to the

Marathi and the Bengali people. To quote Ranajit Guha, ―There was one battle that

Britain never won. It was a battle for the appropriation of the Indian past.‖ (Guha 1998,

1)

Oral traditions/popular culture, literature and nationalism

The discussion outlined above has demonstrated the privileging of the Sanskrit

traditions, by the emergent vernacular cultures. How did this translate into popular

perceptions? According to Nehru, ―The old epics of India, the Ramayana and

Mahabharata and other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely

known among the masses…….I realized that even the illiterate peasant had a picture

gallery in his mind,….drawn from myth and tradition and epic heroes and heroines.‖

(Nehru 1946, 56). This was an important cultural resource for imagining the nation.

Sheldon Pollock has traced the history of Sanskrit literature over the last two millennia,

and his understanding provides us with a direction when we try and make connections

between the epics and Indian nationalism. In the 19th century, the Indian intelligentsia

invoked a Sanskrit tradition which through inscriptions and manuscripts constituted a

shared trans-regional discursive field where, ‖Beyond all variations across space - across

time—beyond all factors of differentiation….lay a larger organizational framework for

cultural life, the cosmopolitan sphere.‖ The Mahabharata texts narrated a domain which

was local (regional scripts) and trans-regional—―Constant oral reiteration, enabled by

manuscript culture…..Achieved coherent mass representations of the geography of

power.‖ (Pollock 2006, 560). This provided the under girding for the modern vernacular

traditions in their negotiation with nationalism.

The link between print, folklore and nationalism forms another strand in the study of

literary cultures. The conventional understanding of ‗folklore‘ is to see it as an extension

of the colonial Orientalist project. Stuart Blackburn points out that there was no word for

folklore in any Indian language, until the neologisms of the 20th century, (Blackburn

2003). However, the Indian intelligentsia also took to the study of folklore and played a

role in the collection, publication and ‗nationalization‘ of oral traditions. Two well-known

folklorists were Rabindranath Tagore and Natesa Sastri.

Though print had made an early entry in Tamil, yet even by the 1830‘s, Tamil publishing

was only in the form of schoolbooks and some literary texts. Around this time,

FortWilliamCollege, Calcutta, started exploring the possibility of teaching through

folktales and the first translation from Tamil into English was made in 1822. By 1850,


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twelve books on folklore had been printed. Folktales were seen as a way of developing

prose traditions in the vernaculars. By mid century, another trend developed, and folk

literature was not considered edifying and was perceived to be encouraging superstition

and immorality. In the later decades of the 19th century, the Indian intelligentsia

recognized the importance of folk literature as the bearer of popular tradition, but

simultaneously, it was increasingly viewed as vulgar, bawdy and unrefined. Natesa

Sastri, started collecting, editing, translating Tamil folklore. He published a large number

of articles, in Tamil and English. He is best remembered for The Folklore of Southern

India(1884-1893) and the Tenali Raman series. N. Sastri believed that folklore revealed

‘national characteristics‘—Tamil and Indian. His work was read differently by some

scholars who chose to appropriate it for the articulation of a Dravidian identity. Stuart

Blackburn argues that eventually folklore played a minor role in Tamil, Dravidian and

Indian nationalism. The classical tradition was given pride of place, whereas folklore

though valorized as popular, remained local.

The attitude of the nationalist intelligentsia to popular culture and oral traditions was

ambivalent. A. R. Venkatchalapathy, in his study of Tamil folklore, has laid emphasis on

the process of appropriation and sanitization. Sanitization was the process by which

indecent, immoral and superstition generating material was removed so that folk

traditions could provide suitable fare for a national audience. (Venkatchalapathy 1999).

S. Blackburn agrees, and says that folktales were essential for constructing colonial

modernity, but they had to be suitably modified, tastefully selected and skillfully

packaged, untainted by colonialism.

Francesca Orsini, in her book, Print and Pleasure has studied the role of the popular

press in colonial North India. She finds that in the second half of the 19th century, Urdu

had become the language for written communication, even for entertainment. However,

by the first decades of the 20th century this trend had been reversed, Hindi had

overtaken it—how did this happen in the popular domain? In the early phase of print,

popular literature was able to become cost effective by using lithography and bi-lingual

printing. Commercial publishers established a demand in print for genres that were

connected to existing cultural forms. Religious texts, pilgrimage guides, prayer books,

qissas, barahmasas, other kinds of song books, chapbooks of plays (titled sangit, svang

khyal),poetry and storytelling created the world of the popular. Gradually, fiction

translated from English and Bengali, generated a need which was fulfilled by Fasana e

Azad and Chandrakanta. These two novels mark the transition from the influence of

courtly traditions and worldview to the lived reality of colonial society. Orsini refers to

the shift from the fantastic to the recognizable and familiar, as ‗naturalization.‘ This

trend created a sensibility which avoided fantasy and magic and which searched for

intelligibility and explication of events and episodes (similar to the writing of history).The

new form created by these changes was not the historical novel, but the detective novel.

The significance of the detective novel lay in the fact that because of its popularity it was

published in movable type (not lithographed). Narrating also became a form in popular

Hindi literature—the roads to nationhood were marked in the sphere of imagination of

‗high‘ and ‗low‘ culture.


63



64


Figure 9.3.4: Chandrakanta

Source: www.columbia.edu.com

Linking literary culture, linguistic community and nation

Narrating the nation, in the vernacular, was not a simple emulation of either Western

history or the Western novel—it involved a complex negotiation with earlier traditions of

history writing and of developing a language in which the historical discourse could be

articulated. We have seen how Urdu and Hindi acquired print cultures. Other literary

traditions have also been mapped out—Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu,

Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya and Goan. As case studies we will look at the developments in

Bengali and Marathi.

In an essay, Sudipta Kaviraj, argues that pre-colonial Bengali vernacular had access to

two cosmopolitan literary spheres—Sanskrit and Arabic-Persian. (Kaviraj 2003). The

coming of colonialism and print culture effected a linguistic change. Publishing privileged

the Nadiya-Santipur form of spoken Bangla, and converted it into standard Bangla with a

particular style of script notation. Printing of grammars created high Bangla, which now

considered other speech forms as less cultivated and subordinate, that is, low. Changes

also occurred in literary practice. As literature shifted from being a participatory,


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communal activity to a lonely pleasure, new forms emerged. As high Bangla established

itself through the creative energies of its stalwarts—Raja Rammohun Roy, Michael

Madhusudan Dutt, Ishwarachandra Vidyasagar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya and

Rabindra Nath Tagore, it became solidly Hindu. Kaviraj argues that Bengali culture

created through the stunning originality of the 19th century erased Islamic elements of

its tradition which made it into a generally Hindu affair. One strand of Bengali literary

culture even showed hostility to Muslims and stigmatized them as foreigners.

Marathi first appeared in royal charters in the 11th century and texts in the language

were produced by the 14th century. During the next couple of centuries Bhakti provided

the impetus for compositions in Marathi. Sufi influence too can be discerned in the

compositions of this period. A political culture based on Marathi was seen clearly in the

17nth century during the period of Shivaji. By this time Bhakti had lost some of its anti-

hierarchical impulse and Ramdas, Shivaji‘s mentor, was willing to uphold the benefits of

institutional structures in the religious and political spheres. Marathi was used for record

keeping, and patronage extended to Brahmins meant that Sanskrit retained its

importance. It was during the period of the Peshwas (post Shivaji) that a scribal,

manuscript culture in Marathi emerged. This period witnessed the proliferation of new

cultural forms such as the lavani (performances/dances for male audiences), tamasha

(folk theater), powada (heroic ballads to commemorate the exploits of Maratha

warriors), kirtan (sermon and song), bakhar (reports of famous Maratha military

expeditions), and shahir (poetry). The Marathi literary realm expanded during the

Peshwai in the 18th century when manuscripts were copied, read, exchanged and

stored.

The advent of print also brought about changes in Marathi literary culture. Marathi

language was standardized and textbooks were published in Marathi. Of the two scripts

available for printing Balbodh/Nagari(used for classical poetic works) and Modi ( used

for daily correspondence, business, accounts etc.), Nagari was adopted. The use of

Nagari script and traditions of literacy helped Brahmins to acquire an exceptionally

prominent place in the emerging print culture. In the formative phase, Marathi literary

culture chose to identify with Sanskrit and denied its links with Persian. The

historiographer Rajwade, wanted to revive old Marathi dating to the 13th century which

was uncontaminated by Persian influences. The Marathi sensibility, which celebrated its

heroism and martyrdom against foreign, Muslim, aggressors, carved for itself a Hindu

tradition.

Devanāgarī alphabet for Marathi

Vowels and vowel diacritics


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Consonants

Sample text in Marathi

Modi consonants

Modi vowels and vowel diacritics

Modi numerals

Figure 9.3.5: Marathi and Modi script

Source: www.omniglot.com

It is important to take note of the fact that both Bengali and Marathi literary traditions

chose to highlight their links with Sanskrit and to repress Persian influences. A question

to be addressed is how these linguistic constructions extended their spatial field beyond

that of their cultural domain and what were the implications of these literary cultures for

the construction of the Indian nation? At this stage of history writing, the question has

been addressed in the terminology of region vis a vis nation. Partha Chatterjee in 1986

wrote that for Bankim, ―the subjection of India… is in terms of culture…India and the

people of India are defined as the ‗Other‘ of the European. Sometimes it is the Bengali,

sometimes the Hindu, sometimes… the bharatvarsiya, the inhabitants of India. There is

no attempt to define the boundaries of the Indian nation from within.” (Chatterjee 1986,

55). Anti-colonialism defined the dharma of the nation---Bengali/Hindu/Indian. It is


67


interesting to find that Sudipta Kaviraj, too, uses the term nationalist discourse for

analyzing Bankim‘s work. He shows how the heroic Rajput figures in Bankim‘s novels

enlarge the spatial envisioning of the nation. Once the nation was imagined as historical,

Hindu and of Sanskrit derivation, its territorial definition could be extended to the reach

of the Sanskrit cosmopolis (which was larger than British India).

The shift from Bengali to Indian may have been easy for Bankim, but we know that this

slippage was not so easily available to all Bengalis, particularly for those who were not

Hindu. In Maharashtra, too, a Hindu identity perceived anti-colonialism as dharma. The

Marathi tradition generated the same perceived heritage as in Bengal—Sanskrit origins,

Nagari script, and a historical memory of struggle against Islam. Yet this representation

and inventing is different. ―The Marathi case is an interesting contrast to the regional

imaginations witnessed in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where the region, in addition to the

nation, is iconised and idolized in feminine form, as Mother Bengal or Mother Tamil.

Maharashtra is always a male entity, embodied in the intensely masculine Maratha

warriors.‖ (Deshpande 2007, 162). Research on other literary cultures is providing us

with fresh insights into how each particular region tailored its traditions to align with

nationalism.

Conclusion

Nationalism in the literary traditions came to rest, primarily, upon the ‗civilizational unity‘

of Hindu India, which appropriated, modified and challenged the Orientalist

understanding. It was the power of this inventing and re-creating at all sites of print

culture which provided for the ‗greatest deception‘ (Ernest Gellner) of all—‗unity in

diversity‘. At this juncture perhaps, Antony D. Smith‘s idea of ethno-symbolism can be

invoked (nations are based upon a pre-existing texture of myths, memories, values and

symbols) - the inter-textual, trans-regional character of the vernacular literary traditions

(based on classical language traditions) provided a basis for the perceived coalescence of

these cultures into a larger cultural configuration—the Indian nation.

It is important to remember that this particular articulation was contingent upon a power

axis, on upper caste elitism, which was neither given nor enduring. It was contested

from the moment of its inception and the history of this contestation is also being written

by scholars and publicists. It was most vociferously critiqued and contested by Muslim

nationalism. As a matter of fact, Islamic South Asian nationalism can be viewed as the

mirror image of this formulation—communitarian and religious, based on the

cosmopolitan heritage of Persian/Islamic civilization. This Hindu/Sanskrit nation

perspective was developed further by ideologues like Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, V. D.

Savarkar and others. In the 1920‘s and 1930‘s, other viewpoints also surfaced. By the

1930‘s, Indian nationalism was deeply influenced by secular and socialist ideas, based

upon notions of individual citizenship that focused on syncretism and opposed the

communitarian perspectives of early nationalists. The Progressive Writers Movement

interrogated this tradition based on caste and religion and articulated a more inclusive

nationalism. Dalit and other marginal groups also questioned and continue to question

this representation of national culture. National culture, therefore, is constantly revisited

in the conversations that the present has with the past. The strength of this literary

tradition lies in its ability to incorporate several voices and contending narratives, and in

articulating not one but many cultures.


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Views on nationalism

Rabindra Nath Tagore, who authored two national anthems — those of India and

Bangladesh, has this to say about nationalism:

―The Nation of the West forges its iron chains of organization which are the most

relentless and unbreakable that have ever been manufactured in the history of

man…You who live under the delusion that you are free, are everyday sacrificing

your freedom and humanity to this fetish of nationalism.‖

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya:

―There is no history of Bengal…There has to be a history of Bengal…Who is to

write it?....Anyone, who is a Bengali, has to write it.‖

Muhammad Iqbal:

―I have been repudiating the concept of Nationalism since the time when it was

not well-known in India and the Muslim world……The imperialistic designs of

Europe were in great need of this effective weapon—the propagation of the

European conception of Nationalism in Muslim countries-to shatter the religious

unity of Islam to pieces.

Sources: Tagore, Rabindranath. 1917. Nationalism. Madras: Macmillan

(reprint); Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. 1363-71 (Bengali era).

Bankim Rachnabali Calcutta: Calcutta Sahitya Samsad; Tariq, A.

R.ed.1973 Speeches and Statements of Iqbal. Lahore: Sheikh Ghulam Ali

and Sons.


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9.1 Summary

The last phase of Mahatma Gandhi's life was spent in Delhi. He had arrived from

Bengal, and wanted to go to the Punjab to try and reduce the communal hatred

that was raging there. However, upon arrival in Delhi in September 1947, Gandhi

was pained to see the communal tension in what was to be the capital of the new

republic. There were thousands of Hindu and Sikh refugees from the Punjab,

living in camps in north Delhi, as well as thousands of Muslims from Delhi and

neighbouring areas who were forced to take refuge in Puran Quila and Jamia

Millia. Gandhi decided to stay in Delhi to work for civic calm.

From January 13 to 18, 1948, Gandhi went on a fast. This fast has been

interpreted as his pressure on the newly independent Government of India to pay

certain financial dues to the Government of Pakistan. Actually his prime motive

was the re-etablishment of communal harmony and the return of the shrine of

Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Chisti at Mehrauli to Muslims, from whom it had been

seized. This shrine was visited every year by Muslims as well as Hindus and

members of other communities.

The fast caused ripples of public emotions, negative as well as positive. Gandhi

continued his practice of evening prayer meetings. During these days he spoke on

the most important issues confronting the people of both India and Pakistan.

Gandhi could not see the people of Pakistan as alien to him. He asked them to

ensure the safety of Hindus and Sikhs living there, as he asked Indians to ensure

the security of minorities in India. In a few days senior leaders from all parties

publicly declared their acceptance of his urgent pleas and asked him to give up

his fast

The lesson presents the contents of the Delhi Declaration of January 18, 1948.

The lesson outlines Gandhi's ideas about truth and ahimsa in the light of his

impact upon the Sikhs and the Pathans. Gandhi‘s moral impact upon these

communities was seen in the Akali agitation of the early 1920‘s and the Khudai

Khidmatgar movement of the Pathans, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also

known as the Frontier Gandhi.

The lesson describes the circumstances of Gandhi‘s assassination. It takes

examples of his activities and utterances in his last months, and analyses them as

his testament to the people of India and Pakistan.


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9.2 Summary

There are various historical approaches to understand Gandhi and his impact

on the Indian national movement and different sections of Indian society.

The context of South Africa is important in understanding how Gandhian

ideas and methods of mobilization took shape.

Gandhian strategy expanded the reach of nationalism to the masses both in cities

as well as in the countryside to hitherto marginalized sections like women,

peasants and workers.

Non-violence and control from above by the leadership sought to ensure that

mass nationalism was never out of effective control of the nationalist elites.

Various critiques of Gandhian strategy and ideology appeared from diverse

sections like religious minorities, lower castes and from the oppressed classes.

The legacy of mass nationalism had its ambiguities, for it coincided with and

occasionally contributed to sectional religious formations like communalism.

The Gandhian vision of swaraj and non–violence culminated eventually in massive

communal riots.

Gandhian ideology of non-violence and his critique of modern society have

remained relevant in the present context not just for India but in many parts of

the world.


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9.3 Summary

The idea of a national culture became the dominant organizing principle of

societies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Initially, this process was perceived to

be natural and evolutionary, but recent trends in historiography argue that

national culture is constructed by elites. It is a system of cultural representations

which claims to be universal, but is clearly located in the existing power axis.

The creation of the public domain in the colonial period was important because it

displaced the patronage of the courts and created space for the new institutions

and associational organizations of the intelligentsia.

Print culture helped articulate communities of language which were associated

with particular regions. The case study of Hindi and Urdu literary print cultures

helps elucidate the manner in which appropriation of different pasts pulled in

opposite directions.

The development of prose facilitated the narrating of the nation through the

medium of history, the historical novel and other literary genres. The high

classical tradition invented by the elites was premised on historical constructions

which also had to reckon with epic, oral and performing traditions. These

provided the popular basis for disseminating the idea of the nation. In conformity

with colonial ideas of moral codes, folk traditions were sanitized and modified.

The study of vernacular literary cultures provides insights into the construction of

an Indian national identity which was based on upper caste Hindu traditions. By

the 1930s, this perspective was contested by secularists, socialists, Dalits and

other marginal groups. National culture as a system of cultural representations is

therefore constantly in a process of negotiation and transformation.


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9.1: Exercises

Essay questions

1) Whydid Gandhi postpone his planned visit to Pakistan in late 1947

and stay in Delhi?

2) What were Gandhi's ideas on the atomic bomb?

3) Why did Gandhi decide to go on fast in January 1948?

4) What were the contents of the Delhi Declaration on January 18, 1948?

5) What lessons do Gandhi's last utterances and his fast have for Indians today?

9.2: Exercises

Essay questions

1) Examine the different historiographical approaches to Gandhian nationalism.

2) What was the importance of Gandhi‘s early political activities in South Africa?

3) Gandhian mass movements were marked by control rather than empowerment of

the masses. Comment

4) Examine the Gandhian approach to the issue of gender and caste discrimination.

5) Discuss Gandhi‘s attitude towards movements of workers and peasants.

6) Examine the different implications of Gandhi‘s combination of religion and politics.

7) Assess the Gandhian understanding of non-violence and Self Rule.

Objective questions

Question Number Type of question LOD

1 Match the following 1

Question

Match each event with the date:

a) Rowlatt Act i) April 1919

b) Jallianwala bagh massacre ii) February 1922

c) Chauri Chaura incident iii) March 1919


73


Correct Answer /

Option(s) a) and iii), b)and i), c)and ii)

Justification/ Feedback for the correct answer

The passing of the Rowlatt act was followed by the Jallianwala Bagh

massacre. Subsequentlly, Gandhi launched the non-cooperation

movement which was called off due to violence at Chauri Chaura in 1922.

Resource/Hints/Feedback for the wrong answer

Reviewer‘s Comment:



Question

Match each Gandhian movement with the relevant time frame:

a) Non-cooperation movement i) 1942

b) Civil Disobedience movement ii) 1930-34

c) Quit India movement iii) 1919-1922

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a) and iii), b)and ii), c) and i)


Gandhi began his mass nationalist movement with the Non-cooperation

movement. Civil disobedience was the second major movement. Quit India

Movement being the last one witnessed far more violence then the

previous two movements.



74





Question

Match the following individuals with the movement they led:

a) Nelson Mandela i) Green movement

b) Martin Luther King ii) Narmada Bachao Andolan

c) Petra Kelly iii) Anti Apartheid movement

d) Medha Patkar iv) Civil rights movement

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a) and iii), b) and iv), c)and i), d) and ii)


All these movement owed some of their ideals and methods from aspects

of Gandhian philosophy.






75


Question

Match each person with the related event:

a) Surya Sen i) Khilafat movement

b) Subhas Chandra Bose ii) Chittagong Raid

c) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan iii) Khudai Khidmatgar

d) Mohammed Ali iv) Indian National Army

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a) and ii), b)and iv), c)and iii), d) and i)


Mohammed Ali joined Gandhi to fight for the Khilafat issue. Khan Abdul

Ghaffar Khan remained part of Gandhian activities in North Western

frontier and led the Khudai Khidmatgar group. Surya Sen was the leader

of the famous Chittagong armoury raid while Subhas Chandra Bose led the

first organized military opposition to the colonial state by organizing the

Indian National Army.





Question

Match each of the following events with the correct date:

a) Quit India resolution i) March 1931

b) Gandhi Irwin pact ii) August 1942


76


c) Pune pact iii) September 1932

d) Purna Swaraj demand iv) December 1929

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a) and ii), b)and i), c) and iii), d) and iv)





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9.3: Exercises

Essay questions

1) What is the understanding of national culture as advocated by the

Modernists?

2) What is the link between print language and culture? Explain with reference

to

developments in Hindi and Urdu.

3) Explain the importance of writing prose for the development of a historical

sensibility?

4) How are regional vernacular cultures linked with the idea of India? Explore

this in the context of your region.

5) Find out the reasons why Vande Mataram became controversial, and why the

Congress party took a decision to sing only the first two verses of the song?

Objective questions


1 True or False 1

Question

a) Early names for the language now called Urdu were Hindvi, Hindi, Dihlavi, Gujri,

Dakhani and Rekhtah.

b) Marathi language was written only in the Modi script.

c) Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya wrote historical novels.

d) Rabindra Nath Tagore was not critical of Nationalism in his book published in

1917.

e) The Orientalists said that India did not have any literary tradition.

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a)True b) False c) True d) False e) False



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a)It was only in the second half of the 19th century that the term Urdu came

into use, even Ghalib did not like the term for the language in which he

composed.

b)Till the 1950‘s Marathi was using two scripts- Balbodhi/Devanagari and

Modi. Balbodhi or Nagari is the standard script for Marathi.

c)Bankim was a well known novelist, famous for his novel Anandamatha.

d) Rabindra Nath was critical of Nationalism in his book (see extract in the

relevant value addition for the lesson)

e)The Orientalist scholars were deeply interested in Indian texts and praised

Indian literary traditions.





Question

Match the following:

a) Ustad i):A folk hero

b) Mohammad Iqbal ii): Sare jahan se acha

c) Tenali Raman iii): Marathi historical poem

d) Powada iv): Shagird

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a) and iv), b) and ii), c)and i), d) and iii)


a) and iv) is correct because the tradition of ustad–shagird developed with

the literarization of Urdu.


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b) and ii) is correct because Muhammad Iqbal wrote this famous poem.

c) and i) is correct because Tenali is a popular figure in folk tradition (now

with a full-fledged TV series based on the stories).

d) andiii) is correct because this is a form of Marathi poetry in use even now.


Other combinations are false for the above mentioned reasons.



3 Multiple choice question 3

Question

Urdu was:

a) the language of Persia.

b) written in Devanagari.

c) the official language of the Mughals.

d) based on Khari-boli.

Correct Answer /

Option(s) d)


Urdu was based on the Khari-boli, spoken in Western U.P., Haryana and

Delhi.


a) Persian or Farsi was the language of Persia.

b) Urdu was written in the Perso-Arabic script.

c) Persian was the official language of the Mughals.


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Question

The novel as a prose form was produced in Bangla and Marathi in the:

a) 19th century

b) 18th century

c) 17th century

d) 15th century

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a)


The novel in Indian languages was a modern literary genre.





Question

A famous Indian folklorist was:

a) Mahatma Gandhi

b) Jawahar Lal Nehru


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c) Natesa Sastri

d) B. R. Ambedkar

Correct Answer /

Option(s) c)


Natesa Sastri collected, edited, and translated Tamil folklore.


a), b) and d) were prominent nationalist leaders.




Question

Hindi was:

a) an ancient Indian language.

b) spoken in the medieval period.

c) derived from Arabic.

d) based on khari-boli.

Correct Answer /

Option(s) d)


Like Urdu, Hindi was based on Khari-boli, spoken in Western U.P., Haryana

and Delhi.


Hindi as we know it developed only in the second half of the 19th century. It was

based on Khari-boli, and consciously Sanskritized.



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Question

Jawahar Lal Nehru noted that the old epics were:

a) Popular.

b) disliked.

c) forgotten.

d) only read by Brahmins.

Correct Answer /

Option(s) a)


Nehru wrote, ―The old epics of India, the Ramayana and Mahabharata and

other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely known

among the masses…….I realized that even the illiterate peasant had a picture

gallery in his mind,….drawn from myth and tradition and epic heroes and

heroines.‖


The quote above makes Nehru‘s assessment clear.



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9.1 Glossary

Alibi: an excuse of any kind

Charisma: a capacity to inspire devotion and enthusiasm

Coercive: having the power of compulsion by physical pressure or force

Infallible: always correct, incapable of being proven false

Irrevocable: irreversible, unable to be undone

Legitimacy: genuineness, legal right to govern

9.2 Glossary

Swaraj: self-governance

Hind swaraj: Indian home rule

Purna swaraj: complete independence

Swadeshi: of one‘s own country

Satyagraha: search for truth

Ahimsa: non-violence

Mahatma: great soul

Harijan: children of God

Dalit: ground down; the most oppressed; the untouchable castes

9.3 Glossary

Dastan: Persian for story

Lavani: a genre of music popular in Maharashtra, nirguni and shringari

Powada: a genre of Marathi poetry which narrates historical events

Shahir: composer of powadas

Bakhar: Maratha prose chronicle

Tatsama: Sanskrit loanwords

Tazkirah: anthology of poetry

Tamasha: form of Marathi folk theater

Balbodh: Devanagari script used for Marathi

Silsilah: Arabic word meaning chain - refers to a chain of masters

Khyal: Arabic word for a modern genre of music

Mushairah: symposium of poets


84


9.1 Further readings

Banerjee, Mukulika. 2001. The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North

West Frontier. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

BBC. 14 Nov 2005 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4435032.stm>

Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi ed. 1997, 2008 (fourth reprint). The Mahatma and the Poet:

Letters and debates between Gandhi and Tagore 1915-1941. New Delhi: National Book

Trust India.

Bondurant, Joan. 1958, 1965. Conquest of Violence: the Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dalton, Dennis. 1970. Gandhi During Partition: A Case Study in the Nature of

Satyagraha. In C. H. Philips and M. D. Wainwright eds.1970. The Partition of India:

Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

Desai, Mahadev. (1946), 1991. The Gospel of Selfless Action or The Gita According to

Gandhi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House.

Desai, Narayan. 2009. My Life is My Message, vol 4, Svarpan (1940-1948). New Delhi:

Orient Blackswan.

Gandhi, M. K. 1993. The Bhagvadgita. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks.

Gandhi, M. K. 1938, 2003. Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule (1909). Ahmedabad:

Navjivan Publishing House.

Gandhi, M. K. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online.


Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online- Controversy regarding alterations:

http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg_controversy.html

Gandhi, Rajmohan. 2004. Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pathans. New Delhi:

Penguin-Viking.

Gandhi, Rajmohan. 2006. Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, his People, and an Empire.

New Delhi: Penguin-Viking.

Goyal, D. R. 1979. Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. New Delhi: Radha Krishna

Prakashan.

Hardiman, David. 2003. Gandhi in his Time and Ours.Delhi: Permanent Black.

Markovits, Claude. 2003. The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: the Life and Afterlife of the

Mahatma. Delhi: Permanent Black.

Markovits, Claude. 2007. The Calcutta Riots of 1946. In:


http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/cwmg_controversy.html


85


http://www.massviolence.org/The-Calcutta-Riots-of-1946

Naess, Arne. 1965. Gandhi and the Nuclear Age. Totowa, NJ: The Bedminster Press.

Nandy, Ashis. 1994. Final Encounter: The Politics of the Assassination of Gandhi. In At

the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture. New Delhi: Oxford University

Press.

Noorani, A. G. 2003. Savarkar and Gandhi. In Frontline; vol 20, March 15-28.

http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2006/stories/20030328003603400.htm

Parekh, Bhikhu. 1989. Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s

Political Discourse. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Payne, Robert. 1969, 2003. The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi. New Delhi: Rupa &

Co.

Ralhan, O. P. and Suresh K. Sharma. 1994. Documents on Punjab, vol 7, Sikh Politics

(Guru-ka-Bagh Morcha). New Delhi: Anmol Publications.

Rothermund, Dietmar. 1991. Mahatma Gandhi:An Essay in Political Biography.Delhi:

Manohar Publications.

Shirer, William. 1979. Gandhi: A Memoir. Abacus: London.

Tendulkar, D. G. 1961. Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, v. 4. New

Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Publications

Division.

9.2 Further readings

Hardiman, David. 2003. Gandhi in His Time and Ours. New Delhi: Permanent Black.

Brown, Judith.1972. Gandhi’s Rise to Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Forbes, Geraldine. 1996. Women in Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Sarkar, Sumit. 1983. Modern India,1885-1947. New Delhi: Macmillan India Limited.

Further readings

Ahmad, Talat. 2009. The Progressive Episode in South Asia 1932 -56. Delhi: Routledge.

Alam, M. 2003. The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial Hindustan. In Pollock, S.

2003.

Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.

Balakrishnan, G. ed. 1996. Mapping the Nation. London: Verso.

http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2006/stories/20030328003603400.htm


86


Bhargava, R. and H. Reifeld eds. 2005. Civil Society Public Sphere and Citizenship, Delhi:

Sage.

Blackburn, S. 2003. Print, Folklore and Nationalism in Colonial South India. Ranikhet:

Permanent Black.

Breckenridge, Carol and Peter van der Veer. 1993. Orientalism and the Postcolonial

Condition. Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania.

Chandra, S. 1994. The Oppressive Present. Delhi:Oxford University Press.

Chatterjee, P. 1986. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse

London: Zed Books.

Chatterjee, P. 1996. The Nation and Its Fragments.Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Chatterjee P. and R. Aquil eds. 2003. History in the Vernacular. Ranikhet: Permanent

Black.

Dalmia, Vasudha. 1997. The Nationalisation of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu

Harishchandra and Nineteenth Century Banaras. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Deshpande, Prachi. 2007. Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western

India 1700-1960.Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

Farooqi, M. A. 2008. The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature Poetry and

Prose Miscellany Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Farooqi, M.A. 2008. The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature Fiction Delhi:

Oxford University Press.

Gellner,E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. London: Blackwell.

Ghosh, Anindita. 2006. Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of and Culture

in a Colonial Society. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Gupta, C. 1996. The Icon of Mother in Late Colonial North India: Bharat Mata, Matri

Bhasha and Gaumata. In C. Bates ed. Beyond Representation Colonial and Post-colonial

Constructions of Indian Identity. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Guha, Ranajit. 1998. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India.

Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Hall, S., D. Held, D. Hubert and K. Thompson eds. 1995. Modernity: an Introduction to

Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hobsbawm, E. J. and T. Ranger eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Hutchinson J. and A. D. Smith. 1994. Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kaviraj, S. 1995. The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya and the

Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

King, C. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts, the Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century

North India. Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press.


87


Majeed, Javed. 2009. Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Post-Colonialism. Delhi:

Routledge.

Naregal, Veena. 2001. Language, Politics, Elite and the Public Sphere. Ranikhet:

Permanent Black.

Nehru, J. 1946. The Discovery of India. New York: the John Day Company.

Nijhawan, S. ed. 2010. Nationalism in the Vernacular:Hindi, Urdu and the Literature of

Indian Freedom. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

Orsini, Francesca. 2002. The Hindi Public Sphere 1920-1940 Language and Literature in

the Age of Nationalism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Orsini, Francesca. 2009. Print and Pleasure Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions

in Colonial North India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

Pollock, S. ed. 2003. Literary Cultures in History. Delhi: OxfordUniversity Press.

Pollock, S. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and

Power in Premodern India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

Rai, Alok. 2002. Hindi Nationalism. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.

Shackle, C. 2010. Introduction: Urdu, Nation, and Community. In Nijhawan, S. 2010.

Stark, U. 2007. An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the

Printed Word in Colonial India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

Venkatchalapathy, A. R. 1999. Songsters of the cross-roads: popular literature and print

in Colonial Tamilnadu. South Indian Folklorist 3, 1: 49-79.

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