UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT

SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

SECOND SEMESTER M.A. HISTORY

PAPER- IV

IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT

(2008 Admission onwards)

Prepared by

Dr.N.PADMANABHAN

Reader

P.G.Department of History

C.A.S.College, Madayi

P.O.Payangadi-RS-670358

Dt.Kannur-Kerala.

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CHAPTERS CONTENTS PAGES

1 NATURE OF THE COLONIAL STATE 02-38

11 COLONIAL IDEOLOGY 39- 188

111 TOWARDS A THEORY OF NATIONALISM 189-205

1V NATIONALIST RESISTANCE 206-371

V INDEPENDENCE AND PARTITION 371-386

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CHAPTER-1

NATURE OF THE COLONIAL STATE

THE COLONIAL STATE AS A MODERN REGIME OF POWER

Does it serve any useful analytical purpose to make a distinction between

the colonial state and the forms of the modern state? Or should we regard the

colonial state as simply another specific form in which the modern state has

generalized itself across the globe? If the latter is the case, then of course the

specifically colonial form of the emergence of the institutions of the modern

state would be of only incidental, or at best episodic, interest; it would not be a

necessary part of the larger, and more important, historical narrative of

modernity.The idea that colonialism was only incidental to the history of the

development of the modern institutions and technologies of power in the

countries of Asia and Africa is now very much with us. In some ways, this is

not surprising, because we now tend to think of the period of colonialism as

something we have managed to put behind us, whereas the progress of

modernity is a project in which we are all, albeit with varying degrees of

enthusiasm, still deeply implicated.

Curiously though, the notion that colonial rule was not really about colonial

rule but something else was a persistent theme in the rhetoric of colonial rule

itself.As late as ten years before Indian independence, a British historian of

the development of state institutions in colonial India began his book with the

following words: “It was the aim of the greatest among the early British

administrators in India to train the people of India to govern and protect

themselves…….rather than to establish the rule of a British bureaucracy”.

And at about the same time, Edward Thompson and G.T. Garratt, two liberal

British historians sympathetic toward the aspirations of Indian nationalism,

closed their book with the following assessment:

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Whatever the future may hold, the direct influence of the West upon India

is likely to decrease.But it would be absurd to imagine that the British

connection will not leave a permanent mark upon Indian life. On the merely

material side the new Federal Government [the Government of India

reorganized under the 1935 constitutional arrangements] will take over the

largest irrigation system in the world, with thousands of miles of canals and

water-cuts fertilizing between 30 and 40 million acres; some 60,000 miles of

metalled roads; over 42,000 miles of railway, of which 3 quarters are State-

owned; 230,000 scholastic institutions with over 12 million scholars; and a

great number of buildings, including government offices, inspection

bungalows, provincial and central legislatures.The vast area of India has been

completely surveyed, most of its lands assessed, and a regular census taken

of its population and its productivity.An effective defensive system has been

built up on its vulnerable North-East frontier, it has an Indian army with

century-old traditions, and a police force which compares favourably with any

outside a few Western countries.The postal department handles nearly 1500

million articles yearly, the Forestry Department not only prevents the

denudation of immense areas, but makes a net profit of between 2 and 3

crores. These great State activities are managed by a trained bureaucracy,

which is to-day almost entirely Indian.Having read our Michel Foucault, we

can now recognize in this account a fairly accurate description of the advance

of the modern regime of power, a regime in which power is meant not to

prohibit but to facilitate, to produce. It is not without significance, therefore,

that Thompson and Garratt should mention this as the “permanent mark” left

by the colonial presence in India. It is also significant that they entitle their

history the Rise and Fulfillment of British Rule in India.

Indian nationalists are not, of course, quite so generous in attributing

benevolent intentions to the colonial mission.But their judgment on the

historical value of the state institutions created under British rule is not

fundamentally different.The postcolonial state in India has after all only

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expanded and not transformed the basic institutional arrangements of colonial

law and administration, of the courts, the bureaucracy, the police, the army, and

the various technical services of government.M.V. Pylee, the constitutional

historian, describes the discursive constraints with disarming simplicity.

“India”, he says, “inherited the British system of government and administration

in its original form.The framers of the new Constitution could not think of an

altogether new system. As a matter of fact, the criticisms Indian nationalists

have made in the postcolonial period is that the colonial institutions of power

were not modern enough, that the conditions of colonial rule necessarily limited

and corrupted the application of the true principles of a modern administration.

B.B. Misra, the nationalist historian of colonial bureaucracy, identified these

limits as proceeding from two premises. The first was the Indian social system

which was governed by irrational and prescriptive customs rather than a well-

regulated rational system of law and a common code of morality.The

second………was the British Imperial interest, which bred discrimination in the

Services on racial grounds as well as differentiation in respect of social status

and conditions of service.

Yet, despite these limits, “the degree of administrative rationalization during

this period of bureaucratic despotism was far ahead of the country’s

Brahmanic social order, which knew of no rule of law in the contractual sense”

Whether imperialist or colonialist, all seem to share a belief in the self-evident

legitimacy of the principles that are supposed universally to govern the

modern regime of power. It is something of a surprise, therefore, to discover

that a persistent theme in colonial discourse until the earlier half of this century

was the steadfast refusal to admit the universality of those pricinples.

THE RULE OF COLONIAL DIFFERENCE

Although Vincent Smith was not the most distinguished imperial historian of

India, he was probably the most widely known in India because of the success

of his textbooks on Indian history. In 1919, Smith published a rejoinder to the

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Montagu-Chelmsford constitutional proposals seeking to placate nationalist

demands by conceding a certain measure of “responsible government” to

Indians.The proposals, Smith said, were based on two propositions: “(1) that a

policy, assumed to have been successful in Western communities, can be

applied to India; and (2) that such a policy ought to be applied to India, even at

the request of an admittedly small body of Indians, because Englishmen

believe it to be intrinsically the best”.His argument was that both propositions

were false.

The policy of responsible and democratic government, “supposed to be of

universal application”, could not be applied to India because it went against “a

deep stream of Indian tradition which has been flowing for thousands of

years……The ordinary men and women of India do not understand

impersonal government…..They crave for government by a person to whom

they can render loyal homage”. The reason for the legitimacy of British rule in

India lay in the fact that the King-Emperor was regarded by the Indian people

as “the successor of Rama, Asoka and Akbar.Their heartfelt loyalty should not

be quenched by the cold water of democratic theory”.In terms of social

divisions, “India has been the battle-ground of races and religions from time

immemorial”, and the anticipation of a common political identity was “not

justified either by the facts of history or by observation of present conditions”.

The fundamental principle of social organization in India was caste, which was

incompatible with any form of democratic government.More importantly, the

spread of modern institutions or technologies had not weakened the hold of

caste in any way. The necessities of cheap railway traveling compel people to

crowd into carriages and touch one another closely for many hours…..The

immense practical advantages of a copious supply of good water from stand-

pipes in the larger towns are permitted to outweigh the ceremonial pollution

which undoubtedly takes place…….But such merely superficial modifications

of caste regulations…….do not touch the essence of the institution………The

Brahman who rides in a third-class carriage or drinks pipe-water does not

think any better of his low-caste neighbour than when he traveled on foot and

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drank from a dirty well…….So long as Hindus continue to be Hindus, caste

cannot be destroyed or even materially modified. Smith then went on to argue

that contrary to the plea of the reformers, the policy of promoting responsible

government in India was bad even as a practical strategy of power.It would

produce not consent for authority but its very opposite. Contentment, so far as

it exists, is to be deliberately disturbed by the rulers of India in order to

promote the ideal of Indian nationhood, the formation of a genuine electorate,

and the development of the faculty of self-help.Do the high officials charged

with the government of India, who propose deliberately to disturb the

contentment of three hundred millions of Asiatic people, mostly ignorant,

superstitious, fanatical, and intensely suspicious, realize what they are doing?

Have they counted the cost? Once the disturbance of content has been fairly

started among the untutored masses, no man can tell how far the fire may

spread. Discontent will not be directed to the political objects so dear to Mr.

Montagu and Mr. Curtis. It will be turned fiercely upon the casteless, impure

foreigner and, inflamed by the cry of “religion in danger”, will attract every

disorderly element and renew the horrors of 1857 or the great anarchy of the

eighteenth century.The lesson of history cannot be mistaken.Our reaction

today would be to dismiss these arguments as coming from a diehard

conservative imperialist putting up what was even then a quixotic defense of

old-style paternalistic colonialism.Yet Smith’s rejection of the claims to

universality of the modern institutions of self-government raises, we think, an

important question.

Let us put this plainly, even at the risk of oversimplification. If the principal

justification for the modern regime of power is that by making social

regulations an aspect of the self-disciplining of normalized individuals, power

is made more productive, effective, and humane, then there are three possible

positions with regard to the universality of this argument. One is that this must

apply in principle to all societies irrespective of historical or cultural

specificities.The second is that the principle is inescapably tied to the specific

history and culture of Western societies and cannot be exported elsewhere;

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this implies a rejection of the universality of the principle.The third is that the

historical and cultural differences, although an impediment in the beginning,

can be eventually overcome by a suitable process of training and education.

The third position, therefore, while admitting the objection raised by the

second, nevertheless seeks to restore the universality of the principle.While

these three positions have been associated with distinct ideological

formations, they are produced, however, in the same discursive field.Our

argument is, first, that all three remain available today; second, that it is

possible easily to slide from one to the other, because, third, all three adopt

the same tactic of employing what we will call the rule of colonial difference.

The implication of this argument is that if a rule of colonial difference is part of

a common strategy for the deployment of the modern forms of disciplinary

power, then the history of the colonial state, far from being incidental, is of

crucial interest to the study of the past, present, and future of the modern

state.We will first demonstrate the application of this rule in two well-known

colonial debates over bureaucratic rationality, rule of law, and freedom of

speech.We will then show that the same rule is effective in contemporary

debates over colonial history.

BRACE AND RATIONAL BUREAUCRACY

It is in the fitness of things that it took an event such as the suppression of a

rebellion of the scale and intensity of the Great Revolt of 1857 for the various

pieces of the colonial order properly to fall into place.The rebels ripped the veil

off the face of the colonial power and, for the first time, it was visible in its true

form; a modern regime of power destined never to fulfill its normalizing

mission because the premise of its power was the preservation of the

alienness of the ruling group.The debates over colonial policy in the decades

following the revolt are instructive.Historians generally characterize this period

as an era of conservatism.Metcalf’s well-known study traces this shift to a

decline in the enthusiasm for Benthamism and evangelism in

Britain.Strengthening this reluctance to embark upon any further reform in

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India was the suspicion that the earlier attack upon “immoral” native customs

might have had something to do with the rebellion. Official opinion was now

virtually unanimous in thinking that local customs were best left to themselves.

“Radical reform”, says Metcalf “was not just dangerous, it had ceased to be

fashionable”.

In keeping with this move away from liberal reform was the hardening of a

certain intellectual opinion in Britain that was particularly influential in the

making of colonial policy.Distressed by the extension of suffrage and of the

politics of Gladstonian liberalism at home, this school of opinion sought to

reestablish the precepts of property and order upon unashamedly

authoritarian foundations and increasingly turned to British India as the ground

where these theories could be demonstrated.James Fitzjames Stephen and

Henry Maine were two leading figures in this campaign to unmask the

“sentimentality” of all reformist postures in matters of colonial policy.The

Indian people, Stephen reminded his countrymen, were “ignorant to the last

degree” and “steeped in idolatrous superstition”.The British were under no

obligation to fit such people for representative institutions.All they were

expected to do was administer the country and look after the welfare of the

people.The empire, he said, Is essentially an absolute Government, founded,

not on consent, but on conquest? It does not represent the native principles of

life or of government, and it can never do so until it represents heathenism

and barbarism.It represents a belligerent civilization, and no anomaly can be

so striking or so dangerous as its administration by men who, being at the

head of a Government………having no justification for its existence except

[the] superiority [of the conquering race], shrink from the open,

uncompromising, straightforward assertion of it, seek to apologize for their

own position, and refuse, from whatever cause, to uphold and support it.

The merit of hard-nosed arguments such as this was to point un-

ambiguously to the one factor that united the ruling bloc and separated it from

those over whom it ruled.Marking this difference was race. As officials in India

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attempted, under directions from London, to install the processes of an orderly

government, the question of race gave rise to the most acerbic debates.

Indeed, the more the logic of a modern regime of power pushed the processes

of government in the direction of a rationalization of administration and the

normalization of the objects of its rule, the more insistently did the issue of

race come up to emphasize the specially colonial character of British

dominance in India.

It seems something of a paradox that the racial difference between ruler and

ruled should become most precisely in that period in the last quarter of the

nineteenth century when the technologies of disciplinary power were being put

in place by the colonial state.Recent historians have shown that during this

period there was a concerted attempt to create the institutional procedures for

systematically objectifying and normalizing the colonized terrain, that is, the

land and the people of India.Not only was the law codified and the

bureaucracy rationalized, but a whole apparatus of specialized technical

services was instituted in order to scientifically survey, classify, and

enumerate the geographical, geological, zoological, and meteorological

properties of the natural environment and the archaelogical, anthropological,

historical, linguistic, economic, demographic, and epidemiological

characteristics of the people.Yet, a social historian of the period notes that

“racial feeling among the British became more explicit and more aggressive in

the course of the nineteenth century and reached its peak during Lord

Curzon’s viceroyalty, between 1899 and 1905”. There is, however, no paradox

in this development if we remember that to the extent this complex of power

and knowledge was colonial, the forms of objectification and normalization of

the colonized had to reproduce, within the framework of a universal

knowledge, the truth of the colonial difference.The difference could be marked

by many signs, and varying with the context, one could displace another as

the most practicable application of the rule. But of all these signs, race was

perhaps the most obvious mark of colonial difference.

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In the case of bureaucratic rationalization, for instance, which had

proceeded through the middle decades of the century, the most difficult

political problem arose when it became apparent that the system of

nonarbitrary recruitment through competitive academic examinations would

mean the entry of Indians into the civil service. Several attempts were made

in the 1870s to tamper with recruitment and service regulations in order first to

keep out Indians, and then to split the bureaucracy into an elite corps primarily

reserved for the British and a subordinate service for Indians. But it was the

so-called Ilbert Bill Affair that brought up most dramatically the question of

whether a central claim of the modern state could be allowed to transgress the

line of racial division.The claim was that of administering an impersonal,

nonarbitrary system of rule of law.In 1882 Behari Lal Gupta, an Indian

member of the civil service, pointed out the anomaly that under the existing

regulations, Indian judicial officers did not have the same right as their British

counterparts to try cases in which Europeans were involved. Gupta’s note

was forwarded to the Government of India with a comment from the Bengal

government that there was “no sufficient reason why Covenanted Native

Civilians, with the position and training of District Magistrate or Sessions

Judge, should not exercise the same jurisdiction over Europeans as is

exercised by other members of the service”.The viceroy at this time was

Ripon, a liberal, appointed by Gladstone’s Liberal government. But it did not

require much liberalism to see that the anomaly was indeed an anomaly, and

after more or less routine consultations, Ilbert, the law member, introduced in

1883 a bill to straighten out the regulations. Some historians have suggested

that if Ripon had had even an inkling of the storm that was to break out, he

would not have allowed such a minor issue to jeopardize the entire liberal

project in India.As it happened, it was the force of public opinion of the

dominant race that organized itself to remind the government what colonial

rule was all about.The nonofficial Europeans – planters, traders, and lawyers

in particular, and in Bengal more than anywhere else – rose in “almost

mutinous opposition”.The agitation reached a fever pitch in Calcutta.Meetings

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were held to denounce the bill that sought to take away “a much-valued and

prized and time-honoured privilege of European British subjects” and aroused”

a feeling of insecurity as to the liberties and safety of the European British

subjects employed in the mufassal and also of their wives and daughters”.

The British Indian presuppositions, with the Englishman of Calcutta at its

head, declared a call to arms by claiming that the Europeans were “fighting

against their own ruin and the destruction of British rule in India”.A European

and Anglo-Indian Defence Association was formed, functions at Government

House were boycotted, and there was even a conspiracy “to overpower the

sentries at Government House, put the Viceroy on board a steamer at

Chandpal ghat, and send him to England via the Cape”.

Gladstone, surveying the fracas from the vantage point of the metropolitan

capital, was in a better position than most to see how this episode fitted into a

longer story. “There is a question”, he said, To be answered: where, in a

country like India, lies the ultimate power, and if it lies for the present on one

side but for the future on the other, a problem has to be solved as to

preparation for that future, and it may become right and needful to chasten the

saucy pride so apt to grow in the English mind toward foreigners, and

especially toward foreigners whose position has been subordinate. Ripon, on

the other hand, chose to see his move as “an error in tactics” and decided to

beat a retreat. The provisions of the bill were so watered down that the earlier

anomalies were not only reinstated but made even more cumbrous.The

question was not, as some historians have supposed, whether Ripon was “too

weak a man” to carry out the liberal mission of making Indians fit for modern

government.What his “failure” signaled was the inherent impossibility of

completing the project of the modern state without superseding the conditions

of colonial rule.When George Couper, lieutenant governor of the Northwestern

Provinces, said in 1878 that the time had come to stop “shouting that black is

white”, he was not being metaphorical.“We all know that in point of fact black

is not white……That there should be one law alike for the European and

Native is an excellent thing in theory, but if it could really be introduced in

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practice we should have no business in the country”.The argument, in other

words, was not that the “theory” of responsible government was false, nor that

its truth was merely relative and contingent. Rather, the point was to lay down

in “practice” a rule of colonial difference, to mark the points and the instances

where the colony had to become an exception precisely to vindicate the

universal truth of the theory.

RACE AND PUBLIC OPINION

Another question on which the Ilbert Bill Affair threw light was the relation

between the state and those relatively autonomous institutions of public life

that are supposed to constitute the domain of civil society.The interesting

feature of this relation as it developed in colonial Calcutta, for instance, in the

19th century was that the “public” which was seen to deserve the recognition

due from a properly constituted state was formed exclusively by the European

residents of the country.Their opinion counted as public opinion, and the

question of the appropriate relationship between government and the public

came to be defined primarily around the freedoms of the British Indian

press.English-language newspapers began to be published in Calcutta from

the 1780s. In those early days of empire, when power was restrained by little

more than brute force and intrigue and commerce was driven by the lust for a

quick fortune, the press not unexpectedly provided yet another means for

carrying out personal and factional feuds within the small European

community in Bengal.Governors-general were quick to use legal means to

“tranquilize” newspaper editors and even deport those who refused to be

subdued.By the 1820s a more stable relation had been established and the

censorship laws were lifted.But the events of 1857, when the very future of

British rule seemed to be at stake, forced the issue once more into the open.

“Public opinion” was now defined explicitly as the opinion of the “nonofficial”

European community, and the English-language press of Calcutta, crazed by

panic, directed its wrath at a government that, in its eyes, seemed too soft and

indecisive in punishing the “d---d niggers”.Canning, the governor-general, was

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a special target of vituperation, and in June 1857 he imposed the censorship

laws once again, for a period of one year.

The contours of state-civil society relations in the new context of the Raj

were revealed in interesting ways in the so-called Nil Durpan Affair.The origin

of the case lay, curiously enough, in an effort by officials in Bengal to find out

a little more about “native” public opinion. In 1861, when the agitations in the

Bengal countryside over the cultivation of indigo had begun to subside, John

Peter Grant, the governor, came to hear about Dinabandhu Mitra’s (1930-73)

play.Thinking this would be a good way “of knowing how natives spoke of the

indigo question among themselves when they had no European to please or

to displease by opening their minds”, he asked for a translation to be prepared

of Nildarpan.Grant’s intentions were laudable.

We have always been of opinion that, considering our state of more than

semi-isolation from all classes of native society, public functionaries in India

have been habitually too regardless of those depths of native feeling which do

not show upon the surface, and too habitually careless of all means of

information which are available to us for ascertaining them.Popular songs

everywhere, and, in Bengal, popular native plays, are amongst the most

potent, and most neglected, of those means. Seton-Karr, the secretary to the

Government of Bengal, arranged for James Long, an Irish missionary later to

become a pioneering historian of Calcutta, to supervise the translation “by a

native” of the play.He then had it printed and circulated, along with a preface

by Dinabandhu and an introduction by Long, to several persons “to whom

copies of official documents about the indigo crisis had been sent”.The

planters were immediately up in arms.They charged the government with

having circulated “a foul and malicious libel on indigo planters”.When it was

clarified that circulation of the play did not mean the government’s approval of

its contents and that in any case the circulation had not been expressly

authorized by the governor, the planters’ association went to court.An

“extraordinary” summing up by the judge, which is said “not to have erred on

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the side of impartiality”, influenced the jury at the Supreme Court into

pronouncing James Long guilty of libel.He was sentenced to a fine and a

month’s imprisonment. Long became a cause célèbre among the Indian literati

of Calcutta: his fine, for instance, was paid by Kaliprasanna Sinha (1840-70),

and a public meeting presided over by Radhakanta Deb (1783-1867)

demanded the recall of the judge for his “frequent and indiscriminate attacks

on the characters of the natives of the country with an intemperance………not

compatible with the impartial administration of justice”. But, more interestingly,

long also attracted a good deal of sympathy from Europeans, particularly

officials and missionaries.They felt he had been punished for no offense at all.

The bishop of Calcutta remarked that the passages“which the Judge

described as foul and disgusting, are in no way more gross than many an

English story or play turning on the ruin of a simple hunted rustic which people

read and talk about without scruple”. At the same time, Canning, the viceroy,

rebuked Grant for having allowed things to go this far and Seton-Karr, despite

an apology, was removed from his posts both in the Bengal government and

in the legislative council.The planters, it would seem, won an unqualified

victory.

Nevertheless, it is worth considering what really was on trial in this curious

case.It was to all intents and purposes a conflict between government and the

public, the “public” being constituted by “nonofficial” Europeans.The charge

against the government was that by circulating the play, it had libeled an

important section of this public.Long was a scapegoat; in fact, neither he nor

the play was on trial. Or rather, to put it more precisely, although Long was an

ostensible culprit in the circulation of a libelous tract, the play itself and the

body of opinion it represented were not recognized elements in this discourse

about free speech.Such in fact was the confusion about where this principle of

freedom of expression was supposed to apply that when one of Long’s

supporters remarked that his punishment was “exactly as if the French clergy

had prosecuted Molière”, it did not strike him that Dinabandhu Mitra, the

author of the play, had not even been deemed worthy of being named in a suit

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of libel and that Long was neither the author nor even the translator of the

impugned material.Within these assumptions, of course, there really was no

confusion.The real target of attack was clearly the government itself, and

Canning, in trying to appease “public opinion”, recognized this when he moved

against Grant and Seton-Karr.The original intent of the Bengal officials,

however, had been to familiarize themselves and members of the European

community with the state of “native” public opinion – a perfectly reasonable

tactic for a modern administrative apparatus to adopt. What incensed the

planters was the implicit suggestion that the government could treat “native”

public opinion on the same footing as European opinion.A native play,

circulated under a government imprint, seemed to give it the same status of

“information” as other official papers.These planters were not prepared to

countenance.The only civil society that the government could recognize was

theirs; colonized subjects could never be its equal members. Freedom of

opinion, which even they accepted as an essential element of responsible

government, could apply only to the organs of this civil society; Indians,

needless to add, were not fit subjects of responsible government.

LANGUAGE AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The question of native public opinion came up once again in the 1870s. In

1878, when the government felt it necessary to devise legal means to curb

“seditious” writings in the native press, the law made an explicit distinction

between the English-language and the vernacular press.An official pointed out

that this would be “class legislation of the most striking and invidious

description, at variance with the whole tenour of our policy”, but the objection

was overruled on the ground that in this instance the exception to the general

rule was palpable.The presumed difficulty, said Ashley Eden, the Bengal

governor, was “imaginary rather than real”.That is to say, the notion of an

undifferentiated body of public opinion that the government was supposed to

treat impartially was only a theoretical idea; in practice, it was the duty of a

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colonial government to differentiate, and language was a simple and practical

sign of difference.

The papers published in this country in the English language are written by

a class of writers for a class of readers whose education and interests would

make them naturally intolerant of sedition; they are written under a sense of

responsibility and under a restraint of public opinion which do not and cannot

exist in the case of the ordinary Native newspapers.It is quite easy and

practicable to draw a distinction between papers published in English and

papers published in the vernacular, and it is a distinction which really meets all

the requirements of the case, and should not be disregarded merely because

some evil-disposed persons may choose to say that the Government has

desired to show undue favour to papers written in the language of the ruling

power.…..On the whole the English Press of India, whether conducted by

Europeans or Natives, bears evidence of being influenced by a proper sense

of responsibility and by a general desire to discuss public events in a

moderate and reasonable spirit.There is no occasion to subject that Press to

restraint, and therefore, naturally enough, it is exempted. It would be a sign of

great weakness on the part of Government to bring it within the scope of this

measure merely to meet a possible charge of partiality.

The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was enacted in great haste so as to

forestall long debates over principles, especially in Britain.Lytton, the viceroy,

himself described it as “a sort of coup d’état to pass a very stringent gagging

Bill”.The provisions were indeed stringent, since local officers were given the

power to demand bonds and deposits of money from printers and publishers,

and the printing of objectionable material could lead to confiscation of the

deposit as well as the machinery of the press, with no right of appeal in the

courts.4 years later, Ripon in his liberalism repealed the act, and “a bitter

feeling obtained among officials that they were denied proper and reasonable

protection against immoderate Press criticism”.In the 1890s, when the

question of “sedition” acquired a new gravity, provisions were included in the

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regular penal law to allow the government to move against statements

“conducing to pubic mischief” and “promoting enmity between classes”.The

distinction by language had by then ceased to be a practical index of

difference because native publications in English could no longer be said to be

confined in their influence to a class “naturally intolerant of sedition”.Other,

more practical, means emerged to distinguish between proper members of

civil society and those whom the state could recognize only as subjects not

citizens. And in any case, a contrary movement of nationalism was then well

on its way to constituting its own domain of sovereignty, rejecting the dubious

promise of being granted membership of a second-rate “civil society of

subjects”.

NATIONALISM AND COLONIAL DIFFERENCE

This domain of sovereignty, which nationalism thought of as the “spiritual”

or “inner” aspects of culture, such as language or religion or the elements of

personal and family life, was of course premised upon a difference between

the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized. The more nationalism engaged

in its contest with the colonial power in the outer domain of politics, the more it

insisted on displaying the marks of “essential” cultural difference so as to keep

out the colonizer from that inner domain of national life and to proclaim its

sovereignty over it.But in the outer domain of the state, the supposedly

“material” domain of law, administration, economy, and statecraft, nationalism

fought relentlessly to erase the marks of colonial difference. Difference could

not be justified in that domain. In this, it seemed to be reasserting precisely

the claims to universality of the modern regime of power.And in the end, by

successfully terminating the life of the colonial state, nationalism

demonstrated that the project of that modern regime could be carried forward

only by superseding the conditions of colonial rule.

Nevertheless, the insistence of difference, begun in the so-called spiritual

domain of culture, has continued, especially in the matter of claiming agency

in history.Rival conceptions of collective identity have become implicated in

18

rival claims to autonomous subjectivity.Many of these are a part of

contemporary postcolonial politics and have to do with the fact that the

consolidation of the power of the national state has meant the marking of a

new set of differences within postcolonial society. But the origin of the project

of modernity in the workings of the colonial state has meant that every such

historical claim has had to negotiate its relationship with the history of

colonialism.The writing of the history of British India continues to this day to be

a matter of political struggle. In this contemporary battle, the case for a history

of subordinated groups has often been stated by pointing out the continuities

between the colonial and the postcolonial phases of the imposition of the

institutions of the modern state and by asserting the autonomous subjectivity

of the oppressed.But since the modern discourse of power always has

available a position for the colonizer, the case on behalf of the colonizing

mission can now also be stated in these new terms.To show the continued

relevance of the question of the universality of the modern regime of power

and of the rule of colonial difference, we will end this it by reviewing a recent

attempt to revise the history of colonialism in India.

“IT NEVER HAPPENED!”

This revisionist history begins by challenging the assumption, shared by

both colonialist and nationalist historiographies, that colonial rule represented

a fundamental break in Indian history.There are two parts to this

argument.The first part of the argument has been advanced by Burton Stein.

He disputes the assumption in both imperialist and nationalist historiographies

that the British regime in India was “completely different from all prior states”.

The recent work of Christopher Bayly, David Washbrook, and Frank Perlin

shows, he says, that “early colonial regimes” were “continuations of prior

indigenous regimes”, that the 18th century was a time of “economic vigour,

even development”, and not of chaos and decline and that the period from

1750 to 1850 was a “period of transition” from extant old regimes to the

colonial regimes.The continuations were marked in two ways. One “structural

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contradiction” in pre-British state formations was between “centralizing,

militaristic regimes” and numerous local lordships.The British inserted

themselves into these formations, “not as outsiders with new procedural

principles and purposes (as yet), but, contingently, as part of the political

system of the subcontinent, but possessed of substantially more resources to

deploy for conquest than others”.The colonial state resolved the contradiction

in favor of the centralizing tendency of “military-fiscalism” inherited from

previous regimes.Here lay the continuity of the colonial state with its

predecessors. The other contradiction was between “sultanism” (Max Weber’s

term), which implied a patrimonial order based on personal loyalty of

subordination to the ruler, and the existence of ideological discontinuities

between ruler and local lordships, which made such patrimonial loyalties hard

to sustain.Patrimonial sultanism was incompatible with the economic

tendencies inherent in military-fiscalism.After initial hesitations, the colonial

state in the second half of the 19th century broke entirely with the sultanist

forms and founded a regime based not on patrimonial loyalties but on modern

European principles, different both from the old regimes and the early colonial

regimes.Here lay the discontinuity of the later colonial state with its

predecessors.

Although Stein appeals, inter alia, to the work of Perlin, the latter actually

makes a much more qualified argument, a qualification important for the

revisionist position as well as for our judgment on it. Perlin argues that the

process of centralization that characterized colonial rule “possessed roots in

the earlier period”. But in accelerating this process, colonial rule gave it” a

new, more powerful form deriving from its location in the agency of a conquest

regime possessing sources of fiat external to the subcontinent, from its radical

concentration of decision making, and from the surplus of new knowledge in

the instruments of rule”.This produced “a substantial break” between the early

colonial polity and its predecessors, despite the colonial use of “old-order

institutions and its social underpinnings”. Moreover, whereas in the indigenous

regimes of the 18th century the attempt to centralize produced large areas of

20

“quasi-autonomy”, where contrary forces and contrary principles of rights and

social organization could emerge to resist the larged order, colonial rule up to

the early 19th century was marked by a substantial loss of this “intermediary

ground”.“Beneath the carapace of old terms and institutional shells, there has

occurred a fundamental alteration of both State and state. This is bound up

with the European origins and international character of the new colonial

polity”.

Notwithstanding Perlin’s qualification, the idea of continuity from the

precolonial to the early colonial period dominates this part of the revisionist

argument.Since the later phase of colonialism is specifically distinguished

from its early phase, one is justified in wondering if the revision is merely a

matter of dates.Is the question one of identifying when the decisive break of

colonialism took place? Earlier historians, whether imperialist or nationalist,

with their simple faith in the proclamations of political rulers, had assumed that

this occurred in the middle of the 18th century; are the revisionist historians,

more skeptical of legal fictions and more sensitive to underlying social

processes, now telling us that the date must be pushed forward by a hundred

years? If this is all there is to the debate, the matter is easily settled. For if the

period from the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th is to be

seen as a period of “transition”, then it must reveal not only the traces of

continuity from the earlier period, as claimed by our recent historians, but

surely also the signs of emergence of all of those elements that would make

the late colonial period structurally different from the precolonial.In terms of

periodization, then, the hundred years of transition must be seen as

constituting the “moment” of break, the “event” that marks the separation of

the pre-colonial from the colonial.The apparent conundrum of continuity and

discontinuity then becomes one more example of the familiar historiographical

problem of combining, and at the same time separating, structure and

process. One might then react to the revisionist argument in the manner of the

student radical in a Calcutta university in the early 1970s who, when asked in

21

a history test whether Rammohan Roy was born in 1772 or 1774, replied, “I

don’t know.But I do know that he grew up to be a comprador”.

But it would be unfair to our revisionist historians to judge them on what is

only one part of their argument.In its stronger version, the revisionist argument

contains another part in which the continuity from the pre-colonial to the early

colonial period is given a new construction.Not only was it the case, the

argument runs, that the Europeans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries

achieved “on a larger and more ominous scale what Indian local rulers had

been doing for the last century”, but in responding to this conquering thrust

Indians too “became active agents and not simply passive bystanders and

victims in the creation of colonial India”.This, says Chris Bayly in a recent

book-length survey of the early colonial period, gives us a “more enduring

perspective” on modern Indian history than do the earlier debates about the

success or failure of the “progressive” impact of colonialism.This perspective

reveals, first of all, the economic history of India from the 18th century to the

present as a history of “Indian capitalism”, born prior to the colonial incursion

and growing to its present form by responding to the forces generated by the

European world economy.Most of the economic institutions of capitalism in

India today, such as commodity production, trading and banking capital,

methods of accounting, a stock of educated expertise and of mercantile

groups that would ultimately become industrial entrepreneurs, emerged in the

pre-colonial period. So did many of the political and cultural movements,

including the rise of intermediary groups between townsmen and the

countryside, the formation of regional cultures, movements for cultural reform

and self-respect among disprivileged groups, and even the politics of

“communalism”. Second, such a perspective on Indian history also shows the

resilience of both townspeople and country people in resisting the onslaughts

on their means of survival and ways of life, especially in the period of

colonialism.Indigenous propertied groups frustrated the “more grandiose

economic plans” of both the colonial state and European businessmen to

extract Indian wealth, while peasants overcame the pressures of war, taxation,

22

and repression “to adapt in a creative way to their environment”.By recovering

these connections, Bayly says, the new perspective enables one to construct

a narrative running from the pre-colonial past to the post-colonial present in

which the Indian people are the subjects of history.

What, then, of colonialism? Surprisingly, there is no clear answer to this

question.Nevertheless; it is not difficult to read the implication of the argument.

At the time of their entry, the European trading companies were merely so

many indigenous players in the struggle for economic and political power in

18th century India, striving for the same goals and playing by the same rules.

In the latter half of the 19th century, when the British appear to have achieved

complete dominance at the apex of the formal structure of power, their ability

to reach into the depths of Indian social life was still severely restricted. By

the early 20th century, even this hold at the top was seriously challenged, and

of course by the middle of the century the colonial power was forced to leave.

Looked at from the “more enduring” perspective of Indian history, then,

colonialism appears as a rather brief interlude, merging with the longer

narrative only when its protagonists manage to disguise themselves as Indian

characters but falling hopelessly out of place and dooming itself to failure

when it aspires to carry out projects that have not already taken root in the

native soil.

We have a more detailed presentation of this stronger version of the

revisionist argument in Washbrook.Once again, the claim is made that by

tracing the continuities from pre-colonial to early colonial processes, one can

restore the “Indianness” of this historical narrative and “recover the subject

from European history”.Further, and this is Washbrook’s contribution to the

argument, “historical theory” “is put on a rather more objective, or at least less

ethnocentric, footing”. It is on this high ground of “historical theory”, then, that

the revisionist flag is finally hoisted.What is this theory? It is the familiar

theme of capitalist development, which in one form or another has framed all

discussions of modern history.The new twist on this theme has as its vortex

23

the claim that not all forms of development of capital necessarily lead to

modern industrialism.The development of industrial capital in England, or in

Western Europe and North America, was the result of a very specific history.It

is the perversity of Eurocentric historical theories that has led to the search for

similar developments everywhere else in the world; whenever that search has

proved fruitless, the society has been declared incapable of producing a true

historical dynamic.Instead of tracing the particular course of the indigenous

history, therefore, the practice has been to see the history of “backward”

countries as a history of “lack”, a history that always falls short of true history.

The perspective can be reversed, says Washbrook, by taking more

seriously the similarities rather than the differences between the development

of capitalism in Europe and, in this case, in India.We will then see that the

similarities are indeed striking.Contrary to the earlier judgment of imperialist,

nationalist, and even Marxist historians, recent researches show that the

economic and so institutions of pre-colonial India, far from impeding the

growth of capitalism, actually accommodated and encouraged most of the

forms associated with early modern capital. Not only did trading and banking

capital grow as a result of long-distance trade, but large-scale exchange took

place even in the subsistence sector.The legal-political institutions too

acquired the characteristic early modern forms of military fiscalism,

centralization of state authority, destruction of community practices, and the

conversion of privileged entitlements into personal rights over property.

Despite the cultural differences with Europe in the early capitalist era, India

too produced institutions that were “capable of supplying broadly similar

economic functions”.The East India Company entered the scene as one more

player capable of pursuing the same functions: “rather than representing a set

of governing principles imported from a foreign and ‘more advanced’ culture,

the early East India Company state might be seen as a logical extension of

processes with distinctively ‘indigenous’ origins”. And if one is not to disregard

the “preponderant evidence” of early capitalist groups in India subverting

indigenous regimes in order to seek support from the Company, one must

24

accept the conclusion that “colonialism was the logical outcome of South

Asia’s own history of capitalist development”.

The tables have been turned!Once colonialism as an economic and political

formation is shown to have been produced by an indigenous history of

capitalist development, everything that followed from colonial rule becomes,

by the ineluctable logic of “historical theory”, an integral part of that same

indigenous history.Thus, the restructuring of the Indian economy in the period

between 1820 and 1850, when all of the principal features of colonial

underdevelopment emerged to preclude once and for all the possibilities of

transition to modern industrialization, must be seen not as a process carried

out by an external extractive force but as one integral to the peculiar history of

Indian capitalism.The colonial state, responding as it did to the historical

demands of Indian capital, offered the necessary legal and political protection

to the propertied classes and their attempts to enrich themselves: “rarely in

history”, says Washbrook, “can capital and property have secured such

rewards and such prestige for so little risk and so little responsibility as in the

society crystallizing in South Asia in the Victorian Age”.The result was a

process in which not only the British but all owners of property – “capital in

general” – secured the benefits of colonial rule.The specific conditions of

capitalism in India had, of course, already defined a path in which the forms of

extractive relations between capital and labor did not favor a transition to

industrialism.The late colonial regime, by upholding the privileges of capital,

destroying the viability of petty manufacturers, pulling down the remnants of

already decrepit community institutions, and consolidating the formation of a

mass of overexploited peasants constantly reduced to lower and lower levels

of subsistence, made the transition more or less impossible.On the cultural

side, the colonial regime instituted a “traditionalization” of Indian society by its

rigid codification of “custom” and “tradition”, its freezing of the categories of

social classification such as caste, and its privileging of “scriptural”

interpretations of social law at the expense of the fluidity of local community

practices.The result was the creation by colonial rule of a social order that

25

bore a striking resemblance to its own caricature of “traditional India”: late

colonial society was “nearer to the ideal-type of Asiatic Despotism than

anything South Asia had seen before”. All this can now be seen as India’s own

history, a history made by Indian peoples, Indian classes, and Indian powers.

COLONIAL DIFFERENCE AS POST-COLONIAL DIFFERENCE

There is something magical about a “historical theory” that can with such

ease spirit away the violent intrusion of colonialism and make all of its features

the innate property of an indigenous history.Indeed, the argument seems to

run in a direction so utterly contrary to all received ideas that one might be

tempted to grant that the revisionist historians have turned the tables on both

imperialist and nationalist histories and struck out on a radically new path.

Like all feats of magic, however, this achievement of “historical theory” is also

an illusion. If the revisionist account of Indian history makes one suspicious

that this is one more attempt to take the sting out of anti-colonial politics, this

time by appropriating the nationalist argument about colonialism’s role in

producing underdevelopment in India and then turning the argument around to

situate the origins of colonialism in India’s own precolonial history, then one’s

suspicion would not be unjustified.There is much in this new historiographic

strategy that is reminiscent of the debates we cited at the beginning of this

chapter between conservative and liberal imperialists and their nationalist

opponents.Like those earlier debates, this account shows a continued effort to

produce a rule of colonial difference within a universal theory of the modern

regime of power. Washbrook argues, for instance, that Eurocentrism and the

denial of subjectivity to Indians were the result of the emphasis on difference;

emphasizing similarity restores to Indian history its authenticity. It is obvious,

of course, though not always noticed, that the difference which produces India

(or the Orient) as the “other” of Europe also requires as its condition an

identity of Europe and India; otherwise they would be mutually unintelligible.

But “emphasizing” either identity or difference, however, it is possible to

produce varied meanings; in this case, the effects noticed by Washbrook are

26

those of Indian authenticity on the one hand and Eurocentrism on the other.

What he does not recognize is that the two histories are produced within the

same discursive conditions.All that Washbrook is doing by emphasizing

“similarity” is restating the condition of discursive unity.This condition is

nothing other than the assumption that the history of Europe and the history of

India are united within the same framework of universal history, the

assumption that made possible the incorporation of the history of India into the

history of Britain in the 19th century: Europe became the active subject of

Indian history because Indian history was now a part of “world history”.The

same assumption has characterized the “modern” historiography of India for at

least the last hundred years, although the principal task of this nationalist

historiography has been to claim for Indians the privilege of making their own

history.

There have been many ways of conceptualizing this universal history.

Washbrook chooses the one most favored in the rational, scientific

discussions of academic social theory, namely, the universality of the

analytical categories of the modern disciplines of the social sciences. In his

version, this takes the form of assuming the universality of the categories of

political economy.Thus, although the history of Indian capitalism, in his

argument, is different from that of European capitalism, it is nonetheless a

history of “capitalism”.The distinctness, and hence the authenticity, of Indian

capitalism is produced at the level of Indian history by first asserting the

universality of capitalism at the level of world history.Instead of saying, as do

his predecessors in the discipline of political economy, that India was so

different that it was incapable of capitalism and therefore required British

colonialism to bring it into the orbit of world history, Washbrook has simply

inverted the order of similarity and difference within the same discursive

framework. In the process, he has also managed to erase colonialism our of

existence.

27

What he has produced instead is a way of talking about postcolonial

backwardness as the consequence entirely of an indigenous history.Indian

capitalism today, his argument seems to say, looks so backward because it

has been, from its birth, different from Western capitalism.It was ridiculous for

anyone to have believed that it could be made to look like Western capitalism;

if it ever did, it would stop being itself.Fitzjames Stephen or Vincent Smith

would have understood the argument perfectly.It is possible to give many

instances of how the rule of colonial difference – of representing the “other” as

inferior and radically different, and hence incorrigibly inferior – can be

employed in situations that are not, in the strict terms of political history,

colonial.These instances come up not only in relations between countries or

nations, but even within populations that the modern institutions of power

presume to have normalized into a body of citizens endowed with equal and

nonarbitrary rights. Indeed, invoking such differences are, we might say,

commonplaces in the politics of discrimination, and hence also in the many

contemporary struggles for identity.This reason makes it necessary to study

the specific history of the colonial state, because it reveals what is only hidden

in the universal history of the modern regime of power. Having said this, we

need to move on to the next, and more substantial, part of our agenda, which

is to look at the ways in which nationalism responded to the colonial

intervention.That will be my task in the rest of this book.This, then, will be the

last time that we will talk about Gladstone and Curzon, Lytton and Ripon, and

pretend that the history of India can be written as a footnote to the history of

Britain.Leaving such exiguous projects behind us, let us move on to a

consideration of the history of India as a nation.

NATURE OF COLONIAL STATE

The colonial state is a basic part of the colonial structure. At the same time,

the subordination of the colony to the metropolis and other features of the

colonial structure evolve and are enforced through the colonial state.The

parameters of the colonial structure are constructed through, and determined

28

and maintained by, the colonial state. The colonial state differs from temple

capitalist state in important aspects. It does not “reflect” economic power but

creates and enforces it.It is not a superstructure erected on the economic

base. It helps create the economic base; it is a part of the economic base of

colonialism. It not only enables the ruling classes to extract surplus, it is itself

a major channel for surplus appropriation.Under capitalism, the ruling class is

that which, to quote Ralph Miliband, “owns and controls the means of

production and which is able, by virtue of the economic power thus conferred

upon it, to use the state as its instrument for the domination of

society”.Reverse is the case under colonialism.It is because of its control over

the colonial state that the metropolitan ruling class is able to control,

subordinate and exploit the colonial society. In other words, the metropolitan

ruling class does not control state power and the social surplus in the colony

mainly because of its ownership of the means of production in the

colony.Rather, because the ruling class controls state power in the colony, it

controls its social surplus and is able to subordinate its producers.The

metropolitan capitalist class may own the means of production in the colony to

a significant extent – as for instance, it did not in India to any significant extent

till the 1920s and subsequently not even predominantly.

Furthermore, while the capitalist state is the instrument for enforcing the

rule and domination of one class over another, the colonial state is the

organized power of the metropolitan ruling class for dominating the entire

colonial society.Also, while in the metropolis the state is a relation between

classes, in the colony it is a relation between the foreign ruling class and the

colonial people as a whole.This virtually amounts to a truism, but it still has to

be stressed because nearly all historians and other social scientists of the

imperialist school ignore or obscure this aspect and its implications.The

colonial state, thus, does not represent any of the indigenous social classes of

the colony. It subordinates all of them to the metropolitan capitalist class. It

dominates all of them. None of them indigenous upper classes share state

power in the colony, none of them are a part of the ruling class.They are not

29

even its subordinated or junior partners.The metropolitan ruling class may

share the social surplus in the colony with the indigenous upper classes, but it

does not share power with them.Not even princes, regents, landlords and

compradors have a share in colonial state power. It is; of course, true that the

economic class position of the landlords and capitalists in the colony is

“articulated through, and by, the colonial state”.But they are not part of the

ruling class.Their interests are freely sacrificed to the interests of the

metropolitan bourgeoisie.This also enables the colonial state to introduce

certain reforms at the cost of the indigenous upper classes such as factory

legislation, tenancy and anti-usury legislation, support to minority

communities, and so on. (This explains the paradox of the ease with which

Irish landlords talk of tenant interests when they administer India, or the

Lancashire spokespersons urge labour legislation in India, or anti-Semites

become champions of minority rights.) The colonial state is thus able, for a

certain period and in certain situations, to play against each other landlords

and tenants, capitalists and workers, and higher and lower castes. It is also

able to play all sorts of majorities against minorities.

On the other hand, this also means that even the uppermost classes and

strata of colonial society are capable of turning against colonialism.Thus the

anticolonial struggle can be led even by big landlords as in Poland or Egypt.

This also explains the attraction of the elite theory of nationalism (the theory

that nationalism was the result of struggle for power between the indigenous

and foreign elites) to imperialist administrators and ideologues since the end

of the nineteenth century and till today. For, this theory obfuscates the reality

of colonialism and the imperialist ruling classes by equating the indigenous

elite of colonial society with the imperialist ruling classes – suggesting that

both were oppressors of the colonial people in the same manner or that the

manner in which the indigenous elite were oppressors made no political

difference to the anticolonial struggle.It was with this elite theory of nationalism

that imperialist administrators and intellectuals tried to question the legitimacy

of the actual anti-imperialist movement – a task which continues to be

30

undertaken till this day, sometimes with radical stance and terminology. To

avoid or see through this obfuscation, it is necessary to use the concepts of

ruling classes and exploiting classes, on the one hand, and those of the

nature of the colonial state and colonial ruling class or classes, on the other

hand.

It is also to be noted that a crucial difference between colonial and semi-

colonial societies lies in this very aspect. First, large sections of the ruling

classes in semi-colonial societies bear a determinate relation to the means of

production:they appropriate social surplus because of the position they occupy

in the mode of production.Second, the indigenous upper classes or some of

them – landlords, compradors and even sections of the national bourgeoisie –

are part of the class coalition that constitutes the ruling class.That is, they

share in state power, sometimes even as senior partners.Arun Bose has put

this aspect quite aptly:“The ‘class nature’ of a colonial state is determined by

the dominant class of the conquering, dominating country.But the class nature

of the semi-colonial state is determined by the class nature of the politically

dominant class in the semi-colony”.The colonial state differs in this respect

from the most authoritarian of the precolonial states.In the latter case, the

state, however oppressive, is an organic part of the indigenous society; it is

not an instrument for the enforcement of subordination of the society to a

foreign society or ruling class, or for the export of social surplus.

(Interestingly, this was the ground on which Dadabhai Naoroji and other Indian

nationalists differentiated between the British Indian colonial state and the

Mughal state).Lastly, it is to be noted that the colonial state is basically a

bourgeois state.Consequently, in several of its stages it does introduce

bourgeois law and legal institutions as also bourgeois property relations, the

rule of law and bureaucratic administration.It can, therefore, as is the case

with the metropolitan bourgeois state, be authoritarian or even fascistic as in

many of the colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia or it can be semi-

authoritarian and semi-democratic as in India. (It can, of course, never be fully

democratic). It can also, to a certain extent, create a constitutional space in

31

the colony for itself.It can rule by the bayonet or can assume a semi-

hegemonic character, depending on the character of the colonial society, its

size, history and so forth, as also the character of the colonizing society and

its polity.Yet the bourgeois character of the state and its superiority in certain

aspect to some of the pre-colonial or even some of the post-colonial states

does not change its basically colonial and therefore negative character.

THE COLONIAL STATE

In this last section, we would like to make a few preliminary and tentative

remarks regarding the colonial state, while keeping in view the fact that a truly

historical study of the nature of the colonial state and its relation to colonial

society has yet to be made.The main difference between out theory of the

colonial state and that of the capitalist state is regarding historical specificity;

otherwise our theoretical framework is the same as evolved for the study of

the capitalist state by Marx, Engels and Lenin and developed further by

Antonio Gramsci, Ralph Miliband, Nicolas Poulantzas and others.Our major

effort will be to outline what is specifically colonial about the colonial state.

What Marx said about the state being “merely the organized power of one

class for oppressing another” applies to the colonial state but with a basic

difference: the colonial state is the instrument for oppressing entire societies.

This virtually amounts to a truism, but needs to be stressed because nearly all

historians and other social scientists of the imperialist school ignore or

obscure this aspect. The state plays a much greater role, quantitatively as well

as qualitatively, in the colonial system than perhaps in any other social

formation.First of all, colonialism is structured by the colonial state.Moreover,

the conquest of the colony itself is in many cases carried out by the colonial

state and is in almost all cases paid for by the colonial state and the colonized

people.Unlike in the capitalist system, where the state’s chief role is to provide

the legal and institutional infrastructure for capitalist production relations – and

where the state often did not intrude into the production process till the

twentieth century, and the system is maintained by the production process

32

itself – the colonial state is not a superstructure erected on the base of

colonial economy; it is an integral and intrusive element in the structuring and

functioning of the colonial economy.While “the ‘ruling class’ of a capitalist

society is that which owns and controls the means of production and which is

able, by virtue of the economic power thus conferred upon it, to use the state

as its instrument for the domination of society”, under colonialism the reverse

is the case.It is because of its control over the colonial state that metropolitan

capitalism is able to control, subordinate and exploit colonial society.This is

true even of the laissez-faire period.

The colonial state guarantees law and order as also its own security from

internal and external dangers.It also directly or indirectly, through acts of

omission or commission, represses indigenous economic forces and

processes hostile to colonial interests.It directly serves as a channel for

surplus appropriation, mainly during the first state but also during the other

stages of colonialism.This is a major point of departure from the capitalist

state.Another is the role of the colonial state in preventing unity among the

colonial people.While the capitalist state tries to prevent working-class unity

but makes active efforts to promote unity and harmony among the propertied

and the non-propertied classes, the colonial state tries to break up the

emerging national unity in the colony, promotes segmentation of colonial

social into any and all kinds of social groups, including social classes, and

sets them at odds against one another.Simultaneously, it puts forward the

theory that the colonial society would disintegrate in the absence of

colonialism and that its unity is possible only under the colonial state. Thus,

the anti-imperialist struggle of the colonial people is sought to be diverted into

the struggle of caste against caste, ‘community’ against ‘community’, ‘tribe’

against ‘tribe’ and sometimes even class against class. More positively, the

colonial state not only maintains favourable conditions for the continuous

appropriation of colonial surplus, but actively and directly produces and

reproduces these conditions, including production of goods and services, to a

much greater extent than does the capitalist state.It actively aids foreign

33

enterprises.Above all, it directly undertakes the economic, social, cultural,

political and legal transformation of the colony so as to make it reproductive

on an extended scale.The colonial state, however, is not able to carry the

heavy burden of such a catalogue of functions.A major contradiction within

colonialism arises out of the relative weights to be assigned to its police and

direct appropriational functions, on the one side, and its ‘transformational’ or

‘development’ functions, on the other.This contradiction finds expression in a

perpetual crisis in the colonial budget, heavy taxation on the colonial people,

and the atrophying of the ‘development’ functions.

In a colonial society, the relationship between the state and the underlying

economic structure is direct and explicit.Consequently, the anticolonial forces

are easily able to penetrate and expose the character of the colonial state as

the instrument of the colonial economic structure.Once the economics of

colonialism is analysed and understood, the colonial character of the state is

easily and readily grasped and the anticolonial struggle invariably moves to

the sphere of the state and is increasingly politicized.While under capitalism

the struggle between the working class and capitalism occurs at the trade-

union and economic planes and the task of raising it to the political plane –

especially to the plane of struggle for state power – remains a serious,

complex and prolonged problem, under colonialism the anticolonial forces

almost from the beginning – even in their early moderate phases – put forward

the demand for sharing of state power and then rapidly move into the politics

of its capture.This is one of the reasons why a national liberation struggle is

easier to organize than social (class) movements in capitalist or post-colonial

societies where the connection between the state and the dominant economic

structure is complex and not so evident.

Similarly, the mechanism of colonial control lies on the surface, that is,

nearly all colonial policies are amenable to instrumentalist explanations, which

are easier to grasp and expose.Whose interests does the colonial state

serve? The anti-imperialists have a simple and unambiguous answer from the

34

beginning.The relationship between colonial administrative policies and

metropolitan interests is easily established. Why does it serve metropolitan

interests? Obviously, because it is visibly controlled from abroad.How can it

be proved that the colonial state serves foreign interests? By simple

instrumentalist reasoning.While under capitalism the complex policies and

apparatuses of the state cannot be adequately explained in terms of their

manipulation by the ruling class, under colonialism the task is not difficult. The

colonial people have no part in policy making and controlling state

apparatuses and processes. Moreover, the colonial state possesses, because

of its basic character, very little capacity to undertake ameliorative and welfare

measures and to thus promote harmony between the rulers and the ruled. In

other words, the opaqueness of the colonial state, of its mystifying shell, is

easily penetrated.It legitimacy is easily destroyed.The empirical proof of the

anti-imperialist position is easy to gather and propagate.History and

contemporary life are full of glaring incidents and examples.This aspect has

two important consequences for post-colonial scientists.First, most of the anti-

imperialist leaders successfully employ instrumentalist arguments and modes

of analysis during the freedom struggle, and consequently, fail to dismantle

the total structure of colonialism after political liberation.They come to believe

that once the political mechanism comes under indigenous control, the colony

will be successfully decolonized.Similarly, they overlook the role of colonial

ideology and culture and the ideological apparatuses which often continue to

exist and function fully and freely in the post-colonial situation.Second, faced

with the different and complex task of organizing social struggle within the

post-colonial society, the left-wing political groups hark back wistfully to the

ease with which the anticolonial movement was organized and are tempted to

look once again for the colonial situation and the national liberation tasks in

their society.

However, in a profound sense, the scope for structural analysis is even

greater with regard to the colonial state than the capitalist state.In fact, both

the instrumental and structural aspects get exaggerated in the analysis of the

35

colonial state.Clearly, it is not the bureaucracy and other instruments of the

colonial state which determine the functions of the colonial state and the thrust

of colonial policies.For that we must study the structure of colonialism and

above all its economic structure.This is particularly important because the

colonial structure and consequently colonial policies undergo basic changes in

the different stages of colonialism, even though the instruments of the state

more or less continue to be the same. Colonialism is from the beginning riven

with inner contradictions.Colonial policies at different stages of colonialism are

determined by these contradictions and the efforts to resolve them. The

colonial state relies much more heavily than the capitalist state on domination

and the political, coercive apparatuses and much less on leadership or

‘direction’ based on consent.Under colonialism, consent of the ruled is at the

most passive.Colonial society is much less a civil society. Under colonialism,

the terrain occupied by civil society, which is often treated by colonialism as

potentially hostile to itself, is more or less vacant.This is two consequences”

(1) the colonial state very soon enters into a state of crisis; and (2) the vacant

space is rapidly occupied by the anti-imperialist forces whose main task

becomes that of mobilizing political forces to fight the domination of the

colonial state.This, in fact, is another reason why it is initially much easier to

organize a national liberation movement than a social movement.

Within this limited framework, colonialism does have a mystifying

ideological element which has two distinct aspects: one is the belief system of

the colonial bureaucracy and the other is the ideological penetration and

control of the ruled.Unfortunately, neither has been studied adequately. It is

necessary to analyse the ideology of colonialism in its different stages, both

theoretically and empirically.In the second stage of colonialism, for example,

colonial people are sought to be won over with the promise of total

modernization including economic development, modern culture and the

introduction of modern politics and political ideas – including self-government

and democracy.In the third stage, on the other hand, the emphasis is on

benevolence and depoliticization.The permanent incapacity of the colonial

36

‘child people’ to rule themselves or to practice democracy is emphasized. A

‘child people’ could also have no politics; they could only be passive recipients

of benevolence.Thus, colonial authorities actively oppose politicization of the

people and preach the ideology of non-politics.For a long period they

propagate not loyalist politics but non-participation in politics.They take

recourse to layalist politics and divisive communal, caste or ‘tribal’ politics only

after all efforts to check the growing anti-imperialist politicization have failed.

What is the relationship between the colonial state and the foreign and

indigenous exploiting classes? The colonial state is completely subordinated

to the bourgeois state of the metropolis and the metropolitan bourgeoisie as a

whole.Therefore, it possesses little of the relative autonomy that characterizes

the capitalist state.It is, however, autonomous vis-a-vis the individual

capitalists or individual capitalist groups. It serves the long-term interests of

the metropolitan capitalist class as a whole.It acts on behalf of the

metropolitan capitalists but not at their behest.In this sense, it perhaps

possesses even a greater degree of relative autonomy that the capitalist state.

The colonial state structure in the colony is not an arena of strife for the

promotion of sectional interests of the different metropolitan capitalist groups.

That strife occurs in the organs of the metropolitan state.For example, the

political struggle for making the colonial state an instrument of transition from

one stage of colonialism to another occurs in the metropolis. Colonialism and

capitalism both constitute relations between human beings.But while under

capitalism this relation exists between classes, under colonialism it is

established between the foreign ruling class and colonial people as a

whole.This is because the parameters of the colonial state are very

different.Its main task is not to enable the extraction of surplus or surplus

value from a subordinate class or classes, but to make the entire colonial

economy and society sub-servient to the metropolitan economy, to enable the

exploitation of the colony as a whole. Consequently, colonialism dominates all

the indigenous classes in the colony.

37

One of the most important aspects of the class structure of a colony is that

the ruling class is alien and the domestic propertied classes are not a part of

the ruling class; they are not even its subordinate allies or junior partners; they

are completely ruled by it; they, all equally impotent and equally mute, fall on

their knees before it.The metropolitan bourgeoisie may share the social

surplus in the colony with the indigenous upper classes but it does not share

state power with them.Not even the semi-feudal landlords and compradors

have a share in colonial state power.This is another aspect of the general

proposition that the (alien) ruling class of a colonial society does not control

state power because of economic power derived from the ownership of the

means of production in the colony; rather, the economic power of the

metropolitan bourgeoisie in the colony derives from the control of state power

itself.Similarly, the colonial state protects the indigenous exploiting classes but

in its own interests, that is, free of their political control.It does not have to

protect them except in so far as defence or private property is inherent in any

bourgeoisie society, including its colonial version. In fact, this aspect gives the

colonial state a certain political manoeuvrability. It is able, for a certain period

and in certain situations, to play landlords and tenants, and capitalists and

workers; against each other.Thus it is inaccurate to describe any section of

the colonial upper or middle classes as political elite. The relationship of the

foreign ruling class to all of them is that of a master. This relationship between

the colonial state and the indigenous upper classes is a crucial difference

between colonies and semi-colonies. In the latter – for example, as was in

China, Egypt after 1920, Thailand and the Latin American countries – the

landlords, the compradors, or even sections of the national bourgeoisie can be

part of the class coalition that constitutes the ruling class; they can be junior or

even senior partners in the state.

Returning to colonialism, there is no question of competition over state

policies between the colonial ruling class and the indigenous upper classes,

as certain political theorists would have it. No group of the colonial people

forms a ‘competing interest group’ in the colonial state structure.The

38

indigenous classes influence colonial state policies from outside the state

structure, through loyalism or through anti-imperialist parties and movements,

they extort concessions.Thus, once the anti-imperialist movement emerges, it

does have an impact on colonial policies because the colonial state has to

‘respond’ to it, sometimes with a carrot and sometimes with a stick.This is fully

recognized by the indigenous upper classes.

In conclusion, it may be pointed out that colonialism, metropolitan control

and the colonial state are best illuminated through a study of the numerous

inner contradictions of colonialism.For example, the crucial economic

contradiction of colonialism arises out of the objective need to make the

colonial economy reproductive and the objective consequence of colonialism

in producing the opposite result.This in turn leads to two other contradictions:

(1) the external one between the colonial people (and their social

development) and colonialism, leading to the subjective process of the

colonial people’s struggle for the overthrow of colonialism; and (2) the internal

one which tends to make the colony increasingly ‘useless’ or incapable of

serving the needs of metropolitan capitalism on an extended scale. During

the third stage, a large number of colonies fail to serve as adequate outlets for

metropolitan capital or even metropolitan manufactures.Moreover, many of

them become net importers of foodstuffs! The colonial state has now to play

the role of overcoming both these contradictions, in one case through the

suppression of the colonial people’s struggle and the mystification of the

colonial processes, and in the other through initiating ‘development’, which

can even take the form of ‘aid’ in the case of semi-colonies and post-colonial

societies.

39

CHAPTER-11

COLONIAL IDEOLOGY

COLONIAL PERCEPTION OF HISTORY AND THE INDIGENOUS

HISTORIOGRAPHY.

India was known to Europe in ancient times; indeed, parts of both Greece

and India were under Iranian domination at the same time.Greek and Indian

soldiers had fought together and against each other; diplomatic, commercial,

and cultural relations existed for centuries between India and the Hellenic and

the Hellenistic worlds; and countless adventurers, scholars, merchants, and

missionaries had traveled to and fro. However, this close contact ceased after

the emergence of Islamic power in the 7th century, and during the middle Ages

there was little or no direct intercourse between India and the West.

European knowledge of India was remote during the Crusades, and was, at

best, fragmentary during the medieval period. Something of India was known

through travel accounts, such as those of Marco Polo, but here reality often

gave way to romantic imagination. However, Indian influence can definitely be

traced in some works of literature.For instance, in the Alexander Song,

composed by Priest Lambrecht in the 12th century, the flower girls, in their

charming existence as half flowers – half humans, show a surprising similarity

to the daughters of Mara who were supposed to seduce the Buddha. From the

Alexander novel, the story, Girl with the Poison, entered the poetry of

Frauenlob, Hugo von Trimberg, and others.This story belongs to Indian

tradition in connection with the Maurya king, Chandragupta, and is found in

Visakhadatta’s play, Mudrarakshasa. Again, the hero, Parzival, in Wolfram

von Eschenbach’s poetry becomes the embodiment of compassion and mercy

as the positive result of the commandment not to kill. Remarkable, too, is the

description of the ‘schastel marvel” and the “lit marveile” which is reminiscent

of the Buddhist stupas.Moreover, the development of the legend of Priest

John who spread Christianity in India, and for whom the Portuguese went

looking in vain, may well have a basis in some kind of cultural contact.

40

During the 15thcentury the Renaissance spirit drew Europe out of

mediaevalism, and the new religious and commercial zeal inspired European

explorers to find a direct sea link with India. It was the quest for India that led

Columbus to stumble onto America in 1493.After persistent exploratory

expeditions, the Portuguese, in their bid to reduce the power of the Muslims of

North Africa and Western Asia, as well as in search of “Christians and spices”,

circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Arabian Sea with the assistance of an

Indian sailor, and reached Calicut on the southwest coast of India, on 27th

May, 1498.This success eventually led to the almost complete elimination of

Turkish supremacy on the Indian Ocean; the Arab trade monopoly between

Asia and Europe was also destroyed by the incoming European powers. “It is

to the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and to the

vigour and success with which the Portuguese prosecuted their conquests

and established their dominion there, that Europe has been indebted for its

preservation from the most illiberal and humiliating servitude that ever

oppressed polished nations”.This contact also slowly altered the whole

character of Indian society.India became for a first time a political and

economic appendage of another country, her weaknesses were exposed, and

the processes of modernization were stirred into motion with increasing

rapidity.The maritime activity of India, which had declined after the fall of the

Roman empire, was revived.

Although profitable trade was always one motive for their activities, the

Portuguese, as the first European power to come to Asia, looked upon

themselves as crusaders against Islam.Every injury inflicted on the Moors or

Muslims was a gain for Christianity.Even the capture of the spice trade was

described as a device to reduce the financial strength of the Muslims. It was

both a religious duty and a patriotic pride to combat Islam everywhere.The

centuries-old struggle for the Iberian Peninsula had made the Portuguese

intensely hostile to Muslims.Alfonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese

Commander, reporting the capture of Goa, an important centre of international

trade and commerce, gloated over the fact that he had put every Moor he

41

could find to the sword, filled mosques with the bodies, and set them on fire.

He calculated 6,000 persons had been killed, some roasted alive.These acts

of terror and brutality, initially directed principally against Muslims, gradually

became typical of Portuguese colonialism.They frequently attacked vessels

carrying pilgrims to Mecca and set them on fire, sometimes with the

passengers on board.The Portuguese were no less severe on Hinduism:“The

fathers of the Church forbade the Hindu under terrible penalties the use of

their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their

religion.They destroyed their temples and mosques, and so harassed and

interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers,

refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were

liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own

fashion the gods of their fathers”.The Portuguese tried to build their empire in

Asia on their bitter hatred of Islam and Hinduism.Their reign was devoid of

scruples, honour, and morality, and was a major reason for the decline of

Portuguese power. As the Papal Bulls of Alexander III protected Portugal from

other Catholic powers, especially Spain, the Portuguese were able to carry on

their trade without rival or restriction for about a century.They established a

highly organized and flourishing commercial empire,stretching from the coast

of Malabar to the Phillippines, which was incomparable to any empire in

European history.The Portuguese supplied all of Europe with Asian goods, of

which spices were the most considerable and precious commodity. Almost all

the writers of the middle Ages confirm the widespread demand for Indian

spices in Europe.Most European dishes were highly seasoned with Indian

spices; they were regarded as essential at every entertainment and were

principal ingredients in almost all medical prescriptions.Despite the reduction

in the cost of transport due to themselves discovery of the direct sea route,

and the consequent cheaper price, the Portuguese conducted such a lucrative

trade that the jealousy of other European nations eventually could no longer

be contained.Consequently, by the beginning of the 17th century, when

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Mughal India was at the height of its glory, Dutch and British, and later French,

trading companies emerged to capture the Asian trade.

The anti-Muslim aspect of European expansion in Asia was soon replaced

by the rivalry between the Catholic and Protestant powers of Europe.Holland,

inspired by the Reformation which began in Germany in 1517, revolted

against Spanish tyranny and assumed independence in 1579. Soon England

joined in, and the Protestant nations defied the Papal Bulls allocating the two

halves of the world to Spain and Portugal.Their struggle for commercial

supremacy in the East was one aspect of their religious defiance. During the

reign of Elizabeth I, English world interests had broadened, and their triumph

over the Spanish Armada gave the English confidence to expand their

mercantile activity.Consequently, the East India Company was founded in

1600 to break the lucrative Portuguese monopoly of East Indian trade.The

Portuguese were soon dislodged, and temple European desire for profit and

power made religious rivalry insignificant; indeed, by the middle of the 18th

century religious rivalry had assumed the pronounced character of a political

and economic struggle.For over 200 years, however, the Western powers

remained confined to coastal commerce, and acquired only small territorial

possessions in Asia because at this time the Mughals in India, the Mings and

Manchus in China, and the Safavis in Persia ruled prosperous and powerful

states.These Asian states were strong land powers with limited interest in

maritime activities.This was especially true of the Mughals, who had come to

India by land from the northwest and did not appreciate the danger to their

security from the sea, or the importance of maritime power. When they did

realize their mistake it was too late; they had become too weak even on land

to reverse the process.The early Europeans came to India as traders, not as

invaders, which possibly concealed the emerging trend in their activities for

some time, but it seems incredible that the Mughals, who were so jealous of

the integrity of their Empire, should have failed to detect it.The era of the great

Mughals ended after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, and throughout the 18th

century local powers continued to decline.In due course, this led to the

43

European domination of India and the industrial and technological advance of

the West.

The Mughal period was in many respects a glorious period of Indian history,

and the Mughals devoted much attention to art and culture, but they

completely neglected practical and secular learning, especially the sciences.

Throughout their long rule, no institution was established comparable to the

modern university, although early India had world-famous centres of learning,

such as Nalanda, Taxila and Kanchi.There were flourishing universities in

medieval Europe, as in other parts of the Islamic world, some of which had

been in existence for some centuries.The University of Paris, which became

the model not only for the universities of France but also for Oxford and

Cambridge, had an organized pattern and legal status by the early 13th

century.By the 17th century, a number of universities had come into existence

in Europe. These universities nurtured intellectualism and laid the foundations

of Western scientific culture through disciplined thinking, systematic

investigation, and free discussion of knowledge.What is significant is that

European university had borrowed freely from the ancient Asian and Islamic

models, which really were a part of the Mughal inheritance.Although their

court was frequented by European visitors, the Mughals took no interest in

European knowledge and technological accomplishments.Akbar received

many European missionaries, and Ibadat Khana discussed religion and

theology with them and protected them against the fanatic mullas.Christian

missionaries at Akbar’s Court came fully equipped, having learned Persian

and read the Quran, and repeatedly had the edge in discussion over the

Muslim mullas who argued with intense faith but with no knowledge of their

opponents’ holy book.Neither the nobles nor the mullas was stirred into

learning Latin and investigating the Bible. Nor did Akbar show any curiosity in

European science and philosophy, although both Hindus and Muslims had

made notable scientific contributions in the past.Akbar was presented with

printed books and a printing press, yet even the Indian classics were first

printed by Europeans.It is, therefore, not surprising that during the period of

44

European struggle for power, India was in a state of unparalleled decline,

which not only made it possible for the Europeans to pursue their rivalries at

will but also to do so with unique success.

The Mughals’ power was gone, and a long trail of political upheavals

followed.Intellectual inertia, already in evidence, became the prominent

feature of Indian society, and the country lapsed into chaos, anarchy, and

confusion.18th century India, in contrast to renaissant Europe; was so weak

that it had little control over its affairs.It could not even tip the balance in

favour of one of the European contenders struggling for power over Indian

territory.It was the British who eventually triumphed in this contest, although it

was the French who first conceived of European hegemony over Indian rulers.

In this struggle for power, technology, rather than diplomacy, played a

decisive role.In purely military terms, the West won command of the East

because of two things – ships and, more important, gunpowder.To these could

be added military organization and strategy.Superior armoury soon bred a

military mentality and an aggressive policy.Immunity from retaliatory action

led, at times, to unbridled tyranny.The West developed the bronze gun out of

the bell-founding industry.Spain and Portugal, the first considerable ocean-

goers of the times, borrowed northern European technology and met the cost

of production from their overseas trade.England entered the arena later,

successfully substituted cast iron for bronze, and, with the newer and cheaper

technique, asserted her supremacy over others.By 1600 England was not only

self-sufficient in artillery but also exported guns profitably.About the same

time, France, and a little later Germany, entered the gun-making industry and

eventually surpassed the English lead.Asians did not achieve any comparable

results but fell farther and behind, and it was not until the middle of this

century that they began to catch up with Europe in the race for arms.

Whilst the British were struggling for political supremacy in India, European

scholars began an investigation into Indian literature and heritage.Some of

these scholars were inspired by the spirit of inquiry, others by utilitarian ends,

45

but they all began to explore India’s past by working backwards from its

current phase to its earliest one.They also began, understandably, by learning

the languages spoken in the areas where they carried on their commercial

and political activities.They soon became familiar with Persina, the court

language of Mughal India, through which modern Europe first became

acquainted with Indian literature and religion.It was only later that efforts were

made to gain knowledge of the ancient classical language of India, Sanskrit,

and finally of the Vedic literature and the early civilization. Discounting the

mythical Sighelmus alleged to have been sent by Alfred on a pilgrimage to the

shrine of St. Thomas at Mailapur, the first Englishman to visit India was a

Jesuit priest, Thomas Stevens. He arrived in Goa in 1579 and was one of the

first Europeans in modern times to study Indian languages seriously.He

published a Konkani grammar, and in 1615 a remarkable poem entitled

Kristana Purana, which was the story of the Bible intended for Indian converts

to Christianity. He was a great admirer of the Marathi language, which he

described as “a jewel among pebbles”. At about the same time, a Dutchman,

Jan Huyghen Van Linschoten, published his Itineratio in 1595-1596 in which

he referred to the imprisonments and tortures inflicted upon Indians by the

Portuguese Inquisition. A Florentine merchant, Filippo Sassetti, who studied at

the University of Pisa for 6 years (1568-1574) and lived at Goa for 5 years

(1583-1588), collected a wide variety of data on India. Most of the letters in

which his information was recorded deal with meteorological observations, but

others deal with Indian folklore, science, and medicine.His interest in

pharmaceutical texts awakened his interest in Sanskrit.He was, perhaps, the

first person to declare that some relationship existed between Sanskrit and the

principal languages of Europe.Until the last quarter of the 18th century, several

other isolated missionaries and travelers acquired certain, chiefly

impressionistic, knowledge of Indian literature, language, and contemporary

life but few made any serious attempt to understand Indian civilization.They

accepted Indian culture at its face value without investigating its origins or

studying it in its proper historical perspective.

46

Those Europeans who came to India at the time were a motley crowd of

merchants and medicos, envoys and ecclesiastics, soldiers and sailors,

adventurers and fortune seekers.They arrived from different countries by

different routes with different motives; some eccentrics, such as Tom Coryat

even walked all the way from Aleppo to Ajmer.Seeking pecuniary gain or

excitement, these early Europeans were generally untutored and ill-equipped

to either transmit or absorb ideas.The English were no exception.Trade, and

only trade, was their object and they endeqvoured to attain it, as merchants

still do, not necessarily by sharing the beliefs of their customers or even by

understanding their culture, but by making themselves agreeable to them.

Consequently, they adopted Indian habits in food, often married Indian

women, and respected Indian customs, beliefs, and authority. As traders they

were concerned only with making money, regardless of scruples, morality, and

learning.India was an “Elsewhere Dorado” for enterprising young men in

search of a fortune.The travelers who carried information about India back to

Europe were inadequately informed about the geography and society of the

country as a whole, and their stay, in most cases, was too brief for accurate

knowledge.Moreover, like most foreign visitors, they did not bring

unprejudiced minds to the alien land, and whilst they fully understood and

rationalized their own shortcomings and inconsistencies, they were much too

willing to believe and record, if not magnify, anything which even vaguely had

the ring of the extraordinary, unfamiliar, or exciting.And the complexities of

Indian society and beliefs were far too paradoxical to lend themselves to easy

comprehension.Furthermore, the impressions and the narratives of European

travelers had unfortunately become stereotyped, and each visitor referred to

practically the same things, as if he had come to India with preconceived

ideas and was merely looking for reinforcement.Whilst some useful

information reached Europe through these travelers, references to the exotic

and romantic East became frequent and indiscriminate in European literature.

At best, 17th century India to the European was the India of the great Mughals,

depicted with extravagant imagination.For instance Dryden’s popular drama,

47

Aurengzebe published in 1675, portrayed the Mughal Court quite

fantastically.Unreliable as these narratives were, they succeeded in projecting

a picture of India in Europe which has never fully worn off. It is significant that

although the early European travelers were imbued with an anti-Islamic bias,

they usually accepted the fanatic Muslim point of view about the Hindus,

presumably because they shared the Judaic tradition with Muslims, knew a

good deal about Islam which was no longer so strange by that time, and also

because they were taken by the splendour of the Mughal Court.They looked

upon the Hindus as degraded and superstitious.This attitude was re-inforced

by missionaries like Abbe Dubois, who focused their attention almost

exclusively on the darker side of Hinduism, and sought to replace it with their

own faith.

The French response to India was somewhat different from that of the

British, possibly because many of the French travelers who came to India

were known for their literary taste and gave interesting accounts of their

travels.J.B.Tavernier, Thévenot, Francois Bernier, and Abbé Carré

concentrated on the Mughal Court and Empire in their travel

accounts.Tavernier, a jewel merchant, traveled to India as many as five times

between 1641 and 1668. A competent businessman, he had no education or

refinement, however, and wrote more to amuse than to inform. He probably

saw more of India than any other traveller in the 17th century, although he said

little that is worth remembering; his anecdotes are childish and often offensive.

Bernier is better known, for he was an educated man, and was responsible for

bringing Indian ideas to some of the prominent French scholars of the day.He

spent 12 years as a physician at the Mughal Court, and upon his return met

the eminent French fabulist, La Fontaine, at Mme, de la Sablief’s salon, and

shared his knowledge of India with him and Pascal, the philosopher and

mathematician.Jean Racine gave a flattering portrayal of Puru, Alexander’s

Indian adversary, in his Alexandre.A fried and disciple of Rousseau, Bernardin

de Saint Pierre, who had lived in Mauritius for 2 years, wrote Le Café de Surat

and other pieces with an Indian setting. In 1778 a work was published dealing

48

with Sanskrit literature, Vedic legends, and doctrines, called L’Ezour Vedam,

which created a sensation in the West by attracting the attention of Voltaire.

But it was later shown to be a work faked by a European missionary, Roberto

de Nobili, for the purpose of converting Hindus in the 17th century. Earlier,

Voltaire had published a tragic-comic story relating the adventures of a Hindu

and his wife, as well as his Historical Fragments on India.Whilst Voltaire’s

information on India came from unreliable sources, he believed that the West

received its knowledge of astronomy, astrology, and metempsychosis from

India, and he looked to India for truth with the eyes of a disillusioned

European. Several other well-known French writers of the Enlightenment were

somewhat familiar with India. Diderot wrote several articles on Indian religion

and philosophy in the Encylopédie of 1751.In 1770 Abbé Rayal, with the

assistance of Diderot, d’Holback, and Naigon, produced the Philosophical and

political History of the Europeans in the two Indias.

Not long after the publication of Voltaire’s works, Abbé Dubois fled France

as a political refugee from the Revolution to live in India for 31 years.Typical of

the class of people who regard themselves as charged with civilizing the

heathens, and convinced of the superiority of his own civilization, he published

his widely read Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, which, despite his

laboriously collected data, is essentially a scathing criticisms of Hindu belief

and practices.Even if allowance is made for the Roman Catholic standards he

applied to the Indian religions, many of his observations are grossly inaccurate

and appear to be deliberate distortions. What is incredible, however, is that his

work, despite the decisive exposition of its errors, has enjoyed almost

continuous popularity in Europe, and was long accepted as a standard

interpretation of Indian religions.Jacquemont, who visited India during the

reign of Ranjit Singh, wrote Hindu Heroes and Heroines.Lemierre’s Veuve

Dutch Malabar published in 1770, was epoch-making.M. de Jouy wrote the

Tipoo Sahib and the opera, Legends Bayadères, in 1810, which Napoleon

himself attended.

49

Meanwhile a few missionaries had been taking a close interest in Sanskrit.

In the beginning, having come first to South India, they learned Tamil or some

other South Indian language.It was only after some time that they felt the need

to learn Sanskrit.A German priest, Heinrich Roth was the first European to

produce a Sanskrit grammar, which was written in Latin and remained in

manuscript form.In 1651, a Dutch preacher named Abraham Roger, who had

lived at Pulicat near Madras as well as in Indonesia, published in Amsterdam

Open Door to Hidden Heathendom.This book included about two hundred

proverbs of the Sanskrit poet, Bharthrihari, from a Portuguese translation, and

not only described the customs and religion of the Hindus but also mentioned

the Vedas for the first time.Translated into German in 1663, it was drawn upon

by Herder for his Stimmen der Volker in Liedern (Voices of the Peoples in

Songs).After the stories of the Pancatantra, this work was the first Indian

literature to become known in Germany.A German Jesuit, Johann Ernst

Hanxleden, who worked in Malabar from 1699 to 1732, compiled a Sanskrit

grammar in Latin and one in Malayalam.His Sanskrit grammar also remained

unpublished but was used by the Austrian missionaries, Fra Paolino de St.

Bartholomeo (whose real name was Johannes Philippus Wessdin),

“undeniably the most important of the missionaries who worked at the earliest

opening-up of Indian literature. He lived on the Malabar Coast from 1776 to

1789 and was well acquainted with Indian literature, languages, and religions.

He wrote two Sanskrit grammars in Rome in 1790 and several learned

treatises.Another missionaries, Coeurdoux, suggested in 1767 that there was

a kinship between Sanskrit and European languages.He reached this

conclusion with the help of Maridas Pillai of Pondicherry. It appears that he

was quite familiar with Sanskrit literature. He correctly describes its system of

grammar and refers to the Amarakosa and other Sanskrit dictionaries as well

as to the Indian system of poetics; called alamkara.He also describes the six

systems of Indian philosophy, in addition to Buddhism and Jainism.

The English were most closely bound in political and cultural relations with

India, and although they initiated a systematic investigation of Sanskrit

50

literature, most of the work on the subject was done on the continent,

particularly in France and Germany.Perhaps the Anglo-Indian political

association, enforced and unequal as it was and often clouded by mutual

distrust and fear, was not conducive to a deeper British appreciation of the

Indian heritage.Moreover, the remarkable practical qualities of the British in

commerce, military organization, and administration, and their faculty for

recognizing and making use of opportunities, inevitably, although not

inordinately, subordinated their cultural and intellectual sensitivities. Therefore

it was administrative needs which initially induced the British to study Sanskrit.

Despite the loss of countless texts, today there are scores of thousands of

Sanskrit manuscripts in various libraries.When Alexander came, there existed

in India an ancient literature far richer than that in Greece at the time.The first

scholar to publish a real dissertation on Sanskrit learning was Alexander Dow,

in a preface to his history of India, which appeared in Europe in three volumes

in 1768. Whilst his history leaned on Ferishta, his Preface carried a significant

account of Hindu religion and customs.He pointed out the existence of

innumerable ancient Sanskrit texts, observing that the authentic history of the

Hindus went back farther than that of any other nation.

The turning point in the European discovery of India’s past came during

Warren Hastings’ Governor-Generalship.By this time the British had gained

control of Bengal and their commercial interests in India depended on their

ability to eliminate rampant corruption in their own ranks and to rationalize the

administration of their Indian possessions.The merchants of the East India

Company were generally greedy and corrupt, filling their own pockets by

cheating the Company and the Indians.Their contributions to India were

political anarchy, economic exploitation, cruel taxation, extravagant wars,

unjust intervention, and forged treaties.London was appalled at this tarnishing

of the British name.Born in 1732, Warren Hastings was the son of a

clergyman from an old and once wealthy family.He went to India at the age of

17 as a writer in the Company’s service and, through his varied experiences in

trade and administration, he acquired an exceptional knowledge of the Indian

51

mind and temperament.Well-disposed towards Indian literature and culture, he

stressed the need for the study of Sanskrit, albeit mainly for utilitarian reasons.

Hastings also realized that British supremacy in India could rest only on a

proper understanding of Indian religion and culture.Although he was

impeached for acts of corruption and tyranny, he gave the beginnings of a

sound administration to British India.For the codification of the laws of the land

and for the efficient operation of the administration, it was essential to gain an

accurate knowledge of the ancient Sanskrit legal texts.Hastings had the Indian

law books compiled by the local learned pundits under the title of

Vivadarnavasetu (meaning bridge over the ocean of dispute) but there was no

one who could translate the resultant text into English.Therefore a Persian

translation was made and an English translation of this was published in

London in 1776. This was entitled A Code of Gentoo Laws by N.B. Halhead; a

schoolmate of Sir William Jones.This second-hand translation introduced the

study of Sanskrit philology.

The first Englishman who, urged by Warren Hastings, acquired a knowledge

of Sanskrit was Charles Wilkins (1749-1836).He was a founding member of

the Asiatic Society of Bengal and had acquired considerable knowledge of

Sanskrit at Varanasi (Banaras).He subsequently became the first librarian of

the famous India Office Library at London, then known as the East India

Company Library.He is described by his contemporaries as the first European

who really understood Sanskrit, and he gave Europe its earliest acquaintance

with actual Sanskrit writing. H.T. Colebrooke, a founder of Sanskrit

scholarship in Europe, said that Wilkins had more information and knowledge

respecting the Hindus than any other foreigner since the days of Pythagoras.

In 1785 Wilkins published an English translation of the Bhagavad Gita – the

first Sanskrit work rendered directly into a European language. Later, Wilkins

published the Hitopadesa and the Sakuntala episode from the

Mahabharata.These Sanskrit works were translated principally to familarize

European intellectuals with Indian ideas; their literary merit was a subordinate

consideration if at all.13 years later, in 1808, Wilkins’ Sanskrit grammar

52

appeared, using Devanagari type (which he himself had carved and cast) for

the first time in Europe.Wilkins also initiated the study of Indian inscriptions

and translated some of them into English.

It was, however, the celebrated Orientalist, Sir William Jones (1746-1794),

who pioneered Sanskrit studies.He came to India as a puisne judge of the

Supreme Court at Calcutta in September 1783, having already gained

competence in Asian learning, especially Persian and Arabic, and having

formed a deep appreciation of Indian culture.He had ardently sought the

Indian appointment, and had waited in un-easy uncertainty for 5 years, first, in

order to make enough money to be able to retire early and conduct his

researches without financial worries, and second, to “give the finishing stroke

to his Oriental knowledge”.He lived in India for about 10 years, until his

premature death, and was extremely happy there.He said that, although he

was never unhappy in England, for it was not in his nature to be unhappy, he

was never really content until he was settled in India. His admiration for Indian

thought and culture was almost limitless. “It gave me inexpressible pleasure to

find myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre, almost encircled by the

vast regions of Asia, which has even been esteemed the nurse of sciences,

the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human genius,

abounding in natural wonders, and infinitely in the forms of religion and

government, in the laws, manners, customs, and languages, as well in the

features and complexions, of men”. Even at a time when Hinduism was at low

ebb and it was quite fashionable to run it down, he held it in great

esteem.Whilst Jones believed in Christ and Christianity, he was attracted to

the Hindu concepts of the non-duality of God, as interpreted by Sankara, and

the transmigration of the human soul.The latter theory he found more rational

than the Christian doctrine of punishment and eternity f pain. Writing to his

erstwhile pupil and close friend, Earl Spencer, in 1787, after 3 years in India,

he said: “I am no Hindu; but I hold the doctrine of the Hindus concerning a

future state to be incomparably more rational, more pious, and more likely to

deter men from vice, than the horrid opinions, inculcated on punishments

53

without end”. Although he had nourished political ambitions, which fortunately

for Oriental learning did not materialize, and although he was a professional

barrister, Jones was essentially a scholar.He was a brilliant Qrientalist and

linguist, for whom his eminent contemporaries, such as Burke, Gibbon,

Sheridan, Garrick, and Johnson, had great respect.Literary London admired

him so much that he was elected a member of the Club, Samuel Johnson’s

immortal coterie, a month before even Boswell was given that honour.He was

made a Fellow of the Royal Society in April 1772 when he was learning

Sanskrit during his initial years in India. His interest in botany was much more

than mere pleasure; it was stimulated by his deep religious feelings, for in

every flower, every leaf, and every berry he could see the attributes of God

more eloquently illustrated than in the wisdom of man.

He learned Sanskrit with the assitance and encouragement of Charles

Wilkins before the latter left India in 1786.In January 1784, a few months after

his arrival in Calcutta, Jones founded the famous Asiatic Society of Bengal,

of which he remained President until his death.The object of the Society was

to inquire into the history, culture, literature, and science of Asia; it has done

enormous work to advance the knowledge of Asian civilization both in India

and abroad. It was in the journal of this Society, Asiatick Researches that the

initial attempts were made to unearth India’s past. Within 3 years Jones

became so proficient in Sanskrit that he could converse familiarly with Indian

pundits.In 1789, five years after his arrival in India, he published in Calcutta

his translation of the celebrated Sanskrit drama, Abhijnana Sakuntala, by

Kalidasa.This work became so popular that it went into 5 English editions in

less than 20 years.In 1791 a German translation of the English version was

made by George Förster, the world traveller and revolutionary.This inspired

men like Herder and Goethe.Many other translations of the Sakuntala were

made in the first half of the 19th century from Jones’ English version, and later

from the Sanskrit original. In 1792 Jones brought out an English translation of

Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda, and published in Calcutta, Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara

in the original; this was the first Sanskrit text ever printed.Of greater

54

importance, however, was his translation of the well-known legal text of

ancient India, the Manusmriti, which was published posthumously in 1794

under the title Institutes of Hindu Law or the Ordinances of Manu.3 years

later, in 1797, a German translation of the book appeared.Not only did Jones

produce excellent translations but he also wrote original hymns to Indian

deities, which are lasting monuments of Anglo-Indian literature. By the time of

his death, his reputation as a Sanskrit scholar had eclipsed all his many other

accomplishments.

William Jones was the first British scholar to definitely assert the

genealogical connection of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, and possibly with

Persian, German, and Celtic.In his third annual discourse of the Asiatic

Society on 2nd February, 1786, he declared that the Sanskrit language was of

a wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the

Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a

stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than

could possibly have been produced by accident. All 3 languages must have

come from some common source.The greatest influence of Jones work was,

of course, on the study of Oriental learning itself.The interest in Indian

literature awakened by Jones and Wilkins, led to scholars searching for

Sanskrit manuscripts “with the avidity of explorers seeking Australian

goldfields”.Of those scholars, the most outstanding was Henry Thomas

Colebrooke (1765-1837), who put the study of Sanskrit on a scientific footing.

“Had he lived in Germany”, says Max Müller, “we should long ago have seen

his statue in his native place, his name written in the letters of gold on the

walls of academies; we should haveheard of Colebrooke jubilees and

Colebrooke scholarships. In England if any notice is taken of the discovery of

Sanskrit – a discovery in many respects equally important, in some even more

important, than the revival of Greek scholarship in the 15th century – we may

possibly hear the popular name of Sir William Jones and his classical

translation of Sakuntala; but of the infinitely more important achievements of

Colebrooke, not one word”.Colebrooke entered the service of the East India

55

Company in 1782 and left India in 1815 at the age of 50.During this period he

had a distinguished career as an administrator and lawyer, but his claim to

eminence is mainly based upon his being “the founder and the father of true

Sanskrit scholarship in Europe”.He pursued his study of Sanskrit most

energetically with the assistance of some excellent Indian instructors.A man of

extraordinary industry and clear intellect, Colebrooke published many texts,

translations, and essays dealing with practically all aspects of Sanskrit

literature.His writings included works on Indian law, philosophy, religion,

grammar, astronomy, and arithmetic.In 1797-1798, he published his first four-

volume translation, A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions,

which immediately established his reputation as the best Sanskrit scholars of

his day.His famous Essay on the Vedas, published in 1805, the same year as

his Sanskrit Grammar, gave the first definite and reliable information on the

sacred Hindu texts.In 1808 he published a critical edition of the Amarakosa, a

Sanskrit lexicon. By this time Colebrooke had become President of the Court

of Appeal, a high and lucrative position, but demanding; nevertheless, he

continued his Sanskrit studies. Unlike Jones, Colebrooke’s interests lay chiefly

in scientific literature.His love of mathematics and astronomy stirred his

intellectual curiosity to investigate Indian work in these disciplines. Although

some scholars such as Burrow and Strachery had preceded him, it was

entirely through his work that scientists were able to form a clear idea of the

Indian achievement in mathematics, especially indeterminate analysis.But it is

chiefly for his philological researches and services to Indian jurisprudence that

Colebrooke is remembered. Apart from his writings, Colebrooke collected a

wide variety of Sanskrit manuscripts and presented them to the East India

Company in 1818.This collection is one of the most valuable treasures of the

India Office Library in London. In 1822 he founded the Royal Asiatic Society in

London which has since done much to promote Oriental learning in Europe.

He published many of his most valuable papers in this sociology’s

Transactions.

56

An eminent English contemporary of Colebrooke, Horace Hayman Wilson

came to India in the Medical Service of the East India Company and became

deeply interested in Sanskrit studies.He pursued his interest with vigour and

industry, and published his elegant translation of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta in

1813; this made both an immediate and a lasting impact on European

readers, and it has since been translated into many languages.In 1819,

Wilson published his Sanskrit dictionary, and he translated the Visnu Purana

into English.In 1832, he became the first occupant of the Boden Chair of

Sanskrit at Oxford and this provided him a fuller opportunity to advance the

study of Indology.By this time, however, Indian studies in England had lost

their earlier vigour.The British, now masters of India and the supreme

maritime power of the day, were less inclined to learn from aliens; they

listened to Macaulay instead. To professors of Sanskrit, Wilson at Oxford and

Lee at Cambridge, bemoaned the fact that not much attention was paid at

their respective universities to Sanskrit, a language “capable of giving a soul

to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of metaphysics”.The

best philological works published in England were generally translations from

the German.

France began to take a closer interest in Indian learning and commenced a

systematic investigation by the beginning of the 18th century. In 1718, Bignan,

the librarian of the French king, asked travellersto purchase or make a copy of

every book of note, as well as grammars and dictionaries, available in India or

in regions where Indian culture prevailed.In response, many French officials,

residents, missionaries, and visitors began to acquire Indian texts.The

missionaries, Calmette, obtained copies of the Rig Veda, the Vajur Veda, and

the Sama Veda, although he failed to get a copy of the 4th Veda, the Atharva

Veda.The Rig Veda was first sent to Paris in 1731, together with its Aitareya

Brahmana.Other Sanskrit books, such as Gangesa’s Tattvacintamani, which

was very popular at the time in the southern and eastern regions of India,

together with some Tamil books, a Tamil grammar, and a Tamil dictionaory,

were also sent to France about the same time by the Italian Jesuit, Beschi. A

57

number of books were obtained from Bengal.Pere Pons, stationed in

Chandernagore, succeeded in collecting main works in the different branches

of classical Sanskrit literature.His catalogue containing one hundred and sixty-

eight entries was astonishingly accurate for its time.Pons, who himself knew

Sanskrit, had been assisted in the selection of his manuscripts by competent

Indian scholars.His collection included a Sanskrit grammar which he had

written in Latin, following the Samkshiptasara, and a Latin translation of the

Amarakosa.Because of the labours of these men, the first printed catalogue of

Sanskrit literature was published in Paris in 1739.The following year, Pons

published in a letter, which has been repeatedly reproduced since, the first

sound report on Sanskrit literature. Whilst the difficulties of reading these

manuscripts held up progress, French scholars learned something of Indian

thought and history through Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Greek, and Latin

works.The collection of Indian materials continued, however, and Joseph

Deguignes accumulated as much material as was possible from non-Indian

sources.Strictly speaking, Deguignes was not an Indologist; he was

essentially a Sinologist who wrote a vast history of the Huns, but he gathered

remarkably accurate knowledge about India.He was perhaps the first modern

European to show, through his study of Chinese sources, the wide influence

of Buddhism on Central Asian and Chinese peoples, and to give a tentative

translation of a part of an ancient Chinese Buddhist text, the Sutra in 42

Articles. Still greater was his accomplishment in fixing the basis of Indian

chronology.In this he had received invaluable help from an Indian scholar of

Tamil, Maridas Pillai of Pondicherry, who knew Latin and French well. Both

these contributions are extremely significant, and are worthy of much greater

recognition than has hitherto been accorded to Deguignes.Possibly because

of their background of English education, Indians have exhibited equal

indifference to the contribution of Maridas Pillai. “All French scholars who

visited Pondicherry during that period were indebted to him for most of the

valuable information. He apparently played a part in the discovery of original

links between Sanskrit on the one hand, and Latin and Greek on the other.The

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astronomer Le Gentil, one of the first who gave substantial account of Indian

astronomy, wrote that he himself had been a grateful pupil of Maridas Pillai

and of other Tamil scholars of Pondicherry in that matter”.Some of his

translations and analyses of Indian texts were profitably used by French

scholars.For instance, his translation of the Bagavatam was sent to

Deguignes before its publication, and it was in this manuscript that the latter

found the dynastic lists of the Suryavamsa and the Somavamsa kings who

had reigned since Parikshit, including Chandragupta which Deguignes

immediately recognized as the Sandrokottos of the Greeks.This synchronism

was published in the Mémoires de l’Academie described Inscriptions et

Belles Lettres; this same synchronism was rediscovered by Sir William Jones,

who is generally given the credit for identifying it. Whilst Jones may not have

been the real discoverer of Indian chronology, he indeed popularized it.

At about this time, Anquétil Dutch Perron (1731-1805) visited India and

later prepared the first European translation in Latin of the Upanishads from

the literal Persian version made for the Mughal prince, Dara Shikoh, in 1636.

As a young man of twenty-three, Dutch Perron, whilst working in the

Bibliothèque de Roi at Paris in 1754, saw a fragment of a mysterious

manuscript which the Bodleian Library at Oxford had acquired in 1718 and

which was reputed to be a book by Zoroaster.Dutch Perron was so moved by

it that he at once decided to visit India and learn the language so that he could

read it.He arrived at Pondicherry in 1754.This was the period when the

English and the French were engaged in a bitter conflict for supremacy in

India and Dutch Perron was caught in it. He finally managed to learn Persian

at Surat, and returned home via England in 1762.Whilst studying at Surat, he

discovered the Avesta, and published his Zend-Avesta in 3 volumes in

1771.He also published an account of his travels, Voyage aux Grandes Indes,

in 1781.Dutch Perron acquired the Persian manuscript of the Upanishads in

1775 from M. Gentil, the French Resident at Fyzabad in North Bengal, and he

translated them into French word for word, in the Persian word-order.

Realizing his error, he set out to make a Latin translation of 50 Upanishads.

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He finished the work in 1796, but it was not printed until 1801-1802 in Paris. It

is remarkable that this translation of the Upanishads, which had so profound

an influence on European thought, was an incidental product of a venture

undertaken for an altogether different purpose. With Wilkins’ version of the

Bhagavad Gita, and Dutch Perron’s translation of the Upanishads, entitled

Oupenekhat, the fundamental texts of Indian philosophy were available to

Western thinkers.Dutch Perron did not know Sanskrit but, despite the

imperfections of his translations, it made an important contribution to

European knowledge.It caught the attention of the German philosopher,

Schelling, and later of Schopenhauer, who in 1813 praised it as “a production

of the highest human wisdom” and adopted an upanishadic motto, “whosoever

knows God, himself becomes God”.

For many decades, attention in France had been centered on China, about

which much was heard from the sympathetic reports of Jesuit missionaries,

mariners, and merchants; on Siam with whom France had come into

diplomatic contact; and on Western and Central Asia, with which Europe had

been closely linked historically and culturally.To Europe, China appeared

culturally unique and politically powerful.Thus China came to influence

European life in many respects, ranging from religious thought to opera.

Hebrew had been taught regularly at the Collège Royal, later called Collège

de France, since its inception in the 16th century. Syriac, Arabic, Persian, and

Turkish were also actively cultivated. Consequently, when France awakened

to Indian literature, there was already an existing tradition of learning into

which Indology could easily fit.French possessions in India, and later

domination over Indochina, provided further incentive for French interest. A

determined French scholar of Persian studies, Lèonard de Chèzy had

become a passionate admirer of William Jones’ translation of the Sakuntala.

He was seized by the desire to read the masterpiece in its original. With the

help of Pons’ grammar of the Amarakosa, and later of Wilkins’ translation of

the Hitopadesa, he began learning Sanskrit.By sheer perseverance and

remarkable ingenuity he was finally able to realize his dream – to read, and

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even publish, the text of the Sakuntala.Leonard de Chèzy, like many

contemporary French thinkers, realized that Europe should be acquainted with

the achievements of Asian nations. Consequently, there developed in France

an influential body of opinion advocating the study of India as well as China.

As a result, in 1814, a Chair of Sanskrit and a Chair of Chinese were created

for Chèzy and Abel-Rèmusat respectively.These Chairs, a radical innovation

in academic life, were set up between the disasters of 1814 and Waterloo,

when the whole nation was undergoing political unrest and military

conflicts.Only a nation like France, whose intellectual and cultural attitudes

dominated most of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, could turn its

attention to scholarship at such a time.

Although Abel-Rémusat was a Sinologist, he made important contributions

to Indology by collecting Chinese data on India and translating the account of

Fa-hsien’s traversl.Both de Chézy and Abel-Rémusat died of cholera in 1832,

but their traditions did not die with them.Abel-Rémusat’s successor was

Stanislas Julien, who furthered research on Indian antiquity through Chinese

documents. De Chézy was followed by several outstanding pupils. Amongst

these were two Germans: Franz Bopp, the founder of the comparative

philology of Indo-European languages, and August Schlegel.His French

pupils included Loiseleur Deslongchamps, who published the Manusmriti and

the Amarakosa, and Langlois, who was responsible for the first translations

made directly from the manuscripts of the Rig Veda and the Harivamsa. But

the most important of all was Eugene Burnout, who in turn had many

eminent students, including Max Müller. Eugène Burnouf’s father, Jean-Louis

Burnouf, had been a student of de Chézy, and was an able classical scholar

who was amongst the first to realize that much progress could be made in the

morphology of European classical languages by a comparison with

Sanskrit.Eugène Burnouf learned Sanskrit not so much to study philology as

to investigate the depths of Indian culture, as well as comprehend hitherto

unknown languages and the civilizations associated with them.With the help of

Sanskrit, he was able to decipher Pali and discover the rules of Avestan and

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its relationship with Sanskrit. His An Essay on Pali, published in 1826 jointly

with Christian Lasses, who was later to become a leading German Indologist,

led to the recognition of a relationship between I’ali and Sanskrit.Burnouf not

only researched classical Sanskrit literature, but also the fundamental vedic

literature, which had remained unused in the Royal Library for about a

century.He translated the Bhagavata Purana into French in 1840, and devoted

himself to the study of Indian Buddhism. Making use of the work done by

Deguignes and Abel-Rémusat on Chinese sources, he realized the

importance of Buddhism in the expansion of Indian culture abroad.He made a

comparative study of Buddhist texts in Pali and Sanskrit.He wrote his famous

Introduction a I’Histoire Dutch Bouddhisme Indien in 1844, and published

Lotus de laterite Bonne Loi, an annotated translation of the Saddharma-

Pundarika, the most important Mahayana text. His work thus led to a great

advance in the study of Indian literature and culture in Europe.He succeeded

de Chézy as Professor of Sanskrit from 1832 until his untimely death in

1853.According to him, the publications of the Asiatic Society of Bengal were

widely sold and read in France, and people frequently bought copies of Indian

classics that were available in various languages.He also refers to the

exchange of learned publications between France and India.

Meanwhile, in 1822, the Société Asiatique, the first of its kind in Europe,

had been founded in Paris. Many other French scholars had now come to

take a deep interest in Indian thought.One of Burnouf’s colleagues, the

philosopher and translator of Aristotle, Barthélémy de Saint-Hilaire, who was

later swept up to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the peculiar current of

politics, published valuable studies on the Nyaya and Samkhya systems of

Indian philosophy.Burnouf encouraged his pupil Ariet to study Tamil and its

literature.Ariel collected many Tamil manuscripts and translated part of the

Tirukkural and the poems of Auvaiyar.Burnouf helped Max Müller to publish

the Rig Veda, and Rudolph Roth and Adolph Régnier to interpret it.The

Piedmontese, Gaspere Gorresio, disciple of Barthélémy de Saint-Hilaire,

published in Paris a monumental edition of the Ramayana, in 5 volumes, with

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financial assistance from the King of Sardinia.He also published two Italian

translations of the work. Fauche translated the Ravanavadha Mahakavya of

Bhartrihari, the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva, and all the works of Kalidasa, the

Dasakumaracarita of Dandin, the Sisupalavadha of Magha, the Mricgkakatika

of Sudraka, the entire Ramayana, and the first nine parvas of the

Mahabharata into French.Having read read Fauche’s translation of the

Ramayana in 1863, the French historian Michelet said: “That year will always

remain a dear and cherished memory; it was the first time I had the

opportunity to read the great sacred poem of India, the divine Ramayana. If

anyone has lost the freshness of emotion, let him drink a long draught of life,

and youth from that deep chalice”.

With the creation of the École described Hautes Études in 1868, a new

centre for the study of Indology was opened up.Amongst many other

Sanskritists who flourished in France were scholars such as Paul Régnaud,

whose chief work was on Sanskrit rhetoric and on Bharatiya Natyasastra,

Hauvette-Besnault, Auguste Barth, Abel Bergaigne, and Emile Senart. Barth

devoted himself for more than forty years to the study of Indian religions in

their historical perspective and to the criticism of works published in every field

of Indology. Bergaigne wrote an epoch-making work, The Vedic Religion

according to the Hymns of the Rig-Veda.This was followed by other works, of

which the Researches on the Samhita of the Rig-Veda is most noteworthy.

He brought about a revolution in the realm of religious history by his tireless

work on the Rig Veda.The vedic hymns, which had been interpreted as songs

of worship dedicated to the forces of nature, came to reveal through his

interpretation an artificial pedantic religion surcharged with liturgy and rituals.

Bergaigne founded the teaching of Sanskrit at the Sorbonne. Although at first

purely a Vedic and Sanskrit scholar, Bergaigne later turned to the study of

Indian civilization and to the history of Indo-china.Many inscriptions in

impeccable Sanskrit, frequently elaborated in kavya style, were found in

Cambodia and on the eastern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula. Bergaigne

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and Barth deciphered and translated many of these.With the help of such

data; a part of the history of Champa was disclosed.

French scholars preferred to study Indian civilization in its broader

perspective, including its phase of foreign expansion, through non-Indian

sources. Foucaux, Professor of Sanskrit at the Collège de France, and Leon

Féér workoed on Buddhist subjects from Sanskrit and Tibetan works.The

former published the Lalitavistara in Tibetan and French, and the latter

translated many texts from Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese.

With the increasing interest in the archaeological remains of Indo-china, Indian

art also attracted French attention.At the beginning of the 19th century;

Langles compiled his comprehensive ‘The Monuments of Hindustan’.Later,

Emile Guiment founded, first in Lyons and later in Paris, a special museum of

history of religions, Musée Guimet, which became a world-renowned museum

of Indian and East Asian art and archaeology.Since every major Asian country

had been in the closest possible contact with India in the past, an

understanding of Indian culture was essential to appreciate other neighbouring

civilizations.Therefore in addition to their interest in Indian civilization or in

Sanskrit, the French need to evaluate Indo-chinese society and culture led

them back to India, and to Central Asia. In Khotan, Dutreuil de Rhins bought a

manuscript written on birch bark in Kharoshthi script. It was a Buddhist work,

containing a middle Indian version of the Dharmapada.It was studied and

published by Emile Senart.He published a new edition of Asoka’s inscriptions,

and of those found at Nasik and Karle. He edited the Pali grammar of

Kaccayana and the Mahavastu, and wrote the Essay on the Legend of

Buddha, in which he tried to show how the Buddhists introduced into the life

story of the Buddha many elements taken from the saga of Vishnu-

Mahapurusha.

The discovery of Dutreuil de Rhin’s manuscript was the first in a series of

finds.Since the end of the 19th century, a number of competent French

scholars of Asian history and culture have undertaken historical explorations.

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Amongst the first of these were four friends of slightly different ages, Sylvain

Lévi, Alfred Foucher, Edouard Chavannes, and Louis Finot, Edouard

Chavannes was a Sinologist, but he contributed much to Indology through his

studies on Chinese pilgrims, Chinese inscriptions of Bodhgaya, and the

Chinese renderings of Buddhist stories and legends.However, his work cannot

be separated from that of Sylvain Lévi. In 1894 Sylvain Lévi, a former pupil of

Bergaigne succeeded Foucaux to the Chair of Sanskrit at the College de

France, at the age of 31. Earlier he had done field work in India, mainly in

Nepal, looking for inscriptions and manuscripts.He was devoted to the study of

Hindu-Buddhist literature and texts. He first published The Indian Theatre and

then Doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Brahmanas.It was his findings in Nepal

and his collaboration with Chavannes which finally led Levi to Buddhist

studies.Having learned both Tibetan and Chinese, he was able to correct the

Sanskrit texts he rediscovered, such as Mahayana-sutralankara by Asanga,

Trimsika and Vimsatika by Vasubandhu, and Mahakarmavibhanga, by

checking them against their Tibetan and Chinese versions.With the help of the

linguist, Antoine Meillet, Levi also deciphered the Kuchean language. He

found fragments of a Kuchean poem very similar to the Karmavibhanga, the

sculptural illustrations of which he also later noticed in the famous Buddhist

temple, Borobudur, in Jave.Another French scholar, Paul Pelliot, in 1908

discovered many fragments of Indian texts in Central Asia. Albert Foucher

came to India long before he succeeded Victor Henry at the Sorbonne.He was

a devoted humanist who was greately attracted to Sanskrit literature, its

grammar, system of philosophy, and archaeology. It was he who connected

the art of Buddhist India, widely known as the Gandhara School, with that of

the Graeco-Roman world.He edited Maridas Pillai’s French translation of the

Bhagavata Purana, and in association with Finot, was responsible for the

foundation of a research institute, the École Francaise d’Extreme-Orient, in

Indochina, to study and preserve Indochinese culture.This institute helped to

join Indology with Sinology.He also founded the French Archaeological

Institute at Kabul, and the Franco-Japanese Mansion at Tokyo. Many French

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Indologists, including Jean Przyluski and Jules Bloch, have worked in these

institutions.Przyluski was attracted to Buddhist studies, linguistics, and

ethnology, and wrote many books with the intention of tracing the remains of

Munda, or popular, elements of non-Aryan origin in Indian documents.Jules

Bloch, having first studied in Paris under Sylvain Lévi, Meillet, the famous

linguist, and Vinson, the specialist in Tamil studies, came to India as a

member of the École Francaise d’Extreme-Orient to learn modern Indian

linguistics, where he worked with the Indian scholar, R.G. Bhandarkar.In

addition to working on the grammatical structure of Dravidian languages and

Asoka’s edicts, he wrote a study of the Gypsies, Legends Tsiganes. His work,

Formation de la langue Marathe, contributed greatly to the study of modern

dialects as well as to the rigorous science of linguistics.

The Belgian scholar, Louis de la Vallée Poussin (1869-1938), who studied

with Emile Senart and Sylvain Lévi, contributed 3 volumes to the famous

Histoire Dutch Monde series between 1924 and 1935.His volumes form a

complete political history of pre-Muslim India and are outstanding works of

scholarship.The French, even after withdrawing from their Indian territorial

possessions, retained their interest in Indian studies.With the concurrence of

India they have founded a centre at Pondicherry to continue research on

Indian life and culture. Louis Renou, who died in 1966, was not only the

leading French Indologist of his generation, but the most distinguished in the

West. His output was phenomenal, but he was chiefly a scholar of the

Vedas.Amongst his many books and articles were a Veda bibliography, a

Veda index, a study of Indo-Iranian mythology, a Sanskrit-French dictionary,

and a study of Panini, the grammarian.Jean Filliozat, who has made

outstanding contributions to Indian studies, especially to the history of Indian

science, worked for many years at the Pondicherry institute.Filliozat, a

qualified medical practitioner and an accomplished linguist, has the rare

competence to study ancient Indian medicine.His work, The Classical Doctrine

of Indian Medicine, must remain a standard text.

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Germany, unlike Britain or even France, was not at all politically connected

with India, but undertaook Sanskrit studies most enthusiastically.German

Indologists produced work exceptional both in quality and quantity, and they

soon became the leaders in the study of Sanskrit language and literature, as

well as Indian thought and culture.Although the English scholars were the first

to study Sanskrit, they did not maintain their lead for long, presumably

because they were mainly motivated by considerations other than scholarship.

Whilst a Chair of Sanskrit, which was first held by August Schlegel, was

instituted at the University of Bonn in 1818, it was not until 1832 that the first

Chair of Sanskrit was created in England, at Oxford, to recognize the work

done by H.H. Wilson. Later, Chairs of Sanskrit were established at London,

Cambridge, and Edinburgh Universities, and by the first quarter of the 19th

century practically every intellectual capital of Europe had initiated a full

fledged study of Sanskrit.A contemporary of Jones and Colebrooke,

Alexander Hamilton (1765-1824), who had learned Sanskrit in India,

inadvertently introduced the language to Germany.Returning from India to

England in 1802; he was detained in France when hostilities were suddenly

renewed between England and France. By a remarkable coincidence, the

German poet and philosopher, Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), was also

in Paris.By that time German interest in Indian literature had already been

awakened by the work of the English scholars.Consequently, when Schlegel

met Hamilton in 1803 he quickly took advantage of the opportunity and began

learning Sanskrit. In 1808 Schlegel published Über dic Sprache und Weishcit

der Inder (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians), and thus became the

founder of Indian philology in Germany.This work contained the first direct

translation from Sanskrit into German.It gave an account of Indian mythology,

and of the theories of incarnation and the transmigration of soul, all illustrated

by translations from Sanskrit texts.Friendrich von Schlegel declared that a

real history of world literature could be written only when Asian literature was

included in it.However, his brother, August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-

1845), whose translation of Shakespear’s plays is a German classic, became

67

an even more active Sanskrit scholar.He had learned Sanskrit under Leonard

de Chezy in France, and led the extensive development of Indology in

Germany.He edited and translated a number of Sanskrit texts and wrote

works on philology. He edited the original text of the Bhagavad Gita, together

with a Latin trtanslation, and paid tribute to its unknown authors: “I shall

always adore the imprints of their feet.” Schlegel insisted that the critical

methods evolved in classical philology, of which he was an expert, should be

applied to Sanskrit texts. He established a Sanskrit press at Bonn, at a time

when the printing of Sanskrit was only beginning in India. With painstaking

care he drew the Devanagari types, supervised their casting, and invented

important technical improvements for their printing.He composed his first text,

a critical edition of the Bhagavad Gita with his own hands. With the help of a

Subscription from Geothe, he then started a critical edition of the Ramayana,

but only the first volume was published.Franz Bopp (1791-1867), who had

also studied Sanskrit in Paris, was, unlike the Schlegel brothers, more

interested in language than in literature. Professor of Sanskrit at the University

of Berlin, he published.On the Conjugational System of the Sanskrit language

in comparison with that of the Greek, Latin, Persian, and Germanic languages

in 1816, thus laying the foundations for the new science of comparative

philology.In addtion, Bopp selected a number of episodes from the

Mahabharata, especially that of Nala and Damayanti, translated them into

Ferman and Latin, and published them in 1819.His Glossarium Sanscritum, an

important complement to this translation, appeared in 1830.

During the initial phase of Sanskrit studies, until about 1830, European

attention was mainly focused on the classical period of Sanskrit.The Vedic

literature remained almost unknown except for Colecrooke’s essay. Little was

known of the extensive Buddhist literature.The Upanishads were better known

through Anquetil du Perron’s Latin trnslation from the Persian.The Indian

linguistic genius, Ram Mohan Roy, edited the Sanskrit text of several

Upanishads and published their English translation in 1816-1817. Later, Paul

Deussen (1845-1919) reinforced the study of the Upanishads with his

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translations and philosophical writings; he also made a selection of texts from

the Mahabharata with philosophical commentary.Many Indologists reproduced

consecutive depictions of the Mahabharata.The pioneer in this field, however,

was Hermann Jacobi, whose book, Mahabharata-Inhaltsangabe, Index,

Concordanz, was published in 1903.The real philological investigation of the

Vedas began in 1838 with the publication of the first eight parts of the Rig

Veda in London by a German Scholar, Friedrich Rosen.Vedic literature

contains many forms which became extinct in the later Sanskrit, but which

existed in similar forms in Greek and other Indo-European languages.For

instance, classical Sanskrit has no subjunctive mood unlike most of the older

Indo-European languages, but it is common enough in vedic

Sanskrit.Moreover, Vedic Sanskrit has a tonic accent unlike the later Sanskrit,

but similar to the Greek system. After his premature death, Rosen’s work was

continued by Eugene Burnouf. One of Burnouf’s students, Rudolph Roth

(1821-1895), published his work on the history and literature of the Vedas in

1846.In association with another German scholar, Otto Bohtlingk (1815-

1909), Roth produced the enormous Sanskrit-German dictionary, the St.

Petersburg Sanskrit Dictionary, commonly known as the St. Petersburg

Lexicon because it was published by the Russian Imperial Academy of

Sciences between 1852 and 1875.Comprising almost ten thousand pages,

this is the most outstanding of all the achievements of German Indology.

The most celebrated German Indologist, Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900)

continued vedic research by bringing out his splendid edition of the Rig Veda

in 6 volumes between 1840 and 1874, and, from 1875 onwards, necessary

editing the authoritative and annotated translation series, Sacred Books of the

East, in 51 volumes 31 of which are Indian texts.This work laid the beginnings

of the study of comparative religion. It caused a tremendous sensation even in

India, where a cultural renaissance and renewed national consciousness were

taking place.Max Muller’s translations of the Upanishads and the Rig Veda

and other works, which have since been published in a variety of forms and

editions, made Indian knowledge better known and appreciated everywhere.

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He guided considerable research in Indology, comparative religion, and

mythology.The essays on mythology are amongst his most delightful writing.

Max Muller lived during the formative period of modern India.Armed resistance

to the British rule in India had collapsed, having gained its momentum in 1857,

but political opposition to British domination had become more organized and

intensive.Whilst the Indian rebellion, especially the military revolt of 1857,

enraged many British thinkers, such as Tennyson and Ruskin, to the point of

writing unkindly of India, Max Muller remained a great friend and admirer, and

his name is often Sanskritized as “Moksa-mula,” meaning the root of

salvation.Muller was the first European scholar to announce that India had a

spiritual message for Europe, and he praised Indian thought and philosophy in

almost lyrical terms: “If I were to look over the whole world to find out the

country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature

can bestow-in some parts a very paradise on earth-I should point to India.If we

were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of

the choicest gifts, has most deeply ponded on the greatest problems of life,

and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention

even of those who have studied Plato and Kant-I should point to India…”

Max Muller first came under the influence of German Orientalists, and later

studied in Paris under Burnouf.He went to Oxford in 1848 to supervise the

printing of his Rig Veda, and spent the rest of this long working life in England.

An eminent classical scholar and a master of languages, including English, he

was blocked from succeeding to the Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford in 1860

because he was of foreign birth and his liberal views on theological questions

were unacceptable to the clergy in England.The Chair was given to Sir

Monier-Williams, an important Sanskrit scholar who did a great deal to make

Indian culture known in English-speaking countries. In 1868, however, Max

Muller was appointed to a new Chair of Comparative Philosophy. Muller’s

influence on Indian studies has been extensive, deep and lasting.For instance,

when he pointed out that Alexander is not mentioned in the entire body of

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Sanskrit literature, historians felt compelled to revise their exaggerated

assessment of his campaigns in India.

By the middle of the 19th century, Indian texts began to appear in rapid

succession, and knowledge about India was keenly sought. One of the most

important works of this period was Indische Alterthumskunde by Christian

Lassen (1800-1876), a pupil of August Wilhelm von Schlegel.The work was

published in four large volumes between 1843 and 1862.Lassen, a Norwegian

who regarded himself as a German, worked for many years as Professor of

Sanskrit at the University of Bonn.His work, although somewhat absolete

today, is of outstanding merit.The discovery of the vedic hymns also led to the

emergence of a new science of comparative mythology.Theodor Benfey

published in 1859 his edition of the Indian fable collection, the Pancatantra,

which created a literary revolution.Benfey showed through meticulous

research how the fables of India reached Europe, traveling step by step,

though Pahlavi, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and the modern languages of

Europe, till they supplied even La Fontaine with some of his most charming

themes.Benfey’s various Sanskrit grammars, founded as they were on the

classical grammar of panini, and his History of Sanskrit philology are still

important.In 1852, A. Weber published his History of Indian Literature in

German, the first connected historical account of Indian literature.The work

was translated into English and has been printed several times.Weber brought

out a second edition in 1876 which he updated by adding notes to the texts.He

also opened up a new branch of Indian study through his work in 1883-1885

on the sacred writings of the Jains.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the literature on Indian studies had

grown too vast and unwieldy for an individual scholar to master.

Consequently, the need for an encyclopaedia surveying the work done in all

branches of the subject was felt.Grundriss der into-arischen Philologic und

Altertumskunde (Compendium of Indo-Aryan Philology and Antiquities) began

to appear in 1897 under the general editorship of the versatile Sanskrit

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scholar, Georg Bühler (1837-1898), who had studied under Benfey, and

published many works of his own.This was an attempt by thirty leading

scholars from throughout the world to give an encyclopaedic view of the work

done in the various branches of Indology.The publication was continued under

the editorship of other scholars and was one of the important developments in

the field of Indian studies.Later, in 1900, A.A. Macdonell, a successor of

Wilson at Oxford, published A History of Sanskrit Literature and in 1907 M.

Winternitz, Professor of Indology at Prague, brought out A History of Indian

Literature in German.Today almost every library in Germany has a special

collection of books of India and every university has a departmental library of

Indology.6 universities – Bonn, Tübingen, Göttingen, Marburg, and Hamburg

and Munich – have Chairs of Sanskrit, and practically every university

provides for the teaching of Sanskrit within its department of comparative

linguistics. Three German universities have their own magazines of Indology.

Holland’s interest in India was direct, because of her commercial and

political involvements in the East Indies, but Indology did not begin in that

country until the 19th century.During the 17th and 18th centuries, a number of

Dutchmen learned modern Indian languages, but only one, Herbert de Jager

of the University of Leyden, is known to have been familiar with Sanskrit.The

first professor to teach Sanskrit was Hamaker at the University of Leyden, who

encouraged the study of comparative linguistics.But the real foundation of

Sanskrit studies was laid by his eminent pupil, Hendrik Kern, whose work

evoked much interest.A Chair of Sanskrit was consequently established at the

University of Leyden in 1865, and was filled by Kern. Before Kern began his

professional career, he had taught in England and India.By his publications

and through his pupils, several of whom became eminent Indologists, Indian

studies made considerable progress in Holland. Later, Holland produced such

scholars as Speyer, Vogel, Gonda, Gabestios, Bosch, and Faddegon.Today

Chairs of Sanskrit exist at Leyden, Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Groningen.In

Italy, also, there developed a keen interest in any systematic study of

Indology.Italian missionaries, merchants, and mariners continuously visited

72

India.Those who left valuable accounts of their travels included Marco Polo;

Florentine Filippo Sassetti, who made the first suggestion in his letters of a

possible link between Italian and Sanskrit in the 16th century; Nicolo Manucci;

Florentine Francesco Carletti; Pietro della Valle; Giovanni Francesco Gemelli

Careri, who wrote Giro del Mondo, one volume of which is devoted to India;

and Roberto De Nobili. Indian studies in Italy did not begin, on a scientific

basis, until the middle of the 19th century.Italian interest in Indian thought was

initially inspired by German romanticism.The father of Italian Indology was the

Piedmontese, Gaspare Gorresio.As soon as Italy achieved political harmony

and the kingdom of Italy was formed in 1870, the first Chairs of Oriental

Studies were set up.Since then Italy has produced famous Indologists from

Graziadio Ascoli to Giuseppe Tucci of the present day. Even in those small

nations of Europe which were not directly concerned with India, the knowledge

of ancient India spread.In Czechoslovakia, which has a long tradition of

learning, Indology was to occupy a place of prominence.Czech scholars were

first attracted to Indian studies through the work of a Jesuit missionary, Karel

Prikryl, who arrived in Goa in 1748 as director of the Archbishops

seminary.During his 14 years in India, he studied Marathi, and is reputed to

have written several books.Only one of these, Principia Linguae Brahmanicae

(The Principles of the Brahmanic Tongue), has survived; this was probably the

first grammar of Konkani dialect to have been written. Inspired by Prikryl’s

works, Josef Dobrovski, a philologist and historian, learned Sanskrit during the

last part of the 18th century and pointed out the similarities between many

Indian and Slav words and forms. In 1812 Joseph Jungmanr, wrote on Indian

prosody and metre, and nine years later his brother, Antonin Jungmann,

published the first Sanskrit grammar in Czech.

Of the numerous comparative philologists, Joseph Zubaty made notable

contributions to Sanskrit philology and to the history of Vedic literature and

classical Indian epic and dramatic literature.He published his Qualitative

Changes in the Final Syllable in Vedic in 1888, and, two years later, a study of

Indian metrics entitled The Construction of Tristubh and Jagati Verses in the

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Mahabharata.Alfred Ludwig, Zubaty’s teacher, and Moriz Winternitz were

the first scholars who advanced Indian studies from comparative philology to

Indology proper.Ludwig’s philological studies were important but he is better

known for his German translation of the Rig Veda in 6 volumes, published in

Prague in 1876 -1888, and for his studies of classical Indian literature.Ludwig

was the first Czech scholar to study Dravidian languages. Winternitz

succeeded Ludwig to the Chair of Indology at the University of Prague and

held it for several decades.He wrote the three volume History of Indian

Literature in German, the first two volumes of which were translated into

English and published in India in 1927-1933.In addition, he wrote many

shorter studies on Indian literature, some of which were published in book

form in Calcutta in 1925 under the title, Some Problems of Indian Literature.

After the 1st World War, a new Chair of Indology was founded at the

Charles University of Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. Its first

occupant, Wincerc Lesny had traveled extensively in India, and was a

scholar of Indian, as well as of Iranian, languages.He published a number of

books on India, including a monograph on Rabindranath Tagore, and

translated many of Tagore’s works directly from Bengali.His work,

Buddhismus, analyzing the Buddhism of the Pali canon and its development in

India and abroad, is yet to be translated from Czech into other languages.

Lesny also founded the periodical, ‘The New East and the Indian Society’,

before Second World War. In Hungary, Indian studies did not reach such an

advanced level as in some major countries of Europe, but Indian thought

made a significant impact on Hungarian intellectual life, and Hungary has

made some contributions to Indology. One of these is the work of Sir Aurel

Stein, a British citizen of Hungarian origin whose archaeological surveys and

work in Central Asia are classical contributions to the study of Indian culture

abroad. Born in Budapest, he studied in Austria and Germany, and taught

Sanskrit at the University of the Punjab, before he led Indian archaeological

expeditions to the hitherto unexcavated ruins in Serindia. He bequeathed his

valuable library to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.The first Hungarian

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Orientalist was Alexander Csoma de Körös who visited India in 1830 at the

invitation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and who died at Darjeeling in 1842

during his second visit.His work and that of Tivadar Duka were the beginnings

of Indian studies in Hungary.Some of the scholars whose contributions to

Hungarian Indology are particularly notably are Karoly Fiolk, who translated

several Sanskrit classical texts; Sandor Kegl and Josef Schmidt who made

Indian, philosophy accessible to Hungarians; Charles Louis Fabri, whose

writings on Indian art and aesthetics are well known to Indian scholars; Ervin

Baktay; and Ferenc Hopp, who founded the Museum of East Asiatic Art in

Budapest, which is named after him.

Some Rumanian scholars and poets were also fascinated by Indian culture.

G. Coshbue, called “the singer of the Rumanian Peasantry”, translated the

Sakuntala from a German version in 1897, and compiled a Sanskrit

anthology.B.P. Hashdeu studied the problems of Sanskrit literature or

linguistics.His disciple, Lazar Saineanu, went to Paris where he studied

Sanskrit at the Sorbonne with Abel Bergaigne.Constantin Georgian who had

worked with A. Weber at Berlin, was the first Rumanian Orientalist to make

persistent efforts to introduce the study of Sanskrit into his country. However,

the authorities did not approve of the teaching of Sanskrit; original translations

from Sanskrit and works of Indology did not appear in Rumania until the

1930’s.Amongst many other Rumanian scholars who made Sanskrit and

Indian culture their intellectual pursuit and formed a literary circle (Juimea), the

names of Vasile Pogor, Vasile Burla, and Teohari Antonescu, can be

mentioned as more prominent.Antonescu’s important work on the philosophy

of the Upanishads was the first study in Rumania to deal with such a problem

in its entirety.

Information about early Russian awareness of India and Indian culture is at

present insufficient.In the South Russian Steppes, some Buddhist images of

the pre-Mongol period have been found. Indian fables and stories have long

been known in Russia, although it is doubtful if their origins were known. A

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Russian traveller, Athanasius Nikitin, went to India in the 15th century but his

diary, a valuable source of information, was unfinished. At the end of the 17th

century a Russian merchant, Semen Malinkov, was received by Aurangzeb.A

small colony of Indian traders and artisans was established in Astrakhan

about 1615 and some Indian religious men settled in the region and enjoyed

freedom of worship.The first translation of a Sanskrit text was published in

Russia in 1787 by N.I. Novikov.This was not a direct translation from Sanskrit

but a Russian version of Wilkins’ translation of the Bhagavad Gita. Later, a

Russian musician, Gerasim Lebedev who lived in India from 1785 to 1797

and played a significant role in the renaissance of the Bengali Theatre,

published his Grammar of Pure and Mixed East Indian Dialects with Dialogues

in 1801, and An Impartial Survey of the Systems of Brahmanical East India in

1805.He also cast the first Devanagari type by the command of Tsar

Alexander I.

An Asian Academy was established at St. Petersburg in 1810, and Robert

Lenz who learned Sanskrit under Franz Bopp at Berlin, was appointed the first

professor of Sanskrit and Comparative philology, but he died at the age of 28.

His work, however, was continued by Pave Yakovlevich Petrov, who taught a

number of Russian philologists and Indologists, including F. Korsch, F.F.

Fortunator, and V.F. Miller, and translated into Russian the Sitaharana

episode of the Ramayana with a glossary and a grammatical analysis. Once

the process had begun, Sanskrit studies expanded rapidly in the receptive

atmosphere of Russian intellectual life, and Russia produced famous

Indologists, such as V.P. Vasilyev and V.P. Minayev.A pupil of Minayev,

Sergei Fedorovich Oldernburg, founded in 1897 the Bibliotheca Buddhica, a

series devoted to the publication of Buddhist texts and monographs on

Buddhist subjects.The Russian school of Indology had already produced the

monumental St. Petersburg Lexicon, between 1852 and 1875.Possibly

Oldenburg’s greatest achievement was his archaeological explorations of

Eastern Turkistan, and his participation in the organization of Russian

scientific exploration of Central Asia; Russian explorers were the first to point

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out the rich archaeological sites on the edges of the Taklamakan

Desert.Redor Ippolitovich Stcherbatsky (1886 – 1941), who studied under

Minayev and Oldenburg in St. Petersburg, Büchler in Vienna, and Jacobi in

Bonn, published important works on Buddhist thought and edited numerous

Tibetan and Sanskrit texts for the Bibliotheca Buddhica. Since the end of the

last century, Russian interest and work in Indian studies have become even

more comprehensive.

The first direct contact between India and the United States was

commercial, and began in the end of the 18th century.By the middle of the 19th

century; American trade with India had greatly increased.Diplomatic and

missionary activity followed. American knowledge of India was at first vague,

fragmentary, and indirect, acquired through the writings of oeu scholars.

Later, however, the impact of Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, and

other visiting Indians was clearly felt. Since Yale University was founded in

1718 with the help of a cargo of gifts raised in India by Elihu Yale, who was a

governor of Madras, it was only appropriate that it was there that Indian

studies in the United States begun in 1841.Edward Elbridge Salisbury, a

pupil of Franz Bopp, was appointed the first Professor of Sanskrit.Later, his

pupil, William Dwight Whitney, who had also studied with Weber and Roth,

filled the Chair with distinction and made the first important American

contributions to Sanskrit studies, including editions of the Vishnu Purana and

the Atharva Veda. Johns Hopkins University was next to set up a Chair in

Sanskrit in 1876, within 2 years of its own foundation.A pupil of Whitney,

Charles Rockwell Lanman, the author of the widely known Sanskrit Reader

and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series, was appointed to the position,

but he moved to Harvard University two years later to set up what was to

become an outstanding Department of Sanskrit. Later, several other

universities, such as Columbia, California, and Pennsylvania, instituted Chairs

of Sanskrit, and America produced many well-known scholars, such as

Washburn Hopkins, Maurice Bloomfield, Franklin Edgerton, Arthur Ryder, A.U.

William Jackson, and W. Norman Brown.Whilst American scholarship has

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made notable contributions of its own. Indian thought made its impact on the

American mind mainly through European Indology. Until the 11nd World War

American academic interest was primarily confined to the linguistic and literary

study of ancient texts.Now, with the independence of India and the role of

America in world affair,s the study of India in American universities and

colleges has increased and become phenomenally diversified.Research in

Indian history, sociology, politics, economics, and many other fields is rapidly

expanding, and the recently established American Institute of Indian Studies

has given a new impetus to American Indology.Thousands of Indian students

are studying at American universities – over one thousand Indian scholars are

now teaching there – and countless American scholars, journalists, artists,

and tourists have visited India. Without further straining the patience of the

reader, it is not possible to mention here the considerable Indological work

done in the other countries of Europe, and the many outstanding contributions

made by scholars not already noted; the works of Sten Knnow and Georg

Morgenstierne from Norway; Jarl Carpentier and Helmer Smith from Sweden;

Myles Dillon from Eire; W.S. Majewski, J. Lelewal, D.L. Boskowsk, and S.

Schayer from Poland; Hermann Brunnhofer, Ernst Leumann, and Jacob

Wockernagel from Switzerland; and Fausboll from Denmark are particularly

valuable.

Whilst a good deal of work was thus being done in Europe and America, the

study of ancient Indian culture was progressing in India as well, through the

efforts of both European and Indian scholars.Amongst the Indians themselves

there developed during the 19th century a class of scholars who were

educated in Western learning and were inspired by the growing spirit of

cultural renaissance in India. Of these the works of R.G. Bhandarkar and

Rajendralal Mitra are best known.Their tradition gave rise to successive

generations of Indian scholars who now do the vast majority of the work in

Indian studies.The initial work of the Asiatic Society of Bengal on written

records was soon to lead attention to archaeological remains.Inscriptions in

long-forgotten alphabets, coins, etc, were closely scrutinized.Working back

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from current scripts the older languages were deciphered.One of the most

remarkable achievements in this field was james prinsep’s (1799 – 1840)

reading of the Brahmi script in 1837.An erudite scholar skilled in epigraphic

techniques, he was able to interpret the edicts of Asoka, giving India

knowledge of her noblest ruler, and placing Indian archaeology on a secure

chronological basis. His death at the age of 41 was a grievous blow to Indian

studies. A colleague of his, Alexander Cunningham, was an engineer with the

British Indian Army and greatly interested in Indian archaeology.He continued

Prinsep’s work, and in 1862 became the first archaeological surveyor of India.

Later his work was carried forward by a number of archaeologists, prominent

amongst who were James Burgess, John Marshall, and R.D. Banerji, who

discovered the cities of the Indus civilization in 1922.

WESTERN RESPONSE TO MODERN INDIA

Whilst Europe’s debt to Greek literature is generally acknowledged, and

often overemphasized, it is not always easy for modern generations to

imagine the effect Indian ideas have had on European intellectual and cultural

progress.The stimulus of Indian literature was such that scholars, exemplified

by Macdonell, said: Since the Renaissance there has been no event of such

world-wide significance in the history of culture as the discovery of Sanskrit

literature in the latter part of the 18th century.Indeed, the impact of Indian

thought on the intellectual life of renaissant Europe was so powerful that may

European writers have not taken kindly to it. Driven by some strange fear of

losing their cultural identity, they endeavoured to minimize or ignore the

influence of Indian philosophy, and stretch logic to explain intellectual

evolution purely in terms of what they call Western traditions. India, however,

was only one of the several factors which influenced European thought and

life.The entire political, social, and intellectual life of Europe at this time was

far more active and complex than during any previous age, and perhaps any

subsequent one. France led the Age of Enlightenment. Germany was rapidly

advancing, asserting its intellectual prowess in literature and philosophy;

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America and Russia had begun to make important contributions; and science

had scored fresh advances.These were far-reaching changes, in which the

discovery of Indian literature and philosophy played a limited but significant

role.Inevitably, European response to Indian ideas differed from country to

country: indeed, from thinker to thinker.Some received Indian thought more

readily and understood it better than others.Others reacted against it almost

instinctively.Whatever the response, favourable or unfavourable, deep or

fragmentary, it was entirely conditioned by the intellectual climate of Europe

and its variations.There was no organized movement to advocate the adoption

of Indian ideas.If there were those anxious to underline the virtues of Indian

literature, they were the Europeans themselves, acting individually.Seldom

were Indian doctrines adopted wholesale – to expect otherwise would be to

deny the existence of a powerful indigenous tradition and the intellectual

independence of the receiver.Some found in Indian thought reinforcement of

their own ideas; others an escape or diversion from their own tradition.

Indian thought and literature had its finest European reception in Germany.

In fact, Indology became largely a province of German scholarship, stimulated

entirely by academic considerations, as Germany, unlike Britain and France,

had no political ties with India or her neighbours.Although Abraham Roger’s

work, The Open Door to Hidden Heathendom, a German translation of two

hundred maxims of Bhartrihari, appeared in 1663, it made little impact. Not

until the end of the 18th century did the Germans come to know some of the

famous works of Indian literature. Europe took Sakuntala to heart, and in

Germany the popularity of this work ensured that later translations would be

welcomed.The first German to recognize the beauty of Sakuntala was the

poet and critic, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 – 1803).Although not familiar

with India or its languages, he had already given a somewhat idealized picture

of the Indian people in his chief work, Ideen Zur Philosophic der Menschheit

(Ideas on a philosophy of the History of Mankind), in 1787.According to him,

mankind’s origin was to be traced to India, where the “human mind got the first

shapes of wisdom and virtue with a simplicity, strength and sublimity which

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has – frankly spoken – nothing, nothing at all equivalent in our philosophical,

cold European world”.He regarded the Hindus, because of their ethical

teachings, as the most gentle and peaceful people on earth.His concept of

India was taken up by the Romantic Movement, and long dominated the

fantasy of German poets. The connection which the teachings of reincarnation

established between all forms of life opened a new field to Herder and his

contemporaries.Herder’s Thoughts of Some Brahmins (1792), which

contains a selection of gnomic stanzas in free translations, gathered from

Bhartrihari, theHitopadesa and the Bhagavad Gita, expressed these

ideals.When George Förster sent him his German translation of the English

version of the Sakuntala in 1791, Herder responded: “I cannot easily find a

product of the human mind more pleasant than this……..a real blossom of the

Orient, and the first, most beautiful of its kind!……Something like that, of

course, appears once every two thousand years”.He published a detailed

study and analysis of Sakuntala, claiming that this work disproved the popular

belief that drama was the exclusive invention of the ancient Greeks.

Herder’s letters, published under the title, The Oriental Drama, claim that

Kalidasa’s masterpiece contains perfection unique in world literature both in

poetic substance and the characterization of the heroine.Herder hurriedly passed

on his discovery of the Indian drama to his friend, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749 – 1832), whose own enthusiasm for this play was no less exuberant.

Goethe expressed the admiration for Sakuntala more than once.Nearly 40 years

later, in 1830 when de Chézy sent him his edition of the original with his French

translation, he wrote to the Frenchman expressing his deep gratitude: “The first

time I came across this inexhaustible work it aroused such enthusiasm in me and

so held me that I could not stop studying it. I even felt impelled to make the

impossible attempt to bring it in some form to the German stage.These efforts

were fruitless but they made me so thoroughly acquainted with this most

valuable work, it represented such an epoch in my life, I so absorbed it, that for

thirty years I did not look at either the English or the German version…….It is

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only now that I understand the enormous impression that work made on me at

an earlier age”.Goethe goes on to point out the beauties of the work, saying that

in it the poet appears in his highest function, as the representative of the most

natural state, of the most refined form of life, of the purest moral striving, of the

worthiest majesty and the most solemn contemplation of God; at the same time

he is lord and master of his creation to so great an extent that he may venture

vulgar and ludicrous contrasts which yet must be regarded as necessary links of

the whole organization. No wonder he modeled the prologue of his Faust (1890)

on the prologue to Sakuntala. The jester in the prologue of Faust is reminiscent

of one of the vidusaka in the Indian drama, a parallel first noticed by Heinrich

Heine.

Goethe’s friend, Schiller, who otherwise took little interest in Indian literature,

was also moved to enthusiastic praise of Sakuntala, which he found in some

respects unparalleled in the classical literature of Greece and Rome.He

published part of the Sakuntala in Thalia, and in a letter to Wilhelm Humboldt

he wrote that “in the whole of Greek antiquity there is no poetical

representation of beautiful love which approaches Sakuntala even afar”.

Goethe also admired other Indian poems, such as Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda

and Kalidasa’s Meghaduta which he read in Wilson’s English translation in

1817 and welcomed as “a great treasure”.Goethe’s second Indian ballad, “Der

Paria” was his best.The plot for “Der Paria” comes from the work of the French

traveller, Sonnerat who had returned to Europe in 1782 after 7 years in

India.Goethe’s first Indian ballad, “Der Gotund die Bajadere”, published in

1797, was also based on Sonnerat.Whilst Herder and Goethe shared

enthusiasm for the Sakuntala, their attitudes toward India were very different.

Herder was gradually becoming old and moralizing.The Sakuntala had

captivated him, but it was the rich treasure of Indian gnomic and didactic

poetry that appealed to him most.Herder admired India, as did Novalis and

Heine, for its simplicity, and denounced the Europeans for their greed,

corruption, and economic exploitation of India.

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Goethe, on the other hand, reacted to Indian literature as a poet and an

artist.Although he was delighted by the harmonious beauty and lyrical intensity

of the epics and kavya, he did not care for the Hitopadesa and philosophy,

and he took no interest in Indian mythology and sculpture.He was particularly

interested in poetry that expressed human feelings and sentiments in a simple

and natural way, Indian sculpture, with its variety and abundance of form,

offended his classical ideal of unified beauty.His admiration for India was

strong and deep, but it could not compare with his appreciation for Greece.

He was fascinated by India, but he understood Greece. Consequently Goethe

did not actively participate in the expansion of Indian studies and did not learn

Sanskrit, although in the Goethe Archives there are some papers on which the

poet tried the Devanagari script. Extreme attraction unaccompanied by proper

intellectual understanding was bound to unnerve a thinking, sensitive scholar,

such as Goethe.He expressed this feeling to his friend Humboldt in 1826; “I

have by no means an aversion to things Indian, but I am afraid of them, for

they draw my imagination into the formless and the diffuse against which I

have to guard myself more than ever before”.However, he consistently

acknowledged the tremendous stimulus of Indian thought on Western

civilization, and followed the work of German Indologists such as the Schlegel

brothers and Bopp with interest and approval. Inspired by Herder’s idealist

concepts there developed a belief that the highest form of romantic poetry

could be found only in India.The very reason which made Goethe hesitant

gave the Romantics a predilection of India. Consequently, they did not content

themselves with glorifying it in poetry alone; they laid the foundation for a real

science of India.

Until the end of the 18th century, French was the language of the German

elite and, together with Latin, the language of learning.During the French

Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Germany suffered heavily.After the war,

educated Germans became more aware of their own language and heritage,

and took an increasing pride in it.At this psychological moment Indian

literature appeared in Germany; a certain undoubted cultural and historical

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affinity between India and Germany probably assumed greater imaginary

proportions than it would have at any other time. Shakespeare on the one

hand, and Indian literature on the other, formed the main inspiration of the

German Romantic movement.Both were introduced into Germany at about the

same time and by the same persons, Friedrich and August Wilhelm von

Schlegel. The Romantics found in India that dynamic and synthetic approach

to life which they felt was lacking in the formalism and artificiality of the early

European Romantic movement, and sought to substitute aesthetic standards

for utilitarian ones. The religions of India also fascinated the Romantics of

Germany; throughout the 19th century Western religious criticism was inspired

by the discovery of Indian polytheism.“If one considers”, comments Schlegel,

“the superior conception which is at the basis of the truly universal Indian

culture and which, itself divine, knows how to embrace in its universality

everything that is divine without distinction, then, what we in Europe call

religion or what we used to call such, no longer seems to deserve that

name.And one would like to advise everyone who wants to see religion, he

should, just as one goes to Italy to study art, go to India for that purpose

where he may be certain to find at least fragments for which he will surely look

in vain in Europe”.

Amongst those men of letters who took an enthusiastic interest in Indian

literature was the versatile Prussian minister of education, Wilhelm von

Humboldt (1767 – 1835), a brilliant linguist and the founder of the science of

general linguistics. He began to learn Sanskrit in 1821 and was greatly moved

by Schlegel’s edition of the Bhagavad Gita, on which he published an

extensive study and which he described as “the deepest and liftiest thing the

word had to show”.He declared that he was grateful to God for granting him a

life so long that he could read the Gita. Ludwig van Beethoven was also

attracted by Indian thought, as is clearly attested by numerous passages and

notes referring to in ideas and texts found in the Beethoven papers.He was

first introduced to Indian literature by the Austrian Orientalist, Hammer-

Purgstal, who founded a periodical for the dissemination of Eastern

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knowledge in Europe as early as January 1809.Beethoven had a deep interest

in Indian knowledge long before Indological studies began in Germany.The

fragments of Indian religious texts that have been discovered in the

Beethoven manuscripts are partly translations and partly adaptations of the

Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. It is not certain if Beethoven himself or

his Orientalist friends selected these passages for him.

The German poet, Friedrich Rückert (1788 – 1866), Professor of Oriental

Languages at the University of Erlangen from 1827 to 1841, produced, under

the inspiration of August Wilhelm von Schlegel, numerous skilful translations

from Sanskrit.His published translations from Indian classical poetry made

Indian lyrics and poems widely popular in Germany.Amongst his translations

are Nalopakhyana, the Amarusataka, the Raghuvamsa, and the Gita Govinda,

which lost nothing of its beauty, colour, and atmosphere in Rückert’s German

version.The Indian poem is such a complex work from the viewpoint of rhyme,

alliteration, and allusion that Rückert’s version represents a brilliant

accomplishment. Of all the German poets, it was he who best understood the

character of Indian poetry. Novalis, one of Germany’s greatest Romantic

poets, wrote in his essay, Christendom in Europe, that poetry, pure and

colourful like a beautiful India, stood opposed to the cold and deadening

mountains of philistine reason.For him Sanskrit was the most mysterious

linguistic symbol of any human expression; Sanskrit took him back to the

“original people” who had been forgotten.However, in spite of his emotional

enthusiasm for India, Novalis did not really understand Indian thought.Unlike

those Indians who believe the objective world is an illusion.Novalis sought to

perfect this world. Similarly, when E.T.A. Hoffmann attempted to create Indian

characters in some of his stories, they were magicians who, although

traditionally associated with India, were not really representative.Schelling

also accorded India an important position in his Philosophy of Mythology.He

was a great admirer of ancient Indian literature, especially the Upanishads,

which he regarded, like Schopenhauer, to be the genuine wisdom of Indians

and of mankind. Heinrich Heine, a late Romantic lyric poet, whose influence

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was enormous not only in Germany but in most countries of the Western

world, describes the India of his imagination: “……in the glass I saw the dear

motherland, the blue and sacred Ganges, the eternally shining Himalayas, the

gigantic forests of Banyan trees on whose wide shadowy paths quietly walk

wise elephants and white pilgrims……” His poem, “Auf Flügeln described

Gesanges”,

Am Ganges duftet’s und leuchtet’s?

Und Riesenbäume blühn,

Und schöne, stille Menschen

Vor Lotosblumen knien.

Created a picture of India widely familiar in Germany.Heine’s acquaintance

with Indian thought, acquired in Bonn under Schlegel and Bopp, remained

important to him throughout his life.His approach to Indian works was intimate

and sensitive, but it die not lead to un-critical enthusiasm for them. He did not

care for the story of the rivalry between Vasistha and Visvamitra, in which he

saw a parallel with the investiture contest in medieval Europe.However, he

had a particular feeling for Indian scenery, as is revealed by his verses in his

famous Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs).He remarked that if the Portuguese,

the Dutch, and the English had carried away ships laden with Indian

treasures, Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual

knowledge.

Although Gutzkow titled his novel Mahaguru (1832), he shows no evidence

of real knowledge of Indian thought. F. Hebbel’s attention was drawn to India

by Ad. Holtzmann’s Indian Sagas. In 1863, he wrote the story of King Sibi

who by sacrificing his own life saved a dove from a hawk, and his poem, “The

Brahmans”, gives a moving expression of the Indian concept of the equality of

all living beings.Immanuel Kant (1712 – 1804) was apparently the first

important German philosopher to have some acquaintance with Indian

philosophy.Kant’s differentiation between the physical world as seen in space

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and time, and the unknowable thing in itself beyond these concepts, is very

similar to the doctrine of Maya. There are certain parallels between Kantian

thought and Buddhist philosophy. Like the Buddha, Kant declared a number

of questions unsolvable, such as “Has the world a beginning or not?” “Is it

finite or eternal?” Stcherbatsky has shown that Kant’s doctrine of the

categorical imperative has its counterpart in Hindu philosophy, and has

pointed out similarities between Kantian thought and later Buddhist thinkers

like Chandrakirti. Moreover, according to Hermann Jacobi, Kant’s Aesthetics

had been preceded by Indian writers on poetics. These are important parallels

and strongly indicative of Kant’s familiarity with Indian philosophy.But,

considering that Sanskrit studies were only beginning to emerge in Europe,

and Europe knew very little of Indian philosophy at the time, it seems unlikely

that Kant had any direct knowledge of Indian thought. However, the possibility

of his acquaintance, as distinct from knowledge, with Indian ideas through

earlier Western writings and contemporary travel accounts cannot be ruled

out. In his lectures at the Königberg University in East Prussia from 1756 to

1796, he talked about the physiography of India and the customs and

manners of the people, and it seems likely that an intellectual of his genius

would have gathered other information about India and reflected upon it with

utmost care and competence.His observations about Buddhism in Asia and

about Hindus appear to endorse the view that he had extensive and accurate

knowledge of Indian thought. He said the Hindus were gentle and tolerant of

other religions and nations. He was very much impressed by the Hindu

doctrine of transmigration, which corresponded in some respects to his own

teaching about the destiny of the soul after death. Similarly, Kant’s successor,

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814), includes in his Anweisung Zu cinem

selingen Leben (Hints for a Blessed Life) numerous passages which

approximate the Advaita doctrine.Whilst Kant and Fichte were not familiar with

original Sanskrit texts, Arthur Schopenhauer knew them, at least in some

measure, and openly acknowledged his debt to Indian systems in Die Welt als

Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Idea): “I acknowledged that I

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owe the best part of my developed, beside the impression of the outward

world, to the works of Kant and to the holy scriptures of the Hindus and Plato”.

He believed that if “…..the reader has also received and assimilated the

sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I

have to say to him”. Schopenhauer, who was unusually free from nationalism,

and who has been called the philosopher of disillusion and profound

pessimism, was introduced to Indian thought in 1813 by one of Goethe’s

friends, the Orientalist Friedrich Mayer. From then on, Schopenhauer never

lost interest.In 1818, he published his most important work, Die Welt ALS Wills

und Vorstellung, in which he put forward the doctrines of pessimism and the

subjectivity of will to knowledge.Although his university career had come to an

abrupt end at this time, he continued to work on his doctoral thesis

privately.He read whatever he could lay his hands on at the Weimar Library

concerning Indian thought.Of these, Anquetil Dutch Perron’s translation of the

Upanishads was his chief source of information.Schopenhauer, although

working with an imperfect translation, was extremely enthusiastic about the

Upanishads’ philosophy and declared them to be “the production of the

highest human wisdom”. For him no study was as elevating as that of the

Upanishads: “It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my

death”.A few years later when he became acquainted with Buddhism, he

regarded it as more profound than Christianity.He did not think that

Christianity could ever displace Buddhism in the East: “It is just as if we fired

a bullet against a cliff”. On the contrary, he thought that Indian philosophy

would profoundly alter European knowledge and thought:The influence of

Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply that did the revival of Greek

letters in the 15th century.Schopenhauer, mainly influenced by the discovery of

upanishadic thought, has been called the first apostle of Buddhism in

Germany. He was so impressed by Buddhism that he claimed fundamental

identity of his philosophy with the teachings of Buddhism, kept a bronze of the

Buddha in his study, and occasionally referred to himself and his followers as

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“we Buddhists”.But there are important differences between his philosophy

and Indian thought, whether Buddhist or vedantic.

Schopenhauer regarded the Hindus as deeper thinkers than Europeans

because their interpretation of the world was internal and intuitive, not external

and intellectual.For intuition unites everything; the intellect divides everything.

The Hindus saw that the “I” is a delusion, that the individual is merely

phenomenal, and that the only reality is the Infinite One “That art Thou”.

Another German philosopher, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause was even more

strongly influenced by Indian philosophy.He praised the Vedanta particularly in

his Vorlesungen über dic Grundwahrheiten der Wissenschajten (1829),

although he wrote on Buddhism, Jainism, and the Carvakas.Paul Deussen, a

rare combination of a scholar of European philosophy as well as of Indology,

was also greatly attracted by the Vedanta philosophy.Works on the Vedanta

philosophy and his translation of the Vedanta Sutras were published in 1883

and in 1887 respectively.By translating the original texts of the Upanishads

into German and commenting upon them he increased the understanding of

Indian philosophy amongst European thinkers.He called the Vedanta system

one of the greatest achievements of humanity in the search for eternal

truth.Not all German philosophers were fascinated by Indian thought. Once

Europe had recovered from the ravages of the Napoleonic Wars and Indian

culture lost its novelty, European intellectuals began to analyze Indian

civilization, even if they had no familiarity with original texts. A typical example

was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831), a contemporary of

Schopenhauer, who, in reaction to the undiluted romanticism towards India,

gave a full chapter to India in his philosophy of World History (1822 – 1823),

and drew some depressing conclusions.With his stress on reason, he

criticized the Romantics for idolizing India.He considered the prevailing

degenerate condition of Indian society as its natural condition, and maintained

it was a society condemned by its own inability to rejuvenate itself. Hegel not

only applied erroneous standards bureaucracies relied on undependable

sources – the writings of British administrators and Abbé Dubois’ book. How

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ill-informed Hegel was of things Eastern can best be seen in the brief attempt

he makes in his book to define Buddhism. “There is a great dispute going on”,

he says, “which of the two religions (Buddhism and Hinduism) is older and

simpler; for both there are reasons, but one cannot discern it clearly.The

Buddhistic religion is simpler, but this may be due either to the fact that it is

older, or that it is the result of a Reformation. Probably, however, Buddhism is

the older of the two”.

Yet it is interesting to notice a likeness between Hegel’s famous “dialectical

movement”, that every idea and every situation in the world leads irresistibly to

its opposite and then unites with it to form a new whole, and the Buddhist

concept of the “golden mean”.Hegel expressly refers to Indian predecessors

of his logic of contradictions.Also, his view that man reaches his full stature

only through suffering is quite close to the Buddha’s declaration that life is

dukkha.Whilst Hegel reacted against Romanticism and against

Schopenhauer’s enthusiasm for Indian thought, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 –

1900) protested as much against Schopenhauer’s philosophy as against

Deussen’s interpretation of the Vedanta. Nietzsche, however, was deeply

influenced by Schopenhauer in his youth, and regarded himself as his

successor, although superior to him in some ways.He found in The World as

Will and Idea “a mirror in which I espied the world, life, and my own nature

depicted with frightful grandeur”. Although he later denounced pessimism as

decadent, he remained an unhappy man and under the permanent influence

of Schopenhauer’s thought.Nietzsche was very appreciative of the

Upanishads and, indeed, contemptuous of those Europeans who, devoid of

intellectual discernment, wanted to convert and “civilize” the Brahmans.When

Paul Deussen told him his plan of translating ancient Hindu texts and

expounding their wisdom, he expressed great enthusiasm saying that Indian

philosophy was the one parallel to their own European philosophy. Spake

Zarathustra, the most revealing and personal of all his writings, Nietzsche

propounded his central doctrine, the gospel of the superman, which is his

chief legacy to the world.Passionately individualistic; he was a believer in the

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hero. He found in the Manusmriti one of the sources of his own philosophy of

superman.He so highly esteemed the Hindu text that he declared all other

ethical codes to be imitations and even caricatures of this.He saw the

supremacy of the Indian Brahmans as the implicit obedience of the herd to the

religious and moral command of the “ruling” caste.Nietzsche was not a

nationalist and showed no excessive admiration for Germany; he certainly

was not anti-Semitic.He wanted an international ruling race, a vast aristocracy

of artist-tyrants.Seldom in Western thought is the difference between man as

he now is and man as he might become more emphatically pronounced than

by Nietzsche.

During the first half of the 19th century, interest was directed towards India

as a whole, but in the second half of the century, German scholars were

drawn towards Buddhist thought and literature, through the publication of

Burnouf’s Introduction à i’histoire Dutch Bouddhisme indien and Koppen’s

Buddhismus.Even Nietzsche, who had moved away from Schopenhauer and

Wagner, included in his book, Revaluation of All Values, a hymn of praise to

Buddhism which he found a “hundred times more realistic than Christ’s

Nativity”.Richard Wagner was so profoundly influenced by Buddhism as

propagated by Schopenhauer and his followers that he confessed he had

involuntarily become a Buddhist.He was fascinated by the doctrine of

salvation and the ethics of compassion, before which every other dogma

appeared to be small and narrow.In his play, The Victors, Wagner uses a

story from Burnouf’s book about a chandala (untouchable) female, Prakriti,

who was accepted into the monastic order by the Buddha to enable her to find

fulfillment in here love for Ananda who had also become a monk, and to make

amends for her past sins.Prakriti and Ananda were later transformed into

Kundry and Parsifal in his last opera, Parsifal.The flowergirls (which Wagner

took from Lambrecht’s Alexander Song) and Kingsor’s lance, which hangs

above Parsifal’s head, have their origins in the story about the Buddha’s

temptation through Mara.In Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods),

Wahnheim (the abode of illusion) and Wunschhim (the abode of desire), for

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which the man, delivered from the necessity of having to be born again,

strives, are typically Indian concepts.Countless borrowings from India are

found in Wagner’s work.

In 1881 Hermann Oldenberg published his brilliant study, Buddha – His Life,

Teachings and Community, which added greatly to Buddhism’s popularity in

Germany.Oldenberg also edited and translated the Dipavamsa and the Vinaya

Pitaka.The abundance of new material and the inherent atheism of original

Buddhism inspired some German poets of the following decades. J.V. Widmann

created a historically inaccurate picture of the Buddha in his epic, Buddha, as

the Master who urged pantheism and atheism so that “a new golden age” could

be achieved.Karl Bleibtreu’s dramas, Karma and Saviour, attempted to ease the

entrance of Buddhism into Europe, but again it was interpreted inaccurately.The

most complete treatment of the Buddha was achieved by Karl Gjellerup in

Pilgrim Kamanita. He tried to convey some of the nature of Buddhism, and

showed much knowledge of Indian customs and Hinduism. Whilst a general

feeling of weariness towards all matters of the world encouraged the influx of

Eastern, especially Buddhist, ideas at the beginning of the 20th century, this

impact was considerably increased in the years following because of the

intellectual restiveness generated by 1st World War. Buddhism in Germany was

encouraged by the poetry of P. Dahlke and Harappans Much.A particularly

powerful poetic treatment of the Buddha legend was achieved by Albrecht

Schaffer in The Gem in the Lotas which was partly inspired by Sir Edwin

Arnold’s The Light of Asia.Werfel’s play, The Mirror Man, appeared in 1920.

The hero of this play leaves an Indian monastery and through the “mirror man”

(the manifestation of illusion) he gradually overcomes maya (illusion) and

realizes that dissociation from one’s own existence is the highest possible aim.

Most poets at that time no longer believed in the superiority of Christianity.

In Josef Winckler’s comedy, Labyrinth of God or the Comdey of Chaos, the

Buddha has only a smile for the twelve Apostles who want to convince him

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that his time has ended.The hero of Stefan Zweig’s The Eyes of the Eternal

Brother, the Indian Virata, attempts to lead a life without guilt.He moves down

socially from one step to the other and finally realizes that one should strive to

subject one’s will but not attempt to live without guilt.The hero in Alfred

Döblin’s epic, Manas, is haunted by the question of where the enemies he has

slain in battle will continue to suffer.He therefore goes to the land of the dead

in the Himalayas, where he witnesses such terrible things that he suffers a

breakdown and dies.His wife who has followed him brings him back to life.The

hero then overcomes gods and demons; he no longer rejects the world but

worships the forces of nature.Döblin’s descriptions of visions belonging to

Siva’s world show his familiarity with Indian religious literature.Herman

Keyserling who found a strong affinity between Christianity and Buddhism,

was much impressed by the metaphysical profundity of India.He used Indian

thought to measure European standards of conduct and morality.The

influence of Keyserling on the European intelligentsia after the 1st World War

particularly in Germany, was deep but short-lived.Germany, shattered from

the disastrous war, had returned its attention towards India for solace and new

inspiration, as is indicated by the publication of innumerable novels and

poems with a predominantly Asian background.

Hermann Hesse, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946, found in

Indian thought an answer to his yearning for deliverance from “ego”, and from

the tyrannical dictates of temporality.Indian thought offered the most radical

possibility of undoing the curse of individuation, of annihilating the “idiotic one-

after-the-other” by the postulation of the eternal simultaneity of nirvana. The

positive attitude of the Bhagavad Gita also appealed to Hesse.Yoga and maya

are the background to the events portrayed in the Glasperlenspicl (The Game

of Glass Beads).Hesse himself claimed that Yoga had an invaluable effect

upon him as a means of improving his powers of concentration.The threefold

sequence of sensual love, wisdom, and self-denial experienced by the poet

Bhartrihari is interpreted by Hesse as the result of humble and wise humanity.

In Journey to the Orient, Hesse, whose mother was born in Malabar, says of

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India that it was “not only a country and something geographical, but the home

and the youth of the soul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of all

times”. It is significant that Hesse, although a Christian, repeatedly substituted

the upanishadic tat tvamasi, literally “love your neighbour for he is yourself”,

for Christ’s command, “love theory neighbour as thyself”.In Siddhartha, he

tried to reconcile Christian and Indian piety.Other prominent German writers,

such as Paul Dahlke, H. Much, Josef Winckler, Albrecht Schaffer, Franz

Werfel, Stefan Zweig, Hermann Kasack, Gustav Meyrink, and Thomas Mann,

drew upon Indian materials.Thomas Mann gave a new interpretation to an

Indian story from the Vatalapancavimsati in The Transposed Heads, which

Goethe had previously used in his poem, “Der Paria”.

French interest in Indology is also reflected in their literature, especially

during the Romantic period.In common with many of his contemporaries,

Francois René de Chateaubriand (1768 – 1848), who deeply influenced the

Romantic Movement in France, was an enthusiastic admirer of Sakuntala. He

had lived in English as a refugee from Napoleonic France between 1793 and

1800, when Sir William Jones’ translations of Sanskrit works were published.

Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885) imitated an Upanishad in his poem; “Suprématie”

(1870).He gathered his information from G. Pautheir’s Legends Livres Sacrés

de l’Orient. Alphonse de Lamartine who did for French poetry what

Chateaubriand did for French prose, wrote about Sanskrit epics, drama, and

poetry in his Cours familier de Littérature in 1861. Jean-Jacques Ampère,

friend of Hugo, is reputed to have said that during the Renaissance Creek

works were given the attention they deserved, but in his day Indian works

would be studied and another Renaissance would be witnessed.Louis Revel

went a long step farther when he remarked that if Greek culture had

influenced Western civilization, the ancient Greeks themselves were “the sons

of Hindu thought”.Joseph Mery who wrote satirical poems on the French

Restoration, could recite the works of Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti from memory.

In 1825 Philaré le Charles who did much to familiarize his readers with the

literature of foreign countries, wrote The Bride of Banaras and Indian Nights,

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Paul Verlaine wrote the poem, “Savitri”, which is a short piece but is indicative

that the French writers had an accurate knowledge of Indian literature.Verlaine

became keenly interested in Hindu mythology during his high school days.His

enthusiasm was such that he said, “Particular Indra! Qualitative c’est beau, et

comme ca vous dégotte la Bible, i’Evangile et toute la dégueulade des Pères

de I’Eglise”. (By Indra! How beautiful this is and how much better than the

Bible, the Gospel and all the words of the Fathers of the Church.)Louis

Jacolliot who worked in French India as a government official and was at one

time President of the Court in Chandranagar, translated numerous Vedic

hymns, the Manusmriti, and the Tamil Work, Kural. His masterpiece, La Bible

dans I’inde, stirred a storm of controversy. He praised the Vedas in his Sons

of God, and said: “The Hindu revelation, which proclaims the slow and gradual

formation of worlds, is of all revelations the only one whose ideas are in

complete harmony with modern science”.Anatole France saw in the Buddha

“the best adviser and sweetest comforter of suffering mankind”.

English response to Indian culture in the 18th century was conditioned by

the ostentatious “nabobs”, who amassed great wealth through

unscrupulousness and deceit.The nabobs “raised the price of Parliamentary

seats and made themselves otherwise objectionable to the old-established

aristocratic society into which they intruded with their outlandish ways”.The

image of the epic greatness of India was thus tinctured by the money-making

vulgarity of these Englishmen.Consequently, the first reaction of the English

was against their own people who were spoiling the good name of Britain in

the East.During this period a large number of books were published dealing

satirically with the English administration in India: for example, Mackenzie’s

The Lounger, Samuel Foote’s The Nabob, Harley House, and a number of

passages in Cowper’s poems. Later, English administration became firm and

settled and lost some of its earlier unpopularity, and Indian philosophy and

literature came to be known in England.Even before Sir Charles Wilkins

translated the Gita, or Halhead published Sanskrit Grammar, Alexander Dow

had published an essay on Hinduism entitled A Dissertation Concerning the

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Customs, Manners, Language, Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus.The

first European scholar to produce a real dissertation on Sanskrit learning, he

pointed out the vast quantities of Sanskrit literature in existence, plus the fact

that the history of the Hindus was older than that of any other people.Jones

had come to India, unlike most of his contemporaries, not to amass a fortune

or to seek adventure, but to study Sanskrit and Indian culture in order to

transmit Indian learning to the West.Already a master of Greek, Latin, Persian,

Arabic, and Hebrew, he had high regard for Western knowledge which had

culminated in British achievements.Whilst British culture continued to

advance, he believed, because of the free institutions of the West, the Eastern

tradition of despotism caused cultural stagnation in Asia.Yet he had great

esteem for Indian civilization.He was not a romantic admirer of India but, in

fact, a conservative commentator.In assessing Indian heritage he employed

his own criteria and Western standards. His initial conclusion was that Europe

excelled in the realm of reason; India, in that of reflection. But, as he delved

deeper into Indian literature, he modified his earlier opinion to admit the

impressive Indian accomplishments in the natural sciences. In 1794, the last

year of his life, he declared that “…..without detracting from the ‘never fading

laurels of Newton’, the whole of Newton’s theology, and part of his philosophy

were to be found in the Vedas and other Indian works”.His opinion of Indian

philosophy was immeasurably high.“One correct version of any celebrated

Hindu book would be of greater value than all the dissertations or essays that

could be composed on the same subject”. Jones’ evaluation of Indian thought

attracted the attention of contemporary British scholars and writers of diverse

interests, such as Gibbon, Byron, and George Borrow, who acknowledged

their debt to Jones’ Works and the Life. His Hymn to Narayana, in which he

described the process of creation, inspired Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual

Beauty”.Southey and Moore often cite from Jones’ writings, and E. Koeppel

has recently illustrated that Shelley and Tennyson borrowed from Jones in

their Queen Mab and Locksley Hall.William Robertson, Principal of the

College of Edinburgh and a well-known historian, published his book, An

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Historical Disquisition Concerning Ancient India (1791), describing the

knowledge ancient Greeks and Romans had of India, her progress, and trade

activities prior to the discovery of the direct sea route between India and

Europe.Robertson based his assessment of Indian works on the existing

literature, supplemented by his frequent conversations with high British

officials in India, whose names he, for reasons of confidence, did not

specify.He found both merits and defects in Indian thought and literature.

By the beginning of the 19th century, whilst Britain had gained India and

Canada, she had lost America.Her industrial revolution was well under way

and Britain was emerging as a new type of nation-state combining an

industrial capitalist society with an imperialist democratic government.The

newly gained prosperity and security from foreign aggression, and the pride of

possessing a vast colonial empire, produced a sense of power – a national

feeling of implicit faith in her own historical processes and political institutions

– which was later to manifest itself, not infrequently, in racial arrogance.

These changes inevitably affected Britain’s material and intellectual life. It

was during this formative period that words of capital importance in the

English language and way of life at present, and which illustrate the changing

patterns in culture and ways of thinking, such as industry, democracy, class,

art, and culture, came to be used with new meanings. Between the

appearance of William Blake’s Song of Innocence, in which he first revealed

his mystical inclination, and the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832, the English

literary tradition changed its course; the Romantic period, in essence, aimed

at liberating human personality from the letters of social conventions.Whilst

English Romanticism largely provided its own momentum, it was deeply

influenced by Germany in the beginning of the 19th century, and India played a

significant part, either directly or through the medium of Germany or

Neoplatonism.

William Blake’s (1757 – 1827) belief that human life is a manifestation of

eternal being ahs an upanishadic ring.His idea, quite different from the

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prevalent one in England, that soul was the true reality and its corporal form a

passing shadow, an encumbrance, and his belief that the human was divine,

are reminiscent of Indian monism.He declared Jesus Christ “was the only God

– and so am I and so are you”.He even regarded the beasts as “beings, the

Living ones”.Blake’s deep concern and preoccupation with fundamental

questions of life, his emphasis on complete harmony between art, moral

problems, and beliefs, his conviction that the human and the divine are One,

and his painstaking study of Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and the Bhagavad

Gita, are clearly manifested in his wirting.His Four Zoas appear to have a

source in the 4 Guardians (Lokapalas) of the four quarters of the Hindu

mythology.According to Damon, Blake’s zoas were derived from the three

Goons, sativa, rajas and tamas described in the Bhagavad Gita.Blake’s

profound emphasis on mysticism, especially in ‘Songs of Experience’ and his

principal prose work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), was radically

out of character with the literary tradition in England at the time, and he was

long regarded as an eccentric. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he

vigorously and satirically denied the reality of matter and eternal punishment.

In Songs of Experience, too, he protested against restrictive codes and

exalted the spirit of love.His main poems were written between 1788 and

1820, the period of European discovery of Indian literature, thus Indian

inspiration of Blake is plausible.Whilst some attempts to explain Blake’s

thought as an independent growth away from Indian ideas could have been

conditioned by prejudice against alien influences, others are the result of the

critics’ inadequate knowledge of philosophical thought in general, and of

Indian philosophy in particular.Consequently, even some competent recent

studies, such as Désirée Hirst’s Hidden Riches, do not give proper

consideration to the Indian inspiration of Blake or of English Romanticism.

Thomas De Quincey (1785 – 1859), whose qualities as a writer are

fascinating despite criticism of his indulgences as a man, knew something of

Indian ideas.In his famous autobiographical narrative, Confessions of an

English Opium Eater who describes how in his opium dreams he was

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hounded by Brahma, Visnu, and Siva. Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881) found a

basis for his doctrine of superiority in the cast system. Carlyle, who was a

radical early in life and in the course of years became more and more hostile

to democracy and advocated British imperialism, divided humanity into

supermen and helots.His way of combating anarchy by finding heroes who

commanded obedience is somewhat reminiscent of Indian brahmanical

supremacy. William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), who expressed the deepest

aspirations of English Romanticism, endeavoured throughout his writing to

communicate his new vision of nature, which was so alien to English tradition

that it was not until 1830 that his poetry was given wide public recognition. In

intimacy with nature and its beauties, he also found a corrective to his

personal despondency.Apart from this; however, Wordsworth seriously

attempted to work out a bridge between mental and material worlds. It is

impossible for a person familiar with Indian thought not to see the reflections

of Vedanta in Wordsworth when he reads:

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime,

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns?

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

(“Tintern Abbey”, 1798)

Although Hindu thought is recognizable in Wordsworth’s poetry, it is often

characterized as “unconscious” or coincidental for he is considered to have

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been deeply impressed in his romantic ideas by his enthusiasm for France

and the French Revolution.This view, however, does not sufficiently account

for the fact that, after his return from France at the age of 28, Wordsworth –

together with Coleridge – gave up his dreams of political regeneration for the

vision of brining the greatest possible degree of happiness to the world

through proper cultivation of sensibility and imagination in ‘Lyrical Ballads’. By

the time Lyrical Ballads appeared, the works of Sir William Jones had spread

some knowledge of Indian thought in England.Wordsworth’s friend,

collaboratork, and “his spirit’s brother”, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –

1834), was also guided by the same vision.Indeed, he went a step farther in

dabbling with the supernatural, as is reflected in “The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner”.Although Coleridge did not use Indian material, he was greatly

attracted by the words and pictures of old tales, some of which must have

come from India.His Eastern inspiration is to some extent attested to by the

elusive yet arresting images in “Kuba Khan”.This influence is also displayed in

his Circassian love song, “Lewti

Coleridge emphasized the Neoplatonic tradition and introduced into England

the new idealism of Germany, which was influenced by Indian thought.More

than any other English Romantic, he was responsible for bringing about the

literary revolution which regarded imagination as the most important creative

faculty.His cardinal doctrine, reminiscent of the Vedanta, was the wholeness of,

and continuity in, self-consciousness as the basis of mental experience which

was all absorbed into a single dynamic force, the divine spark in each person,

the “I” of every rational being, the free will which was the eventual source of

religious faith as well as of genuine perception. Coleridge was well aware of

Indian literature, as is illustrated by his letter to John Thirlwell in which he said

he often wished to sleep or die, or “like the Indian Vishnu, to float about along

an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotus and wake once in a million

years for a few minutes”. John Keats (1795 – 1821), although he knew little

about India, was somewhat drawn to her as the passage about the Indian maid in

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Endymion (1818) reveals.Keats was fascinated by the romantic aspect of Greek

mythology but Endymion was severely criticized at the time for its un-Greek

quality. Keats wrote all the poems which brought him such fame within twelve

months of Endymion’s publication. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822), who

wrote The Revolt of Islam and was attracted by an idealized version of the Vale

of Kashmir, propounds most magnificently the vedantic doctrine of maya in his

elegy dedicated to Keats.Shelley’s suggestion that birth interrupts a state of bliss

which death restores

That lights whose smile kindles the Universe,

That Beauty in which all things work and move,

That Benediction which the eclipsing curse of

Birth can quench not…….. (Adonais)

Is very close to the Indian concept. Engaged in the pursuit of an unattainable

ideal of beauty, Shelley was inspired by his love for the universe, which

included not only the human race or even all living beings, but all elements of

nature. His identification with nature – be become one with the lark in “To a

Skylark”, with the cloud in “The Cloud”, and with the wind in “Ode to the West

Wind” – and penetrating perception of its hidden meaning approximate Indian

thought.

In 1810, Robert Southey published his long narrative poem, The Curse of

Kehama, drawing upon romantic material from India.Although Soumey had

studied Indian society and literature and claimed his poem as an authentic

picture of India, his knowledge was imperfect, and he graphically endeavoured

to show that Hinduism was a false and monstrous religion. Based on a theme

from Hindu mythology, this poem conveyed little of India, but added distortion

and confusion to the British view of Indian life.Ultimately, Southey himself

found the poem unsatisfactory, as did his contemporaries, such as Sir Walter

Scott.Southey, neither as famous nor as brilliant as his friends Wordsworth

and Coleridge, was united with them in the ardour of youthful ideas, and

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during the years of maturity, in reaction against those same ideas.The foreign

influence in his poetry is so prominent that he is remembered primarily for his

outlandish settings.

Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852) was also attracted by Indian material. He

showed an insight into Indian society and customs in his poem Lalla Rookh

(1817), which brought the then huge sum of three thousand guineas for the

author.The first edition sold out immediately and during the course of the

century it went into innumerable editions.In view of the fact that novels were

far too expensive to buy in relation to the average income of the time, the

rapid reprints of Lalla Rookh reveal more than ordinary attraction for Indian

situations.Lalla Rookh consisted of four narrative poems woven into the

romantic tale of a Mughal princess’ love for a Kashmiri poet.Mainly concerned

with delighting his readers, Moore presented India as a land of dazzling

beauty, full of magnificent palaces, splendid temples, and perfumed gardens.

His descriptions of the country, however, merely underlined the prevalent

conventionally distorted picture of political India.He relied on rather

undependable sources, and occasionally let his imagination get the better of

him, as a result of which certain absurd, even nonsensical, descriptions crept

into his work. Many writers used India as a locale for European adventure. For

instance, India figured prominently in The Surgeon’s Daughter by Sir Walter

Scott (1771 – 1832).However, he knew nothing of India, and hinted as much

in the introduction to the novel. The story begins in Scotland and ends in the

territory of Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan, the famous rulers of eighteenth-century

Mysore, which had recently been conquered by the British after a series of

prolonged and exacting campaigns.Scott’s characters and situations were, of

course, fictitious; his knowledge of Indian history inaccurate; and he had a

Sctosman’s love for fairy tales, fables, and folklore.

Most fiction writers of this period had no personal knowledge of India, and

used Indian situations primarily to advance the popularity of their works. But

the case of Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay is somewhat different and,

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therefore, puzzling.He was a well-known man of letters when he came to India

in1834 where he lived for four years.However, he read little of Indian literature

and made no serious evaluation of India and her heritage, even though scores

of European scholars had revealed the richness of Indian learning, which was

available in any number of European languages.If he had done so, the history

of the Anglo-Indian relationship might have been different.He wrote one small

volume of essays on India, but it was written with such fervour and effect that

it was the standard authority on India for many years in England.The revolt of

1857 gave these essays additional popularity as they were easy on the

English ear. Despite the abundance of evidence contradicting Macaulay, later

English writers continued to echo his ideas again and again, thereby keeping

a falsehood alive.Macaulay’s India was a distant land across boundless seas

and deserts where dusky natives lived under strange stars, worshipped

strange gods and wrote strange characters from right to left.

It is not surprising that India figured in English Romanticism.What does

astonish historians is that the Romantic writers found India of only passing

and minor interest.Perhaps the complexities of a political relationship

hampered a better understanding of Indian culture. Britons came to India to

govern, acquire wealth; live without interrupting their own habits and customs,

and return home in comfort and economic security.Belief in their political

ascendancy and material prosperity as evidence of cultural superiority

possibly rendered them unreceptive to any but the negative aspects of Indian

society.There were, no doubt, some British administrators who made notable

contributions to Indology, but most of the traders, as well as the adventurers

serving at Indian courts, were hardly men of culture; they were merely

interested in “shaking the pagoda tree”.Whilst British power was reaffirmed

with a certain degree of finality after the revolt of 1857, the uprising left scars

on both sides.The British, proud and arrogant with success, still were mindful

of how close they had come to total loss and disaster, which made them

cautious, suspicious, even afraid.The Indians, on the other hand, smarting

under defeat, turned to more organized preparations for their national

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reconstruction.Each side remembered the savagery and brutalities of the

other, without recalling their own part in it. It was in this atmosphere of mutual

distrust and fear, later worsened by political crises and conflicts, that cultural

intercourse between India and Britain took place. For instance, John Ruskin

whose opinion was coloured by the events of 1857, dismissed Indians and

their philosophy as “childish, or restricted in intellect and similarly childish or

restricted in their philosophies or faiths”,

Ruskin wrote and spoke with equal authority and arrogance on subjects he

knew well and those he knew nothing about.However, he was a great teacher

– he was Slade Professor of Art at Oxford – and a master of prose.But he was

a complex person, at once charming and sinister, righteous and satanic. He

inherited a strain of madness and suffered intermittently from insanity.

Tennyson expressed sentiments similar to Ruskin’s in his Defence of

Lucknow.But these are extreme examples of English response to India in

which reason was subordinated to prejudice. During the second half of the

19th century, Buddhism became better known in Britain, as in Europe.Indeed,

since the end of the 19th century, many European thinkers and writers have

proposed the adoption of Buddhism by the West.Whatever their success,

there is no doubt that in recent times Buddhism, because of its rational and

realistic character, has gained popularity in the West. Of the three Eastern

civilizations, Indian, Chinese, and Islamic, and Indians have influenced the

modern West most, especially through Buddhism.In fact, the West –

especially Christians – regarded Buddhism as so powerful that it was

dangerous.

Sir Edwin Arnold’s famous poem, The Light of Asia published in 1879,

which is based on Lalitavistara singing the praise of the Buddha, has become

extremely popular.In America it has gone through one hundred editions, and

in England between fifty to one hundred.It has been translated into several

European languages.Later, scholars like T.W. Rhys Davids who greatly aided

the interpretation of early Buddhism by editing Pali sources, Mrs. Caroline

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Rhys Davids, Paul Carus, Edward Conze, Christmas Humphreys, and others

contributed to the popularity of Buddhism in the West. In 1881 T.W. Rhys

Davids founded the Pali Text Society, which attracted the attention of a

number of European scholars to a new and important branch of Indian thought

and literature.In addition to two dozen volumes of translations, the Society

published one hundred and seventeen volumes of Pali texts and a Pali-

English dictionary.The Buddhist Society in London and elsewhere has also

played an important role in exposing the West to Buddhist teaching. Looking

at the notices of meetings and lectures in any recent issue of the London New

Statesman, for example, one must get the impression that during the past

decade or so interest in Indian thought, particularly Buddhism, has been

steadily growing in Europe. Actually, early in the 19th century, attempts were

made to prove the Buddhistic origins of primitive Christianity. N.A. Notovick’s

book, Inconnue Vie de Jesus Christ (Unknown Life of Jesus Christ), published

in 1834, sought to prove that Jesus had been initiated into his career by a 16

year stay with Brahmans and Buddhist monks.Many scholars from different

countries later combined in trying to discover cases of Christian dependence

on Buddhism, such as Rudolf Seydel, A.S. Edmunds, and Richard Garbe.In

1882 Notovick’s book came under heavy criticism.In the English translation of

the work he endeavoured to answer the criticisms, maintaining that the

doctrine contained in the Tibetan verses was the same as that of the Gospels,

differing only in outward appearance.

India even partly conditioned English character, for the conquest of India

made England a powerful political and military empire.A sense of racial

superiority and national exclusiveness, and of a predetermined mission,

inverted nationalism which often manifests itself in understatements and in

deceptively disguised self-praise for which the British are well known, strict

individualism neatly integrated in collective discipline, and ability for

endurance under sustained pressure, are natural consequences of the British

association with India. From the early days of the East India Company, Indian

words have been continuously adopted into English.Typical words are durbar,

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bazaar, pukka, khaki, bungalow, divan, pundit, pajamas, baksheesh, begum,

chop, chit, conquests, fakir, purdah, raj, nabob, darshan, verandah, vakil,

zenana, palanquin, mulligatawny, chutney, swaraj, and shikar.“The Oxford

English Dictionary”, observes Subba Rao “which rejects over half the words

noticed by Hobson-Jobson and does not contain words which have become

familiar only in very recent times, accords recognition to about a thousand

words, apart from numerous compounds and derivatives”.It is, however, true

that this number, large as it is, is small considering the length and intensity of

Indo-British contact, and also in comparison to the English words adopted by

Indian languages.The assimilation of language over this period was

conditioned by the nature and need of the relationship. For instance, in the

early phase when contact was predominantly commercial, the words borrowed

were mainly from that vocabulary.Later, when Indian thought, literature, and

philosophy began to attract the attention of the English scholars, English men

of letters began to use terminology from these fields in their writing.Milton,

Dryden, Orme, Burke, Scott, Thackeray, and T.S. Eliot are some of the

eminent writers who made effective use of Indian words.

In a unique although incidental way, India helped to develop not only British

economy and social life, but also political thought.The increasing influx of

Indian wealth into England created a new class, whose widening horizon for

the deployment and experimentation of political ideas required a setting of

India’s size.In the East India Company Adam Smith saw an embodiment of

the hated “mercantile system”.Many English political movements tested their

strength and fought their early contests upon Indian questions.A few

Englishmen had succeeded in carving out an empire and enforcing an

organized, although intensely authoritarian, government.India provided the

much needed efficiency in administration and the purpose in government for

the dominant English Liberalism of the day, in addition to an operation base

for free trade and the missionary activities of Evangelicalism.It was this Indian

experience which influenced Utilitarian thought, and caused John Stuart Mill to

criticize Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.He called his book “little more than

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the turning of an Indian lantern on European problems”.One obvious example

of Indian influence is the development of British imperialism, another lies in

the reform of the civil service.Maine was deeply influenced by India in his

study of early societies. He wrote after the publication of Popular Government:

“If there was an ideal Toryism I should probably be a Tory; but I should wish to

win now.The truth is, India and the India Office make one judge public men by

standards which have little to do with public opinion.

Echoes of Indian thought could be heard even in lands only remotely

concerned with India.For instance, in the works of Mihai Eminescu (1850 –

1889), the greatest poet of Rumania, Sanskrit and Buddhist influences are

found.Eminescu learned of Indian philosophy through Schopenhauer. He also

had some knowledge of the Sanskrit language, although it is doubtful that he

could read original Sanskrit texts.However, he translated Franz Bopp’s

Glossarium Sanskriticum and a part of his Dictionary.Parts of his poetry

appear to be Rumanian versions of well-known Sanskrit texts. For example, in

Letter number one, his vision of the origin of the world, when the existent and

the non-existent were not, is reminiscent of the “Hymn of Creation” from the

Rig Veda.The idea of nirvana is frequently found in his poems.The Hindu

approach to reality and beauty is reflected in many of his verses. Indian

literary legends and themes are also found in poems such as “God and Man”

and “Looking for Sheherezade”.Not only the title of his poem, “Tattwamasi”,

indicates his familiarity with upanishadic thought, but the content deals with

the identity of Atman and Brahman. Hindu monism is reflected in his

So it is that bird and man,

Sun and moon

Are born and ideological in Brahma

The Sacred –

Where all things become one.

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Eminescu’s poetry also contains many erotic themes, such as Kamadeva,

after the Hindu god of love, the spark of creation.That Eminescu chose an

Indian symbol to express one of his intimate sentiments is held as “yet another

proof of the deep and wide contact he had with the ancient literature of India”.

Russian intellectuals, too, reacting against the increasing mechanization of

life, turned towards the East for inspiration.Although this movement was not

as powerful as the Romantic movement in Western Europe, especially in

Germany, Russia, aided by her rapidly expanding territorial frontiers in Asia,

acquired a new Asian awareness in her national disposition.In fact, even

before the big Russian advance eastwards, Chadaiev said in 1840 that “We

are the darling children of the East. ……Everywhere we are in contact with

the East, it is from there that we have drawn our belief, our laws, our

virtue…….” He goes on to claim that as the East is declining, Russia is the

natural successor to Eastern wisdom. Maxim Gorki (1968 – 1936) in a letter

to Romain Rolland said that Russia was more Oriental than China.

Dostoievsky declared that it would be beneficial for Russia to turn her soul

towards the East.In fact, there has always been a sort of gulf between

Western Europe and Russia; the former frequently referring to the latter as the

East. Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) responded to the East with great sensitivity.

At Kazan he studied Oriental languages and literature, and came into close

contact with Asian people during his frequent visits to Caucasus. He acquired

an early reverent interest in Indian culture which he always retained. In 1870

he published a collection of folktales which included some Indian stories. His

confession, in which he describes his spiritual struggles, refers more than

once to the Buddha with admiration, relates some of the episodes of the

Buddha’s Renunciation, and seeks to demonstrate the futility of human life on

earth in terms of an ancient Indian parable.Ancient Indian literature, Max

Müller’s series, Sacred Books of the East, and later, the writings of

Vivekananda made a deep impression on him. He opposed the imposition of

what he considered a degenerating Western structure on India, but disagreed

with Hinduism on a number of points including Hindu cosmology. Indeed, he

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looked upon Hinduism through the eyes of a social reformer, yet Indian

thought helped him to acquire new standards by which he could revaluate

Christianity.Tolstoy corresponded with a number of his Indian friends,

including Mahatma Gandhi and C.R. Das. In Letter to a Hindu, addressed to

Gandhi in 1909, Tolstoy quoted from the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the

Tamil Kural, and modern Hindu religious writings, including Vivekananda. He

urged Indians to adopt what he called “the Law of Love”, and not give up their

ancient religious culture for the materialism of the West. Tolstoy was amongst

the first European intellectuals who reflected on the problems facing India. It

is well known that his ideas on resistance to aggression influenced Mahatma

Gandhi.

Indian thought made a better impression not only in 19th century Germany

than in England but even in distant America. An illustration of this influence is

the America transcendentalist movement inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803 – 1882).Emerson’s central theme is that all that exists is the manifestion

of a simple universal spirit.The development of Emerson’s thought is revealed

in his Journals which cover 20 years.India is first mentioned in 1842. It seems

that in the beginning Buddhism aroused conflicting feelings in him. Whilst he

admitted the greatness of Buddhist teaching, he was uncertain of its

practicability.He was drawn by the concept of the transmigration of soul:

“Then I discovered the Secret of the World, that all things subsist, and do not

die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again”.The

discovery of Hinduism and Buddhism impressed on Emerson that all religions

are fundamentally the same.8 years later, Romain Rolland came to a similar

conclusion which he described as the “predisposition to Vedantism”. Repelled

by the increasing materialism of the West, Emerson turned to India for

solace:“The Indian teaching, through its cloud of legends, has yet a simple

and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It

teaches and to despise trifles”. As he grew older he became increasingly

devoted to Hinduism and Buddhism.Nowhere does Emerson’s

transcendentalism find more complete expression than in his remarkable

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poem, “Brahma”, which Sencourt suggests is a translation from Kalidasa

through a Latin version known to Dr. Morrison of the Indian Institute.The poem

may not have been a direct translation from Kalidasa, but it was derived from

him. In his essay on Plato, Emerson explicitly acknowledges his debt to India:

“In all nations there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the

fundamental Unity.The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lost all

being in one Being.This tendency finds its highest expression in the religious

writings of the East, and chiefly in the Indian Scriptures, in the Vedas, the

Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana.Those writings contain little else than

this idea, and they rise to pure and sublime strains in celebrating it”.

Another American who turned his attention towards India was Henry David

Thoreau, a younger contemporary and friend of Emerson. He is chiefly

remembered for Walden, which much inspired the pioneers of the British

labour movement, and for his essay, “On Civil Disobedience”, in which he

protested the government’s interference with individual liberty.In some

respect, Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of life and programme of action were

similar to Thoreau’s. Both were keen naturalists; both believed in the dignity of

human labour and attempted to run self-sufficient farms; both were

vegetarians, teetotalers, and non-smokers; both derived their inspiration from

the Bhagavad Gita; and both were rebels against human injustice. There is

some controversy about Mahatma Gandhi’s debt to Thoreau.Thoreau

partisans suggest that his “On Civil Disobedience”, published in 1849, was

Gandhi’s source book in his political campaign for civil resistance, because

the Mahatma used themselves phrase “civil disobedience” to describe his

resistance to the tyranny of the State.Beyond this use of identical phrases,

there is little to substantiate this assertion. In his autobiography, My

Experiments with Truth, Gandhi lists and analyzes the books that most

influenced him during the formative period of his public life when he was

experimenting with the political weapon which he called Satyagraha. In his

generous acknowledgement of debts, he does not refer to the work of

Thoreau.Some weight has been lent to this misconception by an open letter

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that Gandhi wrote to the people of America, on the eve of the launching of his

Quit India movement in 1942, in which he showed his great esteem for

Thoreau, whom he called, in his characteristic humility, his “teacher”.This

letter, however, also clearly states that Gandhi had found in Thoreau a

teacher who, through his essay on civil disobedience, furnished him with

scientific confirmation of what he was doing, and Gandhi was punctilious in his

use of language.

Thoreau was deeply impressed by Hindu thought and his Journal contains

many comments on his extensive reading of Hindu texts.He wrote in 1850 that

the inspiration of the Vedas had fallen on him like the light of a higher and

purer luminary, and risen on him like the full moon after the stars had come

out.Walden contains explicit references to Indian scriptures, such as “How

much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East”. He

even followed a traditional Hindu way of life. “It was fit that I should live on rice

mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India”.Thoreau invokes the

language of silence, which is so common in India, in his silent communion with

the old fisherman at the pond. Even more significant, perhaps, are the many

references to the river and the definite equation of Walden Pond with the

sacred Ganges. “To dismiss all of these references as simply part of

Thoreau’s temperamental affinity for India is to underestimate the

extraordinary influence of the Orient on his own thinking and to misunderstand

the purpose of Walden”.Walt Whitman who championed American intellectual

independence, was amongst those who came under the influence of the

Transcendentalists.There are no explicit quotations from Indian literature in

Whitman’s writings, but he knew of Indian texts.His poems show a strong

sense of the brotherhood of man, and it was possibly from the

Transcendentalists that he learned an all-inclusive mystical self-identification

with all men and all things. In Song of Myself he says that “all religions are

true”; a doctrine which has always found favour with Hindu thought. In the

nineteenth century, this doctrine was powerfully reaffirmed by Swami

Ramakrishna.In some of his later poems Whitman shows a definite interest in

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Hindu mysticism.Most significant of these is Passage to India in which he

voices the characteristic Hindu doctrine that his own soul is one with the soul

of the universe.

The Christian Science movement in America was possibly influenced by

India. The founder of this movement, Mary Baker Eddy, in common with the

Vedantins, believed that matter and suffering were unreal, and that a full

realization of this fact was essential for relief from ills and pains. In Science

and Health she asserts: “Christian Science explains all cause and effect as

mental, not physical. It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows

the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of

being, and sets free the imprisoned thought. In divine Science, the universe,

including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal. Science shows that what

is termed matter is but the subjective state of what is termed by the author

mortal mind”.The Christian Science doctrine had naturally been given a

Christian framework, but the echoes of Vedanta in its literature are often

striking. Late in the 19th century, Vivekananda made two trips to the United

States, and was received with enthusiastic popular acclaim.There were,

however, some critics who were ill-informed of his motives and of the

concepts he represented, and who dreaded the influx of alien ideas. Both the

devotion and dispute which his lectures evoked stimulated further American

interest in Indian religion and thought.As a result, Vedanta Centres and

Ramakrishna Mission were established in various parts of the country, and

they flourish today as active nuclei of India thought.Even before Vivekananda

fired the imagination of the American people, Sanskrit philosophy had made

an impact on American scholarship by the teaching of Sanskrit at leading

American universities. Later, Tagore visited the United States three times and

traveled throughout the country lecturing on Indian art and philosophy and

giving readings from his poetry and plays.His writing had already, and have

always, received widespread appreciation.

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Because of the advance in the mass communication media, the Indian

national movement attracted the attention of European peoples who were

themselves going through a period of democratic advance, fighting against

traditional and aristocratic oppression.Some European intellectuals took a

purely academic interest in India during this period, but others were inclined

towards a synthesis between East and west.Amongst the latter, Romain

Rolland, the French pacifist and author, is outstanding.He was deeply

concerned with and championed the cause of Indian thought and culture.He

saw a close affinity between the Aryans of the East and those of the West. He

met many Indian intellectuals, especially from the Ramakrishna Mission in

Europe.He wrote the Life of Ramakrishna in which he said, “I am bringing to

Europe, as yet unaware of it, the fruit of a new autumn, a new message of the

soul, the symphony of India, bearing the name of Ramakrishna.The man

whose image I evoke was the consummation of a thousand years of the

spiritual life of three hundred million people. He also wrote the world-famous

biography of Mahatma Gandhi, which inspired many European thinkers.

Having read this biography, Mira ben (Madeline Slade), the daughter of an

English admiral, renounced a life of luxury to live in the ashram of Gandhi. In

Gandhi, Rolland saw the embodiment of all that was simple, modest, and

pure.Surprisingly, Rolland had never visited India. In close contact on the one

had with Tagore and Gandhi, and one the other with European Intellectuals,

Romain Rolland was a unique mediator between India and the West.

Although a devout Christian himself, he often felt that his Christianity had

more in common with the religions of India than with the church in which he

was brought up.

Of modern India thinkers, M.K. Gandhi (1869-1948) had the most influence

on the outside world. Gandhi has often been described as the greatest man

since Jesus; he certainly was India’s greatest since the Buddha.He

represented Indian idealism at its best.All his life he worked on almost all

fronts of the Indian revolution, but he combated evil with good and in the true

spirit of love. Satya (truth) was his God; ahimsa (non-violence), his creed. He

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believed violence to be the antithesis of the spirit of truth. Inflicting physical

injury or uttering an unkind word, even thinking ill of others, were serious

violations of ahimsa. Indeed, to be truly non-violent meant that one must love

his opponent and pray for him even when attacked.No wonder many

Christians see in Gandhian doctrines a reflection of Christian thought.

Indeed, Gandhi was a great admirer of Christianity, and often admitted the

influence of the Sermon on the Mount which he believed contained Jesus’

message of non-violence.Frequently he would read passages from the Bible

in his daily prayer meetings.“When I survey the wondrous Cross” and “Lead

kindly light amid the encircling gloom” was his favourite hymns.Romain

Rolland described Gandhi as the “St. Paul of our own days”.Gandhi was so

devoted to Jesus that in the earlier phase of his career many of his Christian

friends thought his conversion was imminent. But he was a Hindu to the core.

Defining his attitude to a prominent Indian Christian, Kali Charan Banerjee, he

said: “Today my position is that, though I admire much in Christianity, I am

unable to identify that Hinduism, as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my

whole being, and I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads that I

miss even in the Sermon on the Mount.”Kropotkin’s essays awakened

Gandhi’s ideas of pacific anarchism.His completely no-violent society to be

stateless, for it was not possible to impose no-violence on a person or

society.Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You and Ruskin’s Unto This

Last contributed to Ghandhi’s philosophy.

Gandhi, although he belonged to humanity and wielded unparalleled

influence over millions of people all over the world, was, in all respects,

essentially an Indian.As a London Times editorial said on the day after his

death: “No country but India and no religion but Hinduism could have given

birth to a Gandhi.” Whilst the full repercussions of Ghandi’s influence are still

to be seen, there is no doubt they will be unending and inexhaustible.His

philosophy has already assumed a self-perpetuating quality.His doctrines of

non-violence and satyagraha have Europe not only given Indians a new

means of fighting for their rights but have become a source of inspiration to all

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seekers of justice everywhere.Indeed, non-Indian movements, notably those

led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the American South and Kenneth Kaunda in

Northern Rhodesia, might even be regarded as more truly Gandhian in

essence than similar movements within India today.Since the days of the

Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956, followed by the upsurge of the sit-

Indians and freedom rides of 1960-1961, the movement for civil rights in the

United States has been strongly based on the Gandhian concept of non-

violence.The movement, as expected, has assumed a distinctively local

character and personality, and has gained notable successes in advancing the

Negro revolution in America. Martin Luther King often acknowledges his debt

to Gandhian thought and literature.

In Nazi Germany, the real resistance that developed within the country itself

was inspired by Gandhian theories of passiveness and non-violent revolution.

Ist leader, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was so impressed by the possibility of applying

these ideas to Christianity, and employing Gandhian resistance against

Hitler’s tyranny that he arranged to make a “pilgrimage to India” to visit

Gandhi, but political events prevented him from undertaking the journey.

Today, wherever there is a popular people’s movement against injustice, it

proceeds along lines inspired by Gandhian satyagraha.Indeed, what Marx is

to socialism Gandhi is to modern active Europe pacifism.His doctrine of class

co-operation and trusteeship inspires hope in those who loathe the prospect of

achieving progress only through class conflict. Persuasion, not coercion, is the

keynote of polity today. In fact, serious, and in some ways diverse, British

writers, such as Sir Stephen King-Hall and Kingsley Martin, suggest that any

resistance to nuclear war must be non-violent, organized on Gandhian lines.

An Indian Gandhi scholar writes, “Countries distant from India, wherever the

field is ready or rather where there are workers in the field have been

influenced by the Gandian approach to the spiritual and practical fusion.

Serious studies in Group Dynamics, group and individual action-therapy are

being pursued in great institutions abroad; the Gandhian quantum which

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stimulates higher loyalties and cohesion rather than spreads negative crowd-

infection has stimulated new sociological and applicational research.’

Romain Rolland spoke for many of Gandhi’s Western admirers when he

wrote “Gandhi is not only for India a hero of national history whose legendary

memory will be enshrined in the millennial epoch.He has not only been the

spirit of active life which has breathed into the peoples of India the proud

consciousness of their unity, of their power, and the will to their independence.

He has renewed, for all the people of the West, the message of their Christ,

forgotten or betrayed. He has inscribed his name among the sages and saints

of humanity; and the radiance of his figure has penetrated into all the regions

of the earth. The American missionary, John Haynes Holmes, declared: “If I

believe in rebirth, I should-I mention it with due respect-see in Mahatma

Gandhi the Christ returned to our world.” Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), the

modern Indian philosopher, transformed the Hindu spiritual heritage into a

dynamic spiritual evolution. He is the only modern Indian thinker known both

as a Yogi and as a philosopher. He sought to reconcile the theories of ancient

Vedanta with those of modern scientific materialism and vitalism, thus

attempting to harmonize spiritual and material demands.He was opposed to

scientific materialism that sought to reduce man to the position of an insect.

He believed in the omnipresence of the One and the inevitable culmination of

man’s evolution into an integral and dynamic union with Him in life. Reality,

although manifold in self-expression, is one and indivisible. There is nothing

else but Him, and to infuse His unity, harmony, and perfection into worldly life

and nature is the mission of eventually every individual human soul. This was

the core of Aurobindo’s philosophy and the central aim of his Yoga. His

Spiritual Realism thus departs from the traditional Indian doctrine of maya.

Aurobindo was educated in Europe, and his philosophy was greatly influenced

by the theory of evolution and the Western positive attitude to the material

world, but he discovered both of these elements in the Saiva and the Sakta

forms of the Advaita.Romain Rolland regarded Aurobindo as the highest

synthesis of the genius of Europe and the genious of Asia. He was an Indian

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rishi who had gained a clear insight into the modern scientific mind. Instead of

finding a conflict between East and West, he saw the old heritage of the East

and the new knowledge of the West as one organized whole. His philosophy,

like that of Gandhi, was couched in a language drawn from India’s past, but

was addressed to problems posed in the modern West.

Whilst Aurobindo’s philosophy was rooted in the vedantic consciousness,

his Muslim contemporary, Sir Muhammed Iqbal (1876 – 1938), was deeply

committed to Islam.Poet and philosopher, he wrote one of the most popular

national songs of India, “Sare Jahan settlement Acchha Hindustan Hamara”.

He was well versed in European thought and culture but is better known as a

poet than as a philosopher, although he inspired the creation of Pakistan. In

Germany, where he completed his doctoral thesis on Persian metaphysics, he

became acutely conscious of both the good and the evil of Western scientific

materialism, and of the consequent agonizing inner conflicts amongst

European intellectuals and nations.He admired the vitality and dynamism of

European life but criticized its mechanistic and utilitarian aspects.In his poems

and teaching he combined his Islamic beliefs with Western rationalism, and

was heavily influenced by Nietzsche.Although a mystic, he preached the

glorification and divination of desire rather than its negation.Somewhat like the

Bhagavad Gita, he urged man not so much to seek God as to seek his own

true self.The essence of his philosophy was the quest for perfect man which

could only be achieved through persistent and continuous personal effort.

During the last years of his life, Iqbal was increasingly attracted by the

progress of Soviet Russia.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) was a poet, philosopher, educator,

and above all, a humanist. Fundamentally inspired by the Upanishads, he did

not believe the new India belonged to one race or religion but to humanity.

His visits to Western capitals were invariably attended by huge crowds, and

he became an object of world-wide adoration. For a poet, especially of a

subject-nation, this reception was unique. Despite this, the award of the Nobel

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Prize in 1913 to Tagore, against the claims of such famous Europeans as

Thomas Hardy, Anatole France, Tolstoy, and Zola, drew protests from certain

sections of the European and American press because Tagore was not

“white”. Perhaps in honouring Tagore, the West was endeavouring to show its

appreciation of the Indian heritage which he so nobly symbolized.Tagore

wrote in both Bengali and English, and from 1913 onwards his poetry was

translated into practically every European language.No other Indian has

received greater honour in the West during his life-time. Such appreciation

cannot be altogether devoid of understanding.The west, involved in the

conflicts of political and military alignments, and on the brink of the First World

War was frustrated at the futility of material advancement. At this time Tagore

brought to them a message which appealed “to their intelligence, their

goodwill, their longing for emancipation from the chains of dead matter,

speaking to white, black and yellow in the same language …….with the

simplicity of a child and a prophet”. After the war, Europe’s response to the

culture of Asia took conflicting forms. Whilst some thinkers defend the West,

others hailed the East. In this process of European rethinking, India and

Tagore played an important role, Numerous Western readers eagerly read

Tagore’s works, hoping to find mystical solace from the frustrations of life.

Many European intellectuals were so firmly convinced that only Eastern ideals

could save them that innumerable pseudo-oriental societies were founded all

over Europe.Many of these societies had inaccurate knowledge of the East

and practiced popularized forms of pseudo-Buddhistic and yogic cults.

Amongst the many European intellectuals and artists Tagore met, William

Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939) was one of his more intimate friends.He dedicated

The Gardener to Yeats. Yeats’ belief that poetry was the product of a mystical

experience, a state of trance where worldly conflicts melt away and the

subconscious is transformed into artistic creation had Indian origins.Yeats had

discovered India, in fact, long before his intimate contact with Tagore. He had

published his essay The Celtic Element in 1897, followed three years later by

an essay on Shelley in which he compared the ministering spirits of

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intellectual beauty with the Devas of the East. Impressed in his adolescence

by Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, he was alienated from science; Theosophy,

Buddhism, Odic Force, and poetry constituted his world for a long time. In his

Autobiography he recalls that it was under the impact of psychical research

and mystical philosophy that he broke away from his father’s influence, and he

spent much time in mystical gatherings during his school days. Describing his

first meeting with a Hindu philosopher at Dublin, Yeats said: “It was my first

meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed

at once logical and boundless.Consciousness, he taught, does not merely

spread out its surface but has, in vision and in contemplation, another motion,

and can change in height and in depth”. His appreciation of India, however, in

common with many European intellectuals, was more romantic than

academic.After his contact with Tagore and his discovery of the English

version of the Gitanjali, he turned more towards the East for inspiration. When

Sir William Rothenstein, the celebrated English art critic and painter who was

chiefly responsible for introducing Tagore to English intellectuals, gave Yeats

the manuscript of the Gitanjali to read before it was published, Yeats was so

deeply moved by it that he carried it with him everywhere. He records in his

preface to the first edition of Gitanjali: “The lyrics…..display in their thought a

world I have dreamed of all my life long.The work of a supreme culture, they

yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the

rushes”.He continues: “A whole people, a whole civilization, immeasurably

strange to us, seem to have been taken up into this imagination; and yet we

are not moved because of its strangeness, but because we have met our own

image, as though we had walked in Rossetti’s willow wood, or heard, perhaps

for the first time in literature, our voice as in a dream”.Yeats wrote some

poems which had an Indian setting, such as “Jealousy”. “Kanva on Himself” is

based on a Hindu prayer: “I have lived many lives…….Everything that has

been shall be again”.

The quality Yeats valued most in Tagore’s poetry was his union of

sensuous images and deep spiritual appreciation of life. Yeats also aspired to

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what he called the “unity of being”, to bring together the natural and the

spiritual world in his poetry.In his conception, nature and God were not

separated by thought, and the constricting sense of guilt was banished by

gaiety and joyfulness in which the creative mind of the artist had been freed.

According to Yeats, European writing, despite its familiar metaphor and

general structure, was no longer acceptable because spirit and matter were

irrevocably separated and as a result nature had become evil. Yeats could

not forsake nature which was so full of art, beauty, and music. In Tagore he

found a saint who sand of the joy in life without disturbing its deep sense of

sanctity.Unlike Tagore, however, Yeats was keenly interested in the Yoga

system and the Tantra.The authoritative texts of these two systems had

reached Europe at about the same time and they made a further impact on

Yeats.Towards the end of his life Yeats moved away from Tagore a little, but

he continued to draw inspiration from India, which contained for him the vision

of the final harmony in human life.Like another Irish poet, George William

Russell (popularly known as A.E.) who had also come under the influence of

the Upanishads and Theosophy, Yeats discovered an identical spirit

underlying both Gaelic and Indian civilizations. In his “Meru” (1935) – Meru is

the central mountain of the world in Indian mythology – Yeats contrasts the

peaceful life of the mystic, despite the hardships of nature, with the transitory

cycle of creation and destruction exemplified in the world of man.Yeats was

influenced not only by Indian mysticism, but also by the secular aspects of

Indian classical literature and art.Traces of the influence of Indian secular

thought are also noticed in the works of other writers, such as Edward

Carpenter, Havelock Ellis, and D.H. Lawrence, who found support in the

Kama Sutra for their revolt against the rigid sexual ethics of an earlier

period.This text, widely read despite restrictions on it of various kinds, has had

a far more subtle effect on West people than is often realized.

The mysticism of T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and W.H. Auden clearly stems

from Hindu roots.Aldous Huxley, an exacting critic, a brilliant novelist, and a

satirist of his age, was deeply concerned with Indian religions and philosophy.

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He was, however, a highly sophisticated European with scientific training. He

tested both aesthetic enjoyment and mystic experience by what he saw in

conduct and behaviour, both in himself and in the world around him. He found

many faults with the Indian attitude towards life. Yet he was convinced, after

prolonged reflection, that society could not be changed unless the individual

sensibility, cleansed of all passions, proceeded towards self-realization

through selflessness.In ‘Beyond the Mexique Bay’ and ‘Ends and Means’ he

suggests that the flux of time is an illusion caused by man’s preoccupation

with his personal affairs, and it is through contemplation that man can merge

into the timelessness of reality. For the first time in Ends and Means, a pacifist

manifesto, Huxley almost reverentially mentions Gandhi, in whose

achievement means and ends are inseparable.In Ape and Essence, he

regarded Gandhi’s assassination as a cosmic tragedy.The Perennial

Philosophy is yet another illustration of his knowledge of Indian thought,

especially the Vedanta.T.S. Eliot shows considerable knowledge of and

sympathy with Hinduism and Buddhism in his writings.The Waste Land, for

instance, contains references to a sermon of the Buddha and to a famous

passage of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and concludes, like an Upanishad,

with the Sanskrit words Shantih shantih shantih (Peace! Peace!

Peace!!!!).Four Quartets reaffirms his familiarity with and interest in the Hindu

and Buddhist texts. In “The Dry Salvages”, which treats time and eternity, he

makes an explicit reference to the Bhagavad Gita and to its cardinal doctrine

of niskama karma – that all man’s actions should be motivated by rightness

and goodness, not by expectation of gain or merit.

Indian influences can easily be seen in Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s

Edge, and in the writings of Edith Sitwell, Christopher Isherwood, and Gerald

Heard.C.G. Jung interpreted Hinduism and Buddhism in terms of his

psychological system, and pointed out the great significance of Indian thought

for the modern West: “We do not yet realize that while we are turning upside

down the material world of the East with our technical proficiency, the East

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with its psychic proficiency is throwing our spiritual world into confusion. We

have never yet hit upon the thought that while we are overpowering the Orient

from without, it may be fastening its hold upon us from within”.Many other

Western scientists have been profoundly attracted by Indian thought, causing

them to revise their own intellectual pre-suppositions and inheritance.The

relationship between the body and the mind is as much a concern of the Western

psychologist as it was of the ancient Indian philosopher. Kenneth Walker, a

famous British surgeon, has devoted a good deal of time and writing to the

study of Indian thought and literature in search of an answer: From the point of

view of science we see man as an elaborate piece of mechanism, his actions

determined by man’s endocrine glands, his central nervous system, his

hereditary endowments, and his environment. From philosophy we learn that

his capacity for knowledge is strictly limited, so that by means of the sense

organs alone he can never know reality.This is confirmed by Eastern

philosophy, but a new idea is added. Man, as he is, can see no more and do no

more, but by right effort and right method, he can gain new powers, understand

more, and achieve more. Finally we have the confirmation of this idea by

religion. Whatever may be the differences in their creed, whatever may be the

variations in their philosophy, all religions, without exception, contain this idea

of the possibility of change, so that a man may become other than he is. From

the point of view of all religions man is a being in who are lying latent higher

powers.

Amongst contemporary interpreters of Indian culture and philosophic

thought, S. Radhakrishnan is the best known. His many works, almost thirty,

written in superb English with arresting originality, his long period of teaching

Indian philosophy at Oxford University, and his eloquent, lucid lectures, have

made him the representative Indian philosopher for most foreigners.His

scholarly status, no doubt, has been aided by his pre-eminence in Indian

political life; he served a term as India’s Rastrapati, President. In fact, well

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before Radhakrishnan’s work became widely known, he had made such an

impact on the West that more than thirty years ago C.E.M. Joad published a

book entitled Counter-attack from the East.The Philosophy of Radhakrishnan.

Generally, Radhakrishnan is regarded as the philosopher of a dynamic

idealism characterized by a deep spiritual note, a catholic outlook, an

appreciation of the eternal values of all cultures and religions, and an abiding,

confident optimism as to the future of human civilization.His idealism contains

certain influences of Western thinkers such as Plato and Hegel, but it is

essentially upanishadic in its comprehensiveness.He accepts the monistic and

the theistic view of the Upanishads, and does not subordinate the one to the

other.The essence of his idealism is the primacy of the spirit and its

manifestation in matter, life, mind, and self. It is not the substance of Hegel,

for it is not immobile but dynamic and real. It is felt everywhere, although

seen nowhere.The spirit is the absolute, and is not only imminent but also

transcendent.He is a follower of Samkara, but does not regard the world as an

illusion (maya), as most other Advaitins do. Although the creation of the world

is inexplicable, the world is inexplicable; the world is not devoid of value and

importance. He would prefer to treat the world as a combination of being and

non-being.

Of the other interpreters of Indian culture who have made substantial

impact on Western thinking. Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877 – 1947) is

unique. Born in Ceylon of a highly successful Ceylonese barrister and a British

mother, and originally trained as a geologist, he became a scholar and

philosopher wholly wedded to the Indian tradition.His masterly analysis of

Indian culture exhibits a rare combination of scientific investigation and artistic

formulation.His researches include work on archaeology, philology,

iconography, metaphysics, and religion. For the last thirty years of his life he

worked at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His writing reveals a devoted,

painstaking, and erudite scholarship, encyclopaedic intellect, and sensitive

insight.His works have acquired such a high degree of authority that it is

virtually impossible to pick up any significant modern work on Indian art which

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has not drawn upon Coomaraswamy. He wanted India to remain Indian and

continue to demonstrate that a pattern of life rooted in religion and philosophy

can also be elegant, graceful, and fully satisfying.In India philosophy has been

the key to the understanding of concrete life, not a mere intellectual exercise

in abstract thought. In Jagdish Chandra Bose can be seen a remarkable

Indian response to Western impact.Bose, a pioneer of modern Indian science,

combined ancient Indian introspective methods with modern experimental

methods to demonstrate “the universal livingness of matter” or “the

omnipresence of Life in Matter”.He demonstrated by laboratory tests, using

special scientific instruments of extreme delicacy and precision, that plants

possessed life. Modern science thus endorsed the ancient upanishadic truth

that the entire universe is born of a life-force and is quivering with a touch of

animation.His work represents the triumph of spirituality over extreme

materialism.

In 1897, two disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda and Swami

Brahmananda, founded the Ramakrishna Mission with its headquarters at

Belur near Calcutta.Whist Brahmananda remained in India as head of the

organization, Vivekananda pioneered the establishment of Ramakrishna

Missions in America and other Western countries.However, when

Vivekananda first visited the United States in 1893 to attend the World-

Parliament of Religions at Chicago, he did not come as a missionary of the

Ramakrishna cult but as an exponent of Vedanta philosophy.So Vedanta

philosophy got further circulation before the Ramakrishna movement gained

currency.In any case, the distinction between the two is small. Vivekananda

boldly proclaimed that Vedanta was destined to be the religion of mankind.

He received a spontaneous ovation at the Chicago meeting when he gave his

remarkable presentation of the Hindu religion.He won popular recognition

abroad for India’s ancient civilization, for the Vedanta philosophy, and for

India’s newborn claim to nationhood.Such was the impact of his personality

that wherever he went, whether in Europe, China, or Egypt, he created a

minor sensation; in America he was called the “cyclonic Hindu”. The influence

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of Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Missions, through their maths in almost

every Western capital, is considerable.Although essentially Hindu, they

advocate the oneness of all religions and the doctrine of “one goal of the many

paths”.This extreme religious tolerance has a natural appeal to many in the

West.There are some, however, who dread a deeper challenge in this “live

and let live” approach.

How deeply Indian ideas have impressed the Western mind through

Theosophy can be gauged by the great popularity of the works of J.

Krishnamurti who was acclaimed in his youth as “Messiah”. The central theme

of Krishnamurti’s teaching is that it is through self-knowledge that man comes

to eternal reality. The term Theosophy is a translation of the Sanskrit term,

Brahmavidya.First used in the third century by the Greek philosopher,

Iamblichus, it meant the inner knowledge concerning the things of God.In its

modern sense, Theosophy was a movement founded by Madame H. P.

Blavatsky in 1875 in New York.The Theosophical Society is a non-sectarian

body whose creed is that there is no religion higher than truth.It seeks to form

a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race,

creed, sex, caste, or colour; to encourage the study of comparative religion,

philosophy, and science; and to investigate unexplained laws of nature and

the powers latent in man. Theosophy, signifying knowledge of Brahman or the

Absolute, closely follows the concepts propounded by the Upanishads and

Indian philosophies.For example, the doctrine of the one transcendent,

eternal, all pervading, all sustaining, self-existent life, and of the re-incarnation

and liberation of soul bear deep affinity to Hindu ideas.Theosophists regard

India as the guardian of secret wisdom and esoteric science, and the chief

exponent of the transcendent unity of all religions. In addition to the influence

of the Theosophical Society in the West, Theosophy has also had a notable

impact in the countries to the east of India. In Indonesia, for instance, early

nationalism came under Theosophist influence through Taman Siswa, literally

garden of pupils, and Sukarno at one time subscribed to Theosophy.Madame

Blavatsky founded a branch of the Theosophical Society in Java in 1883; by

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1910 it had a membership of over two thousand, about half of which were

Europeans, and the rest Indonesians and Chinese.The Theosophical

movement in Indonesia also ran its own schools, called the Arjuna Schools.

Yoga, which seeks to join the unenlightened nature of man to the

enlightened and divine part of himself through knowledge and discipline of

mind and body, is becoming increasingly popular in the West.The Western

world is best acquainted with Hatha-yoga (the yoga of body control), as is

indicated by a flood of publications on the subject and the rapidly growing

number of Yoga schools. Paul Brunton’s The Hidden Teaching beyond Yoga,

published in 1941, and has gone through eleven printings.The first official

recognition by a British local authority was given recently when the

Birmingham City Council introduced courses in Yoga, for which there had

been a growing demand for some years. Reporting on the Birmingham Yoga

Schools, the Times (London) on 23rdFebruary 1965 observed: “The attractions

are often relaxation and gentle exercise, and the air of Oriental mystery which

surrounds the classes.The long list of pleasures from which a fulltime yogi

should abstain seems not to be observed by night school students. Many of

them say they would not want to ‘go in any deeper’, but in subtle ways the

classes have changed some of their beliefs”.The father of the Yoga

philosophy, Patanjali, defined it as “restraining the mind-stuff from taking

various forms”. Based on psychological conception by the proper training of

mind, Yoga aims to reach the higher levels of consciousness. It is a method of

finding things out for oneself rather than a preconceived metaphysical theory

of reality or of universe.Yoga aims at removing suffering, sin, and all

imperfections caused by avidya (ignorance), egoism, attachment, aversion,

and clinging to life, which belie the true nature of self. By eliminating these

obstacles through knowledge or illumination, and by controlling the flow of

ideas in one’s mind, one can become a true man. It is only natural that such a

widely known system should be wrongly interpreted and even denounced at

times for its quaint practices. Apparently its influence perturbed a widely read

naturalized British writer so deeply that he venomously attacked Indian

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thought, about which he knew, by his own confession, but little, and reiterated

the prejudices of those who are convinced that Western philosophies are the

unfailing standards of all truth.

The growing influence of Indian thought in recent years has indeed

frightened some Western religious writers, such as Hendrik Kraemer (World

Cultures and World Religions), who have designated it as the “Eastern

invasion of the West”.Perhaps excessive anxiety to defend the Western

Christian tradition may have led Kraemer to over-rate Indian influence. But

there are many European scholars who have denounced Indian thought in

unmistakable terms.Whether response or resistance, admiration or

denunciation, all are equally indicative of impact and stimulus. In a limited way

the migration of Indian labour to other countries provided yet another link

between India and the outside world. Indian settlers began to move to other

countries in 1830, mainly to work on British plantations.This made the

abolition of slavery commercially possible a few years later, when the

notorious indenture system was introduced in the British Empire.Indian

migration, enforced or voluntary, has possibly been second only to that of the

Europeans. Whilst it does not come anywhere near the combined migration of

all the European countries, it exceeds – in absolute numbers, not in the

proportion of population – the recorded overseas migration of any single

country. According to one estimate, twenty-eight million Indians migrated to

various countries between 1834 and 1932. Today there are said to be more

than four million Indians in forty countries all over the globe, in some of which

they form a majority, such as British Guiana, Fiji, and Mauritius. In some they

constitute strong minorities; in Britain, a recent estimate would show them to

be over forty thousand.Their economic and political importance is

considerable, and there must also be a significant cultural impact.

An important social survey, carried out in Britain about ten years ago,

produced some surprising results.A representative sample of five thousand

persons, of both sexes and all ages and classes, was chosen for questioning.

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Nearly a quarter of the population of England did not consider that they

belonged to any religion or denomination. About half the population – 47%–

expressed a positive belief in a future life; a third –30%– stated that they were

uncertain.What is most significant, however, is that a quarter of all those who

professed belief in an after-life – an eighth of the population – did not believe

that this after-life would be eternal; eleven per cent of the believers actually

declared their faith in transmigration. This was “perhaps the most surprising

single piece of information to be derived from this research”.Belief in

reincarnation is a typically Indian doctrine and is contrary to the creeds of

Europe and western Asia.Politically and intellectually it was inevitable that

there should have been some reaction in Europe against an invasion of Indian

learning.Reaction against alien ideas appears to be a common human

irrationality.Certainly, the nature of political relationships and nationalistic pride

understandably played a significant role.European nations generally were

more receptive to Indian ideas during the early period of their relationship

which was based on relative equality.But as European political, technological

and economic supremacy over Asia came to be recognized, an attitude of

superiority crept into the European – and particularly the British – outlook.

The influence of political relationships on cultural intercourse is further

illustrated by the fact that, once the British became overlords of India, Indian

learning drew more sympathetic and imaginative understanding from other

European countries than it did form the British.

The discovery of Indian thought by European scholars in the 18th and 19th

centuries led to an outburst of admiration and enthusiasm, mainly because

they felt that Indian thought filled a need in their European culture.Neither

Christianity nor the classical cultures of Greece and Rome were considered

satisfactory any more and the European intelligentsia sought to apply the new

knowledge, brought in increasingly by Indologists, to their own spiritual

preoccupations.Upon closer examination of Indian thought, whilst some of the

deeper ideas were revealed, illusions were exposed.Even some admirers

became critical and skeptical.Both reactions were based on insufficient

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knowledge. Goethe himself moved from one opinion to the other, although he

continually acknowledged the tremendous stimulus of Indian thought.This

conflicting approach is in fact characteristic of the modern European attitude

towards India. Although in recent years some European writer’s have made a

thorough and understanding study of Indian thought, India still conjures up

conflicting images in Western minds, and evokes a variety of responses

ranging from Kipling’s caricatures to Max Müller’s “the very paradise on earth”.

It is significant that, with notable exceptions, India appears to have been most

attractive to those European who did not visit the country personally. In other

words, Indian thought made a better impact on the European mind than did

contemporary Indians. Although it was uneven, intermittent, and in many ways

limited, the stimulus provided to the West by Indian thought was timely and

invaluable.Of all the European nations Germany’s response to India was most

enthusiastic and open-hearted. Perhaps the similarity between the German

and the Indian mind, in the sense that both are given to contemplation,

abstract speculation, and pantheism, and both have a tendency towards

formlessness, inwardness, and transcendentalism, contributed toward

German understanding of Indian literature.Leopold von Schroeder says:“The

Indians are the nation of romanticists of antiquity: The Germans are the

romanticists of modern times”. He even concludes that all the romantic minds

of the West turn towards India because of the deep-rooted similarity between

romanticism in Europe, and, what he considers to be, romanticism in

India.Sentimentality and feeling for nature are common to both German and

Indian poetry, whereas they are foreign, for instance, to Hebrew or Greek

poetry.The similarity between the two peoples is further illustrated, in a

different area, by the Indian tendency to work out scientific systems; India was

the nation of scholars of antiquity, in the same way as the Germans are the

nation of scholars of the modern times.Even if suggestions of parallels

between the Germans and Indians are discounted as being over emphasized,

if not altogether misleading, it cannot be denied that German response to

Indian literature and philosophy was prompt and profuse, which must have

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been considerably conditioned by some intrinsic appeal of Indian thought for

the German mind.

The French were not amongst the first Europeans to come into contact with

India. But, as soon as French travelers, who are known for their literary taste,

visited India and reported on their travels, french literary circles responded

enthusiastically. French interest in Indian studies, which was much anterior to

that of the English, was distinctive for their imaginative understandings of

Indian literature and thought.There have been many eminent French

Indologists, and both the volume and quality of French contributions to Indian

studies are remarkable. In fact it is a matter of some surprise that Indologists

working in the English speaking world have not made full use of these French

contributions.The British response to Indian learning was most mixed.Whilst

India remained a trying political problem, she was a symbol of British power

and achievement, as well as a major source of her economic wealth.India as a

national political problem required collective reaction, but intellectual response

was a personal matter.Individual thinkers, studied India closely and whilst

some were fascinated, others were repelled.In both cases, Indian ideas

stimulated British imagination and exercised influence in a variety of ways,

which at times were conflicting.Often for political expedience – for instance the

need to justify domination of India to the British public – British administrators

were compelled to interpret Indian culture as degenerate and decadent. Even

the Utilitarians, who advocated liberty and democracy, supported the

continued rule of the Company so that Indian society could be rejuvenated.

Another barrier between Indian and British cultural co-operation was the

Englishmen working in India.The early administrators were in-different to

anything except trade and profits; the later ones, after 1830, suffered from a

sense of cultural inferiority, which, compounded with political superiority,

manifested itself in self-righteousness, prejudices, and arrogance. They often

came to India for only a few years, invariably lived an exclusive life, and

returned home to condemn Indian culture and traditions with gusto. Their

collous indifference to Indian art is well reflected by the fact that the liberal

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William Bentinck, who initiated social reforms in India, seriously considered

the possibility of dismantling the Taj Mahal and selling the marble to meet the

shortage of money in the Company’s treasury. He was prevented because

“the test auction of materials from the Agra palace proved unsatisfactory”.

Fed on Macaulay, Mutiny, and Kipling, the English, no wonder, did not

appreciate India.

In spite of these handicaps, Indian literature captured the imagination of a

few British scholars and writers.This unknown land of romantic dynasties,

luxury and exotic beauty, and mystic religions and developed philosophies

became a source of inspiration for romantic literature.Indian peoples, scenery,

costumes, courts, religious ceremonies, folk songs, tiger hunts, hermits, and

buildings presented a kind of fairytale picture, which increasingly captured

popular interest.It is a pity that Europeans did not press on with their

advantage and make better use of Indian knowledge.If Indian philosophy,

literature, and art had received a fuller and less inhibited appreciation in

Europe, some new form of all inclusive civilization or European renaissance,

more comprehensive than a mere technological and industrial revolution,

might have emerged. However, a British-Indian civil servant and historian,

Garratt, considered that the British rulers of India were not a good channel for

cultural intercourse, for they had “failed to achieve a ‘union of Hindu and

European learning’ or to give any scope to the technical skill and knowledge

inherent among the people”.

INDIAN RESPONSE TO MODERN EUROPE

Whilst Europe sought ancient Indian learning, India focused her at tention

on modern European knowledge.In this cultural encounter, initiative remained

for the most part with Europe, for she was a young developing society with an

inquisitive mind and the material resources to obtain easy access to what she

fancied.In contrast, Indians even if they knew what they knew what they

needed, could not get at it at will.As a result, Europe absorbed Indian wisdom

within a much shorter period than Indians took to gain Western knowledge.

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Indeed, some Western scientific theory and technological know-how has only

been acquired since Indian independence.Once the initial period of

romanticism and disillusionment had been overcome, and the Indo-British

political relationship was firmly established, a new phase of cultural interaction

between India and the West began. With the increasing Western domination

of Asia and the advance in science and technology, the process of cultural

exchange gained speed and momentum.The traffic of people and ideas

between India and Europe grew correspondingly, and numerous, Indian

intellectuals, students, officials, soldiers, tourists, princes, and merchants

began to visit Britain and Europe. The cultural encounter between India and

modern Europe hardly has a parallel in history.

Western tradition is a highly generalized, extremely vague, and ill-defined

concept that is often stretched to included or exclude anything at will to suit

the purpose in hand.It is not a unitary system of thought, nor has it an

unbroken historical continuity.There are deep controversies as to its exact

nature and value, and it is a complex of diverse, even contradictory, ideologies

and traditions.For instance, it is equally proud of the imprints of early Greek

and Christian traditions which were relentlessly opposed to each other. Even a

casual investigation reveals the inherent contradictions of Western

tradition.Western tradition is often characterized as one of material progress

and scientific advancement, yet Christian mystical thought is superbly well

developed, and until recently science was positively denounced in the

Christian West.In most respects scientific inquiry was much more highly

developed in the Hellenistic period than it was in medieval Europe. In fact,

exactly why Hellenistic science declined needs an explanation.Again, it is

repeatedly pointed out that Western tradition stems from the enlargement of

individual liberties, and that individual liberty is the essence of Western

civilization. Some Western scholars go much farther and assert that the West

has regarded “a denial of freedom as a denial of the value of the individual

and therefore as a sin against the soul of man”.Yet it is not possible to

completely ignore the Western institutions of slavery, feudalism, colonialism

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and imperialism, and racism.Western liberalism, of which the West can be

justly proud, was born in the seventeenth century, as a reaction against the

violence and hatred that had prevailed during the almost unbelievably

atrocious religious wars.But even since then, liberalism has not remained

unchallenged in the West. Indeed, totalitarianism and suppression of freedom

of thought and person appear to be the unbroken trend of a Western tradition

that can claim most of the great despots of world history, including Alexander,

Julius Caesar Nero, Napoleon, Hitler, and Mussolini.This fact is even more

startling when these dictators and conquerors are contrasted with the

prophets of non-violence and peace, such as Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha,

Asoka, and Mahatma Gandhi, who were all born in Asia. Even the concept of

the divine right of kings found far more serious advocates amongst Western

monarchs – the Greek Alexander, the Roman Caesars, Russians Czars,

French Bourbons, and British Stuarts.It is true that the Western world has

continuously fought for liberty, but this only serves to illustrate the existence of

anti-freedom forces and a totalitarian current in Western tradition.

Again, it cannot be claimed, as is often done, that the rise of Christianity

did much to improve the position of the individual, for religious persecution has

been a common feature of Western Christianity.The once persecuted

Christians, having gained power, themselves became persecutors; Caesar

was more, not less, divine when he became the sword of Christianity. The

terrible struggles between Church and State were not fought for individual, or

even religious, freedom; the Church sought to compel the secular power to

serve its own purposes.Any individual who did not subscribe to the Church’s

belief was at once denounced as a heretic.Crusades and religious wars of

extermination were often as bloody as Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews and

Gypsies.The Church even persecuted the medieval minstrels and Gypsies

because they loved freedom. Once the so-called heretics came to power they

were no less tyrannical and no more tolerant than their erstwhile persecutors.

It was Calvin, an apostle of Protestantism, who managed to bring secular and

religious life under a single authority, and thus to direct thought and action

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alike by “the rule of the saints”.His was the first monolithic party of the

Western civilization, from which all totalitarian states have learned.

“Toleration, when it came did not spring from deep-rooted conviction; it

originated in the boredom and weariness of the mass of ordinary men with the

conflict of totalitarian rulers who had struggled to tear Europe apart”.

Christianity, which is in practice a unique combination of beliefs and clergy,

whilst owing its religion to Jesus and his early Asian disciples, is, in strict

ecclesiastical hierarchy, an essentially Western movement.Whatever may

have been the value of the Church in religious practice, it has inhibited

freedom of thought and individual liberty by relentlessly enforcing its

presuppositions as eternal truths. It is the Church which sets moral standards

for the individual and prescribes his belief.The organization of the Church is

unparalleled in history.No federation of states has been as comprehensive

and universal in taking hold of the minds of people, and no monarch or

dictator has been given the complete and willing obedience of such a wide

and vast body of peoples as has the Church.The Islamic Caliphate and

Buddhist monasticism were, in this respect, no way comparable to the

Christian Church.The former was too often divided, and was always too

temporal to command any control of minds, and eventually was abolished.

The Buddhist Sangha was, at best, a collection of autonomous monasteries.

Communism, with all its scientific reason, humanism, and economic

equality, is essentially a totalitarian doctrine, negating individual liberty, and is

a typical, almost exclusive, Western concept.Communism stresses the

primacy of reason, but, like a missionary religion, it has a sense of its own

infallibility and an obligation to world-wide expansion. Its greatest exponents

have mainly been Western or Western-trained.

Even British thought, which was more directly and closely linked with India

than that of other European countries, had its own inner conflicts and

contradictions in respect to India, ranging from Edmund Burke’s liberalism and

John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism to John Bright’s radicalism. Burke desired India

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to stay Indian; in fact, he was rather anxious to reform the disreputable

English trustees in India.He strongly condemned the facile and much used

aspersion of “Oriental Despotism” and warned his countrymen against passing

judgment upon a people, for ages civilized and cultivated, who formed their

laws and institutions prior to “our insect origins of yesterday”. The Utilitarians

and Evangelicals, on the contrary, saw little good in Indian society and desired

to Westernize it completely by denying individual liberty to the Indian. The

Utilitarians, whilst not denying the abstract right to liberty, could see no

alternative to a benevolent British despotism in India, conducted from London.

India exposed Utilitarianism’s paradox between its principle of liberty and that

of authority.The Evangelicals’ viewpoint was religious; they believed that

only through Christianity could temporal welfare and spiritual salvation be

achieved.Therefore they looked upon the British conquest of India as a divine

act of punishment for Indian paganism, and an opportunity for Indians to

redeem themselves from their depraved system of superstition.Thus they

sought the rapid conversion of the peoples of India to Christian ways, as

interpreted by Western clergy.If utilitarianism provided a justification and a

practical basis for British imperial rule in India, Evangelicalism gave it a sense

of urgency and intense zeal. Each diverse current of thought or tradition had

its corresponding influence on India, and the Indian response, consequently,

was as varied as Western tradition itself.The Portuguese were the first

European power to expand into India.Their activities were essentially an

extension of the Christian crusade against Islam, and a search for trade.

Although they were the last of the colonial powers to leave Indian Territory (in

1961), their imprint on Indian culture is negligible.

Whilst the 17th century marked the zenith of India’s mediaeval glory, the 18th

century was a spectacle of corruption, misery, and chaos.The glory of the

Mughals had vanished, life had become increase, the nobility was deceitful

and oppressive, and intellectual curiosity had given way to superstitious

beliefs.The country was in a state of military and political helplessness. In this

atmosphere, literature, art, and culture could barely survive.The malaise of

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India was aggravated in full measure by the East India Company with its

indiscriminate exploitation, corruption, and bribery. In contrast, Europe was

robust and vigorous.This was the Age of Enlightenment, and Europeans had

gone through a process of rebirth during which religion was detached from

state, alchemy from science, theology from philosophy, and divinity from art.A

Western scholar recently asserted that “Western science and philosophy as

they have developed in the last three or four centuries, are the most

sustained, comprehensive, and rigorous attempt ever made by man to

understand himself and his environment, physical and social…..”Even if the

achievement of the modern West is not as unprecedented as is claimed, there

can be little doubt that the cultural vitality, the variety, and the spirit of scientific

inquiry displayed by Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

mark the rise of a civilization more dynamic than anything seen in the West

since Alexandria’s heyday. Thus, the impact of Western culture on India was

that of a dynamic society on a static one. It is a cruel irony of history that

whilst two major revolutions – the French and the American – upholding the

human rights to liberty and equality were taking place in the West, India was in

the throes of losing her own freedom to Western mercantile imperialism.

The West provided India with the necessary impetus for a real stock taking

and reform.The introduction of Western culture, education, and scientific

techniques gave traditional Indian life a jolt, shocking Indians into a new

awareness and vitality in thought and action.Long dormant intellectual

impulses emerged and a new Indian spirit was born.During the period of

Western supremacy in India, the conflict of two civilizations certainly produced

unrest, but it also sustained and stimulated intellectual life. Western influences

became effective in India mainly through the British, who were the pioneers of

a new technological and industrial civilization.They represented a new historic

force which was later to change the world, and thus were the forerunners of

change and revolution.Although Indian and Western civilizations were at

approximately the same level at the time, they were tending in different

directions: the former was declining, the latter progressing.India lost to Europe

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because it lacked political organization, including a central government, and a

progressive outlook.

The British domination of India has been described as a “political and

economic misfortune”, and in some respects it was indeed enervating and

devitalizing. Dadabhai Naoroji, whilst pointing out the many blessings oflaw

and order it had conferred on India, called the despotic system of government

in British India “un-British”, for it was as destructive to British ideals and

honour as it was to India. In 1937, a distinguished British civil servant, G.T.

Garratt, declared that the period of Indo-British civilization of the previous one

hundred and fifty years had been most disappointing, and “in some ways the

most sterile in Indian history”.This must come as a shock not only to those

who have been brought up to believe in British virtue but also to those who do

not take an uncritical view of British colonialism.Garratt was no Indian

nationalist charged with exaggerated patriotism.He had scrupulously analyzed

the problem and advanced some impressive arguments in support of his

assertion, although he no doubt overstated his indignation at “what could be

done but was not done”.Whilst it may be irrelevant to dwell here upon the

merits and demerits of British colonial policies, there can be no doubt that

British impact led to such a transformation of Indian society that Indians, in

retrospect, may even be thankful for what the British did regardless of what

they did not do.Western influences were very different from any India had

received before. This time the newcomers not only had a different religion but

also a different outlook on life, and an economic system which was the result

of new scientific and technological advances.They had firm political values,

well-developed cultural traditions, and superior technological skills.Above all,

their organization in all respects – military, religious, economic, and political –

was remarkable and iron-cast. Whilst India has always held her own in the

realm of thought, broadly speaking, organization and co-ordination have never

been her strong points.Indeed, in India, as in no other civilization, except with

doubtful and partial exceptions in ancient Greece and modern France,

extreme intellectual individualism has been a dominant, zealously guarded

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characteristic. Complete freedom of individual thought, academic disputes,

and philosophical debates led to enriched Indian cultural heritage.But

individualism caused frequent clashes, frustration, and indifference in political

and military spheres.No serious attempt was ever made by Indian states to

direct and superintend the dissemination of Indian culture.It is indeed

surprising that whilst intellectually so independent and individualistic, Indians

followed for centuries a caste system almost unparalleled in its rigidity.That

they were unable to suppress its ugly features, and paid for it heavily in terms

of social suffering and cultural decline, would further emphasize the Indian

lack of collective discipline and organization.

It is not a rarity that intellectual perseverance and thoroughness of analysis

add to the infirmity, rather than to the clarity, of conclusions. Having searched

into all aspects of a problem, Indians do not necessarily feel the need to opt

for one view or the other.They are quite content to accept the reality of

contradictions in a given situation, a quality which baffles most people but is

easily acceptable to the Indian mind. Indians accept reality as it is, which may

or may not be unitary, and their decisions and beliefs are generally tentative,

for the finite mind cannot always comprehend totality.Contradiction, not

compromise, has been the keynote of Indian intellectual and political strengths

and weaknesses, and even conditions her present-day revolution.

Compulsion to make a firm choice in cases of conflicting views often results in

merely selecting a preference for the one against the other.There is no fervour

of conviction in it.Whenever there is fervour in Indian convictions it is generally

emotional and indecisive; belief based on pure emotion is passion, not

conviction.Consequently, upon being confronted with British power, India

could neither penetrate the steel ring of British organization nor could she

absorb their culture into her own pattern. Intellectually indifferent, spiritually

subdued, and physically weak at the time, Indians found an adjustment with

the newcomers not only practical but essential.

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Indian response to Western impact was first noticed in religion.Indians were

not unfamiliar with Christianity, nor were they ill-disposed towards it.

Christianity dated to the 1st century A.D. in India, long before Britain had even

acquired the necessary degree of cultural sophistication to be able to

appreciate Christian doctrines.Whilst Indians were attracted of Christian

missionaries, and they were repelled by their excessive zeal, their religious

arrogance, and their harsh criticisms of Indian religious practices and social

customs. Indians could not understand the narrowness and intolerance of the

Christians, in marked contrast to India’s inclusive and tolerant religion. They

were prepared to admit Christ as one of the prophets of God, but not as the

only son of God.Despite their indignation at the new heralds of Christianity,

Indians became acutely conscious of their own inadequacies and intellectual

inertia. Even though Christian missionary activity in India became widespread

during British rule, the East India Company was disinclined to mix trade and

religion. From the beginning it set its face against all missionary activities, and

after 1757 it decided to exclude missionary propaganda in the territories under

its control.However, the Company’s attempts to restrict missionary work within

its territory were frustrated in 1808 by Spencer Perceval, who has been called

“the Evangelical Prime Minister” because of his zeal for Church reform. He

was assassinated in 1812, but by then his efforts, in combination with those of

Wilberforce and the Evangelicals, had already broken the Company’s

resistance to missionaries.The Charter of 1813 required the East India

Company to allow missionaries to travel on its ships, and to admit a British

bishop at Calcutta. By this Act, however, the Company’s trade monopoly was

abolished and its commercial opposition to missionaries weakened.

In any case, the Company had never successfully controlled missionary

activity in India.Several Christian missions had been at work in various parts

of India for a long time. Catholic missions had been active since the arrival of

the Portuguese, and in 1780 the Serampore Mission was established in

Bengal. By 1792, the spirit of evangelism had permeated Protestant churches

deeply enough to move the English Baptists into organizing the first protestant

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mission. Three years later the London Missionary Society was formed, and a

powerful evangelical movement began in Britain, the vibrations of which,

under the direction of William Carey, were felt in British India.Whilst the

Company itself, as a mercantile corporation, could not lend its support to

Christian missionary activity, many individuals in the administration felt deeply

convinced of the need for evangelical work in India, and gave their active co-

operation to the missionaries. Although the Christian missionaries intensified

their activities under the stimulus of the Act of 1813, they met with only limited

success through conversions.The impact of Christian thought itself, however,

was considerable, culminating in a revival, reinterpretation, and reorientation

of Indian thought.Just as the impact of Islam had given encouragement to the

Bhakti movement in medieval times, the advent of Western civilization caused

the growth of numerous reform movements in modern times.

Bengal, where British power was concentrated at the time, and which had

felt the worst of the East India Company’s early misrule, took the lead in both

cultural and political advances.The earliest stirrings of the Indian cultural

renaissance appeared under the leadership of Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772 –

1833) who made the first organized efforts to adapt Hinduism to the new

situation.He made a clear distinction between good and bad traditions, and

reasserted the wisdom of welcoming a good concept, regardless of its

nationality. He was a scholar of Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Persian, English,

and Arabic.A devout Hindu inspired by the vedantic philosophy, he was also

deeply influenced by Sufism and was an admirer of Christianity and Western

thought, especially the writings of Montesquieu, Black-stone, and Bentham.

Towards the end of his life, he was also attracted by the revolutionary

movements of America and Europe. He was perhaps the first earnest modern

scholar of comparative religion.Making a clear distinction between Western

virtues and Western failings, he defended Hinduism against the attacks of

missionaries as stoutly as he challenged the orthodoxy to abandon its

ritualistic conventions.He kept in close touch with Oriental research and

interpreted the ancient Indian texts in the light of Western doctrines and

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ideas.Consequently he became an uncompromising and vehement opponent

of idolatry and of all rituals connected with it. At the age of thirty-one, he

published a book in Persian, denouncing idolatry and advocating belief in one

god and a universal religion. He conceived the idea of a universal church,

somewhat in the tradition of Akbar’s Din-i-ilahi, combining the best spiritual

traditions of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam and accepting equally the

teachings of all religions. He looked beyond dogma, ritual, and philosophical

dialectics to seek the fundamentals of each faith, and found them identical.

Although willing to join in Christian worship, Ram Mohan Roy was an ardent

Hindu who found Hinduism’s defence against Christianity in Vedanta, which

supported his ideas on the unity of God, the futility of idolatry and pilgrimages,

and the doctrine of Karma and incarnations. In an exposition on Christianity,

The Precepts of Jesus, the Guide to Peace and Happiness, he extolled the

ethical teachings of Christ but rejected the miraculous legends about his life

which he said were due to a misinterpretation on the part of his followers.

Moreover, he did not believe that man could atone for his sins simply by

repentance.This was, in fact, a reply to missionaries rather than a call to

Indians.He regarded a bigoted Christian to be as conceited as a bigoted

Hindu, and ignored both. He accepted the humanism of European thought.

Whilst his denunciation of Hindu orthodoxy antagonized Hindu traditionalists,

his discriminating approach to Christian doctrines displeased Christian

diehards.Despite strong opposition from a superstitious and indifferent people,

aggressive missionaries, and a mercenary government, he persisted in his

endeavours.As a result he set India on a course of cultural reformation, which

gradually gathered momentum and support, and eventually made it possible

for modern India to emerge. In his attempt to bring about harmony between

faiths, Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj in 1828. Brahmo Samaj was not an

entirely new religion, for it was based on the Vedanta philosophy, but its

outlook was European, and it derived its inspiration from the intellectual

movements of the eighteenth century.Doctrinally somewhat similar to

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Unitarianism and attempting to synthesize the cultures of East and West, it

encouraged rationalism and social reform.

Ram Mohan Roy, however, was much more than a religious reformer. He

was a patriot who represented Indian nationalism on the defensive; its leaders

at this stage were cautious, and apprehensive.He commenced the task of

national reconstruction on several fronts with vigour and industry. In 1823,

twelve years before Macaulay wrote his famous minute on education, Ram

Mohan Roy had petitioned the British Government to introduce English rather

than continue traditional Indian education. A few years earlier he had founded

a Hindu college at Calcutta, where Western learning was taught. Macaulay,

who is credited with having forced the issue in favour of English education, not

only followed the arguments advanced by Ram Mohan Roy, but even

borrowed some of his language. Roy relentlessly battled the ugly but hallowed

custom of sati to save women from cruel deaths.This custom, for some

unknown reason, increased in Bengal during British expansion.Ram Mohan

filed petitions for its abolition before the British, and ten years later, when

William Bentinck did abolish sati, Roy was profoundly moved.When a group of

reactionary Indians petitioned the Privy Council in London to reverse the

abolition, he appeared before the Council personally and successfully

defended Bentinck’s measure. Many sincere leaders before him had exposed

the evils in Indian life and religion, but none had grasped with as much clarity

the passivity which had come to paralyze the Indian mind, and none had

worked with such devotion, perseverance, and conviction to revitalize Indian

thinking.

Ram Mohan Roy was received enthusiastically in Europe, and exercised a

considerable influence upon liberal Protestants, especially Unitarians. He

went to England ostensibly as the ambassador of the Mughal king to recover

Mughal authority from the British Company. He did not succeed in his political

mission, but he helped to bring India a good deal closer to the West. During

his stay, he met leading British statesmen, philosophers, and historians, such

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as Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. So highly did Bentham hold Ram Mohan

Roy in his esteem that when the Indian scholar arrived in London in April

1831, Bentham was the first man to call on Roy at the Adelphi Hotel.

Bentham was eighty-three years of age at the time and fastidious – he refused

to see Mme. de Staāl in 1813 because he thought she had nothing of interest

to say. In welcoming Roy at the British Unitarian Association’s reception, Sir

John Bowring placed Ram Mohan in the same class as “a Plato or a Socrates,

a Milton or a Newton”.Bentham even actively agitated to secure Roy’s election

to the British Parliament.The new spirit of humanism and rationalism

stimulated Indian thought and literature enormously. No longer was Indian

writing appended to theology, mythology, and scholasticism.No gods and

goddesses descended from heaven and played a part in human life. Man now

occupied the foremost place, steering his course of life without divine

help.This concept of the world was somewhat similar to that which had existed

in the ancient past, of which only a dim recollection had survived. Soon new

ideas began to fill old patterns and Indian writers and thinkers were inspired

not only by the renewed spirit of humanism but also by the French

revolutionary spirit of liberty and equality.

After the death of Ram Mohan Roy in Bristol in 1833, the Brahmo Samaj

remained the focus of the Hindu renaissance. Debendranath Tagore (1817 –

1905), who had been in intimate contact with Roy, continued the monotheistic

tradition.In 1839, he founded the Tattvabodhi Sabha, which played a

significant role in the cultural revival of India, especially in Bengal.Unlike Ram

Mohan, and however, his ideas reflect little Christian influence. In spite of his

impressive missionary activity, Debendranath, who became an ascetic, seems

to have embraced Brahmoism primarily out of an intense spiritual craving, not

out of any inclination for social reform. After him came the dynamic, although

somewhat erratic, Keshab Chandra Sen (1838 – 1884), under whose

direction the eclecticism of the Brahmo Samaj gathered momentum. His

enthusiasm was infectious and he wielded tremendous influence upon his

contemporaries.Widely read in Western philosophy, he was especially

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attracted by Carlyle and Emerson.His own background was vaisnava, and

Ramakrishna’s idea of the harmony of all religions captured his

imagination.He wanted the Samaj to maintain not merely that there were

truths in all religions but that all religions of the world were true. Not a

Christian, he was nevertheless a great admirer of Christ. Indeed, his

teachings were so close to Christianity that at one time his conversion to the

Christian faith was thought imminent. But he was deeply saturated in Hindu

thought and often, especially in his later life, would stress the validity of many

vedantic ideas.He believed that many Hindu rituals and usages could be

reinterpreted and restored with new symbolic meaning to suit the Bramho

Samaj.Consequently, he retained many Hindu practices in Bramho worship

but turned to Christianity for ethical guidance. Despite his mental prowess

and unquestionable integrity, clarity or consistency of thought was not his

strong point. In his New Dispensation, published in 1818, he set out to create

a third dispensation – the Old Testament being the first centre of it, as Christ

was of his dispensation. But immediately he felt he was a sinner; a slave of

Christ, Jesudasa. He called himself “a child of Asia” and loudly claimed

Christianity to be an Asian religion. He asserted that Jesus was akin to his

Asian nature and ways of thinking, and that Christianity was more

comprehensible to the Asian mind than to the European. He made a clear

distinction between the spirit of Christianity and the fashions of Western

civilization.He was a relentless opponent of hypocrisy, insisted on social purity

and upright individual conduct, and preached his views throughout India with

unsparing energy. In some ways he was ahead of his times. He was the first

Brahmo Samaj leader to advocate the welfare and rights of men, to attempt a

new interpretation of history, and to evolve a modern prose style in Bengali.

He took radical positions on social and religious issues which may not have

endeared him to some of his contemporaries but undoubtedly left an impact

on them.After his death, the Brahmo Samaj ceased to be a living force, but by

that time it had served its extremely vital purpose of national awakening.

The Brahmo Samaj was an attempt to achieve a synthesis of East and West

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by some educated and restive men of Bengal. It did not become a mass

movement, but impressive leaders gave impetus to a chain of religious

reforms and social consciousness which gradually bound the whole country

together. Not all of these movements were kindly disposed towards Western

culture, but they all created a new spirit and the face of the country began to

change. Later religious movements were mainly concerned with asserting the

pure and original form of Hinduism and returning to it.

Under the stimulus of renascent Hinduism in Bengal, the Prarthana Samaj

so was founded in Maharastra in 1867. Bengal and Maharastra had divergent

historical experiences during the Mughal period, nut they had much in

common in the nineteenth century. Both had for some time been the scene of

European activities and both had developed the urge to reform traditional

society in a reaction against foreign domination. Eminent persons joined the

Prarthana Samaj, such as M. G. Ranade (1842 – 1901) and Sir R.G.

Bhandarkar; the former being its most outstanding leader. Somewhat milder

in policy than the Brahmo Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj believed in the

fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, but their theism rested largely

on ancient Hindu thought.The Vedas, however, were not their source of

inspiration, and transmigration was left an open question.The Prarthana

Samaj opposed idolatry, child-marriage, prohibition of widow remarriage, and

caste, but membership was not forfeited if these practices were continued.

The Prarthana Samaj did for Maharastra what Brahmo Samaj did for Bengal.

Through the efforts of these cultural movements, the spread of English

education, the study of Indian culture, and the increasing order-lines of

political organization, there had awakened in India a deep sense of nationality

and cultural pride.The emergent India demanded a more militant defence of its

own inheritance, and the growth of national, as opposed to regional,

movements. Soon the initiative passed to Swami Dayananda Sarasvati

(1824 – 1883), who based his teachings entirely on the Vedas, “the primeval

scripture of humanity”, which he regarded as the revealed word of God. He

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thought the amorphous nature of Hinduism exposed it to much weakness,

which could be repaired by possessing, like Islam and Christianity, a revealed

work of unquestionable authority. Born in 1824 in Kathiawar in western India,

Swami Dayananda spent many years in the quest of truth.He began his public

life in 1868. After an extensive lecture tour severely criticizing certain

weaknesses of Hinduism, as well as those of Christianity and Islam, he

founded the Arya Samaj in 1875; it has since been an active movement in

Hindu life, especially in the Punjab.

Untutored in English but a profound Sanskrit scholar, Dayananda, in his

most important work, the Satyartha Prakash, made a brilliant attempt to

discover in the Vedas the bases of the Christian and Muslim religions. His

chief convictions were that there was only one God to be worshipped, without

the aid of idols.The many divine names which occur in the Vedas were all

epithets of the one true God. Many other Hindu texts were of value but they

were not to be followed where they contradict the Vedas.Swami Dayananda

relentlessly opposed priests, who he believed had caused discord and

disunion, in marked contrast to prophets of other faiths who had attempted to

unite humanity.He emphasized the fundamental purity of Hinduism, as he

conceived it, which was to him the original Vedic religion.

Fearless and overpowering, Dayananda aimed at giving self-confidence

back to Hindus, although he ruthlessly denounced the deplorable practices

prevalent in contemporary Hinduism. He asked Hindus to adopt modern ideas

that impressed him, and he introduced militancy into Hinduism.His strong urge

to assert Hindu nationalism found expression in the Shiddhi movement to take

Hindus who had been converted to Islam or Christianity back into the fold.

This was a novel experiment which was resented by Muslims and Christians.

However, belonging to proseletyzing religions themselves, they really had no

logical argument against this practice, even if it were a new one for the Hindu.

As there is no sanction in the Vedas for caste and other taboos that had

gripped Hindu society the Arya Samaj vigorously advocated drastic social

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reform.For example, it spent large sums of money on sacred thread for

millions of untouchables, thus making them equal to other members of the

Hindu society.However successful the Arya Samaj may have been as a

militant organization, its appeal was mainly confined to the Punjab, chiefly for

two reasons.By exclusively emphasizing the Vedas, it ignored the rich tradition

of Hindu culture which had followed them for over two thousand years.The

concept of Arya and Aryavarta, inherent in vedic supremacy, excluded South

India, which has been in many ways the real repository of Hindu culture in

later times. Swami Dayananda and his followers disclaimed any indebtedness

to Western ideas, but this would appear rather an assertion of national pride

than a statement of fact.A distinctive feature of the Arya Samaj has been its

remarkable contribution to the spread of English education, through its

numerous Dayananda Anglo-Vedic schools and colleges throughout the

country. It is significant that a movement which superficially seemed inward-

looking and which raised the cry of “back to the Vedas” should have done

more than any other single Indian public organization to spread Western

knowledge in India.

Dayananda’s contemporary, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1834 –

1886), in preaching selfless devotion to God and seeking self-realization,

approached Muslim and Christian mystics.He emphasized that different

religions are but different paths to reach the one God, and that if one religion

is true, then by the same logic; all other religions are also true.

Ramakrishna, who lived at the temple of Dakshineshwar near Calcutta, was a

poor priest without any formal education.It has been claimed that what

Socrates was to the Greek consciousness, Ramakrishna was to the modern

Indian renaissance.Max Müller said that in comparison to the illiterate

Ramakrishna the brightest intellects of Europe were mere gropers in the dark.

In a recent study, Christopher Isherwood has called Ramakrishna the

incarnation of Siva. Ramakrishna never claimed to be the founder of a new

religion. He simply preached the old religion of India, founded on the Vedas

and the Upanishads, and systematized in later commentaries. He was not an

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original thinker in the true sense of the word, but he could recognize many

things, including the divine presence, which others could not. He never wrote

a philosophical treatise, but his pithy sayings and simple, commonplace

illustrations are marvels of lucid exposition.Not urbane, and often even devoid

of grace, he was utterly genuine, sincere, and forthright. His dynamic disciple,

Swami Vivekananda, preached the teaching of his guru to India and to the

world in somewhat the same manner as Saint Paul preached the gospel of

Jesus. Whilst Ramakrishna was a mystic, depending upon intuition and vision,

Vivekananda was an intellectual, relying mainly upon reason. In India he

pioneered reationalism in religion and philosophy, as Ram Mohan Roy had

done in the field of social thought. He preached the “oneness of all religions”,

asking Hindus to become better Hindus, Muslims to become better Muslims,

and Christians to become better Christians. He impressively interpreted

Indian thought to Western peoples and provided a bridge between the East

and West, both of whom needed reform; the former lacked food and

education, the latter, spirituality. Through his forceful and logical speeches, he

established the inherent virtues of the Hindu religion. The period of apologies

was over; his was the voice of the self-confident Hindu who expounded his

faith with the fullest conviction and righteous pride. Rooted in the past and full

of pride in India’s heritage, Vivekananda was modern in his approach to the

problems of life, providing a bridge between the past of India and her present.

He foreshadowed Mahatma Gandhi in his burning enthusiasm for the uplifting

of the masses. He regarded India, in spite of her degradation, as the home of

spiritualism and enlightenment, but he attacked Indian inertia, disunity, and

lack of national pride.He was impressed with American efficiency and equality,

and British tenacity, law-abidingness, and sense of loyalty.In 1897 he founded

the Ramakrishna Mission at Belur, near Calcutta, and the new institution

adopted a comprehensive programme of social service. It started schools,

colleges, hospitals, orphanages, and libraries, and has remained a leader in

rendering humanitarian services in India. Although Vivekananda died at the

age of thirty-nine, he left a permanent mark on Indian life and thought.The

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great national leaders, such as Gandhi, Tagore, and Nehru, often

acknowledged their debt to him.Towns, streets, bridges, and institutions are

named after him in all corners of India, and it has been said that to understand

India an understanding of Vivekananda is essential.

The Theosophical Society moved its headquarters from New York to India

in 1879. At first the Society aimed mainly at the investigation and propagation

of the belief in life beyond death, but later the scope of its inquiry was

broadened considerably.Today it is a blending of the wisdom of the East and

the West.Theosophists, whilst seeking liberation, are pledged to lead a life of

sacrifice.They are encouraged to act according to their oft-quoted maxim,

“Light on the Path”, and to “try to lift a little of the heavy Karma of the world”.

The members of the Society are required to lead highly ethical and moral lives

and oppose the increasingly materialistic outlook on life. Religious fanaticism

is not allowed and the followers of any religion can become members,

adhering to what is best in their own religion.At a time when Hinduism,

Christianity, and Islam were competing with each other, this stress on the

unity of religions served a very useful purpose.Although not a mass

movement, the Society significantly affected the outlook of the emerging

nation.For a while, at least, it accommodated the urge of educated Hindus to

find a common denomination for their various sects. Annie Besant (1847 –

1933), who came to India in 1893, was the Society’s most forceful leader.

She was at one time a British socialist leader and an atheist. She said that

she remembered India from her past incarnation and looked upon it as her

“motherland”.She adopted the Indian way of life, and translated various

important Hindu texts into English. A persuasive speaker, she advanced the

popularity of Hinduism and Indian culture through her widely attended public

lectures. She took an active part in the Indian national movement and became

the first woman President of the Indian National Congress. However, she

disagreed vigorously with her contemporary Indian nationalism leaders,

Lokamanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi.

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Indian Islam also felt the impact of the West, but its response was

somewhat different from that of Hinduism.Whilst many educated Hindus were

eager to reconcile Western ideas to their own inheritance, Muslims remained

markedly disinclined for some time to accept the validity of any knowledge not

blessed by the Quran.The Muslims refused to give up Persian and Arabic to

learn English.Typical of early Muslim response was Mirza Abu Talib Khan

(1752 – 1807), who was one of the first Indians to visit Europe where he was

lionized by English aristocracy.In The Travels of Mirza Talib Khan, he

described the peculiarities of European customs and the evils of Western

materialism, and advised his fellow Muslims to continue to ignore Western

learning out of “zeal for their religion”. In 1835, when Bentinck decreed the

introduction of Western education, a number of Muslim notables of Calcutta

presented a petition to the British Government asking them to rescind the

decree.They felt it was a slight on their own learning and feared that it was

aimed at the Christianization of India. The centuries’ old rivalry between Islam

and Christianity also contributed to Indian Islam’s hostility. In 1837, Persian

was discarded as the official language, Muslim laws and Muslim courts were

abolished, and high positions in government and the army were closed to

Muslims in the same way as they were to other Indians. The loss of political

ascendancy and the secularization of government produced discontent,

resentment, and resistance to the West. Many Muslims even felt, like the

Arabian Wahhabis, that British India was no longer a suitable place for the

Muslim community, and some of the more zealous ones, under the leadership

of Sayyid Ahmad of Rae Bareli, preached the need to emigrate to other

Muslim countries.The inevitable consequence of this self-imposed isolation

and resistance to modernization was that by the middle of the century Muslims

were left well behind the Hindus in progress.

In 1857, the Mughal Empire was irrevocably ended, and with it Muslim

hopes of political supremacy in India. Not only were the Mughals dislodged

but the Muslim political superstructure built upon Indian society over a period

of centuries was shattered.In 1867, the Muslim intellectuals and nationalist

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leaders who had taken a prominent part in the Indian revolt of 1857, set up the

Darul-Ulum at Deoband, professing loyalty to Islamic law and religious

orthodoxy.The Deoband School derived its doctrines from Shah Walli Allah

Aihlawi (1703 – 1762), who envisaged Islam as an unfinished social

movement begun by Muhammad, and who aimed at purifying the faith.The

school made a vigorous and determined effort to resuscitate classical Islam. It

accepted the old order but tried to revive and purify it.The Deoband School

became the most important and respected theological academy of Muslim

India, indeed of the entire Islamic world next to Al Azhar of Cairo.It produced

some brilliant Muslim leaders and developed a strong tradition of vitality and

quality.

The first concrete efforts to adapt modern thought to Islamic culture were

made in the second quarter of the 19th century at Delhi, where a group of able

men set out to revive Urdu by publishing Western works in that language.

Later, in 1863, under the leadership of Nawab Abdul Latif, some liberal

Muslims founded the Muhammadan Literary Society at Calcutta whose main

objective was to emphasize the increasing importance of Western learning

and culture.In trying to assimilate Western knowledge, leaders of this

movement leaned too heavily on the British for support, and primarily attracted

loyalist Muslims.Even theologically the movement distinguished itself by being

thoroughly pro-British. It opposed the popular Wahhabi jihad agitation against

the British “infidels” and by this denunciation; the Society gained the gratitude

of both the British Government and the well-to-do Muslims.Continuing

somewhat in the same tradition, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817 – 1898)

attempted to persuade Muslims to change their religious outlook and reconcile

themselves to the changing environment. Sir Syed convinced of the futility of

fighting the British, “remained faithful to the British and helped them by saving

the lives of those in danger” during the revolt of 1857. He sought to improve

the position of Indian Muslims through co-operation with the British authorities.

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Anxious to draw the Muslims out of their shell of orthodoxy and to reconcile

modern scientific thought with Islam, he actively pursued a policy of social and

educational reform. He pointed out the basic similarities between Islam and

Christianity, attacked the purdah system which segregated women from men,

advocated the emancipation of women, opposed allegiance to the Turkish

Caliphate, and, above all, advised his fellow Muslims to accept English

education.He founded the Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1877; the

College gained university status and played a vital role in the movement for

Pakistan. He published a multi-volume commentary on the Quran in which he

tried to prove that the teachings of Islam were in complete harmony with

modern scientific theories, and sought to assimilate the best of Western

thought into the Islamic faith.He was consequently severely criticized by the

orthodox section of the community and his interpretation of Islam has

generally been ignored.But his religious writings and advocacy of social

reforms have made a lasting impression on Indian Islam.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888 – 1958) was also influential in helping

modernize Indian Muslims.Unlike Sir Syed, Azad was an uncompromising

adversary of the British imperial rule, and an important leader of the Indian

National Congress.He was an even greater Islamic scholar than Sir Syed and

a versatile litterateur, combining religious knowledge with scientific research.

Azad’s commentary on the Quran is universally acknowledged as an

outstanding contribution to Islamic studies. Although educated entirely in the

orthodox tradition, he imbibed the spirit of the modern West.He interpreted

Islam as a universal religion which could embrace the diversity of all creeds.

A brilliant theologian, his work is distinguished by a spirit of free inquiry. His

interpretation evoked criticism from the orthodox, and admiration from liberal

thinkers.A progressive revolutionary dedicated to true freedom, he is included

amongst the Ulama (learned men) because of his religious learning, in which

he was unsurpassed.

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There was bitter rivalry between Deoband and Aligarh.The achievement of

Pakistan may be regarded as Aligarh’s success, but the cultural response

goes on, and it is yet to be seen which of the two schools will finally triumph in

reconciling Islam to modernity.It seems likely that the uninhibited cultural

response of the Muslims of India and Pakistan may well proceed along the

lines of Deoband, resuscitating the purity of classical Islam with the assistance

of modern concepts and needs. Looking at what has happened in these two

countries since the partition, it would appear that Islam in Pakistan is primarily

a political consideration whilst in India it is more concerned with cultural and

religious advancement.Whilst the Deoband and Aligarh movements

represented the two divergent Muslim responses to Western impact, Muslim

response generally was significantly different from that of the Hindus. The

Hindu reform movements were ruthlessly self-critical, often questioning the

very validity of some of their sacred texts and eager to absorb or adapt

Western knowledge, and all – orthodox and unorthodox – were nationalistic in

varying degrees of intensity. In contrast, the Muslims on the whole were not

so anxious to accept new ideas.Whilst the orthodox movement, attempting to

resuscitate classical Islam, was intensely opposed to British rule in India, the

unorthodox movement, seeking to carve a new image of Islam, advocated

loyalty to British power. The orthodox saw the security of Islam in a free and

united India. The unorthodox, fearful of Hindu supremacy, eventually sought

the partition of the country.In other words, the cultural and religious response

of the Indian Muslim community to the West was largely conditioned by

economic and political factors, as a result, the orthodox dreaded European

Christian domination, the unorthodox dreaded Indian Hindu domination.

The British established an orderly and centralized government in India,

although it was unwieldy and extremely bureaucratic.The British

administration in India, by its very nature, first demolished the traditional

personal rule and later brought about the development of the rule of law. In

contrast to the older Indian system, the fundamental feature of the British

administration was its impersonal character, which had its merits as well as its

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demerits.The multiplicity of governmental functions gave rise to a highly

graded paternalistic bureaucracy which eclipsed the self-governing village

Panchayats and at times discouraged individual initiative.But a somewhat

democratic control served as a continual reminder of the superior value of

parliamentary democracy.

Although independent India has borrowed profusely from other Western

political systems, such as the United States and Ireland, and is inevitably

developing its own body of parliamentary experience, her political values and

institutions are based principally on British experience.Broadly speaking,

Indian political organization is Western in its aims, assumptions, and

techniques. The concepts of human rights and of human equality, implied in

the ideal of democracy, are a Western legacy.These concepts are so

inseparably grafted onto the Indian body politic and appear so natural that

many scholars have tried to trace their origins to early India. Democracy is

working most satisfactorily in India today but not in most other countries of

Asia and Africa, many of which were also ruled by the British.These facts lend

considerable weight to the view that democracy was not altogether alien to

Indian temperament and tradition.Again, if Indians were borrowing from the

British, irrespective of their own values and national considerations, they

would have sought to set up a typically British, monarchical democracy, but

instead they worked frantically to abolish the princedoms left behind by the

British. Whilst it is possible to trace prototypes of some modern political ideas

in ancient Indian tradition, such as democracy and individual liberty, it is

difficult to find approximate parallels of such Western political institutions as

parliamentary democracy or the cabinet system. Whatever Indian precedents

there may be, there is no doubt that in contemporary India these concepts and

institutions are of Western inspiration.

The Indian civil service, now called the Indian Administrative Service, was

carefully built up during the British rule into a powerful and efficient, although

impersonal and bureaucratic, force.Once the much criticized patronage

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system of recruitment was replaced by competitive examination in 1855, the

service acquired a unique reputation for skill, experience, and devotion to

duty.The core of the service consisted of the Disstrict Officers, modern

variants of Asoka’s Rajukas, whose duties were, similarly, to collect revenue

and keep peace. Many members of the I.C.S. became deeply interested in

historical research, and much of Indian historiography was pioneered by these

administrators. More important, however, was the British impact on law, which

has been described as the finest and the most abiding British contribution of

India. Before the British period, both Hindus and Muslims merely applied, at

best, the sacred law and, at worst, the will of the ruler; often there were

different laws for different regions and casts. A Brahman could sometimes go

free, or escape with relatively light punishment, where a Sudra incurred heavy

penalties for the same offence; often the former could not be punished on the

evidence of the latter.In many cases Muslim law was based on religious

partisanship and privileged birth.The Mughal Emperor regarded himself as the

earthly Shadow of God and the source of all law and justice. The British made

the law applicable to all alike, and detached it from religion.

Neither in Hindu nor Muslim India was there a law-making body.The former

relied on ancient codes, as interpreted by the learned Brahmans, to regulate

life and society.For the Muslim, Prophet Muhammad had revealed once and

for ail the divine law which was above modification.Islamic law, derived from

the Quran and the Hadith, was all comprehensive, compulsorily regulating the

public and private life of society and the individual.Thus, law an appendix to

religion until British impact liberated it and made it an instrument of social

advancement. It was this changed character in Indian legal attitudes that

made is possible for free India to enact laws abolishing untouchability,

unequal status of women, and other social evils. It must, however, be pointed

out that law did not become fully Independent of faith. During the British period

it remained largely restricted by firm religious conventions and susceptibilities,

especially in the social sphere. Even in India today the social life of Muslim is

regulated by law based on Islamic beliefs; for instance, their marriage customs

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and property and inheritance rules are yet to be secularized.With this new

legal systems and the monolithic administration, came a complicated structure

of high and low courts, giving rise to litigation, often unnecessary and always

prolonged.A poor man found justice remote and beyond his reach, for it

became expensive and too technical.What was previously “known” locally now

had to be “proven” in distant courts, through a tedious procedure and an often

unfamiliar law.The lawyer, with his skill to convince the judge of the validity of

evidence but not necessarily of the actuality of crime, assumed paramount

importance. There developed a long hierarchy of judicial officials whose ranks

had first to be penetrated before the case could be heard. The familiar and

ancient system of the Panchayati Raj was suppressed. Whilst some of these

undesirable features were inherent in the system, many were the result of

misguided and ill-controlled practice.

Pre-British Indians were not litigious.Numerous authorities of the

contemporary scene have amply testified to the general truthfulness and

honesty of Indians, and to the integrity of Indian merchants. Typical was the

comment made in 1852 by Sir Erskine Perry, who had been the Chief Justice

of Bombay that “the sanctity of mercantile books was such that in the Native

Courts of justice, the production of the books was quite conclusive as to the

veracity of any transaction in dispute.” Similarly, Colonel Sleeman reported

that he had witnessed innumerable cases in which a man’s property, liberty,

and life had depended on his telling a lie, and he had refused to do so.

Whilst the British impact discouraged economic progress it proved beneficial

in social life, despite hesitant and unvertin policy.The prohibition of sati, the

abolition of child-marriage, and the undermining of caste or sex distinctions

were commendable measures which, if taken to their logical end, could have

purged India of its social evils long before the enactments independent India.

The economic consequences of British rule, looking at both the credit and

debit sides, leave much to be desired.Indian economy, on the eve of British

expansion, was not backward for the time, and India had a flourishing export

trade in silk, cotton, brocade, salt, and sugar, but economic exploitation by the

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new rulers led to its rapid impoverishment Indian rural economy was

transformed to suit the new modes of industrial Britain.This transformation led

to drastic changes in the Indian way of life, the most fundamental of which

was the disintegration of the old village community structure, partly as a result

of the spread of commercial agriculture. Pre-British Indian agriculture was, by

the standards of the period, robust, rich, and well provided for by widespread

irrigation systems which had a history stretching back to pre-Mauryan days.

The entire country was carved by an extraordinary labyrinth of canals, tanks,

and dams, constructed by the state at prodigious expense. Bernier marveled

at the extent and size of the engineering works he saw in India, and in 1800,

France Buchanan, who traveled extensively in India between 1800 collecting

agricultural data for the British Government, saw several large reservoirs

which were still functioning.

Indian manufacturing skills and economic were well advanced; spinning and

weaving were national Industry suffered severely because of the partisan and

protective policy favouring British manufactured goods.Indian textiles, ivory

works, brassware, gold and silver, filigree and luxury goods, which were once

famous abroad, gradually fell into disuse, reducing millions of the artisan class

to unemployment, poverty, and many to death.Vast numbers of these displaced

artisans were forced to go back to their villages to live on the already fully

occupied land.The crisis in industry led to a crisis in agriculture. Land holdings

became smaller, the number of landless labourers increased, and villages

became overcrowded. Poverty thus multiplied, famines became common, and

rural India became progressively more ruralized. Famines were not unknown in

Indian history but the frequency and intensity with which they occurred during

the British period were unprecedented and disconcerting. It has been estimated

that in earlier times a major famine occurred, on an average, once in fifty years,

and that between the eleventh and the seventeenth centuries, there were fourteen

famines, almost all of which were confined to small local areas. But, from 1765,

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when the British took over Bengal, to 1858, when they quelled India’s first

major revolt, twelve famines and four “severe scarcities” occurred. This

frequency increased in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Although there

is no accurate record, a conservative estimate suggests that in the 19th century

alone more than twenty-one million people died of starvation.In 1943 four years

before British withdrawal from India, more than three million people perished

in the Bengal Famine.It is significant that those parts of India which had been

longest under British rule were the poorest at the time of Indian Independence.

Although India remained predominantly agricultural, the inflow of British

capital, the development of a modern banking and communications systems,

the establishment of textile, jute, sugar, and cement factories, and the

European demand for tea and coffee led to the beginnings of Industrialization.

However, it remained extremely limited until the withdrawal of British power.

Towards the latter part of British rule, the changed nature of the British

economy and the demands of war rendered Indian industrial development a

little more necessary, and after the British industrial revolution had reached

the height of safety, it not only allowed but even required Indian small-scale

Industrialization in certain specified spheres. The growth of modern commerce

and industry brought urbanization. Old towns, located in religious, political, or

trading centres, were now replaced by large metropolitan cities, such as

Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, and by purely industrial towns, like

Ahmadabad. The densely populated cities were an inevitable source of slums,

but they also became dynamic political, cultural, and economic centres of a

type unknown in India before.The cities and traditions of civic life later played

an important role in developing the national consciousness and progressive

aspiration of India, as they had done elsewhere.Rome introduced the city into

most of continental Europe, and with the city came citizenship and the civic

tradition, the greatest contribution of Mediterranean culture. When Rome

declined, the Romanized cities upheld the Roman tradition.Later, the rise of

the mediaeval city in Europe led to far-reaching changes in the intellectual life

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of Western society.In India, and urbanization attracted landless labour from

the village, which weakened the joint family system and the traditional social

structure.

The growing complex of new occupations could not be accommodated

within the caste system. Industrialization, secular education, and improved

means of transportation and communications all operated against the

institution of caste. Untouchability and caste discrimination can only survive in

small village community where everyone’s caste is known. Where crowds of

people were thrown together, caste was not visible, nor was it possible to

follow all the rules of caste in modern urban surroundings.The need to survive

in new conditions, the increasing knowledge of the irreligious character of

caste, and crusades by national leaders, especially Mahatma Gandhi, shook

the foundations of the caste structure.Consequently, when India became

independent, there were, except for the inevitable orthodox, no mental

reservations against the abolition of caste. During the British period, India

developed considerable interest, if not competence, in science and its

application to human affairs, even though Indian technological development

was still in its infancy. Scientific thought was a major part of the Indian

inheritance but modern technology was a Western innovation.The British

mainly encouraged humanistic and literary education in India, and neglected

technical studies and sciences. Whilst there were many liberal arts colleges in

India, there were only a few engineering or medical colleges. But the

enthusiasm with which the Indians have taken to science and the rapid

progress made in recent years is instructive, especially to those who think of

them as unworldly recluses, levitating in forests and holy places.Modern

education, in which aesthetic values seldom find a place, is not conducive to

artistic development, in India or elsewhere.Indian artists, however, managed

to retain their traditional values and forms, partly because the modernists

neglected them, and partly and partly because of pride in their rich heritage.

Consequently, the old canons are still systematically applied in every form of

popular art in India, and modern Indian art, on the whole, retains the spirit of

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its exceedingly rich past.But it has been influenced by artistic developments in

Western countries. Reflecting the new technical civilization and expressing the

spirit of its time, modern Indian art has become no less experimental than that

of Europe or America.

The Portuguese were the first to introduce late Renaissance and Barque

art into their Indian possessions. It had limited effect. It was with the British,

and their need to build bunglows, factories, forts cathedrals, and cities, that

Indian art came under a major European influence; Bombay government

offices, the Lahore railway station, the palaces of Gwalior and Baroda, and the

Victoria Memorial in Calcutta are but a few examples of various European

architectural styles.Later in the 19th century, a reaction against imitating

Europe set in, and Indian art took a new turn under Englishmen, such as E.B.

Havell, and Indians, such as A.N. Tagore.For a while, an art revival persisted

which attempted to recreate a national style of painting. But, as in other

spheres of cultural life, a process of synthesis commenced. New schools

began to arise, and there is no doubt that a fully developed Indian art will be

an integration of past and present, a synthesis of East and West.Modern

Indian artists are expressing themselves in all the modern idioms of Europe

and America, accompanied by the modes of art practiced in India.Whilst

Indian painters follow the styles and techniques of modern Europe, especially

of France, they depict scenes and people in recognizably Indian manner.

British-built structures guided Indian architects.The importation of European

styles was soon followed by a period of blending the rich Indian tradition with

European design.An example of this was the capital of British India, New

Delhi, built by Sir Edwin Lutyens and his associate, Sir Edward Baker, in the

1930’s.Their first designs were a type of neo-Roman style but, under severe

criticism from innumerable people in England, including such outstanding

names in literature and art as George Bernard Shaw and Sir William

Rothenstein, the plans were revised to incorporate Indian motifs. But the

product did not turn out to be a synthesis of styles but an assortment of

patterns, hybrid and uninspired, partly because New Delhi was built at a time

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when the old style had lost all virility, and the new style was yet to be

developed.However, further changes have taken place since and a composite

style may well be on its way, blending elements of Hindu, Mughal, and

Victorian Gothic architecture. Dance and music remained almost uninfluenced

by European styles. Certain modifications, however, are noticed in popular

music, especially in Indian cinemas, and in modern musical compositions

which have adopted Western techniques. Some Indian composers, such as

Sarabji, have written music in Western styles, sometimes using Indian motifs.

Ali Akbar Khan occasionally incorporated a certain amount of harmony and

Western melodies into his improvisations.

Direct British impact on Indian social and cultural life may not have been as

decisive as it was on Indian economic and political organization.But the revival

of the tradition of learning and the introduction of English secular education

illuminated the path of Indian modernization, just as the Indian appetite for

knowledge had sustained India’s greatness in the past. Education in ancient

India, though somewhat limited in scope, was not commercial, teachers were

generally not paid, nor did students race through examinations to pick up

lucrative jobs.It was a voluntary partnership in pursuit of truth.Standards were

too demanding and academic freedom so firm that even the strongest ruler

could not tamper with universities. On the whole, the system of learning was

exceedingly effective. Emphasis was on philosophy but science was also

studied, and in all subjects and attitude of criticism and a spirit of inquiry and

reason were encouraged.However, this tradition of learning declined during

the long period of changing political patterns in India.

The medieval rulers remained indifferent to scientific and secular

education, and whilst the Western countries were making rapid scientific

progress, India allowed her intellectual heritage to go unused.The spirit of

inquiry was replaced by a sacrosanct attitude towards authority, and an

uncritical acceptance of opinions discouraged rational analysis.The rise of

Muslim power in India did not help matters much. Islam, which had stirred

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Indian intellectual and cultural life into a burst of activity, did not subscribe to

the absolute supremacy of the human intellect; it was decisively restricted by

the Holy Scriptures as interpreted by the Ulama. Islam had begun as an

assertion of interpretation freedom, but the initial urgency for this freedom was

soon lost. Once Islam’s earlier democracy was replaced by authoritarianism,

Muslim education also became subject to state authority, even in the most

creative centres of Islamic civilization. It is no small wonder that Muslim

education in India also became increasingly dogmatic, inward-looking, and

stereo-typed.There was, no doubt, a wide network of schools, but the system

of education, consisting chiefly of the study of theology and scripture, was not

conducive to the sustained growth of higher learning. Neither science nor

technology was taught, although during the reign of Feroz Shah Tughlaq an

unsuccessful attempt was made to introduce a simple form of technical

education.

Indian education was in an especially neglected state on the eve of British

supremacy in India.Whilst the Hindu system of learning was jealously guarded

in Brahman caste interests, Muslim education, although open to all, was

dominated by theologians and confined to the faithful study of the Quran.

Both systems neglected literary and scientific education, critical analyses, and

women’s education.The East India Company was reluctant to take

responsibility for expensive programs, such as religion, public welfare, and

education; although there were notable individual exceptions, for example,

William Carey and Sir William Jones. Until compelled to act otherwise, the

British Company’s rule was like that of a medieval police state, anxious to

extract revenue and keen to maintain internal and external security with no

sense of obligation and responsibility for public welfare, health, and education.

Under the Act of 1813 the Company was required to promote public

education, and to make a ridiculously inadequate annual grant of one lakh of

rupees for educational purposes.Many Indians were already somewhat

familiar with Western education through the activities of Christian

missionaries.Danish missionaries had taken the lead in starting English

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education in India from the middle of the eighteenth century.Ram Mohan Roy

even founded an English school, the Hindu College – now known as the

Presidency College – at Calcutta in 1817. Starting with a hundred students,

the College soon became the leading educational institution of Bengal. In

other parts of the country, English schools and colleges had been established

through private efforts.Although Ram Mohan Roy wanted Western knowledge,

he wanted to use education to promote the moral and rational development of

the individual. He was as much distressed at the secularism of the Hindu

College as at the orthodoxy of the pundits.Whilst Roy believed that the new

learning “was indispensable for the progress of the nation”, he never lost his

admiration for the Hindu Sastras which he sought to study in the light of

modern thought.

After years of agitation, in 1835 Macaulay’s minute was written and

Governor General Bentinck took a definite decision in favour of English.

However, it was not until 1853, forty years after the Act of 1813, that East

India Company officials seriously investigated Indian education, as a result of

which the modern system of education in India emerged. The universities of

Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, modeled on the lines of London University,

were founded in 1857.For a long time these universities continued to be

staffed by Europeans and taught a Western curriculum. The British were not

very generous with expenditures on education; at the turn of the century, after

more than a century of rule, they provided little more than a million pounds a

year for the education of about 240 million Indians – a penny a head.

Widespread progress of Western education, however, was made possible by

the open-door policy introduced by the British, and by the vast sums donated

by Indian philanthropists.Learning, hitherto mainly confined to Brahmans,

rulers, or aristocrats, was now available to all those who cared for it, although

the expense involved made it still the privilege of the well-to-foreign few.

However, the multiplication of presses meant greater production and wider

circulation of books and, in turn, education. (The art of printing had been

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introduced by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century but it made

progress only after the establishment of the British rule.

Western education was like an explosive force as it shattered dogma and

superstition.The Indians were compelled to reflect upon the bases of their

beliefs and institutions and to measure them against European standards. If

this new thinking helped the modernization of India, it also gave rise to a class

of Indian thinkers who shared Macaulay’s contempt of Oriental learning and,

like Macaulay, without bothering to study it. Indians took to Western learning

so wholeheartedly and uncritically that many of these newly educated men

became comic imitators, without any enduring contact with either West or

East. They were overawed by Western knowledge and in their eagerness to

profit by it, missed its very essence-intellectual skepticism and scientific

investigation.Without a critical understanding of Western learning, they made

no effort to learn their own. Even competent Indian scholars acquired, at best,

a high level of scholarly knowledge, but made no creative contributions to

learning.With great expertise they either elaborated Western concepts or

sought endorsement of their ideas in Western literature.Whilst Western

learning opened up new vistas of knowledge for the Indians, in some ways it

blunted the edge of their intellectual skepticism.Consequently, English trained

Indian scholars were generally inferior to European authorities. Their

intellectual subservience had been so intense that eventually even at present,

despite political independence; Indians have yet to assert their intellectual

freedom.

Some effects of English education were quite ugly, for it gave rise to a

cultural minority with its own distinct features and interests. Although the

English-educated Indians were a very small minority in the country (less than

one per cent), they were numerous enough to constitute a class of their own.

Patronized by the British Government, this class soon dominated the tope

levels of Indian life. It became a kind of middle class interposed between the

masters and the masses, often acting as an insulator protecting the former

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against the latter.Whilst peasants, workers, and petty tradesmen did not speak

English, those above them, from clerk to councilor, did. Spurred by the class-

preservation instinct, the Westernized Indian was led to rather indiscriminately

adopt Western forms in speech, dress, and manners; and to isolate himself

from the “illiterate” and “uncouth” masses of his own people. At best, he was

a laboriously cultivated English gentleman. At worst, he was clumsy if not

ludicrous, and often crude, pretending to enjoy European food, music, and

painting, at times even speaking his own native language with an English

accent.The snob value of English degrees was so great that those who had

any kind of degree would take care to display it meticulously, and those who

could not pass their examinations would be anxious to let it be known that

they had reached the take-off point, even if they could not take off. As a

result, there grew up not only a class of B.A.’s, but also a class of “B.A. failed”

or “Intermediate passed”. The English-educated had a hierarchy of their own;

the Brahmans of this class were those who returned from England, preferably

with a degree-any degree-but without it if necessary.Those Indians who

desired a Western education other than English flocked to Germany and other

Western centres of learning.History does not offer a parallel to this

phenomenon where efforts for learning such a pathetic class of self-

complaisant and servile scholars. The nearest example, perhaps, may be that

of the English themselves during the Norman period, when it was fashionable

to be French in speech, appearance, and behaviour, and English was the

language of the vulgarian.

Reaction against this kind of English education inevitably set in. A number

of “national” institutions which imparted both Indian and Western learning,

such as the Kashi Vidyalaya, the Jamia Milia, and the Gurukula, were

established.In contrast, the Anglicized schools and colleges strongly

emphasized English education-not even European learning-and students

learned a good deal of England, its birds, countryside, and flowers, and of

English literature and history. The national institutions did not, as expected,

gain widespread support in the absence of government patronage. They were

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not assisted financially or otherwise by the state, nor were their degrees

recognized. On the contrary, the British Government language looked upon

them with distrust as centres of “subversive” propaganda. Indeed, these

institutions did seek to inculcate a sense of nationhood and Indian-ness and

therefore attracted students with nationalistic inclinations. As their degrees

did not originally entitle them to government or other positions, they did not

draw a response from the practical-minded. Despite their limitations and small

numbers, they have produced quite a number of competent and successful

national leaders, such as Acharya Narendra Deva, a much respected Indian

patriot-scholar, Lal Bahadur Sastri, who succeeded Jawaharlal Nehru as

India’s Prime Minister, and Zakir Hussain, who was the first Muslim president

of India.

The influence of English literature on the literature of Indian languages was

intensive.Poetry had been composed in India since the days of the Rigi Veda,

but prose began to be written for the first time after a break of more than a

thousand years. Begun as polemics for and against religious and social

reform, prose forms rapidly reached maturity. Novels, short stories, essays,

and modern drama developed in Indian writing-the short story particularly in

the 20th century.Shakespeare became an integral part of Indian studies,

exercising an almost hypnotic influence on Indian literature and drama.

Shakespeare was not known to Indian until the beginning of the nineteenth

century, although he was writing his great tragedies around the time the East

India Company was founded in 1600.Once, however, English education was

begun and a knowledge of Western literature and thought became a status

symbol and an essential prerequisite for professional and pecuniary gain,

Shakespeare became familiar reading in Indian literary and dramatic circles.

For most English –educated Indians, Shakespear’s characters, the situations

in his plays, and significant quotations, became almost as intimate a part of

their lives as those of their own best writers. Most of Shakespear’s better

plays have been translated into Indian languages. First to appear, in 1853,

was a Bengali translation by Harachandra Ghosh called Bhanumati

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Chittavilasa, an adaptation of the Portia-Bassanio theme from The Merchant

of Venice.Since then all of Shakespear’s comedies have been translated, with

the exception of the “dark comedy”, (in fact unclassifiable as a kind of drama)

Troilus and Cressida. The Marathi version of the minor comedy, The Taming

of the Shrew, rendered by V.B. Kelkar in 1891 has been “acclaimed to be

such a perfect stage version that even if Shakespeare were a Hindu, he could

not have improved on it.” P. Sambada Mudaliar’s Tamil adaptations of

Shakespear are well known.The four best known tragedies have been

translated with alterations to suit the Indian taste, which prefers a happy

ending.For instance, Hamlet and Ophelia are reconciled at the end;

Desdemona is not really dead; a daughter is provided for Macbeth in answer

to the famous question, “How many children had Lady Macbeth?” to make it

possible for her to be married to Malcolm at the end. However, it is doubtful if

Shakespeare will continue to attract Indian universities as before, and the

modern scholar’s image of Shakespear-emphasizing the technical, social,

source-hunting, and temporal aspects of his work-does not appeal much to

Indians, who prefer to look at him from literary and human viewpoints, as did

the romantic poet-critics during the last century.

The continual growth of secular and scientific knowledge affected the whole

Indian attitude towards life. Indians were overpowered by the ideas of Western

liberty, parliamentary government, and nationalism. Later, Marxism and

socialism also permeated Indian thinking. Early Indian nationalists even drew

their inspiration from European patriots. In the 1870’s, Italian nationalist

leaders, such as Mazzini and Garibaldi, were popular idols of Indian patriots.

The Irish movement for self-rule was closely watched and admired by many

Indian leaders, for whom the Irish patriots were models of devotion and

sacrifice. De Valera was as much an Indian as an Irish hero, and Subhas Bose

was called the Indian De Valera. Two major political ideologies have dominated

Indian life for about a century-nationalism and Marxism. Indian nationalism has

long assumed its own individual personality, and there is every likelihood that

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Indian communism may well become distinctly Indian before gaining any

widespread adherence in Indian communists already look more to Gandhi and

Nehru than to Marx and Lenin. Nationalism was, no doubt, primarily a reaction

against British imperialism, which gave in the consciousness of a common

political community, the urge to organize, and the power to attract widespread

attention.It was further strengthened by territorial unification, a uniform

educational system, the establishment of a communication network, and a

highly centralized administration. But its ideological rationalization and form

came from the influx of Western liberal ideas and a growing pride in its own

cultural past.

How much Indian nationalism owes to the direct impact of European

liberalism would be extremely difficult to ascertain.The force of liberal ideas

certainly made British imperialism more humane and receptive to Indian

demands, although the growing power of commercial interests in an era of

industrial revolution invariably counseled authoritarianism.Democracy at home

was to “co-exist with despotism abroad”.The conflicting principles of liberty

and empire were to be blended into a new and unique doctrine of “domination

for the dominated”.Many of the prophets and leaders of Indian nationalism

were, no doubt, greatly influenced by European liberal thought, but their main

inspiration was India’s cultural renaissance, which was almost contemporary

with Western liberalism.Ram Mohan Roy implored the British to introduce

colleges of Western, not Oriental, learning to India.He saw no contradictions

between the freedom of liberalism and the intrinsic values of Hinduism.Roy

was not a product of the West, and did not visit there until the end of his life.

Even Jawaharlal Nehru, who adopted British habits and thought-processes

“more than even the British themselves”, regarded Indian cultural heritage as

the driving force behind unity and progress. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the “Father

of Indian Unrest” and the first man to suggest to Indians the goal of “swaraj

(freedom) is my birth-right”, did not visit England until almost the end of his

career. He was deeply inspired in his political philosophy by the Bhagavad

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Gita. However, it would not be correct to assume that Western ideas did not

influence their thinking. The common people, who formed the great bulk of the

Indian national movement, knew little of Western liberal ideas.The only impact

they felt directly was Western imperialism.To them, Western concepts of rights

and freedom were vague, hypothetical, and even hypocritical.They could see

the value of these concepts only when they were presented in Indian terms.

Thus, Aurobindo Ghose, a completely Westernized and English-educated

intellectual, who renounced politics to retire to Pondicherry in the pursuit of

Divine consciousness, spoke of nationalism as an Avatar (an incarnation of

God), which must emancipate humanity from demonic oppression.

Nationalism, being God, was immortal, and therefore no government could

destroy it. Aurobindo Ghose, despite his too brief incursion into politics from

1905 to 1910, was able to introduce into the Indian nationalist movement an

esoteric philosophy which proved to be of immense political value both at

home and abroad.The divinity of “Mother India”, long cherished as an abstract

and ethical conception by many generations of Indian nationalists, became a

political weapon of unquestionable efficacy in his hands. He preached that

the sanctification of patriotism was the dedicated worship of India personified

as the Great Mother.Much later, Mahatma Gandhi spoke along the same lines

to “the teeming millions of India”, who followed him. His concept of political

freedom was translated into “Ramarajya”, the kingdom of Rama, which was

based on principles of universal morality, and in which justice, righteousness,

and the will of the people were supreme.

It was this alliance between the imported concepts of liberty and unity, and

the developing ideals of renascent Hinduism which gave Indian nationalism

not only a distinctive character but also a worthwhile meaning and force. The

concept of nationality, that is, the existence of a community within a defined

territory, and patriotism were both known to Indians throughout their history.

Ancient literature testifies to a well-defined image of Mother India and to a

clear consciousness of national solidarity called Bharatavarsha, or just Bharat,

a name now reinstated in the republican constitution of India.Deep sentiments

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of love and service of India were voiced in the Vedic and epic literature. The

Manusmriti contains passages of extreme patriotic fervour such as “Mother

and Mother-country are greater than Heaven”.The protective natural frontiers

of India helped to weld all Indian peoples into an Indian oneness.The

resuscitation of this image gave a definite meaning to Indian nationalism, and

Indians responded with intense feeling. Indian leaders visualized political and

social development as going hand in hand, and considered social rejuvenation

essential for political and economic progress.Consequently, Indian nationalism

in its early phases was closely linked with cultural renaissance.Later, it

became more virile and political in character. It was not only the pride of the

old, but the vigour of the new which agitated for change (inqilab). Liberation

from alien rule was not sufficient; the nationalist movement was to be the

comprehensive crusade against all kinds of oppressions – including social and

economic. In the final phase, the cry for change almost subordinated the

demand for political independence (swaraj or azadi).

The fact that Mahatma Gandhi, who was typically representative of the

Indian synthesis of contradictions which baffles logic, was able to gain

leadership of the national movement with little resistance and held it almost

unchallenged until his death, would further illustrate the syncretic nature of

Indian nationalism. Mahatma Gandhi, however, made a distinction between

Western and modern civilizations.Although both were equally good, he

believed the latter had taken a wrong turn in the West. He, therefore, asked

India to keep clear of that kind of modernized West.His position was

somewhat similar to that of Tolstoy – a moral man in an immoral world, which

had been brought about by a materialist, militarist, and imperialist way of life.

He called upon his countrymen to select those elements from Western culture,

as from any other, which were essential for their own progress.The spirit of the

century was to be reconciled with that of the country.In the era of intense

nationalism, cultural pride, and racial prejudice, Rabindranath Tagore sought

to broaden India’s outlook to one of world-wide humanism.Truly a world-

citizen, he consistently warned his countrymen against the evils of

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nationalism, and, like Gandhi, spoke of India’s self-purification and

constructive work. For him, the ideal of humanity transcended the love of

country. Political freedom was not necessarily real freedom but might merely

be a means of becoming more powerful. Real freedom was of the mind and

the spirit, and this could not come to India from outside. Tagore was not

against any one nation in particular but the idea of nationalism in general. He

was, however, very proud of Indian culture, and called upon the West to

understand its good qualities.Tagore’s influence over the Indian mind has

been incalculable; more than any of his contemporaries, he helped to

harmonize the ideals of East and West, and to broaden the bases of Indian

nationalism. He was one of the world’s great internationalists, believing in and

working for international co-operation, taking India’s culture to other countries

and bringing theirs to India.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s greatest gift to renaissant India was to underline the

intrinsic merits of Western culture. Although influenced by his Indian heritage,

Nehru was completely Western in his outlook.Scientific rationalism,

humanism, and socialism had a profound influence on him, enabling him to fill

a gap in Indian political life, a gap that could otherwise have proven very

costly.Western individualism was essential in order to give the Indian a feeling

of self-reliance. Contemptuously discarding traditional self-effacement, he

preached and practiced self-assertion, even at the risk of appearing arrogant;

competent arrogance was preferable to empty humility in a society ridden with

multiple social and economic inequalities. Nehru was the living symbol of what

was best in the West.Most Indian intellectuals saw in Nehru the ideal

expression of their Westernization, and a bridge between tradition and

modernity. Even at a time when Nehru lay in a British prison, he recorded in

his Autobiography, “in spite of my hostility to British imperialism and all

imperialisms, I have loved much that was England……” Yet, he spoke the

Gandhian language of India: “Do away with evil; put your faith in goodness –

in your goodness and the goodness of your opponent”.

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Influenced by the ethical norms of Western humanism, the precepts of the

Upanishads, and the rationalism of the Buddha, Nehru had been attracted by

Marxist theory, during the late 1920’s. He was generally regarded as the

patron of democratic socialism in India, although he was never a member of

any socialist party.It was mainly through his efforts that Marxism, a completely

Western product, was admitted to Indian political life, and it has since

considerably influenced modern Indian thought, politics, literature, economic

life, and social outlook. It was mainly Gandhi’s moral influence and Nehru’s

admiration for Gandhian Satyagraha that restrained Nehru from becoming a

Marxist socialist.During his visit to Europe in 1926 – 1927, he came into

contact with numerous Marxist intellectuals and leaders, especially at the

Congress of the League of Oppressed Peoples at Brussels. Later, he went to

Russia and was greatly impressed by the achievements of Socialist Russia.

Since then he always advocated a socialistic society for India, based on

democracy and individual liberty. From the declaration of Indian independence

until his death in 1964, Nehru dominated Indian life and politics blending

modern values into Indian tradition with a skill that hardly has a parallel in

history.Throughout; he remained a key man in world politics. A leader of an

anti-imperialist revolution, he embodied the hopes of peace of men all over the

globe. Others looked upon him as the architect of a unique democracy,

struggling between divergent forces to acquire economic prosperity and social

justice.The Indian revolution, although rooted in Gandhian ethics, could be

described as “Nehruesque”, for it is to Nehru that it owes its present form,

reflecting his typical combination of Indian idealism and Western materialism.

Nehru was not a philosopher in the sense that Gandhi was, but without him

much of Gandhism would have remained in disuse, somewhat in the same

way as Marxism would have without Lenin. He commanded both the respect

of the intelligentsia and the love of the common man. He was not only an

exponent of the cherished ideals of his people but an expression of human

conscience.Features statesmen could claim his empiricism without

opportunism, and doctrinism without dogmatism. He could win the personal

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affection of his political adversaries without compromising either relationship.

He believed that the “creative mind”, with its social sensitiveness, could alone

solve the crisis of the human spirit. It is this humanism which made him a

representative of the West in the East and of the East in the West.

A major consequence of the West’s impact on Indian tradition has been in

psychological attitudes. Being a self-contained, rich, agricultural community,

India was conservative, hospitable, tolerant, ad somewhat fatalistic. But all this

changed, first under prolonged foreign domination, and later under the

pressure of the newly developing competitive society.India’s natural

contentment has given way to a spirit of rebellion and self-reliance which,

under the excessive zeal of new converts, often inclines Indians to self-

deprecation and lack of collective discipline.Highly individualistic, Indians have

always resisted any regimentation of thought. Extrovert, nonconformist, and

informal, they express themselves uninhibitedly, and indulge too often in

reflection and introspection.Whilst these qualities gave India a distinctive

character, and advanced her learning and democracy, they have often enough

in the past, as in the present, reached a point where they hinder organization,

team work, and discipline, the essential virtues of material transformation. It is

curious, for the Indian does not lack in self-discipline, or even in self-denial. In

fact, self-discipline to the Indian is not denial of one’s liberty but an aid to

individual spiritual perfection. However, any collective political discipline is

regarded as an abridgement of individual liberty. Despite exemplary devotion

and the spirit of self-sacrifice, conspiracies, mutinies, and underground

revolutionary movements failed in India because of poor co-ordination and the

inevitable leakage of information.Mass movements, such as Mahatma

Gandhi’s satyagraha, succeeded because they were open, and required

essentially individual effort.Whilst crowds of people participated in satyagraha,

in effect, each individual was a self-contained movement, and as an individual

he could successfully protest against what he thought was unjust.Gandhi often

did, alone.

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Indians have yet to strike a balance between these two opposites and learn

to blend individual liberty with social discipline in order to speed national

advance.The value of compromise and discipline in a collective effort cannot

be overestimated.No chapter of history is more instructive in this respect than

that of Western activities in Asia. Western domination was, in fact, the triumph

of organization and teamwork over personal valour and an unco-ordinated

approach to politics. It is this Indian inability to integrate individual qualities

into a collective pattern which, more than any other finds its expression in a

variety of meaningless disagreements, consuming national effort and morale.It

seems sometimes that every Indian is a walking Lok Sabha as well as a moral

preceptor What India needs, and has often stood in need of, is not so much

sound advice as sustained endeavour. Reflection and criticism are, no doubt,

indispensable for both the political and spiritual health of a nation, but they can

be overdone. Democracy after all consists of both criticism and effort. In

India, they sometimes part company. Excessive self-criticism soon leads to

loss of self-confidence, and thoughtless and irresponsible expression creates

an atmosphere of general frustration.Together they drain national

energy.Today, India’s most severe criticism comes from thinking Indians,

especially from perfectionists and those whose expectations far exceed their

competence.As perfection is unattainable, and undeserved expectations

remain unfulfilled, frustration is inevitable, with the result that the very class of

people who should be in the vanguard of an Indian revolution are its great

liability.One often finds on the one side the educated Indians, extremely

critical of everything and exuding gloom, and on the other the common people

solemnly engaged in the tasks of national reconstruction. Irrespective of what

awaits them – although it is prosperity they expect to find – and unmindful of

the urgency of their job, the common men in India evidently find honest work

for honest ends inspiring and satisfactory in itself.

The frustration of educated Indians is in no small measure conditioned by

Western criticisms of Indian achievements, which are not always valid.

Indians cannot shut themselves away from criticism, valid or invalid, for they

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respect their own right to criticize.Often Western critical analysis is more

effective than it should be because it is couched in English, a language in

which the Indians are at a disadvantage. Indians, however, are often reluctant

to confess to this inadequacy for they still confuse knowledge of English with

knowledge itself and unconsciously tend to measure the degree of a person’s

learnedness by his command of English.But even well meaning critics of India,

who would like to see India progress, quite often inadvertently measure India

in Western terms and confuse a difference of values and emphasis with

unsoundness of policy and practice.In any case, in their anxiety to achieve

rapid results they have imposed a sense of urgency on the Indian experiment.

Delay might explode India, they fear, and may even disrupt world

order.Indisputably; the sooner Indian poverty is banished the better.But it

would be imprudent to lose balance for speed. It is better to reach the goal

late on one’s own feet than to arrive soon on a stretcher.India is not racing

against time, economic poverty, political rivalry, or alien criticism. She is

fighting herself. If, during this period of development, she cannot keep up

national morale, avoiding the frustrations inherent in partial successes or

failures, and stand firmly optimistic against the unsolicited flood of gloomy

prophecies, no amount of her past glory or professions of noble faith can lead

her to the desired goal.

If the British brought out the best in Indian society, they also emphasized

its hitherto dormant weakness.One such influence was on the social and

political relationship between Hindus and Muslims, which finally destroyed the

political unity of India. Before the advent of the British in India, Hindus and

Muslims had lived side by side for about a thousand years in distinct social

compartments, accommodating each other’s religious beliefs.In political

spheres, there were, as anywhere else, divisions within each community as

dictated by the politics of power.Political relationship was not hinged to

religious beliefs.Socially, Muslims were yet another caste in India. Just as the

caste system separating Hindus from Hindus came under condemnation, so

did the exclusion of Muslims from Hindu society. But Hindu-Muslim social

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assimilation was a very different problem, because of their diverse faiths and

traditions.Later, the development of modern politics, involving a relentless

struggle between Indian nationalism and British imperialism, gave rise to

Muslim nationalism. Whilst the ruling power remained alien, both Hindus and

Muslims were equally deprived of authority, but once the prospects of

democratic self-government began to emerge, the numerical superiority of

Hindus caused a natural concern to Muslims. Whether the British deliberately

introduced the policy of “divide and rule” or not, they did little to maintain the

separation of religion and politics, and still less to tone down the

consciousness of communalism.They certainly did make positive efforts to

accommodate the problems and to allay the fears of minorities.But their

attitudes and statements, made either in genuine ignorance of the effect of

their policy or in conscious effort to profit by it, overemphasized the problem,

and even inflamed fears.Practically every Secretary of State and Viceroy kept

notes for a stereotyped statement, which was repeated with necessary but

minor variations on every public occasion, stressing the manifold divisions in

Indian society.Referring to India’s many languages, races, and creeds, it

sought to mobilize all the interests opposed to Indian nationalism and unity. It

paraded minority statistics, not always quite accurate, and invariably dwelt on

the opposed religions and depressed classes.Sometimes this was done in a

tone of fatalistic regret, sometimes with an air of polemical triumph, but always

the stress was on the divisions of India. This was surely the wrong way to try

to bridge such divisions.The reverse would have been more appropriate.The

British might have emphasized the fundamental unity of the two religions and

their common historical past.

It must, however, be pointed out that Western thought is, unlike Indian,

permeated with the consciousness of religious differences and antagonisms,

even amongst denominations of the same Christian faith.Religion was the

keynote of British politics and education until the end of the nineteenth

century. The British could have recalled that it was only in 1829, after a period

of prolonged opposition, that the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in

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Britain, even if they chose to ignore the terribly bitter Catholic-Protestant

conflicts and other religious struggles. It was in 1836 that the Marriage Act of

1753, under which no one could be legally married except by a Church of

England parson, and which was an intolerable insult to Catholics, was

remedied.Religious bigotry was intense in education.Catholics could not enter

the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge until 1871, after the working class of

the towns had been enfranchised by the Reform Act of 1867, and long after

the rise of liberalism and concepts of individual freedom. The treatment of the

Jews was no better; indeed, the Jews did not get full and equal citizenship

rights until 1866. Charles Bradlaugh was not allowed to take his seat in

Parliament because he was an atheist, and it took six years of painstaking

struggle before he could enter the House and voice the views of his

constituents.Indeed, religion in England was more than a matter of personal

preference, and the Anglican Church was more than an ecclesiastical

choice.Protestant ascendancy was an integral part of the British Constitution;

the Coronation oath pledged the monarch to defend Protestantism by law and

power, and the Act of Settlement ensured a Protestant succession.Yet the

British might have communicated to Muslims and Hindus the Western

discovery made long ago, that creed was an irrelevance in modern politics,

and emphasized the significance of economic and social issues. “If every day

and in every way, each according to his temperament and opportunities, using

the press and the wireless, schoolbooks and white papers, the officials and

spokesmen of this mighty government had sought to minimize religious

differences and promote an outlook of secular commonsense, and done this

steadily for fifty years, is it certain that this feud would rage as it does today?

They chose to make the other speech”.

The influx of Western culture was a gradual, persistent, and

unpremeditated process, brought in by a motley crowd of Europeans ranging

from unscrupulous adventurers to devoted intellectuals, missionaries, and

administrators.As a class, these heralds of change, however, made no

conscious effort to hasten the process.This part of Indian cultural

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transformation is a fascinating period of physical endurance, intellectual

interaction, and social rejuvenation.Indian response to the West was

ambivalent.It endeavoured, on the one side, to reassert India’s great cultural

past and, on the other, to purge its traditional character. Consequently, India

sought to strike a delicate balance between the two. As might be expected in

any cultural encounter between two powerful civilizations, Western impact on

India highlighted both the virtues and evils of Indian society and culture.Whilst

the British industrial revolution inaugurated a new material era that

transformed Indian economy, it also gave rise to poverty, overpopulation, and

famine.Whilst it stirred the depths of the Indian mind, awakened its dormant

spirit of scientific inquiry, and made new contributions to Indian life, it also

compelled Indian society to defend its traditional inheritance, causing a

cultural revivalism.In its totality it acted as a catalyst, setting in motion cultural

processes which gradually led to an organized national consciousness and

unity, and eventually to the modernization of traditional India.Western

influence on modern India, transmitted through English education, Christian

missions and, mainly, British domination, had indeed been both extensive and

varied.Although Christian missionaries initiated cultural exchange in India, it

was not until the British colonial administration began to train Indian personnel

for utilitarian ends and the Indians themselves felt the pressure for change,

that India began to break away from tradition to enter modernity.Despite many

commentaries on the subject, the process and all its implications are yet to be

evaluated dispassionately.Perhaps its full magnitude can only be seen after it

has stood the test of time. India today is both old and new, and this makes her

at once distinctive and complex.That Indian modernization began under

Western impact is not denied, but how much of it is her own renewed vitality is

often a subject of intense, if not acrimonious, debate.The two views are not

really contradictory or even incompatible; the differences mainly arise when

too much is claimed on one side and too much discounted on the other.

Historians have achieved no consensus, nor are they expected to, on

the nature and consequences of the British impact on India. British rule of

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India was a long process with several clearly marked phases.Inevitably,

cultural processes during this period proceeded in various directions and at

various levels.In some respects, the British influence was positive; in others,

negative.Again, some influences were the outcome of a conscious policy,

whilst others were unintentional and incidental. But in all respects it was a

stimulant on a stagnant society, with reactions ranging from imitation and

assimilitation to rejection.The restoration of law and order, the unification of

the country under one central authority, the emergence of the middle classes,

the development of transport and communications, the revival of international

consciousness, on themselves are praiseworthy contributions.But what is

more important is that because of these it was possible for Indians to pursue

other cultural and intellectual activities.It is not for what the British actually

contributed that they should be judged, but for making it possible for Indians to

rejuvenate the best of their culture and determine their own destiny. By

making them conscious of both their weaknesses and of their strengths, the

British gave the Indians objectives and methods to approach these objectives.

Knowledge of Western thought and method, and especially Western

experience gave Indians hope for the success of their new ideals.Without the

awareness of the modernization processes, which the West itself had gone

through, it is extremely unlikely that Indian society could have been stirred into

action. Precept without precedent seldom appears attractive.

The spirit of modern India is something like the spirit of nature itself. It is

ever new, constantly changing yet old. Whilst they are actively engaged in the

pursuit of scientific achievements, the Upanishads will continue to fascinate

and inspire Indians, who will retain their search for the ultimate, without

sacrificing material prosperity.Meanwhile, they will bear the weight of poverty

with their characteristic quietness and happiness.Gandhi will always inspire

them more than Marx, and their means will be as important as their ends. Yet

what India represents today is the emergence of a new civilization, not merely

the continuation of an old one.India was in need of modernization, and the

West introduced it to her. Modernism, however, must not be confused, as is

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so often done, with materialism or even Westernism.There is nothing

inherently Western about modernism because it does not emanate from space

but time.The modern Indian man, for example, may be agnostic, atheist,

religious, or mystical. He is quite capable of experimenting with dangerous

microbes of exploring outer space in search of truth.His motivation may be the

spiritual conviction that man must know the truth about all things, or the faith

that human suffering will be reduced if not eliminated.A modern saint, like a

Karma Yogi, is often seen with hospital instruments or laboratory test-tubes

praying inarticulately to an impersonal God called science or

humanity.Modernism may have begun in the West but it is a universal and

common human heritage. Even if there had been no British rule in India,

modernism would still have come, as it came, for instance, to Japan.In an era

of increasing scientific and technological advancement, the cultural isolation of

one region could scarcely be possible.Without the impediment of colonial rule,

Indian response to the West might have been even more unrestrained. Even

so, although her choice of Western learning was somewhat limited by British

imperial needs, the initiative to select from what was offered was mainly her

own. India elected to absorb voluntarily.She resisted Western domination, but

not Western learning.

In subsequent years, eminent scholars like late Shri Rakhaldas Banerjee,

Dr. D.R. Bhandarkar, Dr. K.P. Jayswal, Dr. R.C. Majumdar, Dr. H.C. Ray

Chaudhuri, Dr. U.N. Ghosal, Dr. A.S. Attekar, Professor Nilakantha Sastri and

some others have contributed to the progress of research in Indian culture and

antiquities.Some of the Indian Universities and Research Institutes, started at

different places in our country, have been actively engaged in original

researches into our culture.The Ancient Monuments Preservation Act passed

during the regime of Lord Curzon has done much to safeguard preservation of

antiquities and relics of the past.The Archaeological Department of the

Government of India and the archaeological departments started in some

states and universities have been fruitfully pursuing exploration and the

preservation of old relics.Some of the important archaeological excavations

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like those at Kohenjo-daro, Harappa, Taxila, Nalanda, Kumrahar, Vikramsila

and Chirand in Bihar, and Paharpur and Mahasthan in Bengal, and

Nagarjunakonda in south India revealed many new and important facts about

the history of our country, in some cases almost revolutionizing our

knowledge.

ETHNOGRAPHY

During the colonial period, ethnography helped to contain and manipulate

populations.The English succeeded in propagating that the teriitory held by

them could not be administered by the indigenous people as they were not

one nation but a conglomerate of many nations.As the colonial powers had

approached other cultures primarily to ensure their political subjugation, they

developed a methodology of gaining cultural definition that relied not on

cultural parameters but on political and administrative premises.Ethno-

sociologists combined documentary and literary data with oral traditions and

field data. In Indian studies, tribe, caste and region have been linked with each

other in a variety of ways.They deal with aggregates of people in a number of

locals, villages, towns and city.During the colonial period a number of

ethnographic works were written by J.H. Hutton, Edward Thomson, H. Risley,

L.S.S.O’Malley and others.There were writings of Sir Henry Maine and W.H.

Baden Powell on the village community in India. Edgar Thurston conducted

extensive ethnographic studies of South Indian tribes and castes. Indian

scholars like L.A.Ananthakrishna Iyer published works on tribes and castes in

Cochin.District Gazetters produced by the British officials contained

ethnographic and economic data pertaining to Indian society.The missionaries

also recoreded valuable data about the society of the period. Abbe Duboi, a

French missionary in Mysore wrote in 1816, Hindu manners, Customs and

Ceremonies, which is very valuable even today. It deals with the customs and

rituals of the people with whom he lived.

Ethnographic studies were supplemented by social anthropology. Several

Indian and foreign scholars such as Brajendranath Seal, Patrick Geddes,

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W.H.R Rivers, L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer and S.C. Roy contributed to this field.

Their writings brought to light various aspects of the sub-stratum of Indian

social scale.In contrast, the European civilization represented the highest

point of this social ladder.This was an ethnographic belief of European

scholars who believed that their society was the best and most evolved while

the rest of the world was in various stages of evolution, Indian scholars

D.N.Majumdar and N.K.Bose were trained anthropologists and studies races

tribes and cultures in various regions of India.

European ethnography supported the theory of an invasion with the

introduction of Indo-Aryan and its supporters as the founders of Indian History.

This appealed to members of the upper castes who identified themselves as

descendants of a superior race – the Aryans. The hypothetical existence of an

Aryan race that supposedly swept down from the Nordic race, find into

Greece, then into Iran and finally into India to oust from the Gangetic plains

the Dravidian inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent.Even though there is

hardly any evidence of a distinct Dravidian race in terms of physical

anthropology, nonetheless, on the basis of linguistic differences, the South

Indians and Tamils have used the Aryan-Dravidian theory to practice an

aggressive Tamil nationalism. Romila Thapar remarked:”The theory provided

what was thought to be an unbroken, linear history for caste Hindus.

However, the discovery of Indus civilization and its city culture in the 1920s

contradicted this theory of linear descent. “She further added: “Today

mainstream historians argue that despite little archeological evidence of a

large scale Aryan invasion with a displacement of the existing culture, there is

linguistic evidence of the Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-

European family, having been brought to Northern India from beyond the Indo-

Iranian border lands and evolving through a series of probably small scale

migrations and settlements.” It is obvious, and then the whole construct of the

ethnic is only for categorizing non Eurogenic cultures and is evident in colonial

ethnography.

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CENSUS, SURVEY, MANUALS AND GAZATTEERS

During the colonial era, the British sought to establish control over the

Indian subjects by extensive record keeping and documentation.The native

population was an object of scientific study. Every year through Gazetteers

ethnographic and anthropological survey, the Crown was informed of the

progress of the empire. These surveys brought to life the image of India in the

minds of her rulers. Besides the Indologists, there were British administrators

who made extensive study of Indian people, their races and cultures. Most of

these studies helped to generate a body of knowledge, preserved in the

census reports, Imperial Gazaetteers, District Gazetteers, Manuals, etc., as

well in books and monographs which are referred by social anthropologists

and ethnologists even today.

Prof. K.N.Panikkar in one of his interviews observed thus: “Gazetteers

that have published from the 1880s are a statement of that time.It is

chronological information of that time but it was undertaken under a particular

context.Most Gazetteers were also known as Manuals.One of the most

outstanding Gazetteers is the Gazetteer of Malabar by William Logan, which is

known as Malabar Manual.They were written for the use of the colonial

administrators for administrative purpose because they hardly knew the

substance “. He further added, “The Gazetteers are like the ‘native newspaper

reports’, a series which were a summary of newspapers in Indian languages.

They were published from 1880s onwards but were stopped in 1936 when

Congress ministries came into being”.The District Gazetteers were a part of

the Imperial Gazetteer of India which the British undertook to gain a stronger

understanding of the culture, economy and geography of the Indian

subcontinent.

CENSUS.

In 1871 the first all India census was undertaken by the British

Government.The ethnological and anthropological studies have been a

continuous feature of Indian census.It throws light on economic, social and

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cultural life of the people comprising of a spectrum of ethnic groups. In the first

census of 1870s, the questionnaire adopted items on ‘religion, caste or class

besides race of nationality or country of birth’. In the 1818 census, ‘mother

tongue’ was added.In 1921 census, for ‘low castes’ the term ‘depressed

classes’ was substituted.The 1901 census classified castes into seven main

categories according to their social standing.

In 1901, Sir Herbert Risely attempted to establish an ethnographic survey

of India which was part of the census. The census data became an instrument

of official policy. It became a method of creating barriers between Hindus and

other groups like tribes, between various castes and so on.The British began

recording the scheduled casts as distinct from other Hindu castes as a policy.

The linguistic terminology Aryan and Dravidian was introduced in Risley’s

racial classification.In conjunction with ethnographic survey, a linguistic survey

of India was started in 1896.The data provided by these censuses and

surveys helped the colonial state to regulate, constrict, count, standardize and

hierarchically subordinate the colonial people.

SURVEYS.

The British had conducted the surveys mainly in view of their revenue,

commercial and military needs.Some of the well known surveys were

conducted by John Mather, the Mysore Survey in 1801, Colin Mackenzie,

Survey of Mysore, District of Nizan and Kurnool, Lt.Ward and Connor, Survey

of Travancore and Cochin States, James Garlings Survey of Sonda District

and so on.The British made divisions, provinces, princely states altogether

consistently drawing boundaries depending on political contingencies.

Intermediate grouping of districts introduced in 1789 as a part of an important

bureaucratic reform. Extensive boundary changes took place under colonial

political climate.

The colonial rulers were fairly successful in drawing definite lines dividing

different jurisdictions – presidencies, princely states, provinces, divisions,

districts, landed estates through surveys and partition.The British thus

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reinforced the idea of India as a ‘natural’geogrphical entity with obvious

physical frontiers defining the sphere in which they and their state were

paramount.The surveys, as a gradual process, had led to the expansion of

British territories across the subcontinent. The boundaries were reinforced by

their representation in laws, gazetteers and maps. Such modern units were

significantly different from other cultural or geographical divisions.

ANGLICISTS AND ORIENTALISTS.

The bitter dispute over colonial languages in education policy during the

1830s raised fundamental questions about the role and status of the English

language and the Indian vernaculars and classical languages in the diffusion

of Western lnowledge and ideas on the subcontinent.Macaulay’s Minute of 2nd

February 1835 ended the long standing controversy between Anglicist and

Orientalist over the content and medium of Indian education. By simply siding

with the Anglicist faction, Macaulay ensured that educational funding would be

devoted to the ‘British Model’. It slammed the door on indigenous tradition on

learning. The East India Company’s modest patronage of traditional Orientalist

studies (Calcutta Madrasa and Sanskrit College) was one manifestation of the

prevailing policy of Orientalism which was the official ideology of British India

from the time of Warren Hastings (1773-85) until the arrival of William Bentick

(1828-35).

The policy of Orientalism interwove the Company’s politicall need to

reconcile Indians to the emerging British Raj with the scholarly interest of

individual British officials in Indian languages and culture. Aware of the fragile

bais of British power in India, Hastings believed that effective governance

depended on the presence of an elite corps of acculturated British officials

who, through their knowledge and sympathetic understanding of Indian

Institutions, laws and customs, would exercise power in the manner of

traditional Indian rulers.Despite growing pressure for introduction of English

language education, during the first two decades of the 19th century, British

education policy in India retained a predominantly Orientalist character.

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British administrators like Munro, Malcolm and Elphinstone supported

education policy dictated towards the improvement of Oriental studies.The

notion of ‘engraftment’ formed the basis of Orientalist in their dispute with

Macaulay. New generation Orientalists, confident in the supremacy of British

power, culture and religion increasingly came to believe that Britain’s Mission

on the subcontinent involved the transformation of Indian culture and society

through the agencies of the English language and Christianity.

ANGLICISTS.

At the forefront of the campaign to anglicize Indian education and society

was the evangelical movement.In India, evangelical movement found

expression in the work of the Company official Charles Grant who believed

that the introduction of Western education and Christianity would transform a

morally decadent society.The central issue for Grant, as it would be for

Macaulay in the 1830s was the medium through which this light and

knowledge should be imparted.The utilitarian view of Indian society was

reflected in the ‘History of British India’ (1817). Mill shared Grant’s contempt

for Oriental learning.He was of opinion that English was an appropriate

medium for the diffusion of ‘useful’ knowledge.There was also pressure for the

introduction of English language education from the middle class

Hindus.Rajaram Mohan Roy demanded teaching English as a language and

believed that it was the key to the revival of Indian culture.Trevelyan replacing

H.H.Wilson, gradually introduced Western sciences and English in Oriental

colleges as he believed them ‘sleepy, sluggish, inanimate machines’.

The Orientalist- Anglicist controversy finally came to a head in 1834, when

Trevelyan and other committee members of public instruction proposed

replacing Sanskrit and Arabic studies with English language.The Anglicist

claimed that one of the ultimate objectives of their programme was the

cultivation of Indian vernaculars through the agency of the English educated

elite.The Orientalist maintained that this could be accompanied only by means

of the Indian classical languages, whereas the Anglicist believed that the only

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credible medium of instructions was English.Macaulay wrote; “English had

ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of

the earth have created and hoarded in the cause of ninety generations “.

The creation of acculturated Indian elite is justifiably regarded as the epitome

of cultural and linguistic imperialism.

By the close of 19th century, the indiscriminate spread of English medium

education had brought into being a class of disaffected ‘would be’ clerical

workers.This was not Macaulay’s elite class of Anglicised Indians. Alienated to

some extent from the cultural roots by their smattering of Western knowledge

and English, denied power and responsibility by the British and disillusioned

by the increasing shortage of employment opportunities, the discontented

products of the English schools were seen as a potential political threat to the

Raj rather than as a class of cultural intermediaries between the British and

Indian masses.

SERVICE AND TECHNOLOGY.

Colonization of India succeeded through the cultivation of local elites who

could make a complete break with almost all prior social obligations. Such

elites were trained to be loyal colonial servants, but disloyal to their fellow

citizens.British Raj used the colonial inhabitabts for achieving imperial

development schemes.Civil administration of British India was mainly divided

into two branches – judicial and executive.In both branches the statues

reserved superior posts for the European and Englishmen. In the Indian civil

service the English and European entrants had to sign a Covenant and hence

it was known as Covenated Civil Service.The uncovenated civil service

constituted mainly of educated Indians with a small sprinkling of Europeans.

The members of the lower service performed the great bulk of Magisterial and

revenue work.The proportion between the convenanted and uncovenated

services was one to six.

In 1853, it was decided to recruit the members of the Convenanted Civil

Service by competition.This decision gave the Indians opportunities to enter

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the realm of higher services hitherto exclusively reserved for the Europeans.

It was extremely difficult to the majority of Indians to go to London for the

competitive examination.Another handicap for the Indians was the age limit,

which in 1866 was reduced from 22 to 21.In 1870 an act was passed in the

British Parliament which permitted Government of India to appoint a limited

number of Indians to any post in the Indian Civil Service without competitive

examinations.With Ripon’s recommendation, in 1886, a Commission was

appointed and it recommended raising age limit and transferring certain post

from the imperial to provincial services.

TECHNOLOGY.

Much colonial historiography recognizes the importance of science and

technology to the colonial development policies. Historians have explained the

critical role played by scientists and engineers in colonial administration.

Similarly, economic historians have addressed science, technology and

industrialization as factors critical to colonial economic growth. The interaction

of Western and indigenous technology affected both colonizing and colonized

societies, creating class differentiation and multiple layers of social strata.

Colonial technologies are being analysed as co-constructed or creolized,

products of complex social processes.Technological determinist model of

modernization formed the basis of development policies throughout the early

20th century. Historians are beginning to problematize the presumed influence

of this modernization principle on the levels of scientific practice and

technological change in colonial settings.

The construction of canals, dams, irrigation tanks, roads and railways all

helped commercialization of agriculture but led to de-industrialisation and

retarded growth in certain areas.Transfer of technology in a way helped

Indians to modernize.The railways for example, expedited the movement of

inland British manufactured goods, the transport of raw materials and strategic

deployment of imperial goods.Industrial development was not a colonial

priority and British acted ambivalently to safeguard their interests.

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ENGLISH AND REGIONAL LANGUAGE.

Colonial language policy was intended to reinforced and perpetuate British

hegemony.The British sought to accomplish their imperial objectives in India

by promoting indigenous languages and cultures in education in the early

periods of consolidation of their power.The most serious effects of British

language policies and practices were the extensive emphasis on English in

schools and neglect of vernacular languages as subjects and instructional

medium.Knowledge of English language by Indians from different regions, of

course, played a part in generating and creating the sense of a nation in India.

The use of English in administration was advocated for efficiency and to

reduce fraud.The direct influence, however, of English was small on the

population at large. More important was state promoting indigenous language.

In the early stages, state translations of official documents promoted

orthography and influenced vocabulary. State printing presses played a major

part in developing public literary culture. Later the Government was influential

further defining linguistic boundaries.

In the pre-colonial days, definable languages had undoubtedly existed in

several senses, yet they had not been exclusive or standardized, even in

formal versions.The British helped decide which were languages and dialects,

as in the case of Oriya and Bengali.Colonial rule linked each language to a

distinct written form, to a region and in some cases to race or religion.

Standardization of regional languages and linguistic division repeated in every

part of British India.This notion was inherent in the empire’s ‘civilising

mission’.Because of the political and administrative convenience, the British

created languages barriers and regional divisions.Imagined hierarchies of

languages and dialects of localities helped the British to generate social and

political cleavages among the colonized subjects.Romila Thapar asserted; “By

the mid-20th century, the notion that language and race can be equated was

found to invalid and indeed the entire construction of unitary races was

seriously doubted “.

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CHAPTER-111

TOWARDS A THEORY OF NATIONALISM

THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IN INDIA

It’s Nature

It is wrong to say that the Nationalist Movement in India was the result of a

few agitators.Basically, nationalism in India arose to meet the challenge of

foreign domination.The very existence of a foreign rule helped the growth of a

national sentiment among the people.There was also a clash between the

British interests in India and those of the Indian people.The British had

conquered India to promote their own interests and they ruled over her

primarily with that object in view.With the passage of time, there was a

realization in India and that realization brought bitterness against foreign rule

and that was responsible for the growth of the nationalist movement to drive

out the foreigners from the country.All classes of people in India joined at one

stage or the other the nationalist movement.The intelligentsia in India, the

peasants, the artisans and the workers all played their part in the freedom

struggle.

Causes

1. The nationalist movement in India was the outcome of a large number of

factors and the most important among them was British imperialism.It aims

during the British rule that the whole of India was conquered and brought

under one sovereign authority.This domination by one country over the whole

of India enabled the people of India to think and act as one nation. Before the

coming of the British to India, the people of the South were usually separated

from the rest of India except for short intervals. British imperialism helped the

process of the unification of the country.Prof. Moon rightly says: “British

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imperialism in India gave her a political unity under a third party in spite of the

many discordant elements in Indian society”.

2.The improvements in the means of transport and communication also

quickened the pace of the nationalist movement in the country.The Indian

leaders found themselves in a position to carry on their propaganda in every

nook and corner of the country.Without those means of communication and

transport, such a thing would have been unthinkable.The frequent meetings of

the leaders among themselves and their personal contact with the people in

different parts of the country gave a momentum to the nationalist movement.

3. Many scholars, poets and religious reformers contributed towards the

progress of the nationalist movement. The study and publication of the ancient

Indian literature by the Asiatic Society of Bengal and scholars like Max Muller,

Monier Williams, Colebrooke, Ranade. Har Prasad Sastri, R.G. Bhandarkar,

Rajendra Lal Mitra, etc., revealed to the people of India the majesty of the

Sanskrit language and also inculcated among them a feeling of pride in their

past and their faith in the future.

4. The religious and social reformers like Raja Rama Mohan Roy, Keshab

Chandra Sen, Debendra Nath Tagore, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Swami

Dayanand Saraswati, Ramakrishna Paramhans.Vivekanand and others

exercised a tremendous influence on the people of India and they were

responsible in different ways in putting the people of India on the road to

progress. It is contended that political agitation in India began with Raja Ram

Mohan Roy.His study of English literature, history and parliamentary

institutions acquainted him with the western political ideas and he introduced

the methods of political agitation by petitions, pamphlets, memorials public

meetings and the press.He was a great lover of liberty.To him, liberty was

indivisible.The enslavement of one section of humanity was incompatible with

the liberty of another section.He followed with intense interest the course of

the French Revolution.He is said to have given a public dinner in the Town

Hall of Calcutta as a mark of his joy at the establishment of constitutional

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government in Spain.Keshab Chandra Sen also made his contribution towards

the cause of nationalism by helping the movement for social and religious

reform.The missionaries of the Brahmo Samaj carried their message of new

religionsand social freedom far and wide all over the Indian continent.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj. He preached to the

people of India the lesson of self-confidence and faith in their future. He

reminded them of the glory and greatness of India’s past and exhorted his

audience to leave no stone unturned to make India great.He declared that

good government was no substitute for self-government and the rule of India

by the Indians was to be preferred in every way.It is well-known that many

leaders of the Arya Samaj like Lala Lajpat Rai played a glorious part in the

nationalist movement of the country.Col. Olcott has rightly pointed out that

Swami Dayanand exercised “great nationalizing influence upon his followers”.

The view of Annie Besant was: ‘It was Dayanand Saraswati who proclaimed

India for the Indians”.

Ramakrishna Paramhans exercised great influence on his followers.He has

rightly been given the credit of assisting the growth of national consciousness

among the people.The Ramakrishna Math and Mission have in many ways

helped the cause of self-consciousness among the people of India. Swami

Vivekanand was the pupil of Ramakrishna Paramhans and he in his own way

helped the people of India in reviving their faith in themselves and also in the

future of the country. About Swami Vivekanand, Niveditta says: “The queen of

his adoration was the motherland”.Like Swami Dayanand, Swami Vivekanand

taught young India self-confidence and self-reliance.The founders of the

Theosophical Society of India and Mrs. Annie Besant made their own

contribution towards the cause of the national awakening.They asked the

people of India to realize that they were not so bad as the Christian

missionaries painted them to be.They were as good as many advanced

people of the world were.They asked the people of India to look to their

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glorious past and try to bring back the same. They taught people to have faith

in themselves.

5.The Indian press and literature, both English and Vernacular, also aroused

national consciousness.Great was the influence of newspapers like the Indian

Mirror, the Bombay Samachar, the Hindu Patriot.The Amrita Bazar Patrika,

The Hindu, The Kesari, The Bengalee, The hurkura, The Bengal Public

Opinion, The Reis and Rayet, the Somprokash, The Sulabh Samachar, The

Sanjibam, The Sadharm, The Hitavadi, The Rast Goftar, The Industries

Prakash, The Standard The Swadeshmitran, The Herald of Bihar, The

Advocate of Lucknow, etc., on the political life of the country.The growth of the

Indian press was phenomenal and by 1875, there were no less than 478

newspapers in the country.Without them, it would have been impossible to

create an atmosphere in which the people of India could be made to think of

their common problems and common grievances.Undoubtedly, the Indian

Press played a meritorious role in not only creating a national awakening in

the country but also guiding the people of India throughout their struggle for

independence.It goes without saying that the Indian press also paid a part of

the price for the freedom of the country.The Indian press was the target of the

British Government from the very beginning but it boldly and fearlessly faced

the challenge.

The writings of Dinbandhu Hemchandra Banerjee, Navin Chandra Sen,

R.C. Dutt, Rabindra Nath Tagore and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee affected the

minds of the people of India.Through his writings, Rabindra Nath Tagore

appealed to thehigher sentiments of the people of India to work for the glory of

their country.He tried to raise the moral tone of his countrymen.The Anand

Math of Bankim Chandra Chatterji which embodied the patriotic song “Bande

Mataram” (Hail to the Mother), has rightly been called “The Bible of Modern

Bengal patriotism”.

6.It goes without saying that the concepts of nationality and patriotism were

known to the Indians throughout their history. Ancient literature and religious

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texts testify to a well-defined image of Mother India and to a closer

consciousness of national solidarity.The ancient Indians gave it the name of

Bharatvarsha or simply Bharat.The Puranas expressly define the term Bharat

as the country that lies north of the Indian Ocean and south of the snowy

Himalayas.The Hindu consciousness of national frontier is illustrated in their

institution of pilgrimages which expects a Hindu to visit the various holy

places, distributed throughout the length and breadth of the country.

7. There was a lot of discontentment in the country on account of many

causes and that discontentment gave a stimulus to the growth of the

nationalist movement in the country.The masses suffered from economic

troubles. The middle classes suffered from the bugbear of unemployment. All

the intelligent Indians felt and bewailed the economic exploitation of their

country.The British officials working in India were a very heavy drain on the

Indian resources.The economic system of India was adjusted to the needs of

the people of England.The interests of the Indians were completely ignored.

Blunt rightly points out that the vice of Indian finance was that the Finance

Minister of India looked more to the interests of Great Britain than to those of

India.All tariff duties were abolished in 1879 with a view to benefit Lancashire.

In 1895, an excise duty of 5 per cent was imposed on Indian cotton goods with

a view to countervail similar tariff on Lancashire goods imposed in the

interests of revenue.The value of the Indian rupee in terms of the English

pound was fixed in such a way as to help imports from England and

discourage exports from India.Sir Henry Cotton condemned the economic

exploitation of India and the consequent miseries of the people of the country.

The Indians resented the attitude of the Englishmen towards them.The

Europeans in India were arrogant.They had a very low opinion of the Indian

character.They took pleasure in calling the Indians the creatures of an inferior

breed, ‘Half Gorilla, half Negro”.They ridiculed the Indian black heathens

“worshipping stocks and stones and swinging themselves on bamboo trees

like bees”.The European masters regarded the Indians as “the belots of the

land, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water”.The life of an Indian was

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estimated by most Europeans as no higher than that of a dog. In 1819, Sir

Thomas Munro confessed that although the foreign conquerors have treated

the natives with violence and cruelty they had not treated them with so much

scorn as the Englishmen had done.Seton Kerr, a Secretary to the Government

of India, spoke of the “cherished conviction which was shared by every

Englishman in India, from the highest to the lowest…….the conviction in every

man that he belongs to a race which God has destined to govern and

subdue”.Lord Roberts, who at one time was the Commander-in-Chief of India,

did not regard even the bravest of the Indian soldiers as equal to a British

officer.

There was a lopsided development of the Indian economy. While Indian

handicrafts and industries were allowed to starve, Indian agriculture was

encouraged with a purpose.Most of the raw materials were produced in the

country so that those could be used to feed the industries in England. That

policy made India dependent on England.The free trade policy helped the

British manufacturers and sacrificed the interests of India.The public debt

increased tremendously.After 1858; the Crown took over the entire debt of 70

millions from the English East India Company. Between 1858 and 1876, the

public debt was practically doubled.Out of the additional debt, only about 24

millions were spent on the construction of railways and irrigation works. No

proper use of the money was made while constructing the railways.Those who

constructed them was given more than what was due to them.

Before the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857, there were many Englishmen

who honestly believed and worked for the good of India. However, during the

Mutiny days a lot of blood was shed on both sides.The Europeans wreaked

their vengeance on the helpless and innocent industries after the Mutiny. It

was this policy of oppression and repression which added to the discontent of

the country.The Indians were completely excluded from the legislatures in the

country and also from the key-posts in the administration.

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8. The English language played a very important part in the growth of

nationalism in the country.It acted as the lingua franca of the intelligentsia of

India.Without the common medium of the English language, it would have

been out of the question for the Madrasis, Bengalees and the Punjabs to sit at

one table and discuss the common problems facing the country.The English

language also made the Indians inheritors of a great literature which was full

of great ideas and ideals.

9. The ground was ready and acts of omission and commission in the time of

Lord Lytton accelerated the nationalist movement.The period from 1876 to

1884 has been called the seedtime of Indian nationalism. Lord Lytton held his

famous Delhi Durbar in 1877 at a time when the people of South India were

suffering terribly from the destruction brought about by famine.They wondered

at the callousness of Lytton.An appropriate comment was made in these

words: ‘Nero was fiddling while Rome was burning”.The second Afghan War

cost the Indian treasury a lot. No wonder, the Indians criticized Lytton

mercilessly.In order to gag the Indian public opinion.Lytton passed the

notorious Vernacular Press Act in 1878.The discriminatory provisions of this

Act were universally condemned by the people belonging to all walks of life.

Sir Erskine Perry points out that the Act was “a retrograde and ill-conceived

measure injurious to the future progress of India”.It was called the Gagging

Act, Lytton passed the Arms Act in 1878 which made an invidious distinction

between the Indians and the Europeans.While the Europeans were allowed to

keep arms freely, the Indians could not do so without a licence.In the words of

Surendra Nath Banerjee, the Arms Act “imposed upon us a badge of racial

inferiority”.Such a measure was derogatory to the self-respect of the people of

India.Lord Lytton removed the import duty on cotton manufacturers with a

view to help the British manufacturers and this was resented by the Indians. It

is true Lord Ripon tried to remove some of the grievances of India but before

he could do so, the Ilbert Bill controversy came to the fore.

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10. The Ilbert Bill was a simple measure whose object was to put the Indian

judges on the same footing as the European judges in dealing with all cases in

Bengal Presidency.The necessity of this bill arose as the Indians who had

joined the judicial service were rising in the ranks and that involved the

possible trial of Europeans by an Indian judge without a jury.This was

considered to be too much by the Europeans. A strong agitation was brought

into edistence by the Europeans who were not prepared to be tried by an

Indian judge.Lord Ripon became the target of the agitation. He was boycotted

by the European community. He was threatened to be kidnapped to England.

Ultimately a compromise was arrived at which suited the Europeans.

However, this set a wrong precedent. The flag of racialism was hoisted by the

Europeans.The Indians realized that they could not expect any justice or fair-

play from the Englishmen when their own interests were involved.

Surendranath Banerjee observes: “No self-respecting Indian could sit idle

under the fierce light of the revelation. It was a call to high patriotic duty to

those who understood its significance”.Before the effect of the Ilbert Bill

controversy was over, the Indians had already organized themselves into the

Indian National Conference which was the forerunner of the Indian National

Congress founded in 1885.

ECONOMIC CRITIQUE OF COLONIALISM: DADABHAINAOROJI

The Indian belief that British rule was a divine blessing to this country

underwent a profound change with the passage of time.The deliberate policy

of the English to rule India for her own economic benefit wounded the feeling

of the Indians. Dadabhai Naoroji was the first Indian to devote his attention to

this particular field of study, ie. The economic exploitation of the country by the

British. On the basis of elaborate data, Dadabhai Naoroji exposed the evils of

British rule.He pointed out that the average annual income of the population of

British India was 40 shillings per head. According to him the expenditure of

the British administration, especially the huge military expenditure was out of

proportion to the Indian revenue.The result was heavy taxation which specially

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fell upon the poorer section.In this famous Drain Theory, Dadabhai Naoroji

stated the various methods employed by the rb for expropriating Indian

material and human resources.Another important question which he raised

was protection.Indian industries, in his opinion, needed protection.Free Trade

was good for those countries which had equal command over their own

resources. But ‘Free trade between England and India is something like a race

between a starving, exhausted invalid, and a strong man with a horse to ride

on’. For freeing the Indian economy from British rule, Dadabhai said, political

independence was a pre-condition.He had no hesitation in declaring that

unchecked British exploitation would one day lead to revolution. Even in 1875

Salisbury, the Secretary of State for India, urged caution by remarking that

‘India must be bled, but the bleeding should be done judicioulsy’.

It was in 1879 when Lord Lytton abolished the import duties on cotton that

the Indians reacted sharply.The press attacked the measures in the most

vigorous language and hundreds of public meetings were held.The condition

of the cultivators grew from bad to worse. Serious agrarian disturbances had

occurred in Bengal in 1872-73 when tenants began something like a no-rent

campaign.Agrarian discontent had reached its climax in western India when

the Prince of Wales visited India in 1875.The discontent of the Moplah

peasants which had organized 22 rebellions from 1836 to 1854 found

expression in five major outbreaks from 1873-80.Similarly, a series of peasant

riots took place in the plains of Assam during 1893-94 owing to high land

revenue assessment.But the peasant movements did not assume such

dimensions as to operate as a threat to British supremacy in India. Apart from

the peasant unrest, the neglect of primary education, restrictions imposed on

Indians by the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act fanned Indian

discontent against the British.

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THE NATIONALISTS, SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION: AN

OVERVIEW

The trend represented by the socialists in the national movement was

broadly represented in the ideas of Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose,

Jayaprakash Narayan, Narendra Developed and their associates in the

Congress Socialist Party.Despite differences among them, they were attracted

towards the ethical ideal of socialism emphasizing abolition of inequality,

exploitation and injustice; they were simultaneously ardent nationalists and

were opposed to the methods of conflict and violence by using which the

socialist revolution had been accomplished in the USSR. In other words, they

aimed at a socialist restructuring of India on the basis of Indian nationalism.

At the same time, they also distanced themselves from the trend represented

by Hindu revivalism. Broadly, they emphasized the secular basis of Indian

nationalism and it was with in this framework that they projected their vision of

socialism.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU.

Nehru’s understanding of the problem of social transformation of India was

primarily guided by his secular and scientific outlook, which aimed at the

modernization of Indian society.In this venture Nehru, had before him two

major alternatives. One, the model of free market economy in the West, based

on unrestricted capitalism; the other was the model of planned economy as

pursued in the USSR.Nehru had reservations against both of these

approaches. He could not accept the first one, since this would eventually lead

to gross inequality and exploitation, in violation of the basic norms of

humanism.As regards the Marxian model of socialism which was being

practiced in Soviet Russia, Nehru was deeply impressed by its achievements

and he quite openly proclaimed that sosm was the onlyoption for India, if a

society free from the clutches of exploitation, injustice and inequality was to be

built.His socialist sympathy was most strongly evident in his Presidential

address at the Lucknow Session of the AICC in 1936. He could at the same

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time never reconcile himself to the methords.Thus, he could not accept the

idea of the cult of one centralized party, restrictions on rights and freedoms of

individuals and above all, Soviet socialism’s emphasis on class struggle and

the forcible overthrow of an exploitative social order.Nehru’s socialism was

broadly based on limited public control of private enterprise, planned economy

etc. on the one hand, and pluralism, freedom of the individual etc. on the

other. In developing this perspective, he was deeply influenced by the Fabian

idea of democratic socialism in a nationalist framework. While this nationalism

was sharply different from the idea of Hindu revivalism with which Nehru never

compromised, he emphasized that India’s road to socialism would have its

foundations based on traditional Indian ideals like co-operation, peaceful

development, humanism and accommodation of all religious beliefs, i.e.

secularism.

It becomes quite strongly evident that Nehru was projecting a vision which

was bound to unleash tensions and difficulties, since it was an attempt to

reconcile things which were contradictory. While Nehru’s goal was to seek a

society based on justice and free from exploitation, he attempted to do it in a

framework of thought where rights and freedoms of individuals placed in

unequal circumstances would not be restricted. This was a kind of humanism

which was unworkable in practice, since the privileged and the underprivileged

were advised to work in a spirit of cooperation. Effectively speaking, Nehru’s

nationalistic vision blurred his perspective of socialism and dissipated the

possibility of any real social revolution, since his radical outlook contradicted

his path of compromise.

SUBASH CHANDRA BOSE.

Subash Chandra Bose’s idea of social transformation of India was guided

primarily by a spirit of intense nationalism and the considerations of practical

politics.While he quite strongly emphasized that political freedom was

meaningless without social and economic emancipation of the masses and

that in free India it was not the vested interests (i.e., the landlords, money-

200

lenders and capitalists) but the interests of the peasants and workers which

would be protected, the ideological framework which he envisaged for

realizing these goals contradicted his objectives. In fighting vested interests,

since he stood for the abolition of landlordism, and uniform land-tenure system

and sound planning, he distanced himself from the capitalist path of free-

market economy and came certainly closer to the radical ideology of

socialism.But his spiritual background, particularly the influence of

Vivekananda, his militant nationalism and above all, his primary consideration

being practical politics, led Bose to reject the Marxist model of socialism with

emphasis on class struggle and materialism.Thus, while he was certainly

attracted towards socialism’s crusade against injustice and exploitation and its

advocacy of the cause of equality, he could not endorse the political strategy

of Marxism for realization of these objectives.

Bose’s ideological vision became particularly clouded because, guided

primarily by militant nationalist sentiments he aimed at realizing his goal by

adopting a path which would give him quick, immediate and effective results.

This inclination towards pragmatism being a major feature of Bose’s political

outlook, he looked towards fascism with its emphasis on centralized state

control and militarism.He felt that the quickest road to social transformation

was possible by combining the ideological goal of Marxism, socialism with

emphasis on equality and the fascist methods of discipline, militant

nationalism and rigid state control. In this regard, the views of Bose sharply

differed from those of Nehru, who was uncompromisingly opposed to fascism

for its inhuman character. Bose, how, could not convincingly explain as to how

this odd mixture was really possible in practice, since fascism was basically a

defence of the vested interests of capitalism, while Marxian socialism was

uncompromisingly opposed to capitalism.The result was that Subhas Chandra

Bose’s nationalist ideological vision did not enable him to develop any real

and effective understanding of the problem of social revolution in India.

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THE SOCIALISTS.

Socialism was a trend broadly represented by Narendra Developed,

Jayaprakash Narayan and Rammanohar Lohia who distanced themselves

from the Congress and claimed to be more racial than views. However, like

Nehru they too, were not much inclined towards the soviet model of socialism

nor was the Leninist concept of a centralized party acceptable to them Guided

primarily by the spirit of nationalism and the idea of co-operation, they

considered themselves radical in the sense that they aimed at the realization

of the ideal of socialism based on equality and social justice by emphasizing

the importance of democratic decentralization regarding the village as the

main unit of development and encouraging the growth of small scale cottage

industries and handicrafts rather than heavy industrialization.They believed

that in India social transformation would be effective only along the traditional

path, that is, by encouraging agricultural growth and it is in this respect that

they distinguished themselves from the path of Nehru, who aimed at the

modernization of Indian society primarily by adopting the strategy of

industrialization and planned economy.

The socialists, broadly identified with the ideology of the Congress Socialist

Party, however, stood for secularism, resistance against obscurantist

practices like untouchability and were inclined towards the ethical and

humanitarian goals of socialism. In this sense their ideological viewpoint also

had common ground with the perspective of the Indian National Congress,

predominantly represented by Nehru. But the socialists, too, could not provide

any real and effective solution to the problem of social transformation, since

their outlook emphasized primarily the values of co-operation and social

harmony in a situation where people were placed unequally in the social

structure. Neither the idea of co-operation nor the programme of rural

development with emphasis on decentralization could provide any real and

lasting solution to the problem of social revolution in India.

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THE MARXISTS, SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The freedom struggle witnessed another trend represented broadly by the

Marxists who distanced themselves from the socialist minded nationalists on a

number of questions. Their idea of social revolution was broadly guided by the

basic tenets of Marxism and the experience of the Russian Revolution that

had taken place in1917.On the one hand, they were skeptical about the very

ideology of nationalism and the solutions provided by people like Nehru,

Subhas Chandra Bose, Narendra Dev and others, since in their opinion the

nationalist framework of thought would perpetuate the basic problem of

inequality, exploitation and injustice in India; on the other hand, they stood for

a social order where the interests of the workers and poor peasants would be

primarily safeguarded and real power would vest in their hands.This meant an

alternative understanding of the problem of social revolution in the framework

of a radical variant of socialism, i.e. Marxism.This trend was reflected

collectively in the viewpoint of the communists associated broadly with the

Communist Party of India, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and other radical

groups which broadly swore in the name of marxism. Individually, the Marxists

position was best represented in the thought of M.N.Roy in his early years

when he was associated with the communist movement. Later, however, there

took place a major shift in his outlook when he provided a reinterpretation of

Marxism and distanced himself from the Communists.

THE COMMUNIST CRITIQUE OF NATIONALISM.

The alternative strategy of social revolution proposed by the communists

was primarily a product of their critique of the nationalist brand of socialism.

While they also were genuine patriots and stood for secularism, opposition to

Hindu revivalism and obscurantist practices like untouchability, their basic

argument was that the objectives of socialism, i.e. equality, justice and

freedom from exploitation could not be realized without a radical restructuring

of society.In their vision, this was impossible by adopting the nationalist

solution which emphasized primarily the idea of accomplishment of national

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freedom under the leadership of the middle-class oriented parties and groups

as represented by Nehru, Subhas Bose and Congress Socialists.The

Communists also could not agree with their perspective of social

transformation which mainly justified the values of harmony and co-operation

among the contending groups and classes in society where discrimination

between the privileged and underprivileged was extremely acute.In other

words, their main objection against nationalism was that it was virtually a

defence of the vested interests and real social transformation was impossible

by adopting the framework of nationalism.

Motivated by this idea the communists, who professed their adherence to

marxism, developed an alternative approach towards the understanding of the

question of social revolution.They followed what is generally known as the

class approach and therein lay their fundamental difference with the

nationalists approach. They argued that if the ordinary man was to be the real

beneficiary of social transformation, then it would have to be the alliance of the

working class and peasantry which would be the guiding force of revolution.

This, they argued, could not be done by adopting the methods of co-operation

and preaching harmony of contending groups and classes in society; to

achieve this objective, the communists thus preached the idea of violent,

forcible overthrow of the propertied classes which included the nationalists,

i.e. the middle classes also. In proclaiming this goal, they were largely inspired

by the experience of the Russian Revolution.

This approach, however, despite its strongly radical thrust, proved

unworkable for a number of reasons.One, despite the criticism of the

nationalists, it could not be appreciated by the communists that nationalist

sentiments and appeals were too strongly embedded in the minds of the

masses, which could not be just brushed aside. Rather, this virulent attack on

nationalism and the castigation of the nationalist leaders like Gandhi, Nehru

and Subhas Bose as agents of capitalists quite often isolated the communists

from the mainstream of the freedom struggle.Two, the model of the Russian

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Resolution was virtually unworkable in India, because the material conditions

were fundamentally different.Three, the communists overestimated the

potential and organizational strength of the working class was somewhat

mechanical and to a large extent unreal, with the consequence that their

vision of social revolution eventually remained unreal and unworkable.

M. N. ROY

M.N. Roy quite often regarded as one of the founders of communist

movement in India, was one of the early Marxists who attempted a radical

understanding of the issue of social transformation of Indian society as distinct

from the framework of nationalism. In his early phase (extending up to the late

20s) Roy’s understanding suggested that the social emancipation of the Indian

masses was possible only by effecting a socialist revolution in the country

under the leadership of the working class, since he believed that in India

nationalism was a spent force and that the nationalist movement was virtually

aimed at ultimate consolidation of the interests of the middle class which

spearheaded it.This hostility towards ad cynicism about nationalism made Roy

an uncompromising critic of the leaders of the Indian National Congress like

Gandhi and Nehru.Moreover, Roy’s optimism about the prospects of a

socialist revolution in India was largely guided by his understanding that

industrialization had proceeded quite rapidly in the country with the result that

a strong working class had emerged with the potentiality to unleash a

revolution. Subsequent research has proved that this understanding was

totally at variance with reality, since the British were not at all interested in any

real and effective industrialization of India.

M.N. Roy, as we know, later returned to India following his dissociation with

the Communist movement and this second phase, broadly known as the

period of ‘radical humanism’witnessed Roy’s reinterpretation of marxism in a

new perspective. During this period, while he maintained his earlier critique of

nationalism and thereby continued to distance himself from the Congress

Party, his views underwent a change in regard to the earlier understanding of

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Marxism as just a political instrument for violent overthrow of the exploiter

class. Roy now came round to the position that for a real social revolution in

India what was primarily necessary was the assertion of a new kind of ethical

consciousness with which the people would have to be imbued. The emphasis

now shifted in his thought from political confrontation to a kind of abstract

humanism which, however, was of little practical use.As a transition took place

in his writings from focusing on the masses to that on the individual and from

political action to abstract humanism, his perspective of social revolution

became blurred and virtually unworkable.

He we have broadly tried to arrive at an overall evaluation of the contending

viewpoints of the nationalists with a socialist outlook and the Marxists on the

question of social revolution. We have seen that despite their agreement on

some major issues like opposition to and overthrow of British imperialism,

Hindu revivalism and different types of obscurantism on the one hand and

their inclination towards the values of Socialism and rejection of absolute free

market economy on the other, they ultimately differed in regard to the issue of

the complex interrelation between social revolution and nationalism. For the

nationalists it was nationalism which was more important than social

revolution and, consequently, the basic issue of social transformation

ultimately got compromised.For the Marxists however, it was social

revolution which was more important and they felt that this was in issue which

could not be effectively settled within the framework of nationalism. In this

venture, while emphasizing class struggle they quite often mechanically

contraposed the two and there were occasions when they got themselves

isolated from the mainstream of the freedom struggle.

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CHAPTER-1V

NATIONALIST RESISTANCE

GENESIS OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS.

There is no unanimity of opinion regarding the origin of the Indian National

Congress. Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya says that the origin of the Congress is

“shrouded in mystery”.There are many accounts and theories about it.

1.Themost widely accepted view is that Hume, under the protection of Lord

Dufferin, organized the Congress with two main purposes and those were to

provide a “safety-valve” to the anticipated or actual discontentment of the

Indian intelligentsia and to form a quasi-constitutional party similar to Her

Majesty’s Opposition in England.The view of W.C. Banerjee, the First

Congress President, was that the Indian National Congress as it was originally

started, was in reality the work of Lord Dufferin, Governor General of India.

According to him, when Hume in 1884 conceived the idea that it would be a

great advantage to the country if leading Indian politicians could be brought

together once a year to discuss social matters and be upon friendly footing

with one another, he did not desire that politics should form part of their

discussions.Hume was also of the view that the Governor of the province,

where the politicians met, should be asked to preside and thereby cordiality

should be established between the official classes and the non-official Indian

politicians.With these ideas, Hume met Lord Dufferin at Simla early in 1885.

The Viceroy showed keen interest in the matter and after considering it for

some time; he sent for Hume and told him that inhis opinion his project would

not be of much use.He suggested to him that there was no body of persons in

India who performed the functions which Her Majesty’s Opposition did in

England.Dufferin’s view was that Indian politicians should meet every year

and point out to the Government in what respects the administration was

defective and how the same could be improved.The assembly proposed by

him should not be presided over by the local Governor.It is contended that

Hume was convinced of the argument of Dufferin and when he placed the two

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schemes, his own and that of Dufferin, before the leading politicians in

Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and other parts of the country, the latter

unanimously accepted Dufferins’ scheme and proceeded to give effect to it.

2. Prof. Sundar Raman has given a slightly different version of the same

theory.According to him, Dufferin persuaded Hume to stay on and work in

India rather than go back to England and work from there.The idea of Hume

was to arouse the consciousness of the people of England by carrying on

agitation in England.However, Dufferin convinced Hume that the latter could

secure his own aims best by confining the agitation to India for the present

and by helping the Indian public men all over the country to organize and

develop a national organization in India conducted by her own leaders with the

help and sympathy of men like Hume. A similar view was expressed by

Gokhale in 1913 in these words:“No Indian could have started the Indian

National Congress. Apart from the fact that any one putting his hand to such a

gigantic task had need to have Mr. Hume’s commanding personality, even if

an Indian had possessed such a personality and had come forward to start

such a movement embracing all India, the officials would not have allowed it to

come into existence.If the founder of the Congress had not been a great

Englishman and a distinguished example-official, such was the distrust of

political agitation in those days that the authorities would have at once found

some way or the other of suppressing the movement”.

3. There is another theory which attributes Hume’s initiative to the fear of a

rebellion of the peasants, especially in Northern India.There are two versions

of the theory.One view is that Hume came to know of the impending calamity

while still a member of the Indian Civil Service through the secret reports from

the C.I.D.The other view is that Hume got the information not from official

sources but from reports from Chelas and Gurus (disciples and masters). It

was through them that Hume got access to 7 large volumes containing

references to a general state of rebellion in Northern India. Critics point out

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that the theory of rebellion has no historical basis and it was merely for

propaganda value.

4. Another view is that the Theosophical Society of India was the parent of the

Indian National Congress.Olcott asserted in 1886 that the Theosophical

Society had first shown the possibility of bringing men from different parts of

India together into friendly relations whi had never been known before.

Reghunath Rao and N.N. Sen virtually accused Hume of having stolen their

thunder.Their contention was that the real origin of the Congress should be

traced back to the meeting held at Raghunath Rao’s house in Madras late in

December, 1884.Rejecting this view, critics point out that the idea of holding

annual conferences of representative men from different parts of the country

in order to promote national objectives had been current in India long before

the founders of the Theosophical Society landed in Bombay in February,

1897.

5. The view of Dr. Nand Lal Chatterji is that the “Congress was founded in fact

as a precautionary move against an apprehended Russian invasion of India”.

The relations between Russia and Afghanistan were very strained over the

question of Panjdeh and there was a danger of Great Britain being involved in

it.The fear of Russian advance in Central Asia worried the Government of

India and the people of India gave a demonstration of their loyalty to the

Crown by offering themselves as volunteers for the defence of their country.

The Indian Press and the educated Indians demanded the organization of a

Volunteer Corps.The attitude of the Government was unsympathetic towards

the movement which died out as the danger of Russian invasion receded. It is

pointed out that Russophobia and the Volunteer Movement worked as a lever

to political activity in India.The prevailing atmosphere in the country was

conducive to the birth and growth of an all-India political organization.It was in

March 1885 that the Russian danger was at its highest and it was then that

Hume met the Viceroy and explained to him his proposal to organize the

Indian National Congress and succeeded in securing the neutrality, if not

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active support of othe Viceroy.Thus, Russophobia played its part in the

creation of the Indian National Congress.

6. Another view gives the Congress an “impressive origin, a birth in

substance, a spontaneous character”.It is contended that “its roots are to be

discovered in the separate political associations in various parts of India. It

was watered by the controversies over the Vernacular Press Act, the Arms

Act, the reduction of the age limit for entrance into the Indian Civil Service and

the Ilbert Bill.Another view is that the Congress was “the first rich harvest of

what had been sown long before by the wise and beneficent statesmen in the

shape of schools and colleges”.The view of Surendranath Banerjee is that the

Congress was the “outcome of those civilizing influences which Macaulay and

his Congress-adjutors were instrumental in implanting in the Government of

the country”.Wedderburn regarded the Congress as “the direct result of

thenoblest efforts of the British statesmen, the rational and healthy fruit of

higher education and free institutions” granted to the people of India.The

Congress was a visible embodiment of the national awakening in India as a

result of the impact of Western civilization on Indian thought.

FIRST SESSION OF THE CONGRESS.

The first meeting of the Indian National Union which was subsequently

renamed the Indian National Congress was to be held at Poona but its venue

had to be shifted to Bombay.Originall it had been decided to request Lord

Reay, Governor of Bombay, to be the first President of the Indian National

Congress but the idea had to be dropped as the Governor was advised by the

Viceroy not to accept the offer.In his place W.C. Bannerjee, a leading Barrister

of Calcutta and a very safe and loyal person, was elected the first President.

72 delegates came from different parts of the country and most important

among them were Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Ranade, Pherozeshah

Mehta, K.T. Telang; etc.The meeting was truly a national gathering consisting

of leading men from all parts of India.

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SECOND SESSION OF THE CONGRESS.

The second meeting of the Indian National Congress was held at Calcutta

and was presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji.Dadabhai praised the blessings

of the British rule in India and he was cheered by the members of the

audience. Hume moved a resolution for three cheers for Her Most Gracious

Majesty, the Queen Empress and a further resolution for the long life of the

Queen.He also advised his colleagues to look upon Dufferin not as an enemy

but as a friend and well-wisher.Dufferin invited the members of the Congress

as “distinguished visitors” to a garden party at the Government House. A

similar welcome was given by the Governor of Madras in 1887. However, a

change took place in the attitude of the Government.After the Madras session

in 1887, an aggressive propaganda was started among the masses.Hume

published a pamphlet entitled “An Old Man’s Hope”, in which he appealed to

the people of England in these words: “Ah Men ! Well-fed and happy! Do you

at all realize the dull misery of these countless myriads? From their births to

their deaths, how many rays of sunshine think you chequer their gloom-

shrowded paths? Toil, Toil, Toil; hunger, hunger, hunger, sickness, suffering,

sorrow; these alas, alas, alas are the key-notes of their short and sad

existence”.In December 1889, the Congress session was held at Bombay

under the Chairmanship of Sir William Wedderburn.It was attended by Charles

Bradlaugh; a member of British Parliament.He addressed the Congress in

these words: “For whom should I work if not for the people? Born of the

people, trusted by the people, I will die for the people”.

LAHORE SESSION OF THE CONGRESS.

Dadabhai Naoroji was re-elected as the President of the Lahore session of

the Congress held in December 1893.His travel from Bombay to Lahore

presented the spectacle of a procession.Citizens of the various places on the

way presented him addresses.At the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar, he was

given a robe of honour.He brought the following message from the Irish

members of the Parliament:“Don’t forget to tell your colleagues at the

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Congress that every one of the Ireland’s Home Rule members in Parliament is

at your back in the cause of the Indian people”. Addressing the audience at

the Session, Dadabhai declared: “Let us always remember that we are

children of our mother country. Indeed, I have never worked in any other spirit

than that I an Indian and owe duty to my work and all my countrymen.

Whether I am a Hindu or a Mohammedan, a Parsi, a Christian, or of any other

creed, I am above all an Indian. Our country is India, our nationality is Indian”.

The next session of the Congress was held in Madras in 1894 under the

Presidentship of Alfred Webb, an Irish member of the British Parliament.The

next session was held at Poona in 1895 and was presided over by

Surendranath Banerjee.Gokhale presided over the Banaras Session of the

Congress in 1905.The next session was held at Calcutta in 1906 under the

Presidentship of Dadabhai Naoroji.On that occasion, Dadabhai unfurled the

flag of Swaraj for India and four resolutions on self-government, boycott,

Swadeshi and national education were passed.

THE MODERATES (1885 – 1905) OR THE FOLLOWERS OF

CONSTITUTIONAL METHOD.

The early Congressmen who dominated the affairs of the Indian National

Congress from 1885 to 1905 were known as the Moderates. They belonged to

a class which was Indian in blood and colour but British in tastes, in opinions,

in morals and in intellect.They were supporters of British institutions.They

believed that what India needed was a balanced and lucid presentation of her

needs before the Englishmen and their Parliament and their demands were

bound to be satisfied.They had faith in the British sense of justice and fairplay.

India’s connection with the West through England was considered to be a

boon and not a curse.The Moderates believed in loyalty to the British

Crown.This fact is clearly brought out by the statements made from time to

time by the Moderate leaders.Dadabhai Naoroji is said to have observed thus:

“Let us speak out like men and proclaim that we are loyal to the backbone;

Surendranath Banerjee described his attitude towards England in these

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words:“Let us work……with unwavering loyalty to the British

connection…..Then will the Congress have fulfilled its mission – justified the

hopes of those who founded it, one who worked for it……not by the

supersession of British rule in India, but by broadening its basis, liberalizing its

spirit, ennobling its character, and placing it upon the unchangeable

foundations of a nation’s affections.It is not severance that we look forward to

– but unification, permanent embodiment, as an integral part of that great

Empire which has given the rest of the world the models of free institutions

…..Covered the world with free states”. Again, “To England we look for

guidance.To England we look for sympathy in the struggle.From England must

come the crowning mandate which will enfranchise our peoples.England is our

political guide and ourmoral preceptor in the exalted sphere of political

duty.English history has taught those principles of freedom which we cherish

with our life-blood. We have been fed upon the strong food of English

constitutional freedom”.

The Moderates relied upon the solemn pledges given by thebr Government

to the people of India from time to time and the Queen’s proclamation of 1858

was one of them.Surendranath Banerjee called this proclamation as “The

Magna Carta of our rights and liberties”.He went to the extent of saying that

“The Proclamation, the whole Proclamation and nothing but the Proclamation

is our watchword our battle-cry and the ensign of victory. It is the gospel of

our political redemption”.The Moderates believed in orderly progress and

constitutional agitation.They believed in patience, steadiness, conciliation and

union.To quote Surendranath Banerjee, “The triumphs of liberty are not to be

won in a day Liberty is a jealous goddess, exacting in her worship and

claiming from her votaries prolonged and assiduous devotion”.In 1887,

Congress President Badruddin Tyabji observed: “Be moderate in your

demands, just in your criticism, correct in your facts and logical in your

conclusions”.Dr. Rash Behari Ghosh is said to have observed: “You must

have patience.You must learn to wait and everything will come to you in time”.

The Moderates believed in constitutional agitation within the four corners of

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law.They believed that their main task was to educate the people, to arouse

national political consciousness and to create a united public opinion on

political questions.For this purpose they held meetings.They criticized the

Government through the press.They drafted and submitted memorials and

petitions to the Government, to the officials of the Government of India and

also to the British Parliament.They also worked to influence the British

Parliament and British public opinion.The object of the memorials and

petitions was to enlighten the British public and political leaders about the

conditions prevailing in India. Deputations of leading Indian leaders were sent

to Britainin 1889.A British Committee of the Indian National Congress was

founded in 1906 and that Committee started a journal called “India”.

Dadabhai Naoroji spent a major part of his life and income in British doing

propaganda among its people and politicians.

The object before the movements was “wider employment of Indians in

higher offices in the public service and the establishment of representative

institutions”. Surendranath Banerjee pointed out that “They lay at the root of all

other Indian problems.If power were vested inus to legislate and to control the

finances and to carry on the administration through and by our men, in

accordance with the principles laid down by our representatives we should

have self-government in the true sense”.This could be accomplished by the

goodwill and cooperation of the British people.With their firm faith in the values

of Western culture and the sense of justice of the Englishmen, noother attitude

was possible.They believed in slow progress towards democracy which

according to many of them was an exotic plant than would take time toget

acclimatized to the Indian soil and involve long training for the people to get

used to it.The Moderates were fully aware of the fact that India was a nation

in the making.Indian nationhood was gradually coming into being and could

not be taken for granted as an accomplished fact.They worked constantly for

the development and consolidation of the feeling of national unity irrespective

of region, caste or religion.They hoped to make a humble beginning in this

direction by promoting close contacts and friendly relations among the people

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from different parts of the country.The economic and political demands of the

Moderates were formulated with a view to unify the Indian people on the basis

of a common political programme.They organized a powerful all India agitation

against the abandonment of tariff-duties on imports and against the imposition

of cotton excise duties.This agitation aroused the feelings of the people and

helped them to realize the real aims and purposes of British rule in India.

The Moderates carried on agitation for the reduction of heavy land revenue

payments.They urged the Government to provide cheap credit to the

peasantry through agricultural banks and to make available irrigation facilities

on a large scale.They asked for improvement in the conditions of workd of the

plantation labourers.They demanded a radical change in the existing pattern

of taxation and expenditure which put a heavy burden n the poor while leaving

the rich, especially the foreigners, with a very light load.They demanded the

abolition of salt tax which hit the poor and lower middle classes hard. The

Moderates complained of India’s growing poverty and economic

backwardness and put all the blame on the policies of the British Government.

They blamed the Government for the destruction of the indigenous industries

in the country.They demanded the rapid development of the modern industries

and wanted the Government to give tariff protection to the Indian industries.

They advocated the use of Swadeshi goods and the boycott of British goods.

They demanded that the economic drain of India by England must stop.The

Moderates criticized the individual administrative measures and worked hard

to reform the administrative system which was ridden with corruption,

inefficiency and oppression.They demanded the Indianisation of the higher

grades of the administrative services.The demand was put forward on

economic, political and moral grounds.Economically, the high salaries paid to

the Europeans put a heavy burden on Indian finance and contributed to the

economic drain.The Europeans sent out of India a large part of their salaries

and also got their pensions in England. That added to the drain of wealth from

India.Politically, the European civil servant ignored the needs of the Indians

and favoured the European capitalists at the cost of their Indian counter-parts.

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It was hoped that the Indianisation of the service would make the

administration more responsive to Indian needs.Morally; the existing system

dwarfed the Indian character reducing the tallest Indian to permanent

inferiority in his own country.

The Moderates demanded the separation of the judiciary from the

executive.They were opposed to the policy of disarming the people of India by

the Government.They wanted the Government to spend more money on the

spread of education in the country.They also took up the cause of the Indians

who had migrated to the British colonies.They opposed tooth and nail the

restrictions imposed by the Government on the freedom of speech and the

press. In 1897, Tilak and many other leaders were arrested and sentenced to

long terms of imprisonment for spreading disaffection against the Government

through their speeches and writings.The Natu brothers of Poona were

deported without trial.The arrest of Tilak marked the beginning of a new phase

of the Nationalist movement.The Amrita Bazar Patrika wrote: “There is

scarcely a home in this vast country where Tilak is not now the subject of

melancholy talk and where his imprisonment is not considered as a domestic

calamity”.The Moderates demanded the expansion and reform of the existing

Legislative Councils.They demanded the introduction of the system of direct

elections and an increase in the number of members and powers of the

Legislative Councils.It is true that their agitation forced the Government to

pass the Indian Councils Act of 1892 but the Moderates were not satisfied with

what was given to the people of India.No wonder, they declared the Act of

1892 as a “hoax”.They demanded a larger share for the Indians in the

Legislative Councils.Later on, the Moderates put forward the claim for

Swarajya or self-government within the British empire on the model of the

other self-governing colonies.

The basic weakness of the Moderates lay in their narrow social base.

There movement did not have a wide appeal.The area of their influence was

limit to the urban community.As they did not have the support of the masses,

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they declared that the time was not ripe for throwing out a challenge to thefo

rulers.That was likely to invite premature repression.To quote Gokhale, “You

do not realize the enormous reserve of power behind the Government.If the

Congress were to do anything such as you suggest, the Government would

have no difficulty in throttling it in five minutes”.However, it must nto be

presumed that the Moderate leaders fought for their narrow interests.Their

programmes and policies hampioned the cause of all sections of the Indian

people and represented nation wide interests against colonial exploitation.

ATTITUDE OF THE GOVERNMENT.

As regards the attitude of the Government towards the Moderates, it

became hostile soon after the inception of the Indian National Congress. Lord

Dufferin looked upon the foundation of the Congress with suspicion.In 1887,

he attacked the Congress and ridiculed it as representing a “microscopic

minority of the people”.Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, accused the

Congress leaders of possessing “seditious and double sided character”.He

went to the extent of abusing Dadabhai Naoroji and declared that Dadabhai’s

residence and association with radical and socialist British leaders had

“deteriorated whatever brains or presence of mind he may originally have

possessed”.The British officers publicly criticized and condemned the Indian

National Congress and its leaders.They were branded as “disloyal Babus”,

“seditious Brahmins” and “violent villains”.The Congress was described as a

“factory of sedition” and the Congressmen as disappointed candidates for

office discontented lawyers who represented no one but themselves.Lord

Curzon declared in 1900:“The Congress is tottering to its fall and one of my

great ambitions, while in India, is to assist it to a peaceful demise”.He

described the Congress as an “unclean thing”.Some Englishmen accused the

Indian National Congress of receiving the Russian gold.Lord Elgin openly

threatened the Indians in 1898 in these words: “India was conquered by the

sword and by the sword it shall be held”. The British officials relied upon the

policy of “divide and rule” to weaken the nationalist movement.They

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encouraged Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Raja Shiv Prasad and other pro-British

Indians to start an anti Congress movement.They tried to drive a wedge

between the Hindus and Muslims.They fanned communal ‘rivalries among the

educated Indians on the question of jobs in Government service.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE MODERATES.

If we critically evaluate the work of the Moderates,it appears that they did

nto achieve much success.Very few of the reforms advocated by them were

carried out.The foreign rulers treated them with contempt.To quote Lala Lajpat

Rai, “After more than 20 ears of more or less futile agitation for concessions

and redress of grievances, they had received stones in place of bread”.The

Moderates failed to acquire any roots among the common people and even

those who joined the Congress with high hopesm were feeling more and more

disillusioned.The politics of the Moderates were described as “halting andhalf-

hearted”.Their methods were described as those of mendicancy or beggary

through prayers and petitions.

The Moderates failed to keep pace with the yearnings and aspirations of the

people.They failed to understand and appreciate the impatience of the people

who were suffering under the foreign yoke.They did not realize that the

political and economic interests of the Indians and the British clashed and

consequently the British people could not be expected to give up their rights

and privileges in India without a fight. Moreover, it was during the period that

a movement started among the Muslims to keep away from the Congress and

that ultimately resulted in the establishment of Pakistan. In spite of their best

efforts, the Moderates were not able to win over the Muslims.

It is wrong to say that the political record of the Moderates was a barren

one.Taking into consideration the difficulties they had to confront with at that

time, themods achieved a lot. It is their achievements in the widen sense that

led later on to the more advanced stages of the nationalist movement.The

Moderates represented the most aggressive forces of the time.They made

possible a decisive shift in Indian politics.They succeeded in creating a wide

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political awakening and in arousing among the middle and lower middle class

Indian, and the intelligentsia the feeling that they belonged to one common

nation.They made the people of India conscious of the bonds of common

political, economic and cultural interests and the existence of a common

enemy and thus helped to weld them into a common nationality.They

popularized among the people the ideas of democracy and civil liberty.They

did pioneering work in mercilessly exposing the true character of British

imperialism in India.Even though they were moderate in politics and political

methods they successfully brought to light the most important political and

economic aspects of the Indian reality that India was being ruled by a foreign

power for economic exploitation.The agitation of the Moderates in the

economic field completely undermined the moral foundations of British rule in

India. This was the seed-time of Indian nationalism.The Moderates sowed the

seeds well and deep.They evolved a common political and economic

programme which united the different sections of the people. In spite of their

many failures, they laid strong foundations for the national movement to grow

upon and they deserve a high place among the makers of modern India. To

quote Gokhale, “Let us not forget that we are at a stage of the country’s

progoress when our achievements are bound to be small, and our

disappointments frequent and trying.That is the place which it has pleased

Providence to assign to us in this struggle, and our responsibility is ended

when we have done the work which belongs to that place. It will, no doubt, be

given to our countrymen of future generations to serve India by their

successes; we of the present generation must be content to serve her mainly

by our failures. For, hard though it is out of those failures the strength will

come which in the end will accomplish great tasks”. Again, “The minds of the

people have been familiarized with the ideas of a united India working for her

salvation; a national public opinion has been created; close bonds of

sympathy now knit together the different provinces; castes and creeds hamper

less and less the pursuit of common aims; the dignity of a consciousness of

national existence has spread over the whole land. Above all, there is a

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general perception now of the goal towards which we have to strive and a

wide recognition of the arduous character of the struggle and the immense

sacrifices it requires”.

THE SURAT SPLIT (1907).

In 1907, there was a split in the Congress and the Moderates parted

company with the Extremists.That split was due to many causes.The

Moderates had controlled the Congress from its very beginning and even now

they were in control of it.They had their own ways of thinking and doing which

were not acceptable to the younger generation who were impatient with the

speed at which the Moderates were moving and leading the nation.Under the

circumstances, a confrontation between the two was inevitable and that

actually happened in 1907.

1. There were fundamental differences between the Moderates and the

Extremists on the question of loyalty to the English throne and the

continuance of British rule in India.The Moderates believed in loyalty to the

English throne. They also believed that the continuance of the British rule was

in the interests of the people of India.The view of the Extremists was that the

British rule in India was a curse and the question of loyalty to the English

throne did not arise at all.

2.Another difference between the two was regarding the emphasis on the

ultimate goal as well as the actual form of ultimate goal.The Moderates

believed in a policy of conciliation and compromise.They were satisfied with

the small concessions given by the British Government from time to time. A

little representation here and a few jobs there were enough to satisfy them.

They stood for self-government for India in the same way as the position of

the British dominions like Canada and Australia was.The Extremists did not

bother about the petty concessions given by the British Government.They did

not care for the petty reforms which they considered to be merely palliatives

and not the final remedy.According to the Extremists, Swaraj alone was the

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final remedy.They considered instalments of constitutional reforms as mere

local applications

3.The moderates believed in adopting strictly constitutional methods for

agitation and that also of the feeblest type, so that there was not the slightest

chance of any violence.They believed in reasoned and emotional appeals,

lucid presentation of the case, irresistible statements of facts, irrefutable

arguments and presenting petitions.The view of Pherozeshah Mehta was: “We

delegates meet together to present our Petition of Rights, our Grand

Remonstrance, our appeal and our prayer”.A.C. Mazumdar considered the

right of petition to be the highest privilege of a nation.The Moderates were not

prepared to resort to a policy of non-cooperation or passive resistance.They

did not accept even the programme of Swadeshi wholeheartedly.They

considered boycott as a vindictive act which was liable to create feeling of ill-

will.On the other hand, the Extremists were convinced that constitutional

agitation will lead them nowhere.They believed that constitutional methods

could not cut ice against the autocratic rule of a foreign nation.They also

believed that the Government of India would not allow even peaceful

propaganda to go on and would intervene at every step to hinder and stop the

progress of the nationalist movement.They believed that the national problems

could not be solved by resorting to arguments, ethics and piety and only a

vigorous agitation could meet the needs of the situation.They believed in a

policy of passive resistance which could make the government of India

impossible.

4. Another point of difference between themods and the Extremists was with

regard to their approach and strategy.Under the Moderates, the Congress

movement was not a popular movement. It had no touch with the masses. As

a matter of fact, the Moderates depended for their success on the goodwill

and sympathy of the Englishmen.They worked on the hypothesis that if the

grievances of the people of India were brought to the notice of the

Englishmen, the same would be redressed.The Extremists rejected such an

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approach.They believed that the people of India were themasters of their own

destiny and not any foreign power.?

5. Another point of difference between the Moderates and the Extremists was

regarding the fitness of Indians to rule themselves without depending upon the

British Government.The Moderates believed that the people of India were still

not fit for self-Government.However, the Extremists believed that the people of

India were fit to rule themselves and self-government could not be denied to

them on the ground of their unfitness.

6. Another point of difference between the Moderates and the Extremists was

that while the Moderates believed that they would get what they asked for

without any sufferings, the Extremists were of the definite view that the

salvation of India was not possible without sufferings and self-sacrifice.

On account of these differences, there were clashes between the

Moderates and the Extremists even during the 19th century. However, events

during the Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon aggravated matters.There is no denying

the fact that the Moderates were as much vehement in their denunciation of

the partition of Bengal as the Extremists, but they had their own limitations

and could not go beyond them.The Congress passed resolutions on boycott,

Swadeshi and national education in 1906 but there was opposition from the

Moderates.The result was that some of them were shouted down by the

audience.The Moderates did not approve of all that happened at the Calcutta

session in 1906 and tried to undo the same at the next session of the

Congress in 1907 at Surat.This the Extremists were not prepared to allow

them. Under the circumstances, an open clash between them was inevitable.

When the Congress met on 27th December, 1907, the atmosphere was

surcharged and there were all kinds of rumours.The name of Dr. Rash Behari

Ghose was proposed for the Presidentship.When Surendranath Banerjee got

up to second the proposal, attempts were made to shout him down and

pandemonium prevailed in the Pandal.The meeting had to be adjourned.On

the next day, Dr. Ghose was elected the president, but when he got up to

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deliver his Presidential address, Tilak ascended the platform, stood in front of

the President and demanded that he be allowed to address the audience. He

refused to sunmit to the ruling of the Chair that he could not be allowed to

address at that stage.While this tussle was going on, the rank and file of the

Extremists created trouble and there were clashes.All efforts to persuade Tilak

failed.He stood with folded hands and refused to go to his seat unless he was

bodily removed.Some persons from Nagpur and Poona rushed to the platform

with Lathis in their hands.A shoe was hurled from the audience and it struck

Pherozeshah Mehta.Pandemonium prevailed.Chairs were thrown at the dais

and sticks were freely used.The session had to be suspended.

On 28th December 1907, a Convention of the Moderates was held in the

Congress Pandal from which the Extremists were excluded although some of

them were willing to sign the necessary declaration. Those who did not wish to

go back from the position taken at the Calcutta Congress met at a separate

place to consider what steps were to be taken to continue the work of the

Congress.It was in this way that the Surat Session of the Congress ended.

Afteh the Surat fiasco, it was clear that the Moderates were not prepared to

yield to the Extremists.They knew that once the plant of extremism was

planted, it was bound to grow.They were not prepared for any compromise.

Tilak was ridiculed, abused and called a traitor.In spite of the attacks from the

Moderates.Tilak was prepared to accommodate them.He wanted the

Moderates and the Extremists to unite to carry on the work of the Indian

National Congress.The Moderates put the blame on the Extremists for the

Surat split.Their contention was that they had no intention to drop or alter the

resolutions passed at the Calcutta session of the Congress.What they

intended to do was merely to modify or to use such words in those resolutions

which would save them from chances of misconstruction.However, such a

contention cannot be accepted.A critical study of the relevant record shows

that what the Moderates intended to do was not only to save the Calcutta

resolutions from missionaries-construction but also to reconstruct them with a

view to watering them down.If that had not been so, the Moderates would hav

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reaffirmed the Calcutta resolutions in their Madras Session held in 1908, but

that was not done.At the Madras Session, the resolution on boycott was

entirely dropped. Instead of national education, the Moderates merely talked

about supplementing the existing institutions and the efforts of the

Government. In 1906, the Congress had declared Swaraj or self-government,

not only as their final goal but also demanded immediate steps leading to it.At

the Madras Session, the Congress expressed deep and general satisfaction at

the reform proposals formulated in Lord Morley’s Despatch.

At the Calcutta Session in 1906, the Moderates had accepted the

resolutions on Swaraj, national education, boycott and Swadeshi on account

of the pressure brought on them from all quarters. In their hearts, they did not

accept the new resolutions.Their fear was that the growing pace on the

national struggle might lead to lawlessness and that would provide the British

with an excuse to deny the reforms on the one hand and to crush all political

activity on the other.They had no self-confidence.They did not believe that

sustained and dignified national struggle was possible and desirable.They

considered the Extremists irresponsible persons who were likely to put in

danger the future of the country.The British Government also tried to win over

the Moderates against the Extremists.There were frequent meetings between

the Moderates leaders and the Viceroy before the Surat split.While the

Extremists were roughly handled by the Government, the Moderates were

shown all the favours.Lala Lajpat Rai, Sardar Ajith Singh, Tilak and many

leaders of Bengal were deported.Public meetings were held all over the

country to condemn the action of the Government. In Bombay the protesting

crowd clashed with the military and police and many were killed.However,

there was no word of condemnation by the Moderates. On the other hand, the

Moderates Congress President observed thus in 1908 at the Madras

Congress Session: “The clouds are now breaking….The time of the singing of

the birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heared in our land”. It cannot

be denied that the Surat split not only weakened the Indian National Congress

but it virtually destroyed its effectiveness till the Lucknow Session in 1916. For

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the next 8 years, India’s nationalist movement remained a house divided

against itself, half constitutional and half revolutionary in aspirations.

RISE OF EXTREMISM OR MILITANT NATIONALISM

Many factors were responsible for the rise of extremism in the Congress.

The Indian Council Act 1892 did not satisfy the aspirations of even the

Moderates.It was contended that the policy of appeals and prayers had

brought forth no result.The Government of India considered that policy as a

sign of weakness.To quote Tilak, “Political rights will have to be fought for.

The Moderates think that these can be won by persuasion. We think that they

can only be obtained by strong pressure”.The constant economic drain on the

resources of the country due to foreign domination added to the

discontentment in the country.The writings of men like Dinshaw Wacha, R.C.

Dutt and Dadabhai Naoroji proved that the impoverishment of the people of

India was due largely to the deliberate policy of the British Government. The

policy of the Government of India sacrificed the industries of India in the

interests of British manufacturers.There seemed to be no prospects for Indian

industries.

Another cause was the discontent created by the outbreak of famine in

1897.It affected about 20 million people and 70,000 square miles of Indian

territory.The attitude of the Government of India was rather unhappy.While the

people were in the grip of famine, the Government was busy celebrating the

Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of Queen Victoria.The money which was

required for the relief of the people was being wasted on needless

celebrations.This was interpreted as an attitude of callousness on the part of

the Government.The outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in Bombay Presidency

also added to the discontentment among the people.It is true that the

Government of India adopted certain measures to check the spread of the

disease but the methods adopted by it were unfortunate.No consideration was

shown for the sentiments of the people.Mr. Rand, the Plague Commissioner of

Poona, was most ruthless in his operations.Such a state of affairs could not be

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tolerated by the people and no wonder the plague policy of the Government

was attacked vigorously by the critics of the Government, particularly by

Tilak.The resentment was so great that Mr. Rand and one of his associates

were shot dead when they were returning from the Government House at

Bombay after taking part in the Jubilee Celebrations of Queen Victoria.

The exclusion of the intelligentsia of India from all the big jobs in the

country created bitterness.The anti-Indian policy of Lord Curzon added to the

discontentment.The view of Lord Curzon was that “the highest ranks of civil

employment must, as a general rule, be held by Englishmen”.He emphasized

that it was only the Englishmen who by their birth and training were fit to rule

India, and not the Indians.According to him, Providence had selected the

Englishmen to rule over India and to give freedom to India was against the will

of God.Such a theory of divine right to rule could not be palatable to the

Indians who were learning to demand the right to govern themselves.Lord

Curzon was a bureaucrat par excellence and he put the greatest emphasis on

efficiency.He had no sympathy with the aspirations of the people of India. As

a matter of fact, he ignored them altogether.He acted unmindful of the

reactions of the people.He regarded the administration as a machine and

acted only in the interests of the efficiency of the machine, although the

people were adversely affected by the machine.His reign was full of missions,

omissions and commissions”.In 1899, he passed the famous Calcutta

Corporation Act, which completely officialised the Calcutta Corporation.The

total number of the members of the Calcutta Corporation was reduced from 75

to 50.The 25 members who were eliminated were those persons who were the

representatives of the people of Calcutta.The result of this measure was that

there was a European majority in the Corporation.No wonder, the measure

was vehemently condemned.In 1904 was passed the Indian Universities Act.

This law reduced the size of the Syndicates, Senates and Faculties with a

view to giving prominence to the Europeans.The result of this law was that the

Indian Universities became the most officialised universities in the world.

They were practically left with no autonomy.In 1904 was also passed the

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famous Official Secrets Act.The definition of the term “sedition” was widened.

The Official Secrets Acts of 1889 and 1898 related to the disclosure of only

military secrets.The Act of 1904 covered also the official secrets relating to the

civil affairs and newspaper criticism which were likely to bring the government

into contempt.

PARTITION OF BENGAL (1905).

Lord Curzon’s most controversial measure was the partition of Bengal in

Bengal in 1905 which led to widespread agitation not only in Bengal but also

in other parts of India.The Government published its official schee for the

partition of Bengal on 20th July, 1905.There was violent agitation against it.It

was suggested that all Honorary Magistrates, Municipal Commissioners and

members of District Boards should resign in protest.A national mourning for 12

months was also advocated.Seditions leaflets were printed and circulated

among the people.When the agitation was at its height, Lord Curzon resigned

as Viceroy on account of his differences with the British

Government.However, the necessary legislation to give effect to the partition

of Bengal was rushed through the Legislative Council in September 1905 in

order to make sure that the partition became a settled fact before he left India.

16th October, 1905 was the day fixed for the coming into force of the partition

and after a month, Lord Curzon left India. 16th October 1905 was declared to

be a day of national mourning throughout Bengal. It was observed as a day of

fasting. There was a Hartal in Calcutta.People went to the Ganges barefooted

in the early hours of the morning and took their bath.Rabindranath Tagore

composed a national song for this occasion.The song was sung by huge

crowds parading the streets.There were cries of Bande Mataram which

became a national song of Bengal.The ceremony of Raksh Bandhan was

observed on 16th October, 1905.

The leaders of Bengal felt that mere demands, public meetings and

resolutions were not enough and something more concrete was needed and

the answer was Swadeshi and boycott.Mass meetings were held all over

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Bengal and big crowds took the oath of Swadeshi.Patients refused to take

foreign medicines and were willing to take the consequences.People burnt

foreign clothes and foreign cigarettes.Large sums were collected to help the

Swadeshi movement.Many textile mills, soap and match factories, national

banks and insurance companies were started.A prominent part was played by

the students of Bengal in the Swadeshi agitation.They picketed the shops

selling foreign cloth and other foreign goods. Women also joined processions

and picketed the shops dealing in foreign goods.The programmes of

Swadeshi and boycott went hand in hand. The leaders of Bengal took up the

work of national education in right earnest.National educational institutions

were opened by them and literary, technical and physical education was given

there.On 15th August 1906, a National Council of Education was set up and

Aurobindo Ghose was appointed the first Principal of the National College.

The Government of the new province tried to suppress the anti-partition

agitation with a heavy hand.Meetings were broken and political leaders were

insulted and threatened.Gorkha soldiers were let loose on the people.B.

Fuller, Lieutenant Governor of the new province, went out of his way to insult

the people.Brutal repression took its heaviest toll at Barisal in East Bengal

where the Provincial Council was disbanded on the strict orders of the

Lieutenant Governor.When the local leaders and the people protested they

were mercilessly battoned on the chests and backs.Many were killed on the

spot and hundreds of them were severely injured.The Lieutenant Governor of

the new province warned the Hindus that they would be thrown 500 years

back and barred from government service for 3 to 4 generations.Students

were sent to jail for throwing away sweets made of foreign sugar.Gorkha

soldiers were ordered to stop the singing of Bande Mataram by the people.

Shopkeepers were ordered to supply the needs of the Gorkhas even if they

did not pay for them.Orders were issued to stop the grants-in-aid to the

educational institutions suspected of being against the Government.

Disciplinary action against the teachers and professors was threatened.The

Government also followed a policy of “divide and rule”.

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In its earlier stages, the anti-partition movement was led by the Moderates

but they were disheartened when Lord Morley, Secretary of State for India,

declared that the partition was a settled fact which would not be changed. At

this stage, the militant nationalists or the Extremists came to the fore and gave

a call for passive resistance in addition to Swadeshi and boycott.They called

upon the people and colleges, courts and Government offices.Their

programme was “to make the administration under present conditions

impossibleby an organized refusal to do anything which shall help either the

British commerce in the exploitation of the country or British officialdom in the

administration of it……unless and until the conditions are changed in the

manner and to the extent demanded by the people”.The question of partition

of Bengal got merged with the question of India’s freedom.The Extremists

called upon the people to offer sacrifices at the altar of theMotherland.In 1907,

Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh were deported from the Punjab. In 1908, Tilak

was arrested and sentenced to 6 years imprisonment.Chidambaram Pillai in

Madras and Harisarvottan Rao and others in Andhra were put behind the

bars.Aurobindo Ghose was arrested and prosecuted and although acquitted,

he retired to Pondicherry.There was a lot of discontentment and bitterness in

the country.This state of affair was allowed to continue.

Lord Minto was succeeded by Lord Hardinge and he and Marquis of Crew

who was then Secretary of State for India, decided to take steps to pacify

Indian resentment over the partition of Bengal.At the Delhi Durbar held in

1911 the King and Queen and the Secretary of State for India were present.

The occasion was taken advantage of to announce the cancellation of the

partition of Bengal.The treatment of the Indians abroad also created

resentment in the country. The Government of India had encouraged Indian

labourers to go to British colonies and had given them big promises regarding

their future.The Indians were responsible for the development of Kenya,

Uganda, Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and South Africa.In spite of their services, the

Indians were despised, insulted and degraded.Their privileges were

withdrawn.They were excluded from trade and were treated as intruders.They

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could not purchase property and could not vote.They were required to give

their thumb impressions and carry identity cards.They were forced to travel in

separate third class railway compartments.They were driven out of train cars

and kept out of the hotels.They were not allowed to sit in public parks.They

were required to walk only on the footpaths and live outside the towns in

places set apart for them.They were required to put off lights and go to bed

after 9 p.m.They were “spat upon, hissed, cursed, abused and subjected to a

variety of other indignities”.

Certain international events also had their repercussions in India.The rise of

Japan after 1868 proved that even a backward Asian country could develop

herself without Western control.The defeat of Italy by Abyssinia and Russia by

Japan exploded the myth of European superiority.This was interpreted as a

harbinger of the rise of the East.The Indians could take inspiration from those

events.It was felt that if the European nations could be defeated by an Asiatic

power, it was also possible for the Indians to drive away the Englishmen from

their country.The growth of education in India increased the influence of

Western ideas of democracy, nationalism and radicalism.The educated

Indians became the strongest advocates of militant nationalism.The treatment

given to them by the foreigners added to their bitterness.They were low paid.

Many of them were unemployed.They felt very strongly the foreign

domination.There was a feeling in the country that self-government was

necessary for the economic, political and cultural advancement of the country.

Leaders like Tilak and B.C. Pal preached the message of self-respect and

asked the nationalists to rely on the character and capacities of the Indian

people.They called upon the people to build their own future by otheir own

efforts.They advocated agitation and mass action.They had no faith in the

efficacy of constitutional methods.They believed that prayers, petitions and

protests were not going to convince the British Government whose only object

was to exploit the people of India with a view to add to their own prosperity.

To quote Tilak, “Protests are of no avail.Mere protests not backed by self-

reliance will not help the people.Days of protest and prayers have gone”.

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Again, “Prepare your forces, organize your power and then go to work so that

they cannot refuse you what you demand”.

The methods of the Extremists were boycott, Swadeshi and national

education.Boycott was directed primarily against the foreign goods but it also

included the boycott of the Government services, honours and titles.About the

methods of the Extremists, Lala Lajpat Rai wrote, “We desire to turn our faces

away from the Government Houses and turn them to the huts of the people.

We want to stop our mouth so far as an appeal to the Government is

concerned and open our mouth with a new appeal to the masses of our

people.This is the psychology, this is the ethics, this the spiritual significance

of the boycott movement”. Both the boycott and Swadeshi movements were a

great success.In his whirlwind tour of the country, Tilak declared that the

Moderates could not deliver the goods and the people should look up to the

Extremists for the liberation of their Motherland.The repetition of the

resolutions full of prayers to the Government could not bring any result.The

remedy was not petitions but boycott.After the Surat session, Tilak had no

rest. Single-handed, he started a many-sided struggle and spread the fire of

patriotism in every nook and corner of the Bombay Presidency.He went on

tours and collected a lot of money for the various national causes.He asked

his audiences to work for Swaraj and get ready for sufferings which alone

could bring Swaraj.His slogan at the meetings was “Swarajya is my birth-right,

I will have it”.

The Government of India passed the Public Meetings Act, the Criminal Law

(Amendment) Act, the Seditions Meetings Act, 1907, the Explosive

Substances Act, 1908, the Newspaper (incitement to Offences) Act, 1908 and

the Indian Press Act, 1910 to take effective action against the Extremists.

Several circulars and ordinances were issued which had the effect of

abrogating the right of free speech and criticism.Processions, meetings and

demonstrations were banned.Students and citizens were prohibited from

taking part in politics.The students who defied the orders were rusticated from

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their schools and colleges.Many leaders were deported from Bengal alone.

Tilak was arrested, sentenced to imprisonment for 6 years and kept in Burma

in “virtual solitary confinement in a prison cell”. Lala Lajpat Rai and Sardar Ajit

Singh were arrested in the Punjab and sent to Burma.Aurobindo Ghose was

kept in jail for a year awaiting his trial although he was acquired by the court.

Madan Lal Dhingra was hanged.Bhupendra Nath Datta, Editor of the

Yugantar, was given a long sentence of imprisonment.The Yugantar, the

‘Sandhya’ and ‘Bande Mataram’ were suppressed.Police raids, house

searches, confiscations and espionage became the order of the day. C.I.D.

officers were let loose upon society. So great was the repression that Lord

Morley had to ask Lord Minto to have more restraint.

As regards their achievements, the militant nationalists added a glorious

chapter to the history of the nationalist movement.They clarified its objectives

taught people self-confidence and self-reliance and prepared the social base

of the movement to include the lower middle classes, students, youth and

women.New methods of political organization and new modes of waging

political struggles were introduced.However, the mass of the common people,

the workers and the peasants were still outside the main-stream of national

politics.The Yugantar wrote thus on 22nd April, 1906 afte rthe Barisal

Conferecne: “The remedy lies with the people themselves.The thirty crores of

people inhabiting India must raise their sixty crores of hands to stop this

course of oppression.Force must be stopped by force”.

IDEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND: BANKIMCHANDRA, VIVEKANANDA AND

DAYANANDA.

The militant nationalism was created by the preachings of Bankimchandra,

Swami Vivekananda and Dayananda Saraswati. The name of Bankimchandra

is often associated with the famous song Bande Mataram included in his novel

Anandamath.Bande Mataram was the keystone of the arch of Indian

nationalism which inspired generations after generations to supremeself-

sacrifice.Bankimchandra was the precursor of the Extremists who had no faith

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in the policy of the Moderates.Bankim turned to the Mahabharata, (Hindu

Epic) Bhagavad Gita (‘the song of the lord’, best-known expression of

Hinduism) as Rammohan had once turned to the Upanishads (speculative

interpretation of the Vedas, the Hindu religious books).Bankim visualized a

united India through Sri Krishna who established dharmarajya (right rule) after

destroying evil.The militant nationalists took their cue from Bankim’s emphasis

on dharmarajya.

The spiritual side of nationalism was voiced by Swami Vivekananda (1863

– 1902), the patriot of patriots.Before Bankimchandra’s death in 1894, Swami

Vivekananda had taken up the cause of Hindu regeneration.He rebuked the

Hindus for weakness and passivity.‘We have become real earthworms,

crawling at the feet of everyone who dares to put his foot on us’.He called

upon Hindus to become strong.‘Religion will come afterwards’. He said, ‘You

will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the Gita’.

He placed Indian nationalism above everything else.The extremists drank

deeply of the love of motherland. ‘Swami Vivekananda might well be called

the father of modern Indian Nationalism; he largely created it and also

embodied in his own life its highest and noblest elements. Bipin Chandra Pal

called him the prophet of nationalism.His message ‘Arise, Awake and stop not

till the goal is reached’ had a perennial appeal to the teeming millions of

Indians. In 1893 he attended the Parliament of Religions at Chicago where he

propounded the true meaning of Hinduism.The message of spiritual hope

which he gave India acted as a potent force in the course of Indian

nationalism.He died in 1902 at the age of 39. ‘Vivekananda’s was the voice of

the Soul. It went into the heart of the nation and restored it firmly on its feet’.

Aurobindo recognized the imperishable influence of Vivekananda on the

people of India. In 1915 he wrote: ‘Vivekananda was a very lion among

men……We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well

how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something

leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving, that has entered the soul of India’.

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Aurobindo once commented that the Indian people were so stimulated by

Vivekananda that there would have been an upsurge like the French

Revolution,had they been politically trained.C.A.Tegart,Special

Superintendent of Police of the Intelligence Branch, in his confidential report of

April 22, 1914 observed that Swamiji’s teachings appealed to the revolutionary

party and helped to sow the seeds of revolution and anarchy in the minds of

the Indian youth.The Sedition Committee (Rowlatt) Report (1918) also

observed that Vivekananda’s teachings and writings survived him and his

influence was perverted by Barindra and his followers in order to creat an

atmosphere suitable for the execution of their projects. Romain Rolland paid

a glowing tribute to Vivekananda in his inimitable words:If the generation that

followed, saw, three years after Vivekananda’s death, the revolt in Bengal, the

prelude to the great movement of Tilak and Gandhi, if India today has

definitely taken part in the collective action of organized masses, it is due to

the initial shock of the mighty ‘Lazarus, come forth’ of (Vivekananda’s)

message.

Neither Bankimchandra Chatterjee nor Swami Vivekananda was

Congressmen, but their concerns were echoed in the wirtings of Surendranath

Banerjea, Rameshchandra Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore and many others.

Between Vivekananda’s death in July 1902 and the beginning of the Swadeshi

Movement in August 1905, Sister Nivedita, Vivekananda’s Irish disciple, did

much to foster the new spirit of national awakening.In 1900 she wrote a

booklet, Kali the Mother, which Aurobindo described as ‘inspiring and full of

rebel spirit’.In 1904 appeared her famous book, The Web of Indian Life in

which she expounded the philosophy of nationalism. S.K. Ratcliffe, one time

editor of The Statesman rightly observed.The influences that have gone into

the shaping of the New India are still obscure; but this may be said with

complete assurance that among them all there has been no single factor that

has surpassed, or equaled the character, and life and words of Sister

Nivedita’.

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If Rammohan appealed to the Upanishads, Bankim to the Gita and

Vivekananda to the Advaita (of Shankara), Dayananda appealed to the Vedas

(Hindu religious books).In 1875 Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824 – 83)

founded the Arya Samaj.Dayananda denounced idolatry, polygamy and caste

and harked back to the Vedas as the fountain of all truth and the sheet anchor

of Hinduism.Manu Smriti (one of the ancient Law-books of India) formed the

basis of Dayananda’s ethics for daily conduct.Religion was complementary to

the good life as well as to the soul.Dayananda eschewed politics. Foreign rule

had been brought upon Indians by their own fault.‘It is only when brothers fight

among themselves that an outsider poses as an arbiter’. He broke the barrier

of orthodox Hinduism by initiating the Suddhi (purification) movement by which

the non-Hindus and untouchables could be converted to Hinduism.The Suddhi

movement was intended to unify India.The movement had certain political

overtones.In the opinion of Bipin Chandra Pal ‘the movement, at least in those

days, seemed to me, in fact, far more political than religious or spiritual’.

However, Dayananda’s legacy to the present was the key word of the Vedas

‘truth in the Soul, truth in vision, truth in the intention, and truth in the act’.

Dayanand died in 1883. In his memory, his followers started the Anglo-Vedic

College in Punjab (1889) and a Gurukul was started at Hardwar where

religious education was imparted.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS:

While the ideological background was slowly being prepared for the growth

of extremism, political and economic factors were no less responsible for it.

The Indian Councils Act of 1892 failed to introduce an elective element in

India as it provided for selection of some members.The simultaneous Civil

Service examinations, pressed for by the Congress, were disallowed as it

might imperil the predominance of the European element.The Moderates’

protest against the increase in military expenditure (1885,1891) had been

turned down by the British authorities.The Tariff and Cotton Duties Act of 1894

and 1896 added fuel to the fire.These Acts, obviously designed to serve the

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interests of British manufacturers, were a severe blow to the Indian Cotton

industry.‘Never before’, protested Tilak in the Mahratta (February 9, 1896)

‘was perpetrated an act of injustice as flagrant as the readjustment of the

cotton duties in favour of Lancashire’.R.C. Dutt, the leading economist among

the Moderates, characterized it as ‘an instance of fiscal injustice

……unexampled in modern times’.Tilak wrote inanguish ‘Surely India is

treated as a vast pasture reserved solely for the Europeans to feed upon’.

Tilak made a fervent appeal: ‘Let this terrible crisis make us one’. It was

around this issue that the idea of boycott was first put into practice. ‘If the

insatiable greed of Lancashire is to rule India let the heroic determination of

India ruin Lancashire’.In the beginning of the 20th century Dadabhai Naoroji

produced his bulky volume Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) on the

solid foundation of facts and figures while Rameshchandra Dutt published his

monumental Economic History of India (1902).The Indian public became

aware of the causes of their grinding poverty and hoped for the end of the

British economic exploitation of the country.

AUROBINDO GHOSH

The early nineties of the 19th century were the seed time of extremism. It

was Aurobindo Ghosh who decried the Congress policy. In one article he said

‘A body like the Congress which represents not the mass of the population,

but a single and very limited class, could not be called national’.In 1893 he

wrote from Baroda that the “actual enemy [of the nationalist movement] is not

any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our

cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy…..”. Aurobindo pointed out the

widening gap between the rich and poor and the imminence of a revolution of

the proletariat. He criticized the Moderates for ignoring the proletariat ‘the real

key of the situation’ and of ‘playing with bubbles’ like the Legislative Council

and simultaneous Civil Service examinations. He asked his countrymen not to

make England as their source of inspiration, but France which ‘blotted out in

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five terrible years the accumulated oppression of thirteen centuries’. He

emphasized the need of purification by blood and fire.

Aurobindo wrote in Bande Mataram on 14th April, 1908 that the alien

government carried the germs of a malady and therefore it was urgently

necessary to get rid of foreign rule.Earlier Aurobindo had declared that

extremism had been born of a conviction that the time had come when India

could become a great and free nation.Indian nationalism was not negative but

a positive impulse towards the making of free India. ‘It is not a cry of revolt of

despair, but gospel of national faith and hope.It true description is not

Extremism, but Democratic Nationalism’.

LALA LAJPAT RAI

In the Punjab, the radical trend found great response in the person of Lala

Lajpat Rai, the ‘Lion of Punjab’.He was a prolific writer, a lwayer and a worker

in the Arya Samaj.He was interested not only in the political awakening of

India but also in the cultural renaissance of India.He pointed out the main

weakness of the Congress.‘The Congress movement’, observed Lajpat Rai

‘was neither inspired by the people, nor devised or planned by them. It was a

movement not from within’.He argued that few Congress leaders could be

called patriots as they were making hardly any sacrifices. They were inactive

for most of the year, yet they were confident of the ultimate success of the

Congress agitation.He appealed to Indians to realize that “politics is a religion,

and a science, much higher both in its conception and in its sphere, than mere

political agitation”.Criticising the aims and methods of the Congress, he wrote

in 1901 that political reforms could not be secured by merely delivering

speeches and passing resolutions.Next year he stated that ‘no nation is

worthy of any political status if it cannot distinguish between begging rights

and claiming them’.He asked the Congress to realize that “Sovereignty rests

with the people, the state exists for them and rules in their name’.

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BAL GANGADHAR TILAK

The founder of the militant nationalism was BAL Gangadhar Tilak; a

Chitpavan Brahman of Poona.He argued ‘we will not achieve any success in

our labours if we croak once a year like a frog’. Appealing to the glory and

greatness of Indian culture, Tilak asked the Indians to rely on their own

strength.He gave a new colour to the movement by declaring that ‘the political

goal of India is self-government or Swaraj, rather than reforms in

administration’. He fostered patriotism and national spirit among the people by

inaugurating the celebration of the Ganapati festival in 1893 and of the Shivaji

festival in 1895.

The inauguration of the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals marked an in

lankmark in the history of the new movement.Tilak’s object was to utilize the

religious instincts and historical traditions of India for infusing patriotism

among the people.He wrote in 1896 ‘No man can deny that our country is

badly in want of a religious revival.Well, such a revival is taking place

…..Swami Vivekananda and the high philosophy of the Upanishads have

appealed to the B.A.’s and M.A.’s of our Universities.The God Ganapati and

the vigorous preachings of Ramdas have appealed to the common people.

Religion is the main stay, the only proprietors for a falling nation….’ The

Shivaji festival was ‘national hero-worship’.As Bipin Chandra Pal said Shivaji

was ‘the symbol of a grand idea, the memory of a noble sentiment, the

mouthpiece of a great movement’. Shivaji was fully justified in killing Afzal

Khan, because it was a great unselfish act for national self-preservation.

As editor of the Kesari, in Marathi and The Mahratta, in English, Tilak

became the acknowledged awakener of India. In 1889, he joined the Indian

National Congress.But very soon he became disillusioned with the programme

and policies of the Congress dominated by Moderates.In 1896 he clearly

stated his disagreement with the policies of the Congress.For the last twelve

years we have been shouting hoarse, desiring that the Government should

hear us. But our shouting has no more affected the Government than the

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sound of a gnat.Our rulers disbelieve our statements or profess to do so. Let

us now try to force our grievances into their ears by strong constitutional

means.We must give the best political education possible to the ignorant

villagers.We must meet them on terms of equality, teach them their rights and

show how to fight constitutionally.Then only will the Government realize that to

despise the Congress is to despise the Indian Nation.Then only will the efforts

of the Congress leaders be crowned with success.

Tilak struck a new note in Indian politics when a severe famine struck

Maharashtra in 1896.He was aware of the imminent danger that gripped the

peasants in the wake of the famine.He called upon the Government to take

those measures of relief which were provided for under law in the Famine

Relief Code.He distributed pamphlets explaining the provisions of the Famine

Relief Code to the people and urged them to take their case to the

Government.Through his paper Kesari he made passionate appeal to the

people to refuse taxes which the official circles regarded as ‘no-rent

campaign’. ‘Can you not be bold, even when in the grip of death’? His efforts

aroused the people and alienated the bureaucracy.

Hardly had the disastrous famine been over when plague ravaged the city

of Pune.The Bombay administration reacted to this natural disaster with harsh

measures.Rand, the Collector of Pune, enforced the anti-plague measures

with undue severity and employed soldiers to segregate real and presumed

plague victims.The newspaper Mahratta complained ‘Plague is more merciful

to us than its human prototypes now reigning in the city’.On 22nd June, 1897,

the date of the Jubilee Celebration of Queen Victoria, Rand and his associate

Lt. Ayerst were murdered by the Chapekar brothers, Damodar and Balkrishna.

The day after the shooting Damodar was said to have sent a message to Tilak

to the effect that the mission had succeeded.Tilak sympathized with the

Chapekars’ activities, although it might be too much to say that he approved of

the murder of Rand and Ayerst.Officials suspected that both the Natus –

Balwant Natu and Hari Natu, two well-known Sirdars – and Tilak might be

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responsible.Tilak was arrested and charged with sedition for his newspaper

articles justifying assassination.The Bombay Government detained without

trial the Natus and attached their property.The Chapekar brothers were

arrested and executed.Their younger brother, Wasudeo Chapekar and his

friend Mahadeo Ranade killed the Dravid brothers, who had been the principal

witnesses in Damodar’s trial. Wasudeo Chapekar and Ranade were arrested,

found guilty and hanged to death.Wasudeo died clutching a copy of the

Bhagavad Gita.The spirit of sacrifice for a cause that was displayed by

Chapekar brothers can be traced back to the great mother who could offer

three valiant sons at the altar of the motherland in the course of a few months.

Nivedita was astounded to find themother completely self-composed, unruffled

and serene.

Tilak became a martyr. Surendranath Banerjea observed in the Congress

of 1897: ‘For Mr Tilak my heart is full of sympathy.A nation is in tears’.Tilak

emerged from prison before the expiry of his full term with enhanced prestige.

He was acclaimed as the Lokmanya, the one honoured and respected by the

people.Tilak was uncompromising inhis political belief which he summed up in

terse memorable words. ‘Swaraj is my birth-right and I must have it’. As early

as 1895, he had begun to preach the necessity for Swaraj or self-rule.To Tilak,

Swaraj was a historical necessity.

GROWTH OF REVOLUTIONARY TERRORISM

Many factors were responsible for the rise and growth of the revolutionary

and terrorist movement in the country.The rising of 1857 had its effect on the

future generations of India.The sacrifices made by the Indians on that

occasion gave inspiration to many to follow their example.The spirit of revenge

with which the rebel of 1857 were crushed and even the innocent Indians

were massacred by the British soldiers even after the failure of the revolt

inflamed the minds of many Indians.There was a general awakening in the

country and the people started thinking in terms of ending the foreign rule at

any cost even if the use of force was necessary for that purpose.The timidity

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of temple Moderates exasperated the youth of India and they decided to take

to violence to turn out the foreigners from the country.The Indian press was

instrumental in putting the Indian case before the people and asked for action

against British tyranny in the country.The minds of the Indians were also

affected by the large number of political assassinations in Europe at the hands

of the anarchists.The murderer of the Empress of Austria-Hungary is stated to

have declared: “Long live anarchy! Let there be only 200 such brave men as

myself and all the thrones of the world will be empty”.All these murders took

place a few years before the partition of Bengal in 1905 and naturally their

effect on the youth was bound to be profound.The unification of Germany and

Italy, the defeat of Italy by Abyssinia in 1896 and of Russia by Japan in 1904,

the Nihilist Movement in Russia and the Young Turk Movement in Turkey had

their effect on the revolutionaries in India.Many people in India were

convinced that the British rule in India could not be ended by constitutional

methods and force had to be employed for that purpose.These revolutionaries

believed in the philosophy of bomb and pistol in one hand and the Gita in the

other.

Maharashtra

Tilak played an important part in furthering the cause of revolutionary

movement in Maharashtra.In 1895; he inaugurated the Shivaji and Ganpati

festival.By doing so, he gave a religious sanction to the movement against the

British Government.These festivals became the spring-boards of revolutionary

enterprises.Fiery speeches were delivered on these occasions.At the Shivaji

Coronation Festival held on12 June 1897, Tilak called upon the people to “rise

above the Penal Code into the rarified atmosphere of the sacred Bhagwat

Gita”.He justified the murder of Afzal Khan by Shivaji and observed.“If thieves

enter our house and we have no strength to drive them out, should we not

without hesitation shut them in and burn them alive? God has conferred on

the Molechhas (foreigners) no grant of Hindustan inscribed onimperishable

brass”. Towards the end of 1896, there was a severe famine in the Deccan

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and Tilak started a no-rent campaign.He called upon the peasants not to pay

land-revenue to the Government.In 1897 occurred the plague and Mr. Rand

was murdered.Tilak was arrested and sentenced to 18 months’ rigorous

imprisonment.There was a lot of political activity in Maharashtra.There were

Shivaji clubs, anti-cow-killing societies, Ganpati choirs, national festivals,

gymnastic clubs, etc.Poona, Nasik, Kolhapur and Bombay were the centres of

these activities.The statue of Queen Victoria was mutilated at Bombay.And

attempt was made to burn the Church Mission Hall.The Marathi press was

revolutionary in tone.The editors of many newspapers and magazines were

arrested and sentenced.Tilak himself was arrested in 1908, prosecuted and

convicted and sentenced to 6 years transportation.

Ganesh Damodar Savarkar, the young brother of V.D. Savarkar, was the

head of the revolutionary activities at Nasik.He was the founder of Abhinav

Bharat Society. In April 1907 he printed 2,000 copies of the Marathi version of

the autobiography of Mazzini.In 1909; he published a pamphlet which

contained many inflammatory verses. In one of the poems he said: “Take up

the sword and destroy the Government because it is foreign and aggressive”.

The title of another poem was: “Who obtained independence without a battle”?

He was prosecuted and sentenced to transportation for life with forfeiture of

property. V.D. Savarkar had sent a parcel containing 20 Browning automatic

pistols with ammunition to Bombay concealed in the false bottom of a box

forming part of the luggage of one Chaturbhuj Amin who was working as a

cook in the India House.The pistols were to be used by the members of the

Abhinav Bharat Society.Before the parcel reached India, Ganesh had already

been arrested.The members of the Abhinav Bharat Society decided to murder

Jackson, District Magistrate of Nasik, as he had convicted Ganesh Savarkar.

Jackson was actually shot dead on 21st December, 1909.The details of the

Nasik conspiracy were divulged by one Ganu Vaidya who was a member of

the Nasik Branch of Abhinav Bharat Society.Acting on the information

supplied by him, the police rounded up 37 youngmen, 3 of whom were hanged

and the rest were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. Mr. Jackson

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had arrested Ganesh Savarkar on the instigation of Sir Curzon Willie who had

laid a ring of spies around the India House to watch the activities of the Indian

students.He also dictated the British policies concerning India. He was shot

dead on 1st July, 1909 by Madan Lal Dhingra.

Bengal

In addition to Maharashtra, the revolutionary movement was also strong in

Bengal.The revolutionaries of Bengal came from the educated classes. The

work done by Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Ram Krishna Paramhans, Swami

Vivekananda, Raj Narain Bose and Nabagopal Mitra had its effect.

Unemployment among the educated classes in Bengal made the situation

intolerable.Things were made worse by the Anti-Bengalee attitude of the

English officials who refused to recruit Bengalees in Government service.The

Government advertisements contained the following words:“Bengalee Baboos

need not apply”.This was bound to have its repercussions.In order to reduce

the influence of the Bengalees, Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal in 1905.The

people of Bengal who had fought against the European Indigo planters with

their Oshspears and bamboo clubs, were not going to be cowed down and

they accepted the challenge.On 25th December 1907, Mr. Allen, who was

formerly the District Magistrate of Dacca, was shot in the back but the injury

did not prove fatal. On 30th April 1908, Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Kennedy were

killed by a bomb thrown by Khudi Ram which was actually meant for

Mr.Kingsford, Presidency Magistrate.Khudi Ram was arrested, tried and

hanged. He became a martyr and a hero. Schools were closed for 2 or 3 days

as a tribute to his memory. His photographs had an immense sale.Youngmen

begal to wear Dhoties with the name of Khudi Ram woven into their borders.

In the Alipore conspiracy case searches were made by the police at

Maniktala and other places.In May 1908, bombs, dynamite, cartridges, and

correspondence were seized.Many persons were arrested, charged and

convicted.Heavy punishments were inflicted on them.Narinder Gosain became

an approver but he was shot dead by his companions in the jail. Nand Lal, the

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Sub-Inspector who had arrested Khudi Ram, was murdered. Asutosh Biswas

who had acted as public prosecutor in the Gosain murder case and the

Alipore conspiracy case was shot dead.Shams-ul Alam, Deputy

Superintendent of Police who was connected with the Alipore case, was shot

dead.

The Punjab

The Punjab also played its part in the revolutionary movement.The Punjabis

detested the policy of repression followed by the Government of India. They

also protested against the treatment given on them in various parts of the

British Empire and the failure of the British Government to protect them.

Sardar Ajit Singh, a revolutionary of the Bharat Mata Society of Lahore, took

an active part against the Colonisation Act which deprived the peasants of

Lyallpur and other districts of the fruits of the lands which they had converted

from barren areas into rich fields. He addressed many meetings which began

with the song of Banke Dayal known as “Pagri Sambhal Oh! Jatta”. (Oh

peasant! take care of the turban, i.e. self-respect). There were disturbances in

Rawalpindi in May 1907 and many Arya Samaj leaders were arrested and

prosecuted.

On 23rd December 1912, Lord Hardinge was taken in a procession on the

back of an elephant in Delhi.When the people were showering lowers and

coconuts on the procession in Chandni Chowk, a bomb exploded which

injured the Viceroy and killed his A.D.C.The procession was turned into a

funeral.The bomb was thrown by Rash Behari Bose.There was a lot of

confusion and Rash Behari managed to escape.A reward of Rs. 7,500 was

announced for the arrest of Rash Behari Bose. He was chased from place to

place but every time he managed to escape. He went away to Japan under a

fictitious name. He played an important role in organizing the Indian National

Army in Japan. He died in 1945. The action taken by the Government in this

connection is known as the Delhi conspiracy case.13 persons were arrested

in that connection and among them were Master Amir Chand, Dina Nath, Bhai

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Balmukand, Balraj Bhalla, Basant Kumar and Avadh Behari.Two of them were

sentenced to 7 years imprisonment and 4 of them were hanged.Dina Nath

became an approver.It is stated that when Avadh Behari was going to be

hanged, an Englishman asked him what his last wish was and his reply was:

“The end of the British rule”.When the Englishman advised him to die

peacefully, he replied, “Peace! I wish that a conflagration may break out in the

country gutting the British rule. Let my country emerge out of this fire like pure

gold”.

THE GHADAR PARTY.

The Ghadar Party was determined to wage war against the British in India

and with that object in view decided to send arms andmen to India to start a

revolt with the help of soldiers and local revolutionaries.Several thousand men

volunteered to go back to India.Millions of dollars were collected for that

purpose.The Ghadarites contacted Indian soldiers in the Far East, South-East

Asia and all over India and persuaded many regiments to revolt.21st February

1915 was fixed for an all-India revolt and vigorous preparations were made for

that purpose.Rash Behari Bose, Sachindra Sanyal, Ganesh Pingale and

Baghi Kariar Singh prepared a master plan for that purpose.Some

revolutionaries were killed and several others were arrested.They were also

hanged.The all-India revolt failed because one Kirpal Singh passed on all the

secret plans to the Government.Many places were raided and bombs were

recovered.Secret papers were also captured by the Government.Most of the

ring leaders of the Punjab fell into the hands of the police.The Ghadarites

were tried in 9 batches in the Lahore Conspiracy Case and the supplementary

cases. Out of 291 sent up for trial. 42 were sentenced to death and hanged

and 114 were transported for life. 93 were imprisoned for varying terms and

42 were acquitted.Prominent leaders like Baghi Kartar Singh, Bhai

Parmanand, Ganesh Pingale, Jagar Singh and Harnam Singh were also tried

for conspiracy to overthrow the British Government. Kartar Singh and Pingale

admitted that they were wholly responsible for the conspiracy.

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The Tribunal announced its judgment on 14thSeptember, 1915.Bhai

Parmanand was so indifferent to death that on that day, he slept till 8 in the

morning.When he woke up, he found everybody around him laughing. One of

them asked him, “Why? Are you going to your inlaws”? These blessed souls

sang sweet songs for the Motherland and at last they prayed this together for

the last time: “Oh Mother! We have not been able to snap your fetters. If any

one of us remains alive he will strive for your honour and the liberty and

equality of Indians”.24 of them including Kartar Singh, Pingale, Bhai

Parmanand, Jagat Singh and others were awarded death sentence.On

hearing that all of them began to dance.Those who were condemned to

transportation for life cried out: “Give us death? Reward us with hanging!”

Kartar Singh thanked the President.Pingale said this much: “So that’s all!”

The Viceroy committed the death sentences of 17 to transportation for life.

Pingale was hanged on 16 November 1915 and he was the last to behanged.

The Officer-in-charge told him. “I tried to give you as much time for life as I

could. I kept your turn last”.The reply of Pingale was: “Then you have made a

mistake. I’ve been separated from my friends.They may lose their faith in me.

Had you sent me earlier, I would have got the privilege of arranging for their

reception and comforts there.Oh, you have deprived me of that good luck”.

He was questioned about his last desire and his reply was; “Kindly remove my

chains so that I can offer prayers to my Mother with the palms of my hands

joined”.When the chains were taken off, he prayed aloud, “Lord, you know our

heart’s desire. Our only prayer is that you fulfil the mission for which we have

so readily laid down our lives”.It is stated that the Chief Justice was inclined to

commute the death sentence of Kartar Singh but the latter replied, “I prefer

gallows to life sentence. I wish I were born again to unfetter by Motherland. I

shall be glad to be hanged every time I am reborn till my country achieved

independence”.

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POST-FIRST WORLD WAR MOVEMENT

There was revival of the revolutionary and terrorist movement in the country

when the people were suffering from a sense of frustration and pessimism

after agitations and demonstrations against the Rowlatt Bills, the Non-

cooperation movement and the Khilafat movement.The revolutionaries put

before the young men of the country a new programme.They called upon

them to start a revolutionary and uncompromising struggle for the

independence of their country.They tried to impress upon the people of India

the secret of the British character that they could be bullied but not argued into

justice and generosity.The terrorism of theGhdar party was to be met by

counter-terrorism.Such a policy alone could restore self-confidence among the

people who were suffering from a sense of utter helplessness.The

revolutionaries believed that the English masters and their hired lackeys

should not be allowed to do whatever they liked, unhampered and unmolested

and every possible difficulty and resistance must be thrown in their

way.Terrorism had an international bearing as the attention of the enemies of

England was drawn towards India through acts of terrorism and revolutionary

demonstrations.The terrorists made it clear that they did not believe in

terrorism for terrorism sake.They resorted to it as an effective means of

retaliation.The revolutionaries believed that the repressive measures of the

Government had destroyed all hopes of political reform being gained without

violence.Moreover, armed resistance against something “Satanic and ignoble”

was infinitely more befitting for any nation that the prevalence of “effortless

and philosophical cowardice”.The revolutionaries went to the villages not to

get votes but to secure “Congress-martyrs” for the country who would die

without anybody knowing where their corpses lay.They would like to go down

in history unknown, unhonoured, unsung, unlamented and unwept.These

“mad lovers” of the country were not actuated by avarice, rivalry, jealousy or

enmity.They were inspired by divine motive of devotion and service.The

revolutionaries were above sectarian and communal considerations.Unlike the

former movements, religion was not allowed to have precedence over the

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secular and nationalistic outlook of its organizers who belonged to different

religious groups in the country.The revy brotherhood had reached a stage

where there was no caste, no religion or even separate identity.

There was a fundamental difference between the pre-1919 phase and post-

1919 phase of the revolutionary movement.The pre-119 revolutionaries were

inspired by Mazzini and Garibaldi of Italy and the Sinn Feinners of Ireland.

The post-1919 revolutionaries derived their inspiration from the October

Revolution of Russia and the socialistic principles of Soviet leaders like Lenin.

The slogans and code words like “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”, “Bande Mataram”,

“Om”, “Ram Hari”, “Allaho Akbar” and “Sat Sri Akal” were substituted by

“Inqilab Zindabad”, “Down with Imperialism”, “Long Live the Proletariat” and

“Long Live India”.A leaflet issued by Naujawan Bharat Sabha discarded

Buddha and Christ and described Karl Marx and Engels as the greatest men

of the world.While the old revolutionaries got their inspiration from the

Bhagwat Gita and the writing of Aurobindo, Vivekananda and Bankim

Chandra Chatterjee, the new revolutionaries got their inspiration from the

wirtings of Marx and Engels. While the revolutionaries like Lala Hardayal and

his followers thought in terms of the past glory of ancient India. Sardar Bhagat

Singh and his comrades relied upon the master-pieces of Lenin and such

books as “Roos Ki Rajya Kranti”.

The revolutionaries lived a life of sufferings hardships, insults and

humiliations at the hands of the agents of the foreign Government.They

believed that no weapon could kill them and no fire could burn them.They

were prepared in mind and body to pass through the severest ordeals.They

were transported for life to the Andamans where life was extremely difficult.

The jail authorities invented various devices to make the revolutionaries as

miserable as they could. “The prisoners were mishandled at the time of taking

meals.Barbarous punishments were inflicted upon the revolutionaries to extort

confessions or to convert them as approvers.Their hands, were kept under the

Legislatures of the cots and the police constables sat on them.Sometimes

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they were wrapped in a blanket and then mercilessly beaten to avoid legal

complications.Sometimes they were made to stand on their Legislatures for

days together with their hands tied with a chain nailed in the wall. Sometimes

they had to wear cross bars which were worse than the bar fetters because

the prisoners under this sentence could not bring their feet or Legislatures

close to each other and they had to walk, sit, work and sleep with stretched

out feet and Legislatures for weeks. Sometimes the revolutionaries resorted

to hunger-strikes to remonstrate against the inhuman treatment meted out to

them.They excited a lot of public sympathy.There were public hartals in

support of their demands.A certain section of the press also sympathized with

them.They published short stories, poems, plays and essays about them.

Whenever an official was murdered, there was praise instead of

condemnation.Whenever a revolutionary was hanged, he was praised as a

courageous hero and a martyr.

KAKORI CASE.

The revolutionaries were in great need of money for the manufacture of

bombs and consequently a few revolutionaries boarded a train on 9th August

1925 on the Lucknow Saharanpur line.They had with them revolvers and

cartridges.After the departure of the train the Kakori railway station, one of the

revolutionaries pulled the alarm chain of the train. When the train stopped, the

revolutionaries tried to take away money from the iron box which was broken

open with great effort by the hammer blows given by Ashfaq Ullah Khan.

However, the revolutionaries were able to get Rs. 5,000only.The Government

took action and arrested about 40 persons.The trials in the Kakori case

concluded on 7th April 1927.It was a mere farce, Pandit Ram Prasad Bismal,

Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were given death sentence. Manmath Nath

Gupta got 14 years and many others got death sentences.Ashfaq and

Sachindra Nath Bakshi were caught later on and given death sentence and

transportation for life respectively.

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The Simon Commission visited Lahore on 20th October 1928.The Hindustan

Socialist Republican Party took out a huge procession against the Simon

Commission, under the leadership of Lala Lajpat Rai, I.P. Saunders gave

blows on the head and chest of Lajpat Rai and theory caused grievous injuries

on his person. As a result of those injuries, Lajpat Rai died on 17th November,

1928. In order to have revenge, Sounders was murdered on 17th December,

1928 by Raj Guru and Bhagat Singh. After the murder, Bhagat Singh and Raj

Guru managed to escape. On 8th April 1929, two bombs were thrown from the

Visitors’ gallery of the Central Assembly Hall in New Delhi by Bhagat Singh

and B.K. Dutt.They could have run away but surrendered to the police.Their

trial started on 7th May, 1929 and on 12th June, 1929, the Sessions Judge

sentences them to transportation for life. In the Saunders murder case, the

trial started at Lahore. Bhagat Singh was taken from Delhi to Lahore to stand

his trial for murder alongwith others.The tribunal which tried Bhagat Singh and

his companions gave its decision on 7th October, 1930 and Bhagat Singh, Raj

Guru and Sukh Developed were sentenced to death. They were hanged on

23rd March 1931 at Lahore.

CONTRIBUTION OF THE REVOLUTIONARIES.

It is true that the revolutionaries failed to bring about the independence of

India.However, it cannot be denied that they had made their own contribution

to the national cause.It is they who set an example before the Indians by

sacrificing their own lives.They taught the people not by precept but by

personal example.They taught them to face death and do everything for the

sake of their country.By their sacrifices they created a new spirit were helped

the Indians later on to wintheir freedom.It is they who revolted against the

policy of the Moderates and thereby opened a new chapter in the history of

the freedom movement in India.Their desperate deeds, daring plans, cool

action and indifference to death won for them a lasting place in the memory of

the nation.They succeeded in what they desired to do – evoking by the

maximum sacrifices of the minimum chosen persons the spirit of minimum

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sacrifice on the part of the maximum number of people. The impression which

the revolutionaries left on the minds of thepeo was very effective and great.

They exhorted the people to live dedicated lives – self-sacrifice for national

emancipation a feeling of service for the needy and the oppressed and dislike

for self-publicity. The revolutionaries were the heroes who left their footprints

on the sands of time.

INDIA AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1014-18)

When the war started, there was great enthusiasm in the country.The

people of India were willing to serve the government in every possible way.

After Marne, there was an increasing demand for Indian troops outside India.

When Turkey joined the Central Powers in October 1914.Indian troops

garrisoned the Suez Canal and repulsed a Turkish attack.Indian troops fought

through the long campaigns of Macedonia and German East Africa.They

played an important part in the Iraq campaign leading to the capture of

Baghdad in 1917. In this way, they helped to found the present State of Iraq.

They were in the Allied army which took Jerusalem in 1917. All this involved a

great effort in India itself.Eight llakhs of men were recruited for the fighting

forces, together with four lakhs of non-combatants.This resulted in a great

expansion in the Military machine, a great mixture of classes and a stronger

feeling of self-confidence all around.Indian self-confidence grew when the

magnitude of their effort and the extent to which it depended upon Indians

themselves, were realized.

In the administrative sphere, the British government made a mistake

inallowing the British civilian officers to serve the forces during the war. Many

of them never returned and those who returned found themselves in a strange

new mental world to which it was difficult to adapt themselves. When times

grew difficult towards the end of the war, the Government had only an ageing

and tired cadre of officers to rely upon. In the economic sphere, the first effect

of the war was one of stimulus.The industrial development of modern India

owes a good deal to the demands of First World War.However, increasing

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demands and expenditure led to rise in prices and ultimately enthusiasm was

turned into discontent.Englishmen could be expected to put up with

inconveniences because they felt that they were fighting for their very-

existence and their victory was likely to add to their glory. The same could not

be said about the Indians for whom the War was merely an external

affliction.No doubt; they became not only exhausted and war-weary but also

sour, discontented and resentful.

The attitude of India towards Europeans and its people was altered radically

and permanently.The Indians gave up the feeling that the Europeans were

superior to them morally and technically.They were regarded merely as more

powerful.The First War casualty in India was the image of Western superiority.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 also had a profound influence on the minds

of the Indians.They felt that if the people of Russia could over-throw an

imperialist regime, the same could be done by the Indians in their own

country.The Fourteen points of President Wilson had great influence on the

Indians.They also demanded the rights of national freedom and self-

determination of peoples. No wonder, the Indians demanded self-government

in thename of the fundamental principles accepted by the Allied Powers. As

regards the effect of war on Muslims, they were very unhappy.They did not

approve of temple dimemberment of Turkey, which was regarded as the

sword of Islam.They also did not like the treatment given to the Arabs who

were considered to be rebels against the Turkish Khalifa.Their princes were

regarded as stooges of the infidel.

When the war started, the Congress was still a middle class body of

Westernised professionals with some commercial and industrial backing.It

was firmly under the control of Gokhale and the Moderates. However, all this

was change dduring the war. Tilak came back from jail and became a leader

of all-India importance. Tilak was opposed to the old policy of making prayers

to the British Government.His contention was that every Indian had the

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birthright to be free.He laid the foundations for the great anti-government

movement led by Gandhiji in the next few years.

THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT

While the Moderate leaders were busy forging unity among the different

political parties in order to recover their strength and wring as much political

concession from the British as they thought possible or proper, the wind was

taken out of their sails by the Home Rule movement which soon cast into

shade all other political activities in India.The idea of starting a Home Rule

League originated with Mrs. Annie Besant, and she announced it on 25th

September, 1915.She was, comparatively speaking, a new figure in the

political field, but her activities as the head of the Theosophical Society had

madeher name quite familiar in India.She came to this country in 1893 and

devoted herself to the cause of social and educational uplift with undaunted

energy.Gradually she came to realize that no real improvement could be

effected without raising the political status of India.She was equally convinced

that the Indian National Congress, under the guidance of its Moderate leaders,

was not likely to achieve much. With characteristic energy she plunged herself

into the political struggle. As early as 1913 she championed the cause of “the

building up of India into a mighty self-governing community”.The definite

campaign for Home Rule began with the publication of a weekly Review, The

Commonweal, on 2nd January, 1914.The paper adopted as its cardinal

programme, “religious liberty, national education, social reform, and political

reform”, aiming at self-government for India within the British Commonwealth.

In 1914 Mrs. Besant went to England to try to form an Indian party in

Parliament. The attempt failed, but she roused sympathy for the cause of India

by her public addresses, declaring that “the price of India’s loyalty in India’s

freedom “.On her return to India she bought a daily paper in Madras, renamed

it New India, and published it on 14th July, the date of the fall of the Bastille.

In September, 1915, she made a speech at Bombay pleading India’s case for

Home Rule or self-government in which she said: “I mean by self-government

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that the country shall have a government by councils, elected by all the

people, elected with power of the purse, and the government is responsible to

the House”.

On 25th September, 1915, Mrs. Besant made a formal announcement of her

decision to start the ‘Home Rule League’ with ‘Home Rule for India’ as its only

obeject, as an auxiliary to the Indian National Congress, and moved a

resolution to that effect in the Congress session at Bombay (1915).The

Moderate leaders did not like theidea slaves they thought that such a new

organization would weaken the Congress. Besant’s resolution on Home Rule

was ruled out by the President on the ground that it contravened Article I of

the Congress Constitution which restricted the scope of the demand for self-

government by the words “bringing about a steady reform of the existing

system of administration”.In the end it was decided that a draft scheme should

be prepared by the All India Congress Committee after consulting other

bodies. Mrs. Besant, having agreed to abide by this decision of the All-India

Congress Committee, postponed formation of the League.The draft Home

Rule scheme which was to be prepared by the All-India Congress Committee

before 1st September, 1916, having not been produced by that date, Mrs.

Besant considered herself absolved of the understanding, and decided to

organize the Home Rule League on a regular basis.It was formally

inaugurated in September, 1916, and within a few days, branches were

formed at Ahmadnagar, Allahabad,Bombay,Calicut,Kanpur,Varanasi,Mathura,

Madras etc.

Mrs. Besant now began an active propaganda by personal addresses and

through her two organs, New India and Commonweal.She took full advantage

of the ready-made organization of the Theosophical Society with its branches

all over India and even outside, as well as of the personal devotion and

admiration felt for her intellect, learning and religious mission by a wide circle

of Indians.She set up Home Rule organizations all over the country, made

extensive tours, delivered stirring addresses and distributed vast quantities of

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propagandist literature. She was nothing, if not extraordinary, in whatever she

took up, and her short period of political activity of less than five years was

marked by an “indomitable will, concentrated purposefulness, undaunted

courage, and indefatigable zeal”.Her superboratory and matchless literary gifts

enabled her to reach the foremost rank in politics in an incredibly short time.

Even the Moderates, who detested her most, admitted that “she stirred the

country by the spoken as well as the written words as scarcely anyone else

could do”.

In the meantime Tilak had also taken up the idea of Home Rule.A short

account of his early political activities up to 1908, when he was sentenced to

imprisonment for six years on a charge of sedition, and a general review of his

contribution to the growth of nationalism in Inid have been given above. After

his released in 1914, he set himself to the task of reorganizing the Nationalist

party and making it a dynamic force in Indian politics.He wanted to move on

with the Congress, if possible, and without it, if necessary. He honestly tried

his best to bring the two wings of the Congress together, and, as mentioned

above, it was achieved in 1915 after a great deal of difficulty, and only by the

accident of the death of Gokhale and Mehta.Tilak was, however, convinced by

the attitude of these two leaders that so long as the Congress was led by the

Moderates they would not follow Mrs. Besant and take up Home Rule as their

war cry.Subsequent events, mentioned above, show that he was right in his

judgment.As unlike Mrs. Besant, Tilak was outside the fold of the Congress,

he could give effect to his ideas without any reference to the body or without

deference to its desire or decision.He therefore summoned a Conference of

the Nationalists of Bombay, Central Provinces and Berar at Poona on 23 and

24th December, 1915.The Conference appointed a Committee, and its report

was placed before the Belgaum Conference held on 27-29 April. On the basis

of this report the Conference resolved to establish the Indian Home Rule

League, its objects being “to attain Home Rule or Self-Government within the

British Empire by all constitutional means and to educate and organize public

opinion in the country towards the attainment of the same”.The League was

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accordingly established on 28th April, 1916, with Joseph Baptista as President

and N.C. Kelkar as Secretary.The members included G.S. Khaparde, B.S.

Moonje, and R.P. Karandikar.Tilak did not accept any office.There was a

definite understanding that the Provincial Conference and the Indian Home

Rule League would remain two distinct bodies.In a leading article in the

Mahratta explaining the reasons why it became necessary to bring the League

into existence Tilak wrote:“It was generally recognized that the time had

positively come for an organization to be started for educating public opinion

and agitating for Home Rule throughout the country.The Congress was the

body which naturally possessed the greatest authority for understanding such

a work with responsibility.The scheme of self-government which the Congress

is supposed to be intending to hatch, served as a plausible excuse for most of

the Moderates to negative a definite proposal to establish a Home Rule

League.But the Congress, it is generally recognized, is too unwieldy to be

easily moved to prepare a scheme for self-government and actively work for

its political success.The spade work has got to be done by someone.It can

afford to wait no longer.The League may be regarded as a pioneer movement

and is not intended in any sense to be an exclusive movement”.Week after

week Tilak wrote stirring articles in his two weeklies, urging for Home Rule.

About the middle of 1916, Tilak undertook an extensive lecture tour for

instructing masses on Home Rule and exhorting them to become members of

the Home Rule League.He appealed mainly to the masses and spoke to them

in homely language with simple illustrations such as could easily bring home

to them the idea of self-government.Tilak’s homely speeches and direct

appeals made himnot only popular but a hero among themasses.He earned

the epithet Loka-mānya (Respected by the people) and was almost

worshipped as a god.Wherever Europe went he received a right royal

reception.He appealed to the people to imbibe the virtues of patriotism,

fearlessness and sacrifice, and held out the national hero Shivaji as their

model.Although there were two Home Rule Leagues of Mrs. Besant and Tilak,

they acted in close co-operation.There was an informal understanding

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between them that Mrs. Besant’s field of work would cover the whole of India

except Maharashtra and C.P., where Tilak’s League would carry on the work.

The wrath of the Government now fell on the devoted heads of Tilak and

Mrs. Besant. It was the peculiar mentality of Indian bureaucracy to ignore the

underlying causes and strength of a public movement, but to look upon one or

more persons as solely responsible for it. So they tried to muzzle the two

leaders as the best way to crush the movement. In July, 1916, a case was

instituted against Tilak for certain speeches he had delivered at the Home

Rule meetings.He was ordered to furnish a personal bond of Rs. 20,000 with

two sureties of Rs. 10,000 each, to be of good behaviour for a period of one

year.About the same time a security of Rs. 2,000 was demanded from the

New India, the daily paper of Mrs. Besant. It was forfeited on August 28 and a

new security of Rs. 10,000 was levied.The Bombay High Court set aside the

order against Tilak, but Mrs. Besant’s appeal was rejected both by the Madras

High Court and the Privy Council. Mrs. Besant sold the two presses where her

two papers were printed.She also suspended the publication of New India on

June 18, but it re-appeared three days later under another editor.These pin-

prick did not cripple the activities either of Tilak or of Mrs. Besant, both of

whom continued their efforts with redoubled vigour.The unwearied activities of

Mrs. Besant, Tilak and their associates propagated the idea of Home Rule far

and wide, and made it practically the only living issue in Indian politics. The

movement had its repercussion on the Indian National Congress and infused it

with new strength and vigour.This is clearly proved by comparing the

Presidential Address in the annual session of the Congress at Bombay in

December, 1915, and the Resolution on Reform passed by it, with the

Presidential Address in 1916 and the Congress-League scheme adopted in

that year at Lakhnau.For the first time after 1907 the Extremists or Nationalists

attended this session of the Congress.A “Home Rule Special” carried Tilak

and his party to Lakhnau and they received unique ovations all along the way.

Tilak received a right royal reception at Lakhnau.When he arrived at the

pandal of the Congress he was carried by his admirers on their shoulders, and

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when he rose to speak he was greeted with deafening cheers.After the

conclusion of the Congress session in 1916 Tilak and Mrs. Besant visited

many parts of India and these visits were referred to in police reports as

“triumphant tours”.Largely attended meetings were addressed by them and

many leaders who had hitherto belonged to the Moderate party joined the

Nationalists in welcoming them.

The Home Rule movement was spreading over India like wild-fire.Two

characteristic features of it were the participation of women and the religious

colouring given to it as in the case of Swadeshi movement in Bengal.It was

not long before the Government realized the intensity of the movement.On

17th January, 1917, the Home Member of the Government of India wrote in a

confidential report: “The position is one of great difficulty.Moderate leaders

can command no support among the vocal classes who are being led at the

heels of Tilak and Besant”.He therefore expressed his opinion that the

Moderates should be placated by an early sanction of the reform proposals

already made to the Secretary of State (which recommended) greater

Indianization of the local bodies and increase of Indian element in the

Legislature.But, true to the policy of reform-cum-repression, the Bombay

Government had prohibited Mrs. Besant from entering into Bombay.The

Government of C.P. also externed Mrs. Besant, while Tilak and B.C. Pal were

prohibited by the Governments of the Punjab and Delhi from entering into their

jurisdiction. Lord Pentland, Governor of Madras, warned the people against

the extravagant demands of Home Rule and uttered a threat which was soon

followed by action.On 15th June, 1917, the Government of Madras issued

orders of internment against Mrs. Besant and her two co-workers, G.S.

Arundale and B.P. Wadia.All this had an effect on political India just the

opposite of what was intended.

The Government’s determined hostility against the Home Rule Leagues

and evident desire to declare them as illegal associations stirred the whole

country.Sir Subrahmaniya Aiyar, recognized throughout India as an eminent

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lawyer, boldly stood forward as the champion of the Home Rule League. He

declared that he would stand by them even if the Government declared them

illegal, and was prepared to suffer any punishment that would be meted out to

him for that offence. More than two thousand persons, including many men of

light and leading, pledged themselves to stand by the Home Rule League if it

was declared illegal.The internment of Mrs. Besant was adversely criticized

even in Britain and other foreign countries.A storm of indignation swept India

from one end to the other.Protest meetings were held all over the country and

those nationalist leaders, who had hitherto stood aloof, joined the Home Rule

Leagues and actively participated in their campaigns. Even the placidity of the

Congress was disturbed.Under the inspiration of Tilak the All-India Congress

Committee made a vigorous protest to the Viceroy against the repressive and

reactionary policy and asked for an official declaration accepting the political

demands of the Indians.They also asked for the release of Mrs. Besant and

her associates.They placed on record their appreciation of the work carried on

by the Home Rule Leagues, and as a mark of it, elected Mrs. Besant as

President of the Congress session in 1917.As a matter of fact, Mrs. Besant

and her associates served the cause of Home Rule far better in jail than if they

had been free.

The Home Rule League was making rapid strides.At the end of the first

year Tilak’s League alone had 14,000 members with an income of about Rs.

16,000.In winding up the first annual Conference of the League, held at Nasik

on 17th – 18th May, 1917, Tilak emphasized the role of the League and its

difference from the Congress.The latter, he said, was merely a deliberative

body whose only or main function was to pass pious resolutions.The Home

Rule League, on the other hand, was pledged to work zealously throughout

the year for the sole object of achieving Home Rule.He did not thank those

who wished the League a long life, but would prefer that the League be

dissolved in two years after the grant of Home Rule to India. After the annual

Conference was over, the workers re-doubled their efforts to carry the Home

Rule propapganda to the villagers.The local officials sent alarming reports of

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their seditious teachings and the Government of India were urged by Local

Governments to take strong measures.The Viceroy, being impressed by the

strength and popularity of the movement, put a brake ontheir ardour, but

apprised the Secretary of State of the real situation in India.While doing so, he

observed:“Mrs. Besant, Tilak and others are fomenting with great vigour the

agitation for immediate Home Rule, and in the absence of any definite

announcement by Government of India as to their policy in the matter, it is

attracting many of those who hitherto have held less advanced views.The

agitation is having mischievous effect on public feeling throughout the

country”.

The Home Rule League was equally anxious that the Government would

publicly declare their policy.In England, Lord Pentland had ridiculed the idea of

Home Rule in a public speech.Tilak took up the challenge and advised the

Congress organizations all over India not only to make vigorous protests, but

also to get up a monster petition urging upon the Secretary of State to grant

Home Rule to India.There was already a suggestion to resort to Passive

Resistance in order to secure the release of Mrs. Besant, and Tilak now

proposed to broadbase it on the main political issue of Home Rule.The

influence of the Home Rule movement is best evidenced by the fact that both

the Congress and the Muslim League considered the proposal of starting

Passive Resistance.It was referred to the Provincial Congress Committees

and was considered by them in August and September.The Madras

Committee fully approved of the idea on 14th August, 1917, and appointed a

sub-committee to formulate practical steps to give effect to it. Six days later

the Secretary of State, E.S. Montagu, made his historic pronouncement in the

House of Commons, declaring Responsible Government as the goal of British

policy in India.There can be hardly any doubt that it was the direct result of the

Home Rule movement. In any case it altered the political situation in India.The

Congress and the Muslim League dropped the idea of Passive Resistance

and decided to send an All-India deputation to the Viceroy.Mrs. Besant also

dropped the Home Rule movement.Tilak, however, did not suspend or relax

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the Home Rule agitation. He knew that it was this agitation that had forced the

Government to meet the Indian demands half-way, and it was therefore

necessary to keep it alive in order to obtain substantial concessions from the

Government.The Home Rule movement became more and more popular and

tended to become a mass movement, though within a restricted zone in India.

Still more surprising is the face that even prominent Muslim leaders like

Jinnah and the family of Muhammad Ali joined it. Indeed both the people and

the Government now began to look upon Tilak as the live wire in politics and

the real leader of India.Tilak’s activities after Montagu’s statement were

described in an official report as follows: “The capture of the Congress

organization by Mrs. Besant and Tilak is complete.The Moderate Party in the

Congress is extinguished. The Congress is completely indentified with Home

Rule”.Montagu, after his arrival in India, had an interview with Tilak on 27

November and tried, in vain, to secure the support of Tilak for his Reform

proposals. But he wrote inhis Diary that Tilak “is at the moment probably the

most powerful leader in India, and he has it in his power, if he chooses, to help

materially in the war effort. His procession to Delhi to see me was a veritable

triumphant one”.

There is no doubt that the Home Rule campaign had practically ousted the

Moderates from the political field which they had dominated till the return of

Tilak to active politics in 1914. Neither Pherozeshah Mehta nor Gokhale could

have possibly prevented his re-entry into the Congress even if they were alive,

but their anticipations about its effect upon the Congress proved to be only too

true.This was made quite clear when even with the utmost efforts the

Moderate leaders could not prevent the election of Tilak’s nominee, Mrs.

Besant, as President of the Congress session in 1917.This leader of the

Home Rule movement uttered words, as President, which were never heard

before in the Congress pandal.The Moderates who successfully prevented in

the past the election of Tilak and Lajpat Rai as Congress President, now failed

in the case of Mrs. Besant, and must have read their doom in the applause

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with which the vast audience greeted the new tone she introduced in an

organization which they had hitherto claimed to be their special citadel.

The Congress session, held in Culcutta in 1917 with Mrs. Besant as the

President, was a great triumph for the Home Rule movement. There was a

record gathering-nearly five thousand delegates and an equal number of

visitors, including four hundred ladies, forming the most significant feature.

The general view was that it was “the congress of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Tilak-

of Mrs. Besant more than of Mr. Thilak”.Mrs. Besant with her usual eloquence,

made a vigorous plea in her Presidential Address for immediate introduction of

a bill in the British Parliamentfor the establishment of self-government in India,

preferable in 1923, and not later than 1928.She rose to the height of her

stature as the following passages, taken at random from her Address, will

show:

“Early in the War I ventured to say that the War could not end until England

recognized that autocracy and bureaucracy must perish in India as well as in

Europe.The good Bishop of Calcatta, with a courage worthy of his free race,

lately declared that it would be hypocritical to pray for victory over autocracy in

Europe and to maintain it in India.” “I once said in England: ‘The condition of

India’s loyalty is India’s freedom’.I may now add: “The condition of India’s

usefulness to the Empire is India’s freedom.” “India demands Home rule for

two reasons: one essential and vital, the other less important but weighty.First,

because Freedom is the birthright of every Nation; secondly, because her most

important interests are now made subservient to the interests of the British

Empire without her consent, and her resources are not utilized for her greatest

needs. It is enough only to mention the money spent onher Army, not for local

defence but for Imperial purposes, as compared with that spent on primary

education”. “Thank God that India’s eyes are opening; that myriads of her

people realize that they are men, with a man’s right to manage his own affairs.

India is no longer on her knees for boons’ she is on her feet for Rights.It is

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because I have taught this, that the English in India misunderstand me, and call

me seditious; it is because I have taught this, and that I am President of this

Congress to-day”.

The Presidential address of Mrs. Besant offers a striking contrast to those

delivered by Bjupendra-nath Basu and S.P. Sinha during the last two sessions

of the Congress dominated by the Moderates, to which reference has been

Rule League, Madras, and in this capacity wrote a letter to President Wilson of

the U.S.A. on 24th June, 1917.He described the intolerable condition of India

under alien rule and made a moving appeal to the President to apply his war-

message of democracy and self-determination of nations to India.“At present”,

he said, “we are a subject nation, held in chains”; but, he added, “immediate

promise of Home Rule – autonomy – for India would result in an offer from

India of at least 5,000,000 men in three months for service at the front, and of

5,000,000 more in another three months”.The publication of this letter created

a furore in the House of Lords and the House of Commons.Montagu

described the letter as ‘disgraceful’ and Aiyar, as a protest, renounced his

titles, K.C.I.E. and Diwan Bahadur.

Far different was, however, the reception of the letter in America. ‘A printed

copy of the letter was placed on the desk of the Senators and Congressmen.

There was a great sensation and 1500 newspapers with 20,000,000 readers

flashed the offer of ten million men.England was strongly criticized.The military

men were strongly impressed.American Labour at once wanted Home Rule

for India as in Canada and Australia’.An Indian Home Rule League was

established in New York.It started a monthly journal, called Young India, in

July, 1918, which supplied correct news about India to the outside world and

exposed the organized campaign of misrepresentation against India’s fitness

for Home Rule carried on by a section of themselves American Press at the

instance of the British. Tilak strongly felt the need of propaganda in the U.S.A.

whose democratic ideals were highly admired in India.Lajpat Rai, with N.S.

Hardikar and K.D. Sastri, proceeded there on behalf of the Home Rule

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League, a branch of which was established at Sanskrit Francisco.Hardikar

gave the following account of his activities in a letter written to Tilak: “From

the 9th of February to the 6th of May (1919), a period of 86 days, I traveled

through 20 States of the Union. I gave 83 popular addresses, and arranged 25

different conferences. The conferences were held in ten States and 25 large

cities, and were the result of 24 extensive tours.In the cities the audiences

ranged from 25 to 3,000. I sold 4,000 copies of ‘Self-determination for India’,

and 1500 copies of ‘Get Together on India’.In all the cities I was received at

the principal colleges, and by the chief newspaper proprietors.Going from one

place to another to speak, I could only arrange conferences at 25 places, and

had to refuse nine invitations”.Lajpat Rai also sent Tilak a brief report in which

he wrote: “Dr. Hardikar has returned from his tour which was very successful

from every point of view.He brought new members, established new

branches, and secured also some funds.We have been issuing occasional

bulletins to the United States Press giving them a summary of what we put in

the English press”.Tilak wrote in 1918 to M. Clemenceau, President of the

Peace Conference, requesting him to solve the Indian problems so that India

might “be a leading power in Asia” and “a powerful steward of the League of

Nations in the East for maintaining the peace of the world”.

A Home Rule for India League was also established in London.Mrs. Besant

sent a stirring message to the British labourers concluding with the following

words: “Help us to become a free Commonwealth under the British Crown and

we will bring our manpower to secure the World-peace.Our people have died

in your war for freedom.Will you consent that the children of our dead shall

remain a subject race?”The activities of the Home Rule Leagues bore

fruit.Eminent Americans and Englishmen wrote and spoke for self-government

in India.A Committee of members of Parliament was formed in London for the

purpose of pressing forward the claims of India to self-government.The Labour

Party Conference at Nottingham, early in 1918, unanimously passed a

resolution in favour of Home Rule for India.

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The Home Rule movement marked the beginning of a new phase in India’s

struggle for freedom.It placed before the country a concrete scheme of Self-

Government, bereft of the verbiage with which the Congress, led by the

Moderates, surrounded this political goal.I also emphasized the point that if

the Congress really wanted to achieve this goal it must cease to be a club of

arm-chair politicians taking to public work only to the extent to which their

leisure permitted them; instead it should be guided by leaders who were

prepared to place their whole time and energy at the service of their country.

This new ideal of a political leader soon commended itself to the whole

country and developed a new standard of public life.The Home Rule

movement was the fitting end of Tilak’s noble political career, which shines

brilliantly, particularly in contrast with the transformation that came over his

colleague, Mrs. Besant, a little later.This great movement shows him at his

best – a sincere, fearless, unbending patriot, who fought for his country with a

religious zeal without caring for the favour or frowns, either of the people or of

the Government.An intellectual aristocrat, he brought himself down to the level

of the common people, and initiated that mass movement in the political field

which worked such a miracle in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi.

EMERGENCE OF MAHATMA GANDHI-NON-VIOLENT, NON-CO-

OPERATION AND KHILAFAT MOVEMENTS

The year 1919 marked a definite stage in the history of India’s struggle

French freedom. The most outstanding event was the emergence of Gandhi in

blasing colours that was to shape the political destiny of India.Born on 2nd

October, 1869; Gandhi had spent 21 years (1893 – 1914) of his life in South

Africa fighting for the rights and dignity of Indians in Africa. Influenced by the

writings of Tolstoy, Ruskin and Thoreau, Gandhi organized Satyagraha (non-

violent passive resistance) against the racial laws in South Africa.This was the

assertion of moral superiority of Indians against the material superiority of the

British.In 1909 Gandhi wrote to Tolstoy that ‘this struggle of the Indians in

South Africa…..is highly likely to serve as an example to the millions inIndia

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and to the people in other parts of the world, who may be

downtrodden’.Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, by her selfless work set an example of

service and sacrifice in Africa.The moderate success he achieved in South

Africa led him to place implicit faith in non-violent passive resistance. As a

recent writer rightloy remarked ‘South Africa had transformed Gandhiji from a

shy and youthful pleader with no experience of public life into a mature idealist

and leader’.By 1915 he had become a skilled political mobilizer and had

evolved a political technique of super flexibility which was to be his hallmark

when he returned to India.

Returning to India in January 1915, Gandhi, at the advice of his political

guru, Gokhale, kept himself aloof from Indian politics for one year.He founded

the Sabarmati ashram at Ahmedabad in May 1915 where he could obtain the

spiritual ‘deliverance’ he sought in his homeland.Gandhi’s entry into Indian

politics was not in blazing colour.On his return to India, he contacted

prominent personalities like Mehta, Gokhale and Tilak.He recorded his

impression as follows:

Sir Pherozeshah Mehta had seemed to me like the Himalaya and

Lokamanya like the ocean. But Gokhale was like the Ganges.One could

have a refreshing bath in the holy river. The Himalaya was unscaleable,

and could not easily launch forth on the sea, but the Ganges invited one

to its bosom.

Gokhale’s premature death at the age of 49 was a great personal loss to

Gandhi.He was a passive onlooker of Indian politics till 1917 when he

emerged like a morning sun from his self-imposed exclusion. The great merit

of Gandhi was that he could identify himself with the masses and brought the

latter into the limelight of Indian politics. Even a Communist writer like R.P.

Dutt acknowledged this contribution of Gandhi: ‘The achievement of Gandhi

consisted in that he, almost alone of all the leaders, sensed and reached out

to the masses’.M.N. Roy almost complimented Gandhi for his method of non-

violent mass struggle against the established regime.In 1917 Gandhi

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explained that Satyagraha was not mere passive resistance.It meant intense

activity –political activity-by large masses of people.It was a legitimate form of

political action by the people against the injustices of the state, an active mass

resistance to unjust rule.He once summed up his entire philosophy of life as

follows: ‘The only virtue I want to claim is truth and non-violence. I lay no

claim to super-human powers: I want none. In his Autobiography, Gandhi

wrote ‘I wanted to acquaint India with the method I had tried in South Africa,

and I desired to test in India the extent to which its application might be

possible’.The opportune moment came in April 1917 when he had gone to

Motihari, the headquarters of Champaran district of Bihar, to enquire into the

grievances of the tenants against the English indigo planters.Soon after his

arrival in Motihari, Gandhi was served with a government order to leave

Champaran.When he refused to do so, he was asked to appear on trial for

disobeying the government order.Gandhi pleaded guilty and requested the

Magistrate to try him. Explaining his refusal to leave Champaran, Gandhi said

‘I have disregarded the order served upon me not for want of respect for lawful

authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of

conscience’.The moral challenge thrown to the Magistrate, perplexed him.

Eventually the case against him was withdrawn and he was permitted to

conduct his proposed enquiry. Rajendra Prasad who had participated with

Gandhi in the Champaran campaign observed. ‘The statements of tenants

continued to be recorded the whole day.There was such a continuous stream

of these tenants that there was not a minutes’ break between 6-30 and 6-30

P.M’.As a result of the enquiry theGovernment appointed a

commission.Gandhi’s moral victory became complete when most of the

cultivators’ grievances were redressed.Gandhi recorded with satisfaction:‘The

ryots who had all along remained crushed now somewhat came into their

own’.Impressed by his idealism, young nationalists like Rajendra Prasad,

Mazhar-ul-Huq, Mahadev Desai and J.B. Kripalani worked with him in

Champaran.

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W.H. Lewis, the Sub-divisional officer for Bettiah reported that Gandhi had

captured the ryot’s loyalty. ‘To the ryots he is their liberator and they credit him

with extraordinary powers’.For the first time Gandhi earned the title of

Mahatma or ‘Great Soul’ and the nickname of ‘Bapu’ or ‘Father’.When the

Secretary of State met him later in 1917, he described him as ‘the renowned

Gandhi’.‘He is the real hero of the settlement of the Indian question in South

Africa, where he suffered imprisonment.He has just been helping the

Government to find a solution for the grievances of the indigo labour in Bihar’.

The next scene of Gandhi’s activity was Ahmedabad where an agitation had

been going on between the labourers and the owners of cotton textile mill for

an increase of pay.While Gandhi was negotiating with the mill-owners, the

labourers went on strike.Having advised the strikers to depend upon their

soul-force, Gandhi himself gave up all his clothes except the loin cloth and

went on a ‘fast unto death’.The mill-owners gave way and a settlement was

reached after 21 day’s strike.The mill-owners agreed to grant 35 per cent

increase in wages and appoint an arbitrator. In 1920 Gandhi formed the Majur

Mahajan (Labour Tribunal) which stood for peaceful relations, arbitration and

social service. Gandhi’s next involvement was in the Kaira district of Gujarat

where the cultivators were hard hit by a poor harvest.Though the cultivators

were entitled to a remission of the land revenue under the law, it was withheld

by the Government.Gandhi organized Satyagraha and asked the cultivators

not to pay the land-revenue.The Government yielded and a compromise was

reached.Gandhi himself reported “The Kheda Satyagraha marks the

beginning of an awakening amongst the poor peasants of Gujarat, the

beginning of their true political education”.During the movement, Indulal

Yagnik was one of the chief lieutenants of Gandhi.Vallabhbhai Patel, an

eminent barrister of Ahmedabad, was so impressed by the success of the

Kaira Satyagraha that he became one of the trusted followers of Gandhi.

The success of Satyagraha had given Gandhiji supreme self-confidence. But

until 1918, he was a supporter of the British Government. He did not want to

embarrass the Government in its hour of crisis.Instead he wanted to give

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unstinted support to the Empire.He believed that by this act ‘India would

become the most favoured partner in the Empire’.But despite his profession of

loyalty, the Government’s antipathy towards Gandhi remained undiminished

which was intensified by later events.

ROWLATT ACT (1919).

During his 1917 – 18 visit to India, Montagu, Secretary of State for India

from 1917 to 1922, had felt that the Government of India was inadequate to

cope with the tense political atmosphere.In his opinion Chelmsford (1916 –

21) was nervous.By 1919 matters seemed to be drawing to a head.The

publication of the Rowlatt Bills set the stage for widespread agitation against

the Government.The Rowlatt Bills introduced in the central legislature on

February 6th , 1919 armed the executive with unlimited powers to suppress

political violence.Coming soon after the war when the Indians were expecting

generous treatment from Britain, it definitely aroused violent protest from all

parts of India.The Bills were opposed by all elected non-official members of

the legislature, including Surendranath Banerjea, Srinivasa Sastri and Tej

Bahadur Sapru .Jinnah declared that a government which enacted such a law

in peace time had no right to be called a civilized government.Gandhi

considered the ‘Bills to be an open challenge to us’. A person, who had

offered to go to Mesopotamia on behalf of England, now felt an irresistible, call

to fight an unjust cause. Gandhi decided to oppose the Rowlatt Bills which he

described as ‘symptoms of a deep-seated disease’.The remedy he proposed

was Satyagraha. As he said ‘I think the growing generation will not be satisfied

with petitions, etc.We must give them ‘something effective; Sathyagraha is the

only way, it seems to me, to stop terrorism’.

LAUNCHING OF SATYAGRAHA

Before the Bills passed into Acts, Gandhi had organized in February 1919 a

Satyagraha Committee, the members of which were to take a pledge to refuse

to obey these laws.But in this struggle they were to follow truth and refrain

from violence to life, person or property.Satyagraha, according to Gandhi, was

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a ‘religious movement, a process of purification and penance’.The Satyagraha

Pledge of 2nd March,1919 described the bills as ‘unjust, subversive of the

principles of liberty and justice and destructive of the elementary rights of

individuals’.The Satyagraha Pledge made an immediate impact on young

Nehru. It filled a void in his soul.The vague nationalism of his childhood at last

found a refuge.Jawaharlal intended to join the Satyagraha Sabha.Motilal did

not like the idea as he held that unconstitutional agitation was not only foolish

but futile.Torn by the conflict between his political convictions and family

affections, Jawaharlal ‘wandered about alone and trying to grope’ his way

about.

Early in 1919 the Government of India failed to recognize the strength of

Gandhi, ‘the giant of Indian politics’.Even at the eleventh hour on March 12,

1919, Gandhi requested the Viceroy ‘to pause and consider before passing

the Rowlatt Bills’.The Viceroy and his advisers were convinced that the bills

were necessary ‘in the public interest’.The Bills were enacted on March 18,

1919 with the support of the official majority. In his plan to start a mass civil

disobedience movement, Gandhi was opposed by Mrs Besant who feared that

this might lead to violence. It was a clash for leadership and Gandhi won.Mrs

Besant lost her popularity and leadership.15 non-official Indian members of

the Imperial Legislative Council – like D.E. Wacha, Surendranath Banerjea,

Tej Bahadur Sapru and Srinivasa Sastri – though opposed to the Rowlatt Act,

were firmly against Satyagraha. Gandhi launched his movement with a day of

hartal when business was to be suspended and the people were to fast and

pray. 30th March, 1919 was the date first fixed but it was changed to April

6.While inaugurating the Satyagraha agitation, Gandhi warned that the fight

against the Rowlatt Bills was ‘probably the most momentous in the history of

India’.The Hindu wrote: ‘Whether Satyagraha succeds or fails it is due to our

self-respect as the only form of protest left us’.Great excitement seized the

people of India.Gandhi said to the people:Whether you architecture

satyagrahis or not, so long as you disapprove of the Rowlatt agitation, all can

join and I hope that there will be such a response throughout the length and

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breadth of India as would convince the Government that we are alive to what

is going on in our midst.

On 20th March the police fired on a procession of Hindus and Muslims in

Delhi.The next day, Swami Shraddhanand, the Arya Samajist leader, led the

procession defying the police.Hindus and Muslims marched hand in hand.

Owing to a misunderstanding, Delhi observed hartal on 30 March.On 6th April,

the whole of India ‘from one end to the other’ observed a complete hartal.

According to Gandhi the hartal was a magnificent success.Sir Michael

O’Dwyer, Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, said that the people regarded the 6th

of April as ‘our national day’. Gandhi was arrested on April 9 but was set

free.The news of his arrest provoked serious disturbances in Bombay,

Ahmedabad, Nadiad and elsewhere.Gandhi decided to suspend non-violent

civil discharge-obedience as he felt that the people were not yet fit for the

movement.Gandhi’s experience of the Rowlatt Satyagraha was that ‘a rapier

run through my body could hardly have pained me more’.He had made a

massive error of judgment as he confessed ‘I think that I at least should have

foreseen some of the consequences, special in view of the gravest warnings

that were given to me by friends whose advice I have always sought and

valued. But I confess that I am dense’.He observed a three-day fast to atone

his ‘Himalayan Miscalculation’.Despite the suspension of the movement,

Gandhi’s faith in Satyagraha remained undiminished. ‘Satyagraha alone’, he

wrote to Maffey, Private Secretary to Lord Chelmsford ‘can smooth the

relations between Englishmen and Indians’.The Rowlatt Satyagraha as a

political campaign was a failure as it did not attain its object – the repeal of the

Rowlatt Act.But it projected Gandhi as ‘an all-India leader of immense

potential’.

PUNJAB HAPPENINGS.

In the meantime events were moving fast in the Punjab.The Lieutenant-

Governor, Sir Michael O’Dwyer had already become notorious for his

repressive measures.Within a week of the hartal of 6th April,a considerable

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part of the Punjab was convulsed with agitation.Gandhi was served with an

order not to enter the Punjab.When he refused to comply with it, he was

arrested. On April 10th, Dr Satyapal and Dr. Kitchlew, two popular leaders of

the province, were deported from Amritsar.This created great commotion. On

the same day a peaceful procession at Amritsar was fired upon.Thereupon the

people committed acts of arson and assaulted a few Europeans.On 11th April,

Brigadier General Dyer took command of the troops in Amritsar which was

quiet for the next two days.

JALLIANWALLA BAGH MASSACRE (APRIL 13, 1919)

On the afternoon of April 13, a public meeting was held at Jallianwalla Bagh

in Amritsar, despite a ban on meetings.Dyer took no steps to prevent irrigation

being held.The meeting ground was enclosed on all sides by high walls and

had onenarrow entrance.General Dyer marched to the spot with his troops

and machine guns. Without warning Dyer ordered firing on an unarmed crowd

of a few thousands strong.The firing lasted for ten minutes until the

ammunition was exhausted. A virtual massacre followed, about 500 persons

were killed and 1200 wounded.Martial Law was proclaimed in Amritsar,

Lahore and several districts of the Punjab.The Punjab Government justified

Dyer’s action by raising the ‘bogey of the Frontier’ and the existence of a

conspiracy.But the Intelligence Bureau of the Government of India found no

traces of organized conspiracy in the Punjab.The Punjab tragedy had a lasting

impact on succeeding generations.Rabindranath Tagore renounced his

Knighthood as a measure of protest.Gandhi returned the ‘Kaiser-i-Hind’ medal

given to him for his work during the Boer War. C.F. Andrews, a friend of

Tagore, Gandhi and the Nehrus, wrote to Mahadev Desai after a visit to

Amritsar, ‘It was a massacre, a butchery’. Romain Rolland wrote: ‘It was as if

the law of non-violence proclaimed by India stirred European violence or

frenzy’.

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APPOINTMENT OF HUNTER COMMITTEE

The Jallianwala Bagh massacred provoked a strong public reaction in India

and England. Montagu made a speech in the House of Commons denouncing

the brutality of Dyer’s action in Jallianwala Bagh.To Chelmsford he wrote

on29th August 1919 “Don’t let us make the mistake of defending O’Dweyerism

right or wrong. Nothing is fatal to British prestige in a developing country like

India than a belief that there is no redress for mistake and that whatever an

official does, he will be backed…..’ The nationalist leaders asked the

Government to institute an enquiry. The Government appointed a Committee

of Enquiry consisting of four British and three Indian members under the

chairmanship of Lord Hunter to enquire into the Punjab disturbances.The

Indian National Congress decided to boycott the Hunter Committee and

appointed a non-official committee consisting of eminent lawyers, including

Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, Abbas Tyabji, M.R. Jayakar and Gandhi.The

Congress Enquiry Committee described General Dyer’s action as ‘nothing but

a cold-blooded, calculated massacre of innocent, unarmed men and children,

unparalleled for its heartless and cowardly brutality during modern times’.

Before the Hunter Committee began its proceedings, the Government passed

an Indemnity Act for the protection of its officers.The ‘whitewashing bill’ as the

Indemnity Act was called, was severely criticized by Motilal.As he said ‘indeed

the way the Government of India has behaved would do little credit even to

and ordinary litigant in a court’.

AMRITSAR CONGRESS (1919)

In this atmosphere of distrust and anger came the Proclamation of King

George V. Issued on December 24, 1919, the King gave his assent to the

Government of India Act of 1919 and granted an amnesty to all political

prisoners.The King called upon officials and the people to Congress-operate.

These sentiments of the King created a most favourable atmosphere in

Amritsar where the Congress session was held towards the end of December.

Simultaneously the annual session of the Muslim League also met at Amritsar

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under Ajmal Khan.The Amritsar Congress which met under the presidency of

Motilal urged the British Government to take early steps to establish full

responsible government in India. The Amritsar Congress was significant as

Gandhi considered his participation in the proceedings ‘as my real entrance

into the Congress politics’.Gandhi cast his influence in favour of constitutional

reforms.‘The Reforms Act’, he wrote, ‘coupled with the Proclamation is an

earnest of the intention of the British people to do justice to India’.The Amritsar

Congress rededicated itself to the cause of the peasants. It declared that the

peasants should be made the actual owners of the soil they cultivate and they

should be subjected to tax but not rent.Though the Royal Proclamation of

December 1919 raised in Gandhi a last flicker of hope, he warned his

countrymen that they must not sit’ with folded hands…..and still expect to get

what we want. Under the British Constitution no one gets anything without a

hard fight for it’. Hardly had the sense of jubilation at the Amritsar Congress

died down, when Gandhi was disillusioned with the faithlessness of the British

Government.He soon changed his opinion and told his people that ‘Congress-

operation in any shape or form with this Satanic government is sinful’.The

events of the next few months turned the great loyalist into a rebel.

KHILAFAT MOVEMENT

As the war progressed and Turkey came under pressure from the Allies,

Muslim anxiety increased.The Muslims like the Ali brothers, Muhammad Ali

and Shaukat Ali and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad had organization a Khilafat

(Caliphate) party.Its avowed object was the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey

to his pre-war status as Khalifa (Caliph) of Islam.The primary object of the

Khilafat movement, according to the British confidential report, was ‘the

independence of India, more especially Mohammedan India, with the object of

uniting her to a revived Islam’.Gandhi decided to extend support to the Khilafat

movement as this was to him an ‘opportunity of uniting the Hindus and the

Muslims’.In March 1918 he petitioned the Viceroy for the Ali brothers’ release.

‘My interest in your release’, he wrote to Muhammad Ali on November 18,

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1918, ‘is quite selfish.We have a common goal and I want to utilize your

services to the uttermost in order to reach that goal. In the proper solution of

the Mahommedan question lies the realization of Swaraj’.But a joint front

developed only afte the Delhi riot of March 30th , 1919, in which members of

both communities were shot dead in police firing.

The Khilafat movement assumed great significance in September 1919,

when a decision at the Peace conference appeared to be imminent. Meetings

of protest were held in Bombay and in North India.17th October, 1919 was

observed as Khilafat Day when the Hindus united with the Muslims in fasting

and observed a hartal on that day.Gandhi was elected President of the All-

India Khilafat conference which met at Delhi on 23rd November, 1919. Khilafat

committee at Bombay collected huge sums of money.Muhammad Ali, the

Khilafat leader visited Europe to popularize the movement. He met the British

Prime Minister on 19th March, 1920, apparently to plead the case of Turkey.

About the same time, Lloyd George alienated the Khilafat deputation by

observing that Turkey could not be allowed to retain the lands which were not

Turkish.The Muslim delegation also wrote to Mustaga Kemal of Turkey in the

name of Indian Muslims in order to mobilize international public opinion in

favour of the pan-Islamic political objective. Finding little response in France

or elsewhere, Muhammad Ali turned to Russia which, according to the secret

memorandum, ‘promised freedom to Indian Mohammadans’.

In his manifesto of March 4th , 1920, Gandhi made it clear that the Khilafat

question was the only burning issue.Gandhi persuaded the Muslims to accept

his Non-violent non-cooperation movement.March 19, 1920 was also

observed as Khilafat Day with a hartal.Tension, however, arose between

Gandhi’s ideal of Satyagraha and the Khilafat leaders’ adoption of it as a

political technique.It was felt that the Khilafat movement might degenerate into

violence.The Intelligence Report of May 10, 1920 observes:The association of

Gandhi with any movement is a great asset, because his name is one to

conjure with among the ignorant masses….. His scheme is obviously

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comprehensive and easily stretched into something far more than passive

resistance.Using the glamour of Gandhi’s name and their own weapon of

religious fanaticism, the most ardent and revolutionary Pan-Islamist can work

at this scheme, knowing that from passive to active resistance is but a step.

The terms of Treaty of Sevres with Turkey were settled on August 10, 1920.

Turkey retained Constantinople but was severely reduced in size.This was

considered by the Muslims as a breach of the pledges given earlier by the

British Prime Minister, Lloyd George (1916 – 22).The Central Khilafat

Committee warned Chelmsford that unless the peace terms were revised,

Muslims would resort to non-cooperation and would ask the Hindus to join

them.‘The Khilafat movement from early 1919 until the inauguration of non-

cooperation on August 1st, 1920 was the context of Gandhi’s rapid emergence

as an all-India political leader’.In his letter of August 1st, 1920 to the Viceroy,

Gandhi pointed out that the scheme of non-cooperation inaugurated today

was essentially in connection with the Khilafat movement and that the Punjab

question had merely given ‘additional cause for it. By participating in the

Khilafat movement, Gandhi had tried to organize a mass movement of political

protest.According to a Government Report Gandhi occupied ‘a unique position

as the leader of two sections of the Indian population most opposed to the

British Indian Government’.

DISILLUSIONMENT OF GANDHI: NON-VIOLENT

NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT (1920)

Indians became indignant at the support extended to Dyer by the

Government.The report of the Hunter Committee which was published on 28th

May,1920 appeared to them as an attempt to justify Dyer’s action.“The cold-

blooded approval of the deed’, shocked young Jawaharlal Nehru.Motilal wrote

to his son ‘My blood is boiling even since I read the summaries you have sent.

We must hold a special Congress now and raise a veritable hell for the

rascals’.On 9th June, 1920 Gandhi condemned the Hunter Report which he

described as an ‘official whitewash’.Gandhi became convinced that ‘the

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present representatives of the Empire’ had become‘dishonest and

unscrupulous’.To an enraged people Gandhi suggested the way of Non-

violent Non-cooperation to secure redress for the Khilafat and the Punjab

wrongs.He suggested total non-cooperation with the rulers with the intention

‘so far to paralyse the Government as to compel justice from it’.The famous

doctrine of Non-violent Non-cooperation movement which Gandhi had issued

in March 1920 was formally launched on 1st August, 1920.Tilak died on the

same day.His last message to the nation was ‘Unless Swaraj is achieved,

India shall not prosper. It is required for our existence’. The loss of this valiant

son of India was deeply mourned. Gandhi wrote: ‘A giant among men has

fallen.The voice of the lion is hushed….. He will go down to the generations

yet unborn as a Maker of Modern India’.

Tilak’s death removed the most vocal critic from the field. Chittaranjan Das,

Lajpat Rai, B.C, Pal, Malaviya had mental reservations about Gandhi’s

programme.They believed that it was folly to boycott the new Councils,

thereby cutting themselves off from the fountain head of political power. In

N.C.Kelkar’s words ‘we will not be able to correct Government by remaining

outside the Council’. When the Congress met in a special session at Calcutta

on 4th September, 1920, Gandhi faced some opposition from veteran leaders.

Motilal was the only front-rank leader who supported Gandhi at the Calcutta

Congress. But Gandhi was not disheartened.He emphasized the fact that by

the adoption of his Non-cooperation resolution, Swaraj might be attained

within one year.Gandhi’s resolution on Non-cooperation was passed.It

recommended the renunciation of Government titles, boycotting of the

Legislatures, law-courts, Government educational institutions and foreign

goods.Great emphasis was laid on the promotion of Swadeshi goods by

means of reviging hand-spinning in every home.In his hour of triumph Gandhi

behaved with exemplary humility. The result was that in a few months his

erstwhile critics C.R.Das, Lajpat Rai and others rallied round him. The

adoption of Non-cooperation ushered in a new era in India’s struggle for

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freedom and marked a turning point in the history of the Indian National

Congress.

NAGPUR CONGRESS (1920):

CONGRESS, A MASS-BASED ORGANISATION

The movement launched by Gandhiji was ratified at the annual session of

the Congress at Nagpur in December 1920. It was declared that ‘the object of

the Indian National Congress is the attainment of Swaraj by the people of

India by all legitimate and peaceful means’. Malaviya and Jinnah opposed the

goal of Swaraj because it was not made clear whether any connection would

be maintained with the British Empire.Jinnah left the Congress after his

association with the organization for fifteen years. Fortunately C.R. Das was

won over. The Nagpur session revolutionized the structure of the Congress by

making it a mass-based organization. A Working Committee of 15 and an All-

India Committee of 350 members with roots going down to districts, towns and

villages was formed.The Congress thus became a broad-based organization.

Nehru said: ‘He (Gandhi) sent us to the villages and the country side hummed

with the activity of innumerable messengers of the new gospel of action’. Any

one who accepted its creed and paid four annas as the annual subscription

could become its members.The revised constitution was largely Gandhi’s own

handiwork.Gandhi was now the great force of the nation.A wave of

unprecedented enthusiasm swept the land.Gandhi toured different places of

India, ‘From Aligarh to Dibrugarh and then as far as Tinnevelly he went from

village to village from town to town, sometimes speaking in temples and

mosques. Wherever he went he had to endure the tyranny of love’.

An unusual frenzy of burning foreign cloth overtook the country.Nearly two-

thirds of the voters abstained from taking part in the election to the Councils

held in November 1920.A large number of students abstained from attending

schools and colleges. Among those who gave up their lucrative careers were

Motilal Nehru,Rajendra Prasad,C.R.Das,Vallabhbhai Patel,C.

Rajagopalachari.The movement exercised such a profound influence upon

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Jawaharlal that he recorded in his Autobiography:’We were full of excitement

and optimism….We sensed the happiness of a person crusading for a cause.

We were not troubled with doubts or hesitation; our path seemed to lie clear in

front of us and we marched ahead….. There was no more whispering….. We

said what we felt and shouted it from the house-tops.What did we care for the

consequences? Prison? We look forward to it; that would help our cause still

further’.Subhas Chandra Bose who passed the I.C.S. examination in 1920,

resigned his post.Jails lost their terror and the people courted arrest

voluntarily.

SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT

Non Cooperation spread to rural areas.The peasants of Midnapur in

Bengal led by Birendranath Sasmal organized a very effective no-tax

movement.Tension ran high in Champaran and Muzaffarpur districts of Bihar.

The Tana Bhagat sect of Chhotanagpur tribals boycotted liquor.The Bihar

Government panicked: ‘If the aboriginals are stirred up, we shall have a new

source of trouble on our hands’.The United Provinces became one of the

strongest centres of the Non Cooperation movement.From this province came

a host of leading nationalists – Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru,

Purushottamdas Tandon, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Govind Ballabh Pant,

Lal Bahadur Shastri.The peasant upsurge in Avadh associated with Baba

Ramchandra culminated in widespread agrarian riots in Rae Barelli,

Pratapgarh, Faizabad and Sultanpur.Tea gardens in Assam were largely

affected by the movement. There were also signs of a no-revenue movement

among the peasants.It was reported on February 9, 1922 ‘It is being widely

stated in the villages that Gandhi raj had come and there is no longer any

necessity to pay anything to anybody.They are consequently not only refusing,

to pay rent and taxes but also repudiating their debts’! Non Congress-

operation attained its great strength in the Andhra delta region with

outstanding leaders like Konda Venkatappayya, A. Kaleswara Rao, T.

Prakasam and Pattabhi Sitaramayya.Among the highlights of the Andhra

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upsurge was the resistance of the small town of Chirala-Parala in Guntur

district. Led by Duggirala Gopalakrishnayya, its 15,000 inhabitants refused to

pay taxes.

The Non-violent, Non Congress-operation movement which started

auspiciously was marred by violence in August 1921.The Moplah Muslims of

Malabar butchered Hindu money-lenders.The Ali brothers began to give way.

They apologized to the Viceroy for their violent speeches at the persuation of

Gandhi.The new Viceroy, Lord Reading (1921 – 6), was hoping for a rift

between Gandhi and Ali brothers. This would mean, according to the Viceroy,

the ‘collapse of the bridge over the gulf between Hindu and Muslim’.

However, in September 1921, the Ali brothers were arrested. Soon afterwards

45 Indian leaders, headed by Gandhi, issued a manifesto calling upon every

Indian civilian and soldier to give up his job.

This was an open challenge but the Government hesitated to take action

owing to the impending visit of the Prince of Wales in November 1921. When

the Prince landed in Bombay on 17th November, people grew violent and

attacked the police. In the riots that followed 53 died and 400 were wounded.

Gandhi, Sarojini Naidu and others failed to pacify the crowd.Gandhi atoned by

fasting for five days and declared that ‘swaraj stank in his nostrils because of

this vilence’.The Government now began to take drastic action.Prominent

leaders were arrested.Motilal was arrested along with his son in December

1921.In a farewell message to his countrymen Motilal said ‘Having served you

to the best of my ability, it is now my high privilege to serve the motherland by

going to gaol with my only son’. In two months nearly 30,000 people were

imprisoned. Chittaranjan Das courted arrest and Lajpat Rai and Gopabandhu

Das of Orissa followed him to prison.

WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION

Bombay and Calcutta were the main centres of women’s participation in the

Swadeshi Movement, though sporadic demonstrations by women occurred in

other cities. During the Satyagraha week from 6-13, April 1921, Sarojini Naidu

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addressed a number of meetings in Bombay. A women’s political organization,

Rashtriya Stree Sangha (RSS) was formed. Urmila Devi, the widowed sister of

the Bengali leader C.R. Das, addressed them urging the latter to leave their

homes and serve the country.In November 1921 one thousand Bombay

women demonstrated against the visit of the Prince of Wales.In Calcutta, C.R.

Das’s wife Basanti Devi, his sister Urmila Devi and his niece, Suniti Devi, were

arrested on 7th December, 1921, while selling Khaddar.The next day, the

whole city was in commotion and they were released.Members of the Das

family thereafter resumed picketing cloth shops and selling Khaddar joined by

numerous other lady volunteers, especially Sikh ladies.In Ahmedabad and

Lahore women also participated in the movement. Gandhi wanted women

from the upper strata of society to take the Swadeshi vow because they would

be emulated by other women.

AHMEDABAD CONGRESS (1921)

It was against this ominous background that the Indian National Congress

met at Ahmedabad in December 1921.The outbreak of violence had cautioned

Gandhi.He wanted to ‘hasten slowly’ with the mass civil discharge-obedience.

It was, as Gandhi said, like an earthquake ‘a sort of general upheaval on the

political plane’. He, therefore, wanted to experiment with it, in Bardoli; a small

sub-division in the Surat district.He gave a clear warning that if violence broke

out in any form, the movement would lose its character.Gandhi sent an

ultimatum to the Viceroy on 1st February, 1922. He demanded, among other

things, the release of political prisoners, and the removal of restrictions on the

press. If these demands were not conceded within seven days, he threatened

to start civil disobedience in Bardoli ‘to mark the national non-violent revolt

against the Government’.

VIOLENCE AT CHAURI CHHURA:

SUSPENSION OF THE MOVEMENT (FEBRUARY 1922)

Before the movement was launched, mob violence at Chauri Chaura

village, in Gorakhpur district of U.P. took place on 4th February, 1922. 22

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policemen were killed including the young son of a sub-inspector of

police.This was followed by more mob violence at Bareilly. Gandhi viewed the

tragedy as a red signal and suspended his Non Congress-operation on 12th

February, 1922.On 24th February, the Congress Working Committee which

met at Delhi, endorsed the decision.From Lahore prison, Lala Lajpat Rai

attacked Gandhi’s blundering tactics just when his followers’ hopes were at

their highest. He wrote bitterly: ‘The fact is that no single man how able, high-

minded, wise and sagacious can lead a movement of this nature without

making mistakes’.

The sudden suspension of Non-Cooperation by Gandhi caused profound

shock to his followers. ‘At a word from Gandhi India would have risen in revolt.

That word was not said’.Gandhi justified his action by writing to Jawaharlal

Nehru on 19th February, 1922 ‘I assure you that if the thing had not been

suspended we would have been leading not a none=violent struggle but

essentially a violent struggle’. Gandhi emphasized that the movement had not

been abandoned but suspended.‘We may have to adjust our sails to the

varying winds, we may have to alter our course to avoid the shoals and the

breakers ahead….. But there can be no question of changing our destination

or our good ship which we have chartered for the voyage’.Gandhi was

arrested, tried at Ahmedabad on 18th March, 1922 and sentenced to six year’s

simple imprisonment.In his historic trial Gandhi observed ‘I came reluctantly to

the conclusion that British connection had made India more helpless than she

ever was before, politically and economically.She has become so poor that

she has little power of resisting famines’.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NON-COOPERATION MOVEMENT

The first phasr of the Non Congress-operation Movement ended with

Gandhi’s crying halt.Though the movement failed to achieve Swaraj, it

generated a feeling of freedom among the masses and inspired them to meet

the forces of repression unleashed by the Government. Even Lajpat Rai, who

did not fully agree with Gandhi’s political ideas, observed that the passive

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resistance in India was an ‘achievement unique in our history, nay even in the

history of the world. It has raised the political consciousness of the country by

one big leap…’The Intelligence Branch of the Government reported

confidentially in March 1921: Never before has any political leader, or perhaps

even a religious leader, in his own lifetime stirred the masses to their very

depths throughout the country and received the homage of som many people,

Hindus and Moslems alike.His influence is certainly phenomenal and quite

unprecedented. The Government was alarmed at the sweep of the movement

and the influence it exercised over the ignorant masses.This fear was

expressed in the following language:The factory hands and the railway

employees who strike, the convicts who have broken out of jail, the coolies

who have migrated from Assam and themselves peasants who recently defied

law and order in Oudh, all proclaim Gandhi as their leader and appear to think

that if they obey what are represented as his orders, the British raj will

disappear and a golden age of prosperity for India will begin.

For the first time the Congress, freed for the dominant middle class, turned

to the masses as a sheet-anchor of their programme and policy.The

movement also contributed to an awakening of the masses to economic

problems.Even the common villagers began to feel that Swaraj was the

sovereign remedy for their ills.There was also an increasing awareness of

social evils like untouchability and drinking and of the importance of Khadi. A

supreme self-confidence seized the people.Gandhi became aware of the

strength of the movement.As he himself said ‘The fight that was commenced

in 1920 is a fight to the finish, whether it lasts one month or one year or many

months or many years’.Gandhi was not vainglorious when he claimed that the

movement achieved in one year what could not have been achieved in thirty

years by earlier methods.‘The net effect of non-violent, non-cooperation has

been of the greatest benefit to India. It has brought about an awakening which

would probably have taken generations otherwise’.As a recent writer observes

‘non Congress-operation marked a major change in the depth and

dimensiosns of concerted political hostility to the Raj. Never before had the

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British faced a continental campaign against their rule’.Even after the

suspension of the movement, the Additional District Magistrate of Midnapore,

Peddie, had to flee for his life owing to the upsurge of the Santals.‘It is the first

time I have had to run away and I did not like doing so-but there was nothing

else possible’.

MUSLIM OPINION CONCILIATTED

With the suspension of the Non Congress-operation movement, the

Khilafat question became unimportant. The Government also felt the necessity

of confiliating Muslim opinion by a revision of the Treaty of Sevres of August

1920 in favour of Turkey. ‘We believe’, wrote the Viceroy to the Secretary of

State on February 9, 1922 ‘that the appeasement of 70 million Muhammadans

of India……is of the utmost importance’. A sudden change in the politics of the

Near East also helped the Government to bring to an end the Hindu-Muslim

combination that had manifested in the Khilafat agitation.Mustapha Kemal

desposed the Sultan, a puppet of the British Government and started the

modernization of Turkey. In November 1922 the Treaty of Sevres was revised

in Turkey’s favour.The Hindu-Muslim alliance which Gandhi had so laboriously

built up now faded and communal disturbances between the two communities

became frequent.

EVOLUTION OF SWARAJISTS

1. The Genesis

In spite of the suspension of all subversive activities by the Non-co-

operators after the arrest of Gandhi, the Government continued its repressive

policy in some localities, and this gave rise to a feeling that the Congress

should resort to Civil Disobedience. The All-India Congress Committee which

met at Lakhnau on 7th June, 1922, thereupon requested the President to

nominate a few eminent persons to tour round the country for reviewing the

present situation.This is the genesis of the Civil Disobedience Enquiry

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Committee.A section of Congressmen, how, felt that they should carry the

fight inside the Councils set up by the Government of India Act, though this

would mean going back upon the resolution of boycotting the Councils.The

Civil Disobedience Enquiry Committee reported that the country was ‘not

prepared at present to embark upon general Mass Civil Disobedience’, nor

was there much enthusiasm for the constructive programme laid down as part

of Non-co-operation activities.This undoubtedly gave a fillip to the views of

Council-entry, but an overwhelming majority of the witnesses who appeared

before the Civil Disobedience Enquiry Committee were against the

programme of Council-entry with a view to fighting the Government inside the

Councils. This led to a split in the Congress rank – a section headed by Motilal

Nehru and C.R. Das supporting the Council-entry, and another headed by

Rajagopalachari leading the orthodox party of no-changers.

The question came to ahead at the annual session of the Congress at

Gaya in December; 1922.The President, C.R. Das, in his Presidential Address

made a vigorous plea for Council-entry, but the motion of Rajagopalachari in

support of continuing the boycott was carried by a large majority.C.R. Das

resigned the Pressidentship and, along with Motilal Nehru and others, formed

a new party within the Congress, called the Congress Khilafat Swaraj party,

briefly referred to as the Swarajya party. By successful propaganda the new

party rapidly gained in strength and a special session of the Congress, held at

Delhi on 15th September, 1923, arrived at a compromise on the qun, by

passing the following resolution:“While re-affirming its adherence to the

principle of Non-co-operation this Congress declares that such Congressmen

as have no religious or other conscientious objections against entering the

legislatures are at liberty to stand as candidates and to exercise the right of

voting at the forthcoming elections….”

As the next election to the Councils was to be held in November, 1923, the

Swarajya party began to make preparations without delay for the coming

contest.They issued a manifesto from Allahabad on14th October, 1924,

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explaining the policy and programme of the party.They declared at the very

outset that the Swarajya party was an integral part of the Congress and

always kept in view the essential principles of ‘non-violent Non-co-operation’

as they understood them.The party, on entering the Legislative Assembly,

wddemand the right of framing their own constitution, and if this was refused,

and they constituted a majority, they would resort to a policy of “uniform,

continuous, and consistent obstruction with a view to make Government

through the Assembly and Councils impossible”. The manifesto made it quite

clear that for achieving their purpose they would try to secure the co-operation

with Nationalist members of the Legislatures who, “without agreeing with the

principles of Non-co-operation, are in sympathy with the party programme so

far as it relates to Councils”.The party would also readily accept the invitation

of other parties to join with them “for the purpose of defeating the Government

on any non-official measure opposed by the Government or on an official

measure opposed by the inviting party or members”.The Swarajya party’s

contest for election in November, 1923, roused great enthusiasm all over the

country which seemed to have got over the political inertial brought about by

the sudden suspension of the Non-co-operation movement.Considering the

very short time in which the party had to prepare for the contest, its success

must be regarded as very remarkable.It practically routed the Moderate or

Liberal party. Even veteran leaders of this party like Surendranath Banerji in

Bengal, Sheshagiri Iyer in Madras, and Paranjpye in Bombay, were thoroughly

beaten at the polls.The defeat of C.R. Das (Calcutta), Mr. Chintamani (U.P.),

Hriday Nath Munzru and others completed the debacle of the Moderates who

henceforth ceased to count as an effective factor in Indian politics.The utter

disorganization of the Liberal party was clearly reflected in the poor

attendance at the session of the National Liberal Federation held at Poona on

26 December.The President of the session, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, ascribed

the debacle of the party at the recent election to lack of organization and

failure to educate public opinion. But the plain truth seems to be that they had

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forfeited the confidence of the educated classes and had no influence upon

the masses.

The success of the Swarajya party varied in different provinces. It had

captured the majority of seats in C.P., but very few members of the party were

elected to the Legislative Councils of Madras and the Punjab. In Bengal the

Swarajists formed the single largest party, though they did not command an

absolute majority of votes. In Bombay, Assam, and U.P., the Swarajists were

fairly strong; no member of the Swarajya party was sent up for election to the

Legislative Council in Bihar and Orissa, but the Nationalists were returned in

large number.

2. Change in the Programme.

In the Legislative Assembly the Swarajists had 48 members, and there was

a group, calling itself Independent, of 24 members under the leadership of

Jinnah .The number of official and non-official nominated members was,

respectively, 25 and 14, forming practically a solid bloc of 39 votes controlled

by the Government.It was obvious that the Swarajists and Independents

joining together could defeat the Government.Ere long there was such a

coalition, generally known as the new Nationalist party. The Swarajya party

maintained its separate identity, but had to revise its declared policy of

“uniform, continuous and consistent obstruction”, and draw up a new

programme of work within the Assembly.They would not only throw out

budgets and official resolutions andbills, but also themselves move resolutions

and support measures necessary for thehealthy growth of national life and the

constructive programme of the Congress.The programme of the Joint Party

was laid down as follows:

“If the Government do not make a satisfactory response to the resolution

demanding reforms within a reasonable, time, the party (Joint Party) will then

be bound to a policy of obstruction and will put the policy into operation at the

earliest period when the demands for grants are made by the Government,

Buddhism refusing supplies, provided the party decide by a majority of three-

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fourths at a meeting specially to be convened for the purpose, that the

response, if any, made by Government is not satisfactory”.

This policy worked remarkably well and the Joint Party achieved notable

successes.But the Independents soon changed their mind and were not

prepared to join the Swarajists to the full extent in the policy of obstruction.

The result was that though on some important occasions the Swarajists, with

the help of the Independents, inflicted defeat upon the Government, they were

defeated on many occasions when the Independents deserted them; the latter

not only remained neutral, but some of them voted with the Government

against the Swarajists.When the 4th session of the Assembly opened in Delhi

in January, 1925, a revised rule was introduced by the Independents to the

following effect:

“In the event of the Party desiring to resort to a policy of obstruction

including refusal of supplies or rejection of Finance Bills, no such decision

shall be taken in the Nationalist party unless both the Swaraj and Independent

parties have separately met in the first instance and decided at their

respective meetings to make it a party question.If either group does not desire

to resort to a policy of obstruction or of refusing supplies, the Nationalist party

shall not make it a party question. In that event either group will be free to act

as it may determine”.

The definite end of the coalition made it impossible for the Swarajists to

follow effectively their policy of obstruction. This was undoubtedly the main

cause of their final decision to walk out of the Assembly, as directed by the

Congress at the end of 1925.

3. Work in the Legislative Assembly.

The Legislative Assembly met on 30th January, 1924, when oath was

administered to the members. Next day the Viceroy, Lord Reading, addressed

the Assembly.The Address was resented by the nationalist members on two

grounds.There was no reference to Gandhi who had undergone a serious

operation while in jail.Secondly, the Viceroy practically threatened the

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Swarajists that if they did not behave well the British Government might

withdraw the reforms. The extent of the indignation may be judged by the fact

that even Pandit Malaviya and his followers boycotted the garden party

arranged by Mr. A.C. Chatterji, Member for Industries and Labour, to meet the

Viceroy and the Countess of Reading.The Swarajists had already decided

upon this course and Malaviya group joined them as a protest against the

Viceroy’s speech.On 8th February the adjourned motion of Mr. Rangachariar

on constitutional advance came up for discussion.It asked for “the

appointment of a Royal Commission for revising the Government of India Act

so as to secure for India full self-governing Dominion Status within the British

Empire and Provincial autonomy within the provinces”.The Government

opposed it but agreed to make a departmental inquiry into the defects and

difficulties in the actual working of the present constitution.Pandit Motilal

Nehru, the Leader of the Swarajya party, then moved the following

amendment on behalf of the newly formed Nationalist party:

“The Assembly recommends to the Governor-General in Council to take

steps to have the Government of India Act revised with a view to establish full

Responsible Government in India and for the said purpose (a) to summon at

an early date a representative Round Table Conference to recommend with

due regard to the protection foreign the rights and interests of important

minorities the scheme of a constitution for India, and (b) after dissolving the

Central Legislature, to place the said scheme before a newly elected Indian

Legislature for its approval and submit the same to the British Parliament to be

embodied in a statute”.

The matter was discussed for full three days, namely 8th, 13th and 18th

February, andNehru’s amendment was carried by 76 to 48 votes.This was the

first great victory – an almost historical one – of the Swarajya Party-cum-

Independents.This was shortly followed by other triumphs.When the Budget

debate on the voting of demands was held on March 10, Nehru moved for the

total omission of the grant under Customs.It was carried by 63 to 56 votes.

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Similarly, the Assembly refused the demands under the heads, Income-Tax,

Salt, and Opium.On 17th March, the motion for leave to introduce the Finance

Bill was rejected.Three days later a resolution to repeal thenotorious

Regulation III of 1818 and other repressive laws was passed by 68 votes to

44.In the September session of the Legislative Assembly, the most important

subject that came up for discussion was the consideration of the Report of the

Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India, generally known as

the Lee Commission from the name of the Chairman, Lord Lee.On 10th

September, 1924, the Home Member moved a resolution to give effect ot the

chief recommendations of the Commission. The more important among these

were the following:

1. That while the existing system of appointment and control of the All-India

Services should, in present conditions, be maintained in Reserved fields, the

Services operating in Transferred fields should, so far as future recruits are

concerned, be appointed and controlled by Local Governments.

2.The recruitment of Indians for the Services in Reserved fields should be

increased as recommended (direct recruitment of 40 Europeans and 40

Indians out of every hundred, the remaining being promoted from the

Provincial service so that there will be a half and half composition in 15 years.)

3. The Constitution of a Public Service Commission.

4. That pay, passage, concessions and pensions be granted to the officers on

the scale recommended (increase of basic pay in the Indian Police Service

and the Indian Service of Engineers, privilege granted to European officers to

remit his total overseas pay at two shillings to the Rupee, grant of four return

passages to the European officers and their wives and one passage for each

child, increased pension for the members of the I.C.S serving as Members of

Council or Governor).

Motilal Nehru moved a long amendment to the Government resolution of

which the principal points were the following:

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1. That the recommentation of the Lee Commision be not accepted.

2. That all further recruitment in England for the Civil services in India be

stopped.

3. That the powers of appoinment and control of the services now vested in

the secretary of state be transferred to the Government of India and the Local

Governments, such powers to be exercised under laws to be passed by the

Indian and Local Legislatures.

4. That a public service commission be established in Indiaand the

constitution and functions of that Commission is determined on the

recommentation of a committeeelected by this Assembly.

5. That instead of accepting the recommentation number 4 of the Home

Member’s resolution a committee elected by this House should go into the

entire question so far as the present in cumbent are concerned.

Mr. Rangachariar pointed out that there was a revision of pay on the

ground of high prices in 1919-20, when the prices had already reached the

highwater-mark, and there was total increase of over a crore in emoluments.

Now that prices had fallen, they were asked to sanction a further increase

costing another crore and a quarter.Colonial. Crawford remarked that the

House was representative to some extent of the intellegensia of India, but it

did not represent the voice of the people of India who desired to retain the

European element in the Services. If the Pandit’s amendment were carried,

the House would show that it was not a civilized body. More than one speaker

pointed out that the Service should be in the real sense services as they were

in other countries, but must not be masters.After 2 days’ debate the

amendment of Pandit Motilal Nehru was put to vote and carried by 68 votes

against 46 on 12 September. On September 16, Dr. Gour’s Bill to repeal Part

II of the Criminal Amendment Act of 1908 was taken into consideration.The

Home Member strongly opposed the motion on the ground that Association

with the objective of assassination and murder were still active. Malaviya said

that the dacoities and murders mentioned by the Home Member could be very

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well dealt with by the ordinary law, and strongly condemned the action of the

Bengal Government in sending thousands of Congress volunteers to jail under

this Act and of the Punjab Government in declaring the Sikh Gurudwara

Prabandhak Committee as an unlawful Assembly.Dr. Gour’s motion was

carried obviously 71 votes against 31.

Although the Labour Government rejected the demand of othe Swarajua

party of revision of constitution, it was evidently at their instance that a

Committee was appointed in February, 1924, in inquire into the working of the

reforms. The terms of reference were: (1) to inquire into the difficulties arising

from or defects inhesrent in the working of the Government of India Act and

the rules thereunder in regard to the Central Government and the Government

of Governors’ Provinces, and (2) to investigate the feasibility and desirability of

securing remedies for such difficulties or defects, consistent with the structure,

policy, and purpose of the Act, (a) by action taken under the Act and the

Rules; or (b) by such amendments of the Act as appear necessary to rectify

any administrative imperfections.The Committee consisted of nine members

with Sir Alexander Muddiman, the Home Member, as the Chairman.There

were two reports known as the Majority and the Minority Reports.The Majority

Report was signed by five members’ three of whom were officials, one an

example-official, and the other a European capitalist. The Minority Report was

signed by four members’ three of whom were example-officials and the

remaining one, the leader of the Independent party in the Legislative

Assembly. But shortly after the publication of the Report one of the members

of the Majority, M.M. Shafi supported the recommendations of the Minority as

soon as he was free from the restraints of office. Thus the so-called Minority

Report may be taken to be really representing the views of the majority.

The assumption underlaying the Majority Report was that they were

prevented from recommending any remedies which were inconsistent with the

Act, whether such remedies were to be found by action within the scope of the

Act or by the amendment of the Act itself.Their recommendations were

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therefore confined to a few minor adjustments. The Minority Report, however,

held that Dyarchy had fialed and “the only cure to be had is in the replacement

of the Dyarchical by a unitary and responsible Provincial Government”.The

most significant feature of the so-called Minority Report is that its analysis of

causes of the failure of Dyarchical system, as well as the recommendation of

replacing it by a Unitary and Responsible Provincial Government, is entirely

based on the opinion held by the Ministers and Indian Members of the

Executive Councils in all the Provinces. Esven some of the Provincial

Governments admitted in thneir eventually idence that “Dyarchy is obviously a

cumbrous, complex, confused system, having no logical basis’ (U.P.); “very

little can be done to smooth the working of Dyarchy or to elimenate the

different administrative imperfections; whatever defect exit are inherent in the

system itself” (Bihar and Orissa); Dyarchy cannot solve the political problem

(Assam); and necessarily contains illogicalities and anomalies(Punjab).The

following observation of the U.P.Government might easily be mistaken as an

extract from the Minority Report:

“It seems to the Governor in Council that the difficulties and defects

inherent in the scheme are quite incurzble by any mere alternation of the Act

or rules. The utmost that their changes so restricted could do would be to oil

the wheels of the constitutional machinery, they could have no effect on the

general and permenant tendencies of the constitution itself.”

The Majority attributed some of the difficulties in working the constitution to

the atmosphere in which it was introduced,and observed that”the constitution

required to be worked by reasonable men in reasonable spirit’.On this the

Minority observed:“In our opinion the system of Dyarchy was during the first

three years every where worked in the Legislature by men most of whom were

professedly its friend and who, generally speaking, tried to work it in that spirit

of reasonableness which is reffered to by the majority of our collegues, and it

is no exaggeration to say indeed this is aiso the testimony of several local

Governments which we have quoted above-that generally a spirit of harmony

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and cooperation prevailed between the Legislature and the

Executive,notwhithstanding the fact that the atmosphere outside was for some

time markedly unfavourable.”The Committee had verbal and written evidence

from past and present Ministers and Executive Councillers from all the

Provinces. With the exceptin of three disgruntled Ministers of Bengal who

were driven out by the Swarajists in 1924, they all expressed the view,

supported by reasons, that the experiment of Dyarchy has already taught all

that it can be used to teach, that it is impossible to work it satisfactorily, that it

is condemened, not only by themselves, who have tried to work it, and by all

politicians of all Indian partiss, but by an increasingly pronounced popular

feeling, due to its failure to fulfil popular expectations. The assumption in the

Majority Report that it could not suggest any amendment of othe Act in any

case, was denied by the Prime Minister, Ramsy MacDonald. “Domination

status for India’ he said, ‘is the ideal of the Labour Government… An inquiry is

being held obviously the Govrnment, which means that inquiry to be a serious

one. We do not mean it to be an expedient for wasting and losing time. We

mean that the inquiry shall produce results which will be a basis for

consideration of the Indian Constitution, its working and its possibilities, which

we hope will help Indians to Councils-operate on the way towards the creation

of a system which will be welf-Government.

Ramsay MacDonald’s Government fell before the Report of the Committee

was submitted, and a Conservative Government took its place. It is significant

to note in this connection that the Labour Party, at its Conference in Liverpool

in September, 1925, declared ‘its agreement with the conclusions of the

Minority Report of the Indian Reforms Inquiry Committee’’, and that Lord

Olivier, writing in December, 1925, associated himself entirely with the

resolution passed by the Conference of the Labour Party at Liverpool.The

Majority Report was strongly condemned by all political parties. In the Madras

Council, when voting on Budgets commenced on 16 March, 1925, an

adjournment motion was moved to discuss the unsatisfactory character of the

Muddiman Committee Report.Speakers of all parties described it a

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unsatisfactory, retrogressive and disappointing, and the motion was carried.

The Assam Council passed a resolution on March 18, disapproving of the

recommendations, and recommended the appointment of a Royal

Commission or Round Table Conference. An adjournment motion was also

passed in the Bombay Council on 10; C.P. Council on 14, and the Punjab

Council on 18 March.On 7th September, 1925, the Report was discussed by

the Legislative Assembly. After Sir Alexander Muddiman moved for the

acceptance of the Majority Report, Motilal Nehru moved a long amendment.

After reiterating the dedmand contained in the resolution of 18 February,

1924, it recommended some fundamental changes in the present

constitutional machinery and administration of India.The more important of

these were follows:

1. The principle of responsibility to the Legislature shall be introduced in the

Central Government subjected to some reservation of powers to the

Governor-General.

2. Unitary and autonomous Governments shall be established in the

Provinces.

3. The Central and Provicial Legislatures shall consist only of members

elected on a wide franchise.

4. The Indian army shall be nationalized within a reasonably short and definite

period of time.

Finally, the Amendment recommended the appointment of a Convention,

Round Table Conference, or other suitable agency to frame a detailed

scheme on the above principles. After a full dress debate for two whole days,

the Amendment was carried on 9th September.In the Council of State the

motion for the acceptance of theMajority Report was carried by 28 votes to 7.It

is necessary now to go back and refer to some other important matters

discussed in the Assembly. The first in point of importance was the notorious

Bengal Ordinance mentioned above. The Government of Bengal introduced

in the Bengal Council, on 7th January, 1925, “The Bengal Criminal Law

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Amendment Bill 1925,” to take the place of the Ordinance, issued in October

1924. The Government motion for leave to introduce the Bill was, however,

defeated, 57 voting for and 66 against it. The Governor certified the Bill under

section 72-Europe (1) of the Government of India Act and forwarded it to the

Viceroy for assent. On January 20, in his opening address to the Legislative

Assembly, othe Viceroy announced that he fully approved of the action of othe

Governor and reserved the Act for the assent of His Majesty in Council.

On 28 January, 1925, Doraiswami Iyergar moved in the Assembly “that

steps be taken forthwith to osupersede by an Act of Indian Legislature the

Criminal Law Amedment Orodinance 1 of 1924 made and promulgataed by

the Governor-General for and in the province of Bengal.” After two days’

debate the resolution was carried by 58 against 45 votes. On 23 Narch, after

the Royal assent was given the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act, the

Government of India brought in a Supplementary Bill, as certain provisions of

othe Bengal Ordinance, such as those affecting the jurisdiction of the High

Court, were beyond the scope of the Bengal Legislature, and cound not be

incorporated in that Act. The motion for consideration of othe Bill was agreed

to. But Clause 4, empowering detention outside Bengal, was rejected by 74

against 34 votes, and Clause 5, suspending jurisdiction of Civil and Criminal

Court, was rejected by 73 against 37 votes. After Clause 6 was also defeatad

by 73 to 39 votes, the Home Member refused to proceed further with the

“mutilated” Bill. Next day, 24 March, the Viceroy sent a message to the

Assembly asking it to pass the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment

(Supplementary) Bill as recommended by him. The Home Member first

moved the re-instating of Clause 4 without any speech. It was strongly

opposed. Finally, all othe three clauses proposed to be reinstated were put

together to vote and rejected by 72 to 41. On 26 March, the Council of State

passed the Bill as recommended by the Governor-General. The Viceroy

certified the Act.Many interesting disclosures were made in the course of the

various debated that took place. Motilal Nehru examined one by one the

various acts of terrorism quoted by the Government in justification of the

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Bengal Ordinance, and showed that many of them were proved to be false

and fabricated by the Police. In one decoity case the approver said that he

had driven a car, but when asked to drive a car, could not do so. Motilal also

pointed out how othe people had in many cases openly assisted the police in

arresting dacoits, and othey were convicted in open trial. There was therefore

no case for the abolition of the ordinary course of law. In this connection he

quoted an extract from a letter written by Sir Reginald Clarke, example-

Commissioner of Police, Calcutta, to The Times: “I have had much experience

of those agencies in the East, and often wonder they donot raise more devils

than they lay. One has to use them (Police informers) to fight anarchy, but

their inevitable concomitants, the agent provacateur and the letter de cachet

alienate public opinion to such an extent that they can never be contined for

long.’

The Legislative Assembly had also a long and protracted debate over the

repeal of repressive Europe laws. On 4th February, 1925, V.J. Patel asked for

leave to introduce his Bill to amend the Code of Criminal Procedure. In spite

of Government opposition leave was granted by 49 votes against 41. After

several adjournments and strenuous opposition of the Government at every

stage, Patel’s Bill was passed on March 19 by 71 against 40 votes. As usual,

a motion for the consideration of the Bill in the Council of State was defeated,

9 voting for and 29 against it.It was apparent at the time of othe discussion of

the Budget that the coalition of the Swarajists and the Independents had

broken down.On 25th February, 1925, Nehru moved the rejection of the

demand for the grant re expenses of the Railway Board, on the old principle

that there should obe redress of grievances before supply. Jinnah, the leader

of the Independent party, announced that his party had discussed the

question and thought that refusal of supplies was not a proper course. There

was ahot exchange of words between Jinnah and V.J. Patel, who pointed out

that the Nationalist party, by its very constitution and programme, was bound

to a policy of obstruction. But Jinnah replied that the Nationalist party rules

had been recently revised, so that the Independents and Swarajists were free

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to odecide as they pleased unless there was an agreement between them.

Patel admitted it, but added, “I still affirm that we are bound, in honour, to go

by the original agreement.” But the Independents voted against Motila’s

motion which was lost by 41 votes against 66.The General Budget was

introduced on 28 February, 1925. The Swarajya and Independent parties met

separataely on 2 March, to determine their attitude.The Swarajya party

adopted the sub-committee’s recommendation to reject all demands under

several heads of General Administration and the Secretary of State’s

expenditure, besides the provision for the Excise establishment.The

Independents did not think it necessary to join the Swarajists in this plan.

The voting of demands began on 6 March, and the provision for the

establishment for collecting the Cotton Excise Duty was opposed by various

parties on different grounds.Eventually the demand was rejected by 70 vootes

against 41. On 14th March, Motilal Nehru moved the omission of the whole

demands for the Executive Council. It was, he said, a motion of censure on

the Government of India, and the Swarajya party would vote for it on the

principle of reofusal of supplies before redress of grievances.After a prolonged

discussion the motion was carried by p65 to 48 votes. But other demands

were granted; thoiugh the Swarajists opposed each of them. Pandit Motilal

also opposed the Finance Bill and there was a passage at arms between him

and Jinnah, who opposed the Swarajist “purpose of wrecking the present

constitution” .The Bill, was passed.In pursuance of the Government of India

Act, the Legislative Assembly was called upon, for the first time, to elect its

own President on 22 August, 1925. There were two candidates-V.J. Patel and

Rangachariar-who received, respectively, 58 and 56 votes, Patel, an eminent

leader of the Swarajya, who came to the Assembly to wreck it by non-

Councils-operation, was accordingly elected, and it was approved by the

Governor-General. On 24 August, after high tributes were paid to the retiring

President, Sir, Frederick Whyte, Patel took the Chair and received selcome

from all sections of the Houose.In reply, Patel remarked that from that moment

he had ceased to be a party man, and asked his friend Motilal Nehru to pass a

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resolution absolving him fromo all the obligations of a Swarajist.The most

important event during this session of the Assembly was the discussion on the

Report of the Muddiman Enquiry Committee, and the adoption, on 9th

September, of the amendment moved by Motilal Nehru, as mentioned above.

On 26th January, 1926, the Assembly discussed the question of the

release of political prisoners and the treatment accorded to them in jails. The

main resolution was moved by Muhammad Shafi, but T.C. Goswami, a

Swarajist member from Bengal, moved the following amendment: “That this

Assembly recommends to the Governor-General in Council.

(a). forthwith to secure the immediate release of all political prisoners

detained without trial;

(b). to take steps to remove all difficulties in the way of the return to India of

Indian exiles in foreign countries who may be or may have been suspected of

being concerned in any revolutionary or other activities regarded by the

Government as prejudicial to the interests of India; and

(c). to bring to trial under the ordinary law of the land such persons against

whom the Government think that they ohave osufficient eveidence to go to

court.”

The Government opposed the amendment, but it was carried by 53

againtst 45 votes.On 12th February, the assembly discussed the Bill for the

repeal of Regullation lll of 1818. It was discussed the whole day and next

taken up on 19 February.The main contention of the debate centred round

terroism in Bengal and its realation to Bolshebism.The home member

asserted that the Bolshebism danger was undoubted and considerable, and

hinded darkly at documents in his possession more than proving his case.He

also reffered to attempts which had been made by Communist at Oxford to

convert Indian students to their way of thinking. The motion to take the Bill into

consideration was defeated by 49 votes to 46.On 26 February; the Assembly

passed a motion for the adjournment of the House to discuss the situation

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created by the hunger-strike among the Regulation and Ordinance prisoners

in Mandalay jail, by 57 votes against 40.

The Budget was introduced in the Assembly on 1st March, 1926. Neither

the Swarajists noro the Independents participated in the general discussion of

the Budget; the former, in accordance with the mandate of the Kanpur

Congress, and the latter as a protest against the recent attitude of Birkenhead

and Lord Reading towards the question of constitutional reforms.When the

House met on 8 March to discuss demands for grants, Jinnah moved that the

demand under the head Executive Council be taken up first. His motive was

to defeat it with the help of the Swarajists, for under the Congress mandate

the Swarajya party was to walk out after opposing the first demand for grant.

The President, however, ruled him out of order.Jinnah thereupon moved the

adjournment of the discussion under Customs.This was put to vote and lost by

43 to 49 votes.Pandit Motilal then got up and announced that his party was

under a mandate to walk out in view of the Government attitude over the

Reform issue.He referred to the resolution of the Kanpur Conogress in

December, 1925, and the All India Congress Committee at Delhi on arch 6

and 7, to which reference has been made elsewhere. He gave a short history

of the demands for constitutional reforms made by the Assembly, and the

refusal of the Government to make even any conciliatory gesture.The

Government passed repressive laws in the teeth of oppostion of the Assembly

by powers of certificate and there was also the ‘Lee loot.”. “The Councils-

operation we offered”’ said Motilal, “has been contemptuously rejected, and it

is time for us to think of other ways to achieve our object”. In conclusion he

said: “There is no more use of us here. We go out into the country to seek

tsahe suffrage of the electorates once more. We do not give up the fight…

We feel that we have no further ouse for these shsm institutions, and the least

we can do to vindicate the honour and self-resoect of the nation is to get out of

them and go back to the country for work in the country. We will try to devise

those sanctions which alonoe can compel any Government to grant the

demands of the nations. We hope and trust that the nation will give a suitable

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replay to the truculent rejection of our demands, and will send us again in

larger numbers, with a stronger mandate, and God willing, with the mission of

fulfilling its aspirations and enforcing its commands”.

After Motilal’s speech was over, he and all the Swarajist members walked

out of the House in a body. It must be said that the concluding part of Motilal’s

speech, quoted above, is not only vague, but somewhat self-contradictory. If

there was no further use of these sham institutions, one might ask, thenwhy

again seek for election to them? Nor is it easy to understand what is meant by

a ‘stronger mandate’, or “those sanctions” which will compel Government to

grant the demands of the Swarajya party. It is not, perhaps, an unreasonable

conjecture that Motilal deliberately chose these vague expressions as the

future course of action was not finally decided upon.It was soonapparent that

the interest, importance, enthusiasm, and excitement walked out of the

Assembly along with the Swarajist members.Mr. Jinnah moved for the

omission of the demand for the Executive Council in order that the House

might record its unequivocal vot of censure on the Government policy with

regard to the reforms. Both he and Rangachariar denounced the Government

for its policy in regard to reforms, and the refusal to accept the hand of

Councils-operation which the Swarajists had extened to the Government. But

Jinnah’s motion was defeated by 47 to 31 votes in spite of his pathetic appeal

to the nominated and non-official European members.This was the last flicker

of the lamp before it went out, and henceforth the proceedings of the

Assembly ceased to evoke much interest.

In spite of the unfortunate end of the Swarajya party’s activity in the

Assembly, there cannot be two opinions on the signal service it had rendered

to the country.For the first time, the Legislative Assembly wore the

appearance of a truly national Assembly, where national grievances were fully

voiced, national aims and aspirations expressed without any reservation, and

real character of the British rule through sham legislatures ruthlessly exposed.

The British autocracy and Indian bureaucracy, in their naked form of tyranny

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and repression, stood exposed to the whole world.This, by itself, was no mean

achievement, even though the Party could not continue this useful function

during the whole life of the Assembly owing to the secession of the

Independents.The stewardship of Pandit Motilal Nehru was fully vindicated,

and the aims and aspirations of the Swarajya party were fulfilled to a very

large degree.Reference has been made above to the change of the policy and

programme of the Swarajya party in the light of experience gained in the

Assembly.The decision to promote the constructive programme of the

Congress, and to pursue a definite economic policy against foreign

exploitation and in furtherance of national industrial development, within the

Assembly, bore rich fruit. Reference may be made to the Steel Protection Bill

and the undertaking given by the Government for the appointment of a

Committee to examine the question of the importation of foreign capital into

the country. In addition to the various measures for the repeal of repressive

laws, amelioration of the lot of Indian detenus and prisoners, and the removal

of various grievances, either of individual or collective nature, to which they

always drew the attention of the Government, some outstanding measures

passed by the Assembly were undoubtedly due to their support, if not

initiation. The most important among these were the abolition of the Cotton

Excise Duty, reduction of the duty on salt, and the abolition of the import duty

on sulphur. The Party also passed various resolutions of national importance

such as the improvement of labour condition, protection to Indian industries,

removal of racial distinction in railway and of grievances of Indians abroad,

imposition of a countervailing duty upon the South African coal, establishment

of a military college in India, protection and growth of Trade Unions, and

relieving the burden of the poor by reduction of railway fare and the price of

postage stamps.The Swarajya party was also instrumental in instituting an

inquiry into the currency problem of the country.

As noted above, the credit for all this also goes to the Independent

members of the Assembly without whose votes the Swarajya party could not

defeat the Government.The wisdom of the policy of the Independents in

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withdrawing their support from the Swarajists may be questioned.But it cannot

be looked upon as a treachery or unpatriotic act, inasmuch as they stood for

the policy they declated at the time of the election. They were not returned on

the Swarajya party ticket and were not bound legally or morally to pledge their

full support to it.

WORK IN THE PROVINCIAL COUNCILS- CENTRAL PROVINCES.

It was in the Central Provinces that the Swarajya party could carry out its

policy and programme to the fullest extent, because it commanded an

absolute majority of votes in the Council. In his opening speech at the

inauguration of the Council on 15 January, 1924, the Governor mentioned that

as neither the Swarajists, who formed the Majority party, nor some of the

Independents agreed to accept the Ministry, he had to select ministers from a

very “narrow sphere”.On 18th January, Raghavendra Rao moved “That a

formal address be moved to His Excellency, the Governor, submitting that the

Hon’ble Ministers do not enjoy the confidence of the Council and he be

pleased to request them to resign”.After a whole day’s discussion the motion

was carried by 44 votes against 24. But the ministers did not resign. The

Swarajya party therefore threw out two bills introduced by the two Ministers on

March 4. On 8th March, voting took place on Government grants which were

all summarily rejected one after another.Only one amendment was passed,

reducing the minister’s salary to two rupees a year. On 10th March, when the

Council met for the last time, it passed the following resolution:

“That no articles manufactured in any part of the British Empire outside

India should be used in any Department by the Local Government or by its

contractors unless they are not obtainable in any other part of the world”.

After the wholesale rejection of the Budget the two Ministers resigned on

27th March, and the Governor took over the administration of the Transferred

Subjects.He restored the grants in the Reserved Department, with minor

exceptions, but as regards the Transferred Departments he only authorized

expenditure on the scale necessary for the carrying on of each department,

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and all new schemes of development had to be dropped for want of funds.

The Government instructed its officials to bring home to the villagers the

mischief caused by othe Swarajists, for whom they had voted, by refusing

grants to carry on the various beneficent projects it had in view. Leaflets were

issued telling people: “Those who tell you that men were happy in the earlier

days before them (British), are liars…. When the British came, they found the

people ignorant, oppressed and frightened” and “they were killing one another

like ravening wolves”.The Swarajya party decided to create a Publicity Bureau

of their own to counteract such official propaganda.After about one year the

C.P. Council met again on 3 March, 1925. A question was put concerning the

sensational Government communication, published in several Indian dailies,

purporting to contain Government instructions issued to all Deputy

Commissioners to fight out Swarajist tactics throughout the Province. The

Chief Secretary tacitly admitted the truth of the said document. Mr. S.B.

Tambe, Swarajist, was elected President of the Council.

On 12th March, the Governor invited Dr. Moonje and Raghavendra Rao to

discuss the question of the Ministry.Dr. Moonje and his section were opposed

to the formation of any ministry, whilst Mr. Rao and his section did not desire

to form one without the support of Dr. Moonje and his section. It was agreed

that the sense of the Council should be taken on this issue by making a

demand for the Ministers’ salaries.Accordingly on 13th March, 1925, the

Government asked for a grant of Minister’s salary at the rate of Rs. 4,000

each. A Swarajistmember moved for the reduction of the amount of annual

salary to rupees two only. While moving the amendment he said: “As there

has been no change in the political situation during the last year……and

particularly as the Muddiman Committee’s Report is not only disappointing

and unsatisfactory, but in some respects positively retrograde, I see no reason

why we would vote for the salaries of ministers”. The amendment was carried

by 37 votes against 28.The same procedure was repeated in 1926, on 9

March. Next day the Swarajists, after rejecting the demand for Land-revenue,

withdrew from the Council in obedience to the instructions of the Congress.

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1. BENGAL

In Bengal the Swarajists did not have an absolute majority in the Council,

but formed the largest single party.The Governor, Lord Lytton, asked C.R.

Das, the leader of the Swarajya Party, to form the Ministry; but he declined,

and ministers were selected from among thenon-Swarajist elected members

of the Council. The action of Lord Lytton in inviting Das to form a Ministry was

perfectly constitutional, and perhaps the most legitimate one in accordance

with constitutional theory and practice. Nevertheless, it provoked the wrath of

the European community in Calcutta. The Statesman, theleading English daily

in Calcutta, denounced the conduct of Lytton in strong language, and it formed

a subject of acrimonious discussion in a meeting of the European association

in Calcutta where overwhelming majorities were against the Governor.On 23rd

January, 1924, the Governor formally opened the Council.On 24th January,

J.M. Sen Gupta moved for the release of all political prisoners of an belonging

to Bengal, detained under Bengal Regulation III of 1818.

In the course of the debate that followed, C.R. Das tore to pieces the

various arguments and justifications advanced by the Governor and his

officials for keeping hundreds of men in confinement without any trial. “We

have done it, trust us, was the whole argument of the bureaucracy in support

of the deportations”, said Das. To Lord Lytton’s statement that the materials

against the persons deported were placed before two judges who found every

one of them guilty of active participation in revolutionary conspiracy, Das gave

an effective reply. This opinion, he said, is based on official reports containing

statements of certain persons. He pointed out that no man, however gifted he

might be, is in a position to test the truth of a statement, unless the man who

makes the statement is brought before him and questions are put to him.

“The wonder is”, he observed, “that judges can be found to report as to the

guilt or innocence of persons upon what we Calcutta dead records”. This

opinion, coming from an eminent member of the English Bar, must have been

a home thrust. Continuing, Das said that he had persuaded many of the old

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revolutionaries to accept the Congress creed and renounce violence, but he

found to hishorror that they were pounced upon by the Police and lodged in

jail under Regulation III of 1818. In reply to the Government statement that

the deportees were furnished with charges against them, he exposed the

whole show by reproducing the statements of some of these deportees whom

he had interviewed with the permission of the Government. Beyond a few

vague allegations no definite charges were communicated to them. Some of

the remarks made by Das on this occasion have become classic. One of

these may be quoted here: “We are told that the Government will never be

coerced. If by coercion is meant the application of physical force, I agree. But

if that statement means that the Government is not to yield to the wishes of

the people, I differ entirely. If it is stated that Government is not to be coerced,

may I not make this declaration on behalf of the people of this country that the

people of this country will not be coerced either”.

When the resolution was put to vote it was declared lost. A division was

demanded and the result showed that 76 members voted for a 45 against it.

The next resolution which was carried by 72 votes against 41 ran as follows:

“This Council recommends to the Government that all political prisoners of

and eblonging to Bengal, namely(a).those convicted for offences committed

with a political motive before the Royal amnesty granted in the Royal

Proclamation issued by His Gracious Majesty, the King Emperor, on the 23rd

of December, 1919;(b).those convicted under the Criminal Law Amendment

Act (XIV of 1908) during 1921 and 1922; and(c).those convicted for sedition,

and those bound down and imprisoned under section 108 of the Criminal

Procedure Code for delivering seditious speeches during 1921, 1922 and

1923.After these two resolutions were carried, the following resolution was

moved:“This Council recommends to the Government to request the

Government of India for the immediate repeal or withdrawal in regard to

Bengal of the following laws:

1. The prevention of Seditious Meetings Act, 1911 (X of 1911);

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2. The Indian Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1908 (XIV of 1908);

3.Sections 15 and 15A and other sections so far as they relate to Sections 15

and 15 A of the Police Act, 1861 (V of 1861); and

4. Bengal Regulation III of 1818.

The Council adjourned while the motion was still being discussed, and it

was again taken up on 28th January.In reply to the taunting remark of Sir

Abdur Rahim, a member of the Governor’s Executive Council, that the

gentlemen who want to have the statutes repealed would not take up the

responsibility of the Government, C.R. Das said: “The moment the

Government is made responsible to the people of this country Sir Abdul

Rahim will find every one of us ready to take up the responsibility of the

Government”.The resolution was carried.The passing of the above three

resolutions in the teeth of the opposition from the Government and their

henchmen showed the degree of unpopularity which the Government had

incurred. Here, as in the Legislative Assembly, the Swarajists were supported

by a group of Independents, both Hindu and Muslim, and it was apparent, that

like his Councils-adjutor, Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das had succeeded in evolving a

Nationalist party by the alliance of the Swarajists with a group of

Independents.

When the Council reassembled after the recess on 18 February, the

President announced that he had received notices of two motions of no-

confidence against the Ministers, and had ruled them out of order. But in view

of a contrary ruling by the President of the Madras Legislative Council, he

explained at length his reasons for disallowing them and suggested how the

same object could be achieved by other means.In accordance with the

suggestion of the President a no-confidence motion against the Ministers was

brought in the shape of an adjournment motion, but it was lost by the narrow

margin of one vote. The Government, however, sustained several defeats, the

most important being the following resolution moved by Dr. P.N. Banerji:“That

early steps be taken to move the proper authorities to amend rule 6 and

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schedule 11 of the Devolution Rules so as to include, in the list of Provincial

subjects for transfer in Bengal, all subjects except Land Revenue

Administration, European and Anglo-Indian education, and Local Fund Audit”.

The resolution was carried by 71 against 49 votes.

The voting on the Budget began on 18 March. The Nationalist party held a

meeting thenight before and decided to throw out the whole Budget.This

unnerved the Government and the Governor came to the Council without

notice and clearly explained to the house the possible effects of the refusal of

demands, particularly with regard to Transferred Subjefts, as he had no power

to restore a single grant.The Dacca University, which depended entirely on

Government Grant, would have to close down at once, and Education, Public

Health, Medical, Agricultural and Industries would be starved and crippled. He

concluded with the following words:“It may be thought perhaps that

Government would not dare to face such a situation. Let there be no illusions

on this point – my Government would not be embarrassed by such situation

which was not of our creation, and from which we would in no way suffer whilt

it lasted”. After His Excellency left, the first Demand for Expenditure under

Land Revenue was opposed by J.M. Sen Gupta who moved for a total refusal.

“Delhi has rallied”, said he. “C.P. has done its duty. Wil Bengal fails? The

Councillors are to reply by their votes on the Budget”. Themotion for refusal

was carried by 65 votes to 63. The motion for refusal of grant under Excise

was lost by the margin of one vote but that under Stamps was carried by the

same majority of one vote. 4 Demands were disposed of on thenext day of

which three were refused.The most important item, the salary of the Ministers,

came up for discussion on the 24th. On the motion of Maulvi Sayedul Huq the

whole salary was refused by 63 to 62 votes.The result was hailed with

deafening applause and cries of “resign, resign”.Then the Demands under the

heads “General Administration” and “Administration of Justice” were refused

as well as that under “Jails and Convict Settlements”.

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On 31st March, the Governor held Conference of Government members and

their supporters in the Council, within closed doors at the Government House.

Next day, when the Council met, the propriety of the conduct of the Governor

was questioned by the members of the Nationalist party. When the first motion

on the refusal of grant was lost, C.R. Das scanned the Division list and found

that some members of his party had voted in favour of the Government. He

thereupon remarked that “the voting of today has been influenced by last

evening’s conference”.There were loud cries of ‘no’ from European and

Government benches, to which Das replied: “A thousand times yes”. C.R.

Das observed that under the circumstances it was useless to go on and,

following him, all the members of the Nationalist party left the Chamber in a

body.The remaining grants were then put without any speech and were

hurriedly carried unopposed.Before concluding the account of the Bengal

Council in 1924 reference should be made to the manifestation of communal

spirit.This was first evident on 20 February, when the no-confidence against

the Ministers was to be moved by way of an adjournment motion, as noted

above. Shortly before the Council began its proceedings, a number of Muslim

boys came in a procession to the Town Hall (where the Council met) with

placards containing warning to the Muslim members not to run the risk of

falling in with the endeavours of some of the Hindu members of the Council to

break the Muslim Ministry.During the course of the proceedings a large

number of leaflets containing a similar appeal were freely distributed amongst

the Muslim members, asking them “to save the Muhammadan Ministry and

not to be wiled away by the camouflage and guise of their bitterest enemies”.

To the same communal spirit may be traced the motion moved by Nawab

Musharaff Hussain that while making appointments in future the Government

should give eighty per cent of the posts to the Muslims till the number of

Muslim officials in each category specified by him become 55 per cent of the

whole.The House, however, accepted an amendment of C.R. Das that the

motion be adjourned sine die.

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The refusal of Ministers’ salaries in the Bengal Council had a very

interesting sequel. In the communiqué issued by the Governor of Bengal on

14 April, 1924, stating the action taken by him in respect of the grants refused

by the Council, he said that the Ministers did not regard this vote as a censure

on themselves, necessitating their resignation, and he agreed with this view.

At the same time the Ministers expressed their willingness, if necessary, to

serve in an honorary capacity.The Governor, however, thought that it would

be against the spirit of the constitution, except as a purely temporary

expedient, either for Ministers to serve in a honorary capacity or for him to

authorize the payment to them of salaries which have been refused by the

vote of the Legislative Council. He therefore decided to resubmit the matter to

the Legislative Council. He therefore decided to resubmit the matter to the

Legislative Council at its next session, and in the meantime to authorize the

payment of salary to the Ministers up to the statutory limit.In pursuance of this

policy the Governor summoned a meeting of the Bengal Council on 7 July,

1924, and included in the agenda an item of supplementary grant for

Ministers’ salaries. The Swarajists regarded this as a clear violation of the

Constitution and decided to challenge its legality in a Court of Law.

Accordingly a case was instituted in the High Court, Calcutta, and the Judge,

Mr. C.C. Ghose, issued an order restraining the President of the Legislative

Council from putting the item of Ministers’ salaries before the Council for its

consideration until the final determination of the suit. The order was issued on

7 July just when the Council was to begin its proceedings.The President came

to the Council a quarter of an hour late, and declared that in view of the

injunction the Governor had asked him to adjourn the House till Monday. On

10th July, the Governor prorogued the Legislative Council.On 21st July; a

Gazette of India Extraordinary was issued announcing an amendment to the

Indian Legislative Rules with the sanction of the Secretary of State in Council,

which legalized the proposed action of the Governor of Bengal. Thereupon a

meeting of the Bengal Legislative Council was called for 26 August to

reconsider the grant of Ministers’ salaries and other rejected demands. When

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the Grant for the salaries was moved Akhil Chandra Datta moved an

amendment that the Demand be refused. Datta’s amendment was carried by

68 votes against 66. As a result of this voting the Ministers resigned and the

Governor assumed charge of the Transferred Departments.

On 25th October, 1924, the Governor-General, on the recommendation of

the Governor of Bengal, promulgated the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment

Ordinance, giving almost unlimited authority to the Executive to deal with

political suspects. Although the Ordinance would automatically continue in

force for six months, the Government of Bengal introduced on 7th January,

1925, the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Bill 1925, to continue the

provisions of the Ordinance for a period of five years by regular Legislative

Act. Its main provisions, like those of the Ordinance, were:

1. Trial by three Commissioners instead of Ordinary Courts of Law.

2. Various restrictions on a person, on mere suspicion, including custory in jail.

3. Arrest and search without any warrant.

The Governor, Lord Lytton, addressed the Council explaining the reasons

or necessity of the Bill.The most interesting speech was that of Prabhas

Chandra Mitter, a signatory to the Rowlatt Report. In opposing the Bill he

stated:“The present Bill departs from the recommendations of the Rowlatt

Report in almost every important question of principle and proceeds on the

Defence of India Act….. The Government …… in following the principles of

the war time measure …… is following a quack’s remedy and not a

physician’s treatment in dealing with this dangerous malady”. The motion for

leave to introduce the Bill was lost, 57 voting for and 66 against it.On 7th

February, the Governor held a conference of the leaders of different groups in

the Council to discuss the question of Ministers’ salaries. In accordance with

the decision of this conference Sir Abdur Rahim moved a resolution in the

Council on February 17, recommending the provision of Ministers’ salaries in

the next Budget. In spite of the opposition of the Swarajists the resolution was

carried by 75 votes to 51, as some of the Independents remained neutral, and

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some voted in favour of the resolution. Accordingly the Governor appointed

two Ministers. In course of the voting on Demands, the Swarajists moved an

amendment that the demand of Rs. 1, 28,000 for the salary of two Ministers

be reduced by Rs. 1, 27,998. C.R. Das, in spite ofill health, attended the

meeting and explained the position of the Swarajist Party. The amendment

was carried by 69 against 63 votes.

On 13th June, 1925, the government decided that the transfer of all

Transferable Subjects in Bengal be suspended for the life time of the present

Council.On 8th December, J.M. Sen Gupta, the leader of the Swarajya party

after the death of Das, moved the adjournment of the House to discuss the

recent treatment of certain prisoners who were transferred from one jail to

another in winter night without notice and without proper clothing. The motion

was carried by 58 votes to 50.On 15th March, when the Council re-assembled

for voting on Budget grants, J.M. Sen Gupta made a statement and walked

out followed by all the Swarajist members. Nine Independent members also

refused to participate in the business of the House from this day.

11. OTHER PROVINCES

No spectacular successes attended the efforts of the Swarajya party in

any Province other than Central Provinces and Bengal. Still they occasionally

scored some significant victory over the Government.Thus the Bombay

Council passed a motion of adjournment to protest against the speech of Lord

Oliver, the Secretary of State, to which reference will be made later. In U.P.,

notices of no-confidence against the Ministers were given by two members,

but none of these was actually moved and was treated as withdrawn. An

attempt was also made to form a Nationalist party by combining with the

Independents as in Bengal and the Assembly, to refuse the Grants. But after

a few trials it broke down. On March 25th, Maulvi Faiznur Ali, the leader of the

Swarajya party in Assam, moved the following resolution in the Assam

Legislative Council. “This Council recommends to the Government to request

the Secretary of State for India and the Governor-General in Council to take

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such immediate steps as may be necessary in order to establish full

Responsible Government in Assam”. After a lengthy debate the resolution was

carried by 29 votes to 17. The Assam Council also passed by the margin of

one vote two important resolutions, one for the inclusion of Forests, P.W.D,

Excise and Fishery in the Transferred Subjects, and another for the reduction

of the salary of Ministers, amounting to Rs, 84,000 by Rs. 48,000. In

accordance with the directions of the Kanpur Congress in December, 1925,

the Swarajist members walked out of the Council in U.P., the Punjab, Assam,

Bihar and Orissa, Madras and Bombay.

111. SWARAJYA PARTY &MAHATMA GANDHI

On 13th January, 1924, the whole of India was started by the news that

Gandhi had been removed from the Yeravda jail to the Sassoon Hospital,

Poona, for an operation of appendicitis. The Swarajya party gave notice of a

resolution in the Assembly demanding the release of Gandhi, and 5th February

was fixed as the date for moving it.At midnight on February 4, the Government

issued a press-note to the following effect: “The Government of Bombay have

received medical advice that Mr. Gandhi should be removed to the seaside for

a prolonged period of convalescence, not less than six months in any event.

In these circumstances they have decided, with the concurrence of the

Government of India, to remit unconditionally…..the unexpired portion of his

sentences….”As soon as Gandhi had sufficiently recovered his health, he held

a long discussion with Motilal Nehru and C.R. Das, but remained as convinced

as before that the Council-entry was inconsistent with the Non-Co-operation

programme.There was a show-down on both sides at the A.I.C.C. meeting

held at Ahmadabad on 27th June, 1924.Gandhi proposed to disqualify for the

membership of any Congress Executive Board those who did not fully

subscribe to the Non-co-operation programme.Motilal opposed Gandhi in a

vigorous speech. “The Charka programme”, said he “was not going to bring

them any nearer toward Swaraj”. He also asked the supporters of Gandhi

how much they worked his Constructive Programme during his imprisonment.

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Motilal’s motion that the resolution of Gandhi was out of order, being against

the constitution of the Congress, was defeated by 82 against 68 votes, and

both Nehru and Das, with their followers, left the meeting by way of protest.

But after lapse of some time an agreement was reached in Calcutta between

Gandhi on one side and Das and Nehru on the other, the essential part of

which read as follows:“Spinning and weaving, removal of untouchability and

promotion of Hindu-Muslim unity should be carried on by all sections within

the Congress, and the work in connection with the Central and Provincial

legislatures should be carried on by the Swarajya Party on behalf of the

Congress and as an integral part of the Congress organization, and for such

work the Swarajya Party should make its own rules and raise and administer

its own funds”.

NEGOTIATIONS OF C.R.DAS WITH THE GOVERNMENT.

The Pact was agreed to by both the Congress and the Swarajya party, but

ere long the political views of C.R. Das underwent a great change.At

Ahmadabad he had fought against Gandhi’s resolution condemning Gopinath

Saha who had murdered a European, and moved an amendment which

appreciated Saha’s ideal of self-sacrifice and expressed respect for the same.

This amendment was lost by only eight votes, 70 voting for and 78 against it.

Das’s amendment merely endorsed a resolution passed by the Bengal

Provincial Conference at Sirajgunje on 1st June, 1924, which was denounced

by Englishmen both in India and England, even in the House of Commons.

But on 25 March, 1925, Das issued a manifesto condemning unreservedly all

acts of violence for political purposes. Lord Birkenhead, the Secretary of State

for India, referred to it in appreciative terms in the House of Lords and

requested Das to co-operate with the Government. Das reciprocated the

sentiment in a statement issued on 3rd April.On 6th April, it was stated by the

Under-Secretary in the House of Commons that “if, as he (Lord Birkenhead)

hopes, Mr. Das now makes constructive proposals which obtain the support of

the Government of Bengal and Government of India, His Majesty’s

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Government, so far as they are concerned, will give such proposals their

sympathetic consideration”.

On 2nd May, Das outlined his policy in his Presidential speech at the

Bengal Provincial Conference held at Faridpur.He defended the ideal of

Dominion Status as against independence. He also offered co-operation with

Government on the following terms:

“In the first place, the Government should divest itself of its wide

discretionary powers of constraint, and follow it up by proclaiming a general

amnesty to all political prisoners. In the next place, the Government should

guarantee to us the fullest recognition of our right to the establishment of

Swaraj within the Commonwealth in the near future, and that in the meantime,

till Swaraj comes, a sure and sufficient foundation of such Swaraj should be

laid at once”.

It is evident that Das extended the hand of fellowship to the Government

even by sacrificing some of the cherished principles of his party. As a matter

of fact, the speech of Das created great discontent among a section of his

followers, and it was openly talked about that it was the result of a secret

negotiation between Das and the Government.This suspicion grew stronger

when the Viceroy, Lord Reading, left for London, and it was announced that

after consulting him Birkenhead would make an important pronouncement

about India. But all these speculations were set at rest by othe sudden death

of C.R. Das on 16th June, 1925.According to Subhas Bose who testifies to the

negotiations mentioned above, the death of Das led the British Government to

change its mind; the official pronouncement, carefully prepared by Birkenhead

on behalf of the Cabinet, and announced to be made on 7 July, 1925, was

suppressed, and a non-committal speech was made instead on that day.

1V.DISINTEGRATION OF THE SWARAJYA PARTY AFTER THE DEATH

OF C.R.DAS.

The General Council of the Swarajya party met at Calcutta on 16th July,

1925, and passed a resolution wholly endorsing the sentiments and the

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conditions of honourable co-operation with the Government laid down in the

Faridpur speech by the late President, C.R. Das, on 2nd May, 1925. The

Council also regretted “that the recent pronouncement of the Secretary of

State for India in the House of Lords is not only no response to the late

President’s offer, but is calculated to make the chances of honourable co-

operation different, if not impossible”.Gandhi’s reaction to the death of Das

and the speech of Birken-head was of a different character.In a letter to Motilal

Nehru, dated 10 July, he wrote: “I have come to the conclusion that I should

absolve the Swaraj party from all obligations of the pact of last year. The

result of this act is that the Congress need no longer be predominantly a

spinning association.I recognize that under the situation created by the

speech, the authority and the influence of the Swaraj party need to be

increased….. This can be done if the Congress becomes a predominantly

political body.Under the pact the Congress activity is restricted to the

constructive programme mentioned therein. I recognize that this restriction

should not continue under the altered circumstance that faces the country….. I

propose to ask the forthcoming meeting of the A.I.C.C. to place the whole

machinery of the Congress at your disposal”.Gandhi’s ideas were carried out

in the meeting of the All India Congress Committee held at Patna on 22nd,

September, 1925, which passed the following resolution:

“That the Congress now take up and carry on all such political work as may

be necessary in the interest of the country. And for this purpose do employ the

whole of the machinery and funds of the Congress provided that the work in

the Legislatures shall be carried on by the Swarajya Party under the

constitution framed by the party and the rules made thereunder, subject to

such modifications made by the Congress as may be found necessary from

time to time for the purpose of carrying out the said policy”.There was,

however, one important departure. A separate autonomous organization was

set up under the name of All-India Spinners’ Association for the development

of hand-spinning and Khaddar.It was a permanent organization under a

Council of its own with a constitution laid down by the A.I.C.C. and funds and

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assets of the Congress were earmarked for this body, which were specifically

excluded in the above resolution from those available for political purposes. In

other words, the position of the Swarajya party Vis a Vis the Congress was

now reversed; the party and its politics now became the main concern of the

Congress, and the constructive programme was relegated to a separate non-

political organization within the Congress.This was further emphasized by

changing the franchise of the Congress membership, the annual subscription

of four annas being restored as an alternative qualification to spinning, in

modification of the decision of the Belgaum Congress.But ere long the

Swarajya party was threatened by a split in its own rank. There was a growing

feeling within the Party that its policy should be revised and brought into line

with the programme of ‘Responsive Co-operation’ formulated by Tilak. But the

majority steadily pursued the old policy.In the annual session of the Congress,

held at Kanpur on 25th December, 1925, Motilal Nehru moved the adoption of

the following directives to the Party: ‘If by the end of February, 1926, the

Government do not give any satisfactory reply to the demands for

constitutional reforms set forth in the resolution passed by the Assembly on 18

February, 1924, the Party will no longer continue to work in the present

legislatures.

Pandit Malaviya moved by way of amendment:“That the work in the

Legislatures shall be so carried on as to utilize them to the best possible

advantage for early establishment of full responsible government, co-

operation being resorted to when it may be necessary to advance the national

cause, and obstruction, when that may be necessary for the advancement of

the same cause”.Jayakar, who seconded this amendment, dramatically

announced at the very outset that he, Kelkar and Moonje had resigned their

seats in the Legislaturesas they could not subscribe to the policy of the

Swarajya party. He said that either they must come out of the Councils

altogether, or, being in, “take the last juice out of it by occupying every place

of power, initiative and responsibility, and would give no quarter to the

Bureaucracy”.The amendment was, however, lost and Nehru’s resolution was

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passed by a large majority. In the meantime the wing of the Swarajya party in

favour of Responsive Co-operation grew in strength.On 23rd June, 1926, a

meeting was held in Calcutta to organize a party within the Congress which

would work this programme.By the end of July, 1926, the most influential

section of the members of the Legislative Council in C.P. seceded from the

Congress. Lajpat Railway tendered resignation from the Swarajya party on 24

August, 1926. Malaviya made a last but vain effort to unite the different

sections of the Congress in a Conference at Delhi on 11th September, 1926.

At last the Responsivists and Independent Congressmen formed a Coalition

party known as the Independent Congress party, which issued a manifesto on

28 September, 1926, laying down a policy and programme based on

Responsive Co-operation.

The position of the Congress was further weakened by the growth of

communalism.A section of the Muslims carried on propaganda that they would

have nothing to do with the Hindus carrying on Non-co-operation, but should

work out the constitution.The Hindu Mahasabha made a counter-propaganda

that if the Hindus non-co-operated while the Muslims co-operated with the

Government, the Hindus would be placed at great disadvantage.The result of

the election of 1926 showed that the old Swarajya party had been replaced by

three disotinct groups, namely, the Swarajists, the Responsivists and

communal Muslims.Thanks to the Responsivist Party in C.P. and the Muslim

members in Bengal, the Ministers in both these Provinces were kept in the

saddle.As a result of the election the Congress in the Gauhati session in 1926

abandoned the walk-out policy, but it ceased to play any effective part in

politics.

THE CONGRESS SOCIALIST PARTY

The foundation of the Congress socialist Party in May 1934 was an

important step in the development of socialism in India.The Bihar Socialist

Party was founded in 1931 and the Bombay Socialist group was organized in

1934.The Congress Socialist Party was founded by those younger

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Congressmen who during their long termsof imprisonment in the Civil

Disobedience Movement came into contact with Marxist ideas.They were not

satisfied with the conservative leadership of the Congress Party after 1933.

They had their reservations about Mahatma Gandhi’s constructive

programme.They left that it was necessary to organize the workers and

peasants on class lines and bring them into the freedom movement.Those

who thought alike met together at Patna and Bombay in 1934 and thus the

Congress Socialist Party was launched with Jayaprakash Narayan ad its

General Secretary.Acharya Narendra Deva, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, Kamala

Devi Chattopadhyaya, Yusuf Meherally, Minoo Masani, S.M. Joshi and other

comrades were his colleagues.There were also yound people like E.M.S.

Namboodiripad, P, Ramamurthy, Sundarayya and others. They later on left

the Congress Socialist Party and joined the Communist Party.However,

Jayaprakash Narayan continued to have excellent relations with them.

At its first Conference in Bombay in 1934, the Congress Socialist Party

adopted a 15-Point programme which included the repudiation of the public

debt of India, transfer of all power to producing masses, planned development

of the economic life of the country by the state, socialization of the key

industries, state monopoly of foreign trade, cooperative and collective farming,

organization of cooperatives for production, distribution and credit and

elimination of princes and landlords without compensation.The members of

the Congress Socialist Party criticized the leadership of the Congress but

professed loyalty to the organization. In the words of Acharya Narendra Deva,

their object was “to resuscitate and reinvigorate the Congress” and to draw

into it the mass of workers and peasants in order to widen the base of the anti-

imperialist front.They criticized Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violence, his

ethical approach to politics and his theory of trusteeship. There was bound to

be a clash between the members of the Congress Socialist Party and the old

members of the Congress. They differed on the question of the Government of

India Act, 1935, the formation of ministries in 1937, the organization of Kisan

Sabhas and agitation for agrarian reforms, the release of political detenus and

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agitation in the Indian States.There were bitter controversies in which the

Congress leadership was severely criticized.Jayaprakash Narayan went to the

extent of saying that “Gandhism has played its part. It cannot carry us further

and hence we must march and be guided by the ideology of socialism”. The

leaders of the Congress Socialist Party did not realize the difficulties of the

Congress Party which had to fight both against the British Government and

the Muslim League and that could not be done without discipline in the

Congress Party itself.

It is true that Jawaharlal Nehru was ideologically the closest to the

Congress Socialist Party. He was in jail when the new party was formed and

when he became the Congress President, he included Jayaprakash Narayan,

Narendra Deva and Achyut Patwardhan in the Congress Working Committee.

Mahatma Gandhi was against the Congress Socialist Party and he made it

clear that if the Congress Socialist Party gained ascendancy in the Congress,

he would not remain in the Congress.He did not approve of class war,

expropriation and violence.Subash Chandra Bose asked Nehru to be firm with

the Congress establishment but Nehru was not prepared to defy Gandhi or

break away from the Congress. Mahatma Gandhi offered again and again to

step down if his ideas were not acceptable to the Working Committee or the

All-India Congress Committee.In October 1939, Mahatma Gandhi wrote to

Nehru, “I must not lead if, I cannot carry all with me.There should be no

divided counsels among the members of the Working Committee. I feel you

should take full charge and lead the country leaving me free to voice my

opinion”.Nehru was not prepared to allow Mahatma Gandhi to give up the

leadership of the Congress. He was not unaware of his own limitations. He

could rouse the masses and inspire the intelligentsia but he was not an expert

in party management.

Whatever the differences between the Congress Socialist Party and the

leadership of the Indian National Congress, there was no intention to carry the

opposition to the breaking point.The Congress Socialists knew well that they

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could not realize their programme unless the British were ousted from India

and that could be done only by the Indian National Congress. The Congress

Socialist Party got a lot of support from the youth, the industrial labour and the

peasantry, but it was still a minority.It was not a homogeneous group.It

consisted of Marxists like J.P. Narayan and Narendra Deva, Socialist

Democrats like Asoka Mehta and M.R. Masani, Gandhians like Patwardhan

and populists like Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia.It is true that the Congress Socialist

Party was not able to have its own way on many important issues but it

certainly succeeded in giving radical orientation to the Congress policies in

certain respects.The Second World War and the breach with the Government

brought the Congress Socialists nearer to Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress

leadership.Both the Congress leadership and the Congress Socialists worked

against the Government during the Quit Indiamo. During that movement, J.P.

Narayan who was already in jail since 1940, made a daring escape from

Hazaribagh jail with colleagues like Ram Nandan Misra and joined the ranks

of the freedom fighters.Achyut Patwardhan, Aruna Asaf Ali, Dr. Lohia, Sucheta

Kriplani and others were operating under the name of the underground All-

India Congress Committee and trying to widen the scope of the mass struggle.

When J.P. Narayan came out of jail, he declared that only armed resistance

could achieve the objectives. He organized squads which operated in Bihar.

Nepal was used as a base of operations. Ultimately, J.P. Narain and Dr.

Lohia were arrested.

The Congress Socialists were always keen to consolidate all leftist forces

in the country.The Congress Socialist Party opened its doors to the

communists in 1936.The Communist Party was an illegal party at that time

and its leaders were happy to get a chance of functioning openly through the

Congress Socialist Party and the Indian National Congress. The communists

created trouble for the leaders of the Congress Socialist Party and hence were

expelled from it in 1940.However, they took away with them the Southern

branches of the Congress Socialist Party. If the Communists had not been

expelled in 1940, they would have created more trouble. About the Congress

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Socialist Party, Shri P.L. Lakhanpal worte the following in 1946. “The role

played by the C.S.P. within the Congress as well as without it was

magnificient indeed. Within it, it served as a rallying point for all the radical

elements; without it, it organized peasant movements, brought about a union

between the various T.U. Congress and Federations, won the sympathy and

support of the other radical organizations and put socialism till then a subject

for academic discussion on the political map of India”. In March 1948 ath the

Nasik Convention, the Socialists decided to leave the Congress because the

leadership of the Congress forbade all inner groupings within that

organization.The socialists left the Congress in 1948 and formed a separate

party known as the Socialist Party of India.After the General Elections of 1952,

the Socialist Party and Krishak Mazdoor Praja Party led by J.B. Kriplani

decided to merge.The decision for merger was taken on 25th August 1952 at

Lucknow and the merger actually took place at a meeting in Bombay on 26

and 27th September 1952.

The National Executive of the Praja Socialist Party at its meeting in Bomba

on 16th October 1959 outlined a 12-point programme for India. It stood for

intensification of agricultural and industrial production, equitable distribution

and democratic decentralization.Its basic political and economic philosophy

was to bring about reconciliation and synthesis of nationalism, secularism and

democratic decentralization.The Socialist Party was merged in the Janata

Party in 1977 and also joined the Janata Government. After the fall of the

Janata Government in 1979, some of the Socialist members remained in the

Janata Party and some joined the Lok Dal.

FORWARD BLOC.

A reference may be made to some other minor leftist parties in India. The

Forward Bloc was formed by Subash Chandra Bose after his quarrel with

Mahatma Gandhi.The Forward Bloc accepted the creed, policy and

programme of the Congress but was not bound to have confidence in the

Congress High Command. When India became free in 1947, the Forward Bloc

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described the transfer of power as a bogus one. Its view was that the

bourgeois leadership of the Congress had entered into a partnership with

British imperialism to defeat the mass struggle.The Revolutionary Socialist

Party was started in 1940.In the tussle between Mahatma Gandhi and Subhas

Chandra Bose, it supported Subash Chandra Bose.It did not support the

Government of India even after the Soviet Union joined World War II.The

Bolshevik Party of India was started in 1939 by N. Dutt Mazumdar.The

Revolutionary Communist Party was started in 1942. The Bolshevik-Leninist

Party was started in 1941. Shri M.N. Roy started the Radical Democratic Party

in 1940.

THE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT

There was a lot of agitation in the country when the Simon Commission

visited India.At the Calcutta Session of the Congress held in 1928, it was

intended to pass a resolution declaring complete independence as the goal of

India.However, Mahatma Gandhi intervened and Dominion Status was

declared to be the goal of India Mahatma Gandhi gave the assurance that he

himself would lead the movement for independence if by the end of 1929 the

British Government did not confer Dominion Status on India.

When the Congress leaders met on the banks of the river Ravi, near

Lahore, in 1929 they were disappointed over the attitude of the British

Government.Leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and

Srinivas Iyengar asked for bold action against the Government.In his

presidential address, Jawaharlal Nehru condemmed British imperialism.

Kings and Princes and declared himself to be a socialist and a Republican.

He called upon the leaders assembled there to take strong action in these

words: “Talking of high stakes and going through great dangers were the only

way to achieve great things”.He declared that complete independence should

be the goal of the Congress.Mahatma Gandhi also approved of that goal but

he did not like to precipitate matters. A resolution was passed that the word

Swaraj in the Congress Constitution means “complete independence”. All

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Congressmen taking part in the National Movement were asked not to take

part, directly or indirectly, infuture elections and the sitting members were

asked to resign their seats.The All-India Congress Committee was authorized

to launch a programme of cicil disobedience including the non-payment of

taxes. At midnight of 31st December 1929, the Tricolour Flag of Independence

was hoisted on the banks of the river Ravi by the Congress President,

Jawaharlal Nehru.

26th January 1930 was declared Independence Day and a pledge was taken

by the people of India onthat date and the same was repeated year after year.

From 14 to 16 February, 1930, the Congress Working Committee met as

Sabarmati Ashram and vested Mahatma Gandhi with full powers to launch the

Civil Disobedience Movement” at a time and place of his choice”. On 27

February, the plan of the agitation was announced and Mahatma Gandhi

declared that he would first defy the Salt laws along with 78 chosen members

of his Ashram. On 2nd March 1930, Mahatma Gandhi wrote to othe Viceroy in

which he gave his own assessment of the situation in the country and put

forward his programme to ease the situation.He made it clear that if his

suggestion was not accepted, he would start the Civil Disobedience

Movement.His threat was treated by the Government with amusement and

contempt. On 12 March 1930, accompanied by 78 inmates of the Sabarmathi

Ashram, Mahatma Gandhi started onhis march of 240 miles to the sea-coast

at Dandi.Huge crowds gathered at the Ashram to see him off. Gandhiji hoped

that he would not return to the Ashram until Swaraj was won. His march

assumed the character of a Padayatra with object of achieving Purna Swaraj

for India. Moti Lal Nehru compared the Dandi march with the “historic march

of Ramchandra to Lanka”.Gandhiji described it as the war against Salt Tax”.

Prayers were offered all over India for the success of Mahatma Gandhi’s

mission and the people watched with great interest the progress of the march.

At every stage where Mahatma Gandhi halted on the way the people flocked

in othousands to hear him and asked for his blessings.He addressed

numerous meetings and urged the people to remain non-violent.

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Gandhiji reached Dandi on 5 April and broke the salt laws on 6 April by

picking up the salt lying on the beach. He called upon the people to celebrate

the week from 6 April to 15 April as the national week and defy the salt laws

and picket liquor shops, opium dens and foreign cloth dealers’ shops. He also

appealed to the people to leave the Government schools, colleges and

services.There was a favourable response from the people.Public meetings

were held all over the country.Hundreds of Government servants left their

jobs.Many legislators resigned their seats and hundreds of people violated the

salt laws.Liquor shops were boycotted.Peasants refused to pay taxes and

debts.The country appeared to be in open revolt.

The Government followed a policy of repression to suppress the

movement.Even before the movement was actually started; thousands of

Congress workers were arrested and put in jails. Subhash Chandra Bose was

sentenced to one year’s rigorous imprisonment.On 16 April 1930, Jawaharlal

Nehru was put in jail and his imprisonment was followed by thousands of

others.Police firing, lathi charges and arrests became the order of the day.

Even women were not spared.From Delhi alone, about 1,600 women were

arrested.On 23rd April 1930, the Bengal ordinance was promulgated and the

life of freedom fighters was made very hard.The Press Act of 1910 was strictly

enforced and many restrictions were put on the newspapers.Many

newspapers and magazines stopped their publications.Civilian property was

destroyed.Innocent men and women were beaten up. Prisoners were starved

and suffocated. Hundreds of men and women were killed as a result of police

firing.

Mahatma Gandhi was arrested on 5th May 1930 and his place was taken by

Abbas Tyabji as a leader of the movement.When he was arrested, he was

succeeded by Sarojini Naidu.Demonstrations were organized throughout India

against Gandhiji’s arrest.In Bombay, riots broke out. In Madras, police beating

was indiscriminate.The boycott of British goods was the highest in Bengal,

Bihar and Orissa.In U.P., the peasants and zamindars were called upon to

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withhold all payments of revenue.In the Central Provinces, Satyagraha was

launched against forest taxes.In Karnataka a successful no-tax campaign was

launched in the Midnapur District of West Bengal.Gorkha troops and punitive

police started a reign of terror which did not spare even the honour of women.

The peasants cheerfullysaw before their eyes the destruction of their huts and

all the little possession they had on earth but they refused to pay taxes. In

Gujarat, the peasants began to migrate to the State of Baroda.

Regarding the results of the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, Louis

Fischer wrote: “Gandhi did two things in 1930: he made the British people

aware that they were cruelly subjugating India and he gave Indians the

conviction that they would, by lifting their heads and straightening their spines,

lift the yoke from their shoulders.The British beat the Indians with batons and

rifle butts.The Indians neither cringed nor complained nor retreated. ‘That

made England powerless and India invincible”.

The First Round Table Conference was held in London from 12th November

1930 to 19th January 1931.Not much was done at the Conference on account

of the absence of any representative of the Congress.While winding up the

deliberations of the Conference, Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald declared

that “steps would be taken to enlist the Congress-operation of those sections

of public opinion which had held aloof from the Conference”.

The Government seemd to be in a mood to come terms with the Congress.

It was felt that there was no prospect of the successful working of the new

reforms unless the Congress was willing to work them. On 25th January 1931,

Lord Irwin appealed to the people of India to consider the statement made by

the British Prime Minister.He also declared that Mahatma Gandhi and all other

members of the Congress Working Committee would be released at an early

date to consider the matter “freely and fearlessly”.In pursuance of this

statement, the Congress leaders were released. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, M.R.

Jayakar and V.S. Sastri were able to persuade Mahatma Gandhi to see the

Viceroy and discuss the possibility of a compromise.The discussions between

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the Viceroy and Mahatma Gandhi continued for 15 days and on 5th March

1931 was signed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact.

As regards the terms of the Pact, both the Congress and the Government

were required to do certain things.The Government of India was to make

concessions and the Congress was to withdraw the Civil Disobedience

Movement.It was agreed that the Government would take steps for the

participation of the representatives of the Congress in the Second Round

Table Conference.It was specifically provided that if the Congress failed to

give full effect to the obligations of the settlement, the Government was to be

at liberty to take such action as might be considered necessary for the

protection of the public and the individuals and due observance of law and

order.

The spirit in which the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed did nto last long. In

spite of protests from all quarters, the Government carried out the execution of

Sardar Bhagat Singh.Sukh Developed and Raj Guru on 23rd March 1931. On

18th April 1931, Lord Irwin was succeeded by Lord Willingdon.The new

Viceroy had no intention to abide by the terms of the Pact.In the United

Provinces, the armed police and the magistracy terrorized and harassed the

people.The houses of the Congress workers were raided.The Congress flag

was burnt and women were insulted.The holding of public meetings was

prohibited and those who violated the law were prosecuted.The confiscated

property of the peasants was restored with great difficulty in Gujarat.

Congressmen were imprisoned without trial in Bengal.Legal practitioners were

required so give understandings.Prisoners were not released in Bombay.

Peaceful picketing was not allowed.Many students were rusticated from

schools and colleges. There were similar violations of the Pact in Madras and

Delhi.Mahatma Gandhi brought those violations to the notice of the

Government but there was no response.However, Mahatma Gandhi went to

attend the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931.

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Mahatma Gandhi attended the conference as the sole representative of the

Congress.He demanded control over defence and foreign affairs. There was a

complete deadlock on the question of representation of minorities.M.A.

Jinnah, H.H. the Agha Khan, and Dr. Ambedkar were not willing to come to a

settlement with Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi was not satisfied with the

statement of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald made on 1 December 1931,

and declared that they had “come to the parting of ways” and their ways would

hereafter “take different directions”.

Mahatma Gandhi came back to India on 28th December 1931.On 29

December, he sent a telegram to the Viceroy in which he expressed his great

concern over the happenings in the country.He particularly referred to the

uncalled for shootings in the country. In reply, the Government justified its

stand.The Viceroy also refused to grant an interview to Mahatma Gandhi. On

4 January 1932, the Government of India issued 4 Ordinance, viz., the

Emergency Power Ordinance, Unlawful Instigation Ordinances, Unlawful

Association Ordinance and Prevention of Molestation and Boycott Ordinance.

Within a short time, the number of Ordinances reached 13. The scope of

these Ordinances was very comprehensive and they covered “almost every

activity of Indian life”.

By 10th January 1932, all leading Congressmen were behind the prison-

bars. Not only the Congress was declared illegal, even those organizations

which were in any way connected with it or were sympathetic towards it were

declared illegal.Youth leagues, students’ associations, national schools and

institutions, Congress hospitals, Swadeshi concerns and libraries were all

declared illegal.There were hundreds of names of this kind in each province.

Even before the civil disobedience movement was actually started by

Gandhiji, he was arrested along with Vallabhbhai Patel who at that time was

the President of the Congress.Thousands of Congressmen were arrested.

The Government took forcible possession of the offices of the Congress.

Lathi-charges were common to disperse the crowds.Even women and children

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were not spared. Every effort was made to break the spirit of the people. The

cattle, household furniture, utensils, jewellery, etc., were either confiscated or

destroyed.A deliberate police was followed by the Government to make the lot

of the political prisoners worse than that of convicts.A confidential circular was

sent to all the prison authorities emphasizing the fact that the prisoners of the

civil disobedience movement must be dealt with severely.Whipping became a

common punishment.

In spite of the pressure, the civil disobedience movement continued.

Meetings and demonstrations were held in spite of the restrictions imposed by

the Government.Liquor shops and foreign cloth shops were picketed.The

people refused to pay taxes.Salt laws were broken.National flags were hoisted

on the Government buildings.The boycott programme was very extensive

affecting even banks, insurance companies and the bullion exchanges. The

no-tax campaign was also continued.However, a stage came when the

political enthusiasm of the people became less and less and feelings of

frustration set in.The movement was suspended in May 1933 and completely

withdrawn in May 1934.Gandhiji withdrew himself from active politics.

QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT

After the failure of the Cripps Mission, there were differences of opinion

among the Congress leaders regarding the future course of action to be

adopted.The view of Maulana Azad who at that time was the Congress

President, was that negotiations should be resumed with Great Britain and full

co-operation should be extended to the United Nations if Great Britain made

an absolute promise of Indian independence after the war and if the American

President or the United Nations gave a guarantee that the promise will be

fulfilled.Nehru’s view was that the British Government must make a formal

declaration of India’s independence at once.The Provisional Government then

formed should negotiate with Great Britain the terms of co-operation.The

Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces was to be given full support in all

decisions relating to military matters and the Japanese must be resisted by

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the Indians at all costs. Mahatma Gandhi advocated mass action to drive out

the British out of India.

A meeting of the Congress Working Committee was held at Wardha and

after a lot of discussion, a resolution was passed on 14 July 1942, which

stated that the failure of the Cripps Mission and the attitude of the British

Government towards India “has resulted in a rapid and widespread increase of

ill-will against Britain and a growing satisfaction at the influence of Japanese

arms”.It was stated that the Congress desired “to build up resistance to any

aggression on or invasion of India by the Japanese or any foreign power” and

the Congress would change the ill-will against Great Britain into good-will “if

India feels the glow of freedom”.It was made clear that “in making the proposal

for the withdrawal of the British rule from India, the Congress had no desire

whatsoever to embarrass Great Britain or the Allied Powers in their

prosecution of the war, or in any way to encourage aggression on India or

increased pressure on China by the Japanese or any other power associated

with the Axis Group”.It was hoped that this “very reasonable and just proposal”

would be accepted by Great Britain, “not only in the interests of India but also

that of Britain and of the cause of freedom to which the united Nations

proclaimed their adherence”.It was made clear in the resolution that in case

India’s appeal was not accepted, the Congress would “then be reluctantly

compelled to utilize all the non-violent strength it might have gathered since

1920, when it adopted non-violence as part of its policy, for the vindication of

political rights and liberty”.The final decision was to be taken by the All India

Congress whose meeting was fixed for 7th August 1942 at Bombay.

The Congress gave 24 days to the Government to make a favourable

response. On 15th July 1942 Mahatma Gandhi told the foreign press that if

the movement had to be launched it would be a non-violent one. On 25th July

1942, President Chiang Kai-shek wrote to President Roosevelt to intervene so

that the Congress was not forced to launch the movement.The letter was

forwarded to Churchill but nothing came out of it.

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A meeting of the All India Congress Committee was held in Bombay on 7

August 1942 as scheduled. The general feeling was that an attempt be made

to come to terms with the Government and for that purpose Mahatma Gandhi

expressed the wish to meet the Viceroy.However, on 8 August 1942, the

famous “Quit India” resolution was moved by Jawaharlal Nehru and passed by

an overwhelming majority.It was declared in that resolution that the immediate

ending of the British rule in India was an urgent necessity, both for the sake of

India and for the success of the cause of the United Nations.India had become

the crux of the question, Great Britain and the United Nations will be judged by

the independence of India. Addressing the Congress delegates on the night

of 8 August 1942, Gandhiji said, “I, therefore, want freedom immediately, this

very night, before dawn, if it can be had.You may take it from me that I am not

going to strike a bargain with the Viceroy for ministers and the like. I am not

going to be satisfied with anything short of complete frem. Here is a Mantra, a

short one that I give you.You may imprint it on your hearts and let every

breath of yours give expression to it.The Mantra is: “Do or die’. We shall

either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation

of our slavery”.

When the resolution was passed, an appeal was made to Great Britain and

the United Nations to respond to the “call of reason and justice”.It was also

decided that all efforts should be made to come to a settlement with the

government and it was only when thosoe efforts failed that the movement was

to be started after Mahatma Gandhi had given his sanction. Mahatma Gandhi

and Maulana Azad openly declared that they would approach the Viceroy

again and the heads of the various Governments for an honourable

settlement.It was also decided that Jawaharlal Nehru was, to explain on 9

August 1942 to the United States the scope and contents of the ‘Quit India’

resolution.

It appears that the Government had already finalized their plans to arrest

the Congress leaders and crush their movement and consequently in the early

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hours of the morning of 9 August, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru,

Maulana Azad, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Acharya Kripalani, etc, were

arrested. As many as 148 Congress leaders were arrested and interned along

with their followers. The people were stunned. As their leaders were arrested

all of a sudden, they did not know what to do. The result was that they carried

on the movement in any way they could.All over the country, there were

‘hartals’ and strikes in factories, schools and colleges and public

demonstrations.Angered by repeated firing, and lathi charges, the people took

to violence at many places.They attacked the police stations, post offices,

railway stations, etc.They cut off telegraph and telephone wires and railway

lines.They burnt the Government buildings.Railway carriages were put on fire.

Even the military vehicles were destroyed. Madras and Bengal were the most

affected in this respect.In many places, the people got temporary control over

towns, citizens and villages.British authority disappeared in parts of Uttar

Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhra and Madras. At

some places, the people set up parallel Governments.To quote Jawaharlal

Nehru, “For the first time since the great revolt of 1857, vast numbers of

people rose to challenge by force (but a force without arms) the fabric of

British role in India”.

The Government used all its machinery to suppress themo Hundreds of

persons were arrested and imprisoned.A large number of them were killed

chiefly by the firing of the military and the police.The people were insulted,

assaulted and injured regardless of their position and status.Whipping was

inflicted on many and heavy collective fines were imposed and recovered.

K.C. Neogy called those fines as communal fines as those were realized only

from the Hindus. There was machine-gunning of mobs from air at five places:

Patna, Bhagalpur and Monghyr in Bihar.Nadia in Bengal and Talchar city.

According to the official figures, the civilian casualties from August to

December 1942 were 940 killed and many more injured.Nehru’s view was that

figures of the dead varied between 4,000 to 10,000.More than 60,000 persons

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were arrested up to the end of 1942, 26,000 persons were convicted and

18,000 were detained under the Defence of India Rules.

Many reasons have been given for starting the “Quit India” movement.The

first was the growing threat of Japanese invasion of India. Mahatma Gandhi

wanted to save India from that attack and his view was if the British

Government withdrew from India, the Japanesw might not attack India.

Another reason was the defencelessness of the British position in India and

their easy defeat inSingapore.The view of Mahatma Gandhi was that India

would meet the same fate if the British did not withdraw from India. Another

reason was the alarming growth of Axis propaganda which was having its

effect on the minds of the people ofIndia. This was particularly so on account

of the broadcasts of Subhash Chandra Bose from Berlin in the Indian

languages.Another cause was that the mind of Mahatma Gandhi was revolting

against the racial discrimination shown in the process of evacuation from

Burma.The British provided separate routes for the evacuation of Europeans

and Indians.The White Road was meant for Europeans and the Black Road

for Indians.The result was that the Indian evacuees had to undergo too many

hardships on the way.There was a lot of resentment in the country when the

people heard of the sufferings of the Indians and that contributed to the

decision of Mahatma Gandhi to start the “Quit India” movement.Another cause

was the sufferings of the people on account of the “scorched earth” policy

followed by the British Government in India.The lands belonging to the people

of India were taken for military purposes and they were not given adequate

compensation.They were deprived of their means of livelihood.A lot of

harshness was used by the Government while getting the houses of peasants

evacuated for the military.The inefficient and ineffective controls and

transportation muddles added to the sufferings of the people. Prices rose in

those months and the people lost their faith in the paper currency issued by

the Government.There was a lot of discontentment among the people and

Mahatma Gandhi decided to take advantage of it.

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The failure of the Quit India movement was due to many causes.The first

was the tactical mistakes of organization and planning.The arrest of Mahatma

Gandhi and the co leaders left the people without any leadership or guidance.

There was no co-ordination and no strategy.Those who led the movement

were divided in their views of the course of action.Nobody knew what to do.

The loyalty of the services and the superior physical strength of the

Government succeeded in crushing the revolt.The movement did not have the

support of the upper classes of India consisting of rich merchants, landlords

and princes and also a part of labour.On the whole, the Muslims remained

aloor from the movement.They were told by the Muslim League that the

movement was directed to coerce the British Government to hand over to the

Hindus the administration of the country.

As regards the gains of the revolt of 1942, Dr. Amba Prasad says that

although the revolt failed it prepared the ground for independence in 1947.

After the revot, no doubt was left in the minds of the British rulers that the days

of British domination of India were numbered. It was only a question of time.

The revolt marked the culmination of the Indian freedom movement. It gave

utterance to India’s anger against imperialism and her determination to be

free.It is true that there were many political developments and much parleying

and bargaining between the revolt of August 1942 and the independence of

India in August 1947, but there was no doubt about the fact that the freedom

struggle was bound to win.

Two important events took place in 1945.One was that general elections

took place in England and the Labour Party came to power.The other was the

surrender of Japan on 14 August 1945 and the termination of hostilities in the

Far East.Unlike Churchill, the new Labour Government was sympathetically

inclined towards the Indian demand for freedom. As the pre-occupation with

war was over, the Labour Government tried to solve the Indian problem. The

Viceroy of India was summoned to London. After prolonged discussions, the

Viceroy came back to India and declared on 19 September 1945 that the

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Government had decided to convene a constitution-making body in the near

future.It was declared that elections to the Central Assembly and the

Provincial Legislatures would be held “during the coming cold weather”.

Elections to the Central Assembly were held in November and December

1945.In the first week of January, 1946, the Parliamentary Delegation came to

India to meet the Indian leaders.On 15th March 1946, Prime Minister Attlee

declared in the House of Commons that India herself must decide her future

Constitution and no minority in India would be allowed to place a veto on the

advance of the majority.The Cabinet Mission reached Delhi on24 March 1946

and on 16 May 1946, it gave its own solution of the problem; known as the

Cabinet Mission Scheme.On 2 September 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru formed the

Interim Government.The Constituent Assembly met on 9 December 1946 but

was boycotted by the Muslim League.On 20 February 1946, the British

Government declared that it would transfer power into the hands of the

Indians by a date not later than June 1948. Lord Mountbatten gave his 3 June

Plan for the partition of India.The Indian Independence Act was passed in July

1947 and India became Independent on 15 August 1947.

INDIA AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR (1939-45)

The outbreak of war in September 1939 found India even more unprepared

in a material sense than Britain and with a much more divided mind. Almost

the only material sign of preparation had been the visit of Lord Chatfield’s

mission.The public and officials alike had been absorbed in the unfolding

drama of the constitutional experiment. Europe was still far off, and it did not

seem, even if war broke out, that India would be very directly affected. Not

that the public was unaware or uninterested in Europe development, Indian

nationalists as good democrats were strongly anti-Fascist; they joined in the

chorus for strong measures without any great expectation of being called to

take part in them.Meanwhile the rise of the Muslim League, the struggle

between right and left wings of Congress, and the fate of the provincial

ministries were of much more absorbing interest.Amongst the Congress

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leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru was the only one to be fully aware of the import of

international events for India and to seek to interest the public in these issues.

In foreign affairs the attitude ofmind which was fast disappearing in home

politics still lingered, a feeling that it was the business of the paramount

power. India could only interest herself when freedom had been won. Theold

feeling was widespread that Britain’s embarrassment might be India’s

opportunity.No one dreamt that embarrassment might become mortal peril,

not only to Britain herself, but to India as well.

When the war broke out, therefore, there was a general approval of the

cause coupled with a widespread reluctance to do very much about it. It was

Britain’s affair, not India’s.The old slogan of ‘no taxation without representation

‘was translated to read ‘no popular war effort without responsible government’.

The Congress ministries resigned on the manner of India’s participation in the

war. Individuals and groups were willing to give help, but India as a whole sat

back to watch the mighty drama unfold in the European arena from what was

thought to be a secure and comfortable seat in the grandstand.This mood

persisted until Dunkirk and the fall of France. A moment of alarm gave place

to a feeling of admiration for British doggedness and spirit. When invasion

failed it was realized that the war would be a long one and that India would

have an important part to play.There was more willingness to assist, but still

the divided mind persisted. How could India assist the cause of liberty abroad

without first obtaining her freedom at home? The entry of Japan into the war

intensified rather than modified this mood.There was more awareness of

danger and more readiness to help, but also a deepening sense of frustration

at India’s inability to control her own destiny.

It will now be convenient to touch on the various aspects of war-time India

in tern.To the Viceroy fell the task of not only managing a restive public

opinion as best he could but of organizing the war of India as a member of the

British empire and potentially of the British common wealth of Nations. A

large programme of military expantion was put in hand.The Middle East was

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the obvious theatre for Indian troops, and thither forces were dispatched to

assist Sir. Archibald Wavell in his watching brief in Egypth. The fall of France,

with its elimination of French strength in the Middle East and the entry of Italy

into the war, transformed this theater overnight in to the most crusial military

area outside Britain itself.Indian troops suddenly found themselves at the

centre of events.Their courage and skill rose to the occasion. In the famous

desert campaign of 1940-1 Indian troops bore a distinguished part. The 4th

and the 7th Divisions added fresh laurels to Indian arms, and proved

themselves masters of the rigours and intricacies of desert warfare. With

modern equipment they were second to none in the world. Indian participation

lasted through the commands of Wavell and Auchinleck to the final desert

campaign of Montgomery.It also included the Iraq, Syrian, and Persian

operations. In Iraq Indian intervention was decisive.

Before that time, however, the major Indian military effort had been diverted

eastward.From the beginning of 1941 the Japanese menace to South-east

Asia had been visibly growing.Along with British and Australians, Indian troops

were used to garrison Malaya. When the Japanese stroke fell in December

1941 Indian troops shared in the long retreat to the south and in the disaster

of Singapore.In its capitulation 90,000 Indian troops were involved.Indian

formations played an honourable part in Alexander’s fighting retreat from

Burma, and henceforth were concerned with the defence of India itself. Their

posts were now the hilly jungles and fever-haunted valleys of the Indology-

Burman border down to the rain-drenched tracts of Arakan.In this situation

they had two fresh problems of the first magnitude to solve.The first was the

exchange of tropical jungle for desert conditions of warfare, and the second

the tactics of the Japanese trained to this type of warfare and possessing the

mobility which came of frugal habits and lifht transport. From 1943 the active

Indian army passed under Mountbatten’s South-East Asia Command

(S.E.A.C.) and became a part of Sir William Slim’s Fourteenth Army.Their

moment of trial and their greatest triumph came with thejap invasion of Assam

in the spring of 1944.The 7th Division’s stand at Kohima, cut off from all aid,

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save by air, broke the spearhead of the Japanese advance, and made

inevitable the rout which followed.Thenceforward the story was one of

increasing success, though always in the most arduous conditions, until the

crowning triumph of the recapture of Rangoon.The Indian army had shown its

mettle in themost difficult of all terrains of the war and the most testing of all

types of warfare.A Japanese document listed the Gurkhas as the troops most

to be feared of all the nationalities opposed to them. When the Japanese war

ended in August 1945 Indian troops were poised for the assault on Malaya

under the command of Mountbatten. Alongside the army, the Royal Indian Air

Force and Navy, both negligible at the outbreak of war, played a distinguished

and increasingly significant part.

One of Linlithgow’s principal claims to fame was his organization of the

Indian war effort. Here the mind of the administrator could range unhampered

by personal vagaries and political perplexities. The first question was that of

supply and the second that of military expansion.At first it was not thought that

India would lie in close proximity to a large-scale comapign, but its vital

relationship to the Middle East was early recognized.Before the war Lord

Chatfield’s committee had recommended a capital outlay of 7 crores of rupees

(£5,400,000) for expanding Indian ordnance factories, and this, with additions,

was at first thought to be sufficient. After the fall of France, however, India

was conceived as a centre of a Commonwealth group for themselves supply

of the Middle Eastern theatre.The visit of the supply mission of Sir Alexander

Roger in the autumn of 1940 coincided with the holding of the Eastern Group

Conference which was attended by representatives, in addition to those of

India, from Australia,Burma,Ceylon, New Zealand, South Africa, Southern

Rhodesia, Malaya, Hong Kong, Palestine, and East Africa.From the

conference came the Eastern Group Supply Council, which rationalized the

supply of materials from the various territories.India became the principal

supplier of cotton textile, jute and jute products, leather products, and wooden

furniture. In the first year of the council’s work India supplied 60 per cent of its

total demands and later 75 per cent.When Japan and America entered the

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war picture changed.Some sources of supply dried up and fresh needs

appeared nearer home.Moreover in America there was a reservoir of

productive power which could make good deficiencies throughout the Allied

world.Inda developed new needs and at the same time became eligible for

Lend-Lease. Early in 1943 the council was wound up, its function ofallocating

orders being taken over by the British Central Provision Office with a British

Ministry of Supply Mission working in collaboration.But the work industrial

development went on with even greater energy.The expansion of industry was

not limited to India’s traditional crafts like textiles, but included heavy industry

and new industries altogether.Tata’s already great steel plant was further

extended and this was supplemented by the Bengal Steel Corporation’s works

at Burnpur and the Kumardhuti group. The cement industry was expanded on

a large scale; the Indian deposits of bauxite were exploited to develop the new

aluminium industry, and the mica industry, in which India held a monopoly

outside Russia and Brazil, was largely increased.

Along with the organization of supply went the rapid growth of the armed

forces. The peace-time strength of 175,000 was steadily increased until there

was a total of more than 2 millions under arms.Mechanization and

motorization went hand in hand with this process with the result that India not

only gained an armed forced of unprecedented size, but a large number of

technicians of varied skills.The navy, under the British vice-admiral, became

an efficient and effective force which played its part both in the Burma

campaign and against the Japanese submarine menace. The air force built up

a reputation for smartness and efficiency which it carried over into the new era

of independence.Though only a relatively small proportion of the military

forces were actually engaged in military operations, the displacement of such

large numbers from their customary life, and their equipment with new skills,

was bound to open up new horizons and to stimulate the spirit of change.

The war in Indian experience had 3 well-defined stages.The first was

the period of ‘phoney’ war, when life went on much as before.The war was a

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remote spectacle, a matter for talk and the newspapers.This phase ended for

India with the fall of France in June 1940.The old International order seemed

to have vanished overnight and the country was for a time bewildered and

alarmed.Then followed the Battle of Britain, which was watched with growing

admiration; the old order, it seemed, was to survive after all.The second

stage was that of organization as a Middle Eastern base.Trade and industry

boomed; headquarters swelled and men in khaki appeared; cities grew

congested and there was an air of bustle and purpose. But still it was not

India’s war so much as one to which India was contributing. The third stage

opened with the Japanese aggression. From the spring of 1942 India began to

suffer some of the perplexities and inconveniences of toehr belligerents and

later met trials of her own. The war cloud spread over the whole country and

became part of its daily experience.The herald of this transformation was

perhaps the Japanese bombardment of Vizagapatam in April 1942.

The first effect was the appearance of the Americans in Delhi and in the

East.To then were added large numbers of British troops concerned no longer

with the Middle East but with the Japanese menace in Burma.The immediate

consequence was the dislocation of the economic life of the country.Supply

lines had to be re-orientated from lines from the interior to the ports to lateral

lines from the ports to eastern India. To the strain, which this placed upon the

railways, already somewhat depleted by shipments to the Middle East, had to

carry the whole weight of the war effort as well as the whole burden of the

country’s economic life.A period of unprecedented strain began which lastedc

until the end of the war.The mounting expenditure on the local war effort,

together with large sums spent by both British and Americans in making

airfields and in other preparations, set in motion a price-rise from which India

had hitherto been largely exempt.Shortages began to appear, and culminated

in the Bengal famine of 1943.

It had been thought that famines were things of the past in India. There

was the Famine Code, which had worked successfully for sixty years. It was

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based on the distribution of grain to threatened areas with arrangements for

the employment of agriculturists on productive work until the next harvest

could restore the countryside. But this assumed the import of foodstuffs from

abroad if necessary.The war had now cut off supplies from abroad except

from neighbouring Burma. Food was short everywhere.The loss of Burma

denied her rice supplies to Bengal and the south. At the same time the price

rise tempted peasants to dispose of their reserve stocks at what seemed to

them heaven-sent prices. But then rice disappeared from the markets and

decline inindebtedness proved a poor substitute for a lack of sustenance. The

overall shortage has been estimated at 5 per cent, but this was aggravated by

faults of distribution and control.Extensive black markets developed and

famished peasants began to appear in Calcutta. An added difficulty was the

absence of rice in the rest of India so that only unpalatable grains and pulses

could be offered to starving rice-eating areas. During the summer of 1943 it

became apparent that the Bengal administration was unable to cope with the

situation.An undue tenderness for the principle of provincial autonomy delayed

action by the Centre and it was only on the arrival of Lord Wavell in October

1943 that the nettle was firmly grasped.The British army was entrusted with

relief distribution and a system of rationing instituted for all large towns. Never

had the British army been so popular.Thenceforth, though shortages

continued, no one starved, and a feeling of confidence returned.Food became

a central concern.

It is now time to turn to the constitutional problem during the war period. In

the summer of 1939 the hesitancy of the princes still delayed the

establishment of the federal centre.The Congress watched and waited and

Gandhi, more fully persuaded of his pacifism as the war clouds lowered, sent

a personal letter to Hitler. On the outbreak of war Lord Linlithgow thus found

himself without a responsible ministry to consult, and without a legal option to

proclaiming that ‘war has broken out between His Majesty and Germany’. He

followed this up by addressing both houses of the legislature and by

consultations with the national leaders, beginning with Mahatma Gandhi

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himself. Such action was legal and perhaps inevitable, but it was natural for it

to appear provocative to the rapidly growing national consciousness of India,

and so in fact it seemed to both League and Congress.The premiers of the

non-Congress or League ministries of Bengal, the Punjab, and Sind were

backed by their legislatures in pledging support to the war effort and the

princes did the same individually. But the Congress demanded an immediate

definition of war aims and an immediate declaration of independence, ‘present

application to be given to this status to the largest possible extent’.The League

made its support dependent on ‘justice for Muslims’ in Congress provinces

and a guarantee of no constitutional advance without League approval. The

Viceroy met this situation on 17th October by affirming dominion status to be

the goal of constitutional development, action to be taken after the war with

due regard to minority opinions. Meanwhile he proposed the formation of an

advisory council representing all sections of opinion to associate the Indian

public with the prosecution of the war. This was rejected by the Congress

High Command as inadequate, and the provincial Congress ministries

forthwith resigned. The League was less forthright and indeed commended

the stress of minority rights, but demanded the abandonment of the whole

federal scheme.

The deadlock thus created lasted throughout the war.It had two aspects. In

relation to the British the Congress demanded full responsibility before sharing

in the war effort. The British on their side were precluded by constitutional

difficulties from agreeing to this and could only offer self-government de facto

in anticipation of the end of the war.To the British, with the precedent of

Canada in mind, this seemed an honest, and, in the circumstances, a

common-sense procedure.To the Congress it savoured of Machiavellian delay

and dark designs to frustrate legitimate aspirations.The second aspect was

the relation of Congress to other parties.The Congress continued its 1937

policy of regarding itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Indian

people.This was unacceptable, not only to the government, but also to the

League. It encouraged the League to proceed to the formal acceptance of the

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Pakistan programme in the early months of 1940, and the League’s attitude in

its turn sustained the British in declining to make a unilateral settlement with

the Congress.The three parties to the constitutional struggle thus strultified

each other.The deadlock bred a steadily increasing sense of frustration as

between British and Congress on the one hand, and a stedily deepening

suspicion as between the League and Congress on the other.

The fall of France produced a temporary easing of tension. ‘The tone of

Congress hostility’, in Professor Coupland’s words, ‘softened’. For a moment

it seemed as though the fall of Britain might be the prelude to a Nazi

occupation. ‘We do not seek our independence’, wrote the Mahatma on 1

June, ‘out of British ruin’.The Congress High Command threw overboard

Gandhi’s pacifism. (He had praised Petain’s armistice and had called ‘on

every Briton to adopt…….a nobler and a braver way’ of surrender to H itler.)

There was talk of a national government and of parallel bodies to organize

defence. The reply of the new British war cabinet was the ‘August offer’. The

offer contained one new point of substance along with the usual provisos of

British obligations and minority rights.The post-war constitution was to be

drawn up by an Indian constituent Assembly whose decisions were virtually

accepted beforehand.Thus Parliament virtually surrendered its right of

legislating for India, a right which it had hitherto jealously guarded.But by

August the first panic fears of British collapse had passed. Though the issue in

fact was still in the balance it was known that the British would fight to the last,

and the evident British resolution inspired a new confidence in their ability.

This had the effect, not of warming Congress hearts but of reviving suspicions

of real British intentions.Britain, thought many, was still playing with India.

There could be no settlement except on the basis of independence now and

with Congress alone as representing India. Consciousness of strength joined

with revived suspicion to reject the offer. The appeals of the new Secretary of

State (Mr. Amery) as well as the Viceroy fell on deaf ears; the deadlock was

more complete than ever.The League for its part, newly converted to the

Pakistan ideal, insisted that any national government should be on a Hindu-

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Muslim fifty-fifty basis and pointed the moral of partition.The communal

deadlock was as complete as the Indology-British one.

The Congress was thus thrown back on Mr. Gandhi’s pacifism and non-co-

operation.Mr. Gandhi insisted on preaching pacifism in opposition to the war

effort and organizing civil disobedience as a sanction for this right when

disputed or denied by the government.The most reluctant and least successful

of civil disobedience movements followed. Organized in easy stages from the

autumn of 1940, it reached its peak in the following May, when some 14,000

congressmen were in prison. This bore no comparison with the figure of 1930

and thereafter the numbers steadily fell.The movement had in fact no real

popular backing, and was chiefly interesting as an index of what the Mahatma

could achieve through personal influence alone. The Viceroy on his side

carried out the long-promised expansion of his council to a total of fifteen of

whom eleven were Indians.

The entry of Japan and America into the war and the imminent threat of

invasion which followed produced a new situation. The need to break the

deadlock was not very urgent, and to the British desire to achieve a settlement

was added an evident American interest in Indian freedom. All Congressmen,

including Pandit Nehru, had been released on the eve of Pearl Harbour and

the stage was set for a further effort.On 11th March 1942 the prime minister

announced the dispatch of Sir Stafford Cripps, then Leader of the House of

Commons and a member of the war cabinet, on a mission to India with a new

and radical offer. The Cripps offer dominated Indian politics for the rest of the

war. It first reiterated the intention of His Majesty’s government to set up an

Indian union which should take its place as a dominion of the Commonwealth

as soon as possible after the war, and it then proposed specific steps towards

that end.A constituent assembly would be elected by the provincial

legislatures acting as an electoral college.This body would then negotiate a

treaty with the British government.The future right of secession from the

Commonwealth was explicitly stated.The Indian states would be free to join,

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and in any case their treaty arrangements would be revised to meet the new

situation. The only proviso was the right of any province to contract out of the

constitution and ‘to retain its present constitutional position, provision being

made for its subsequent accession if it so desires’. The offer ended with a call

for co-operation by the popular parties in a national war-time administration.

The great advance which the Fripps offer marked was its frankness and

precision.Gone were the hesitancies and the generalities of the 1939 and

1940 declarations.But there were new feas as well.A Constituent Assembly

had already been conceded, but it was now made clear that the framing of the

new Constitution would be the work of Indians alone.The right of secession

was acknowledged.The device of a bilateral treaty for implementing the new

Constitution and dischargeing British obligations (reminiscent of the Irish

settlement) was introduced. Finally the provision for provincial contracting out

provided a means of reassuring Muslim fears within the orbit of democratic

principles.At one moment it seemed as though a settlement was in sight, but

then the Congress leaders insisted that the new government must have

immediately the full powers of a dominion cabinet. On this rock thediscussions

foundered; high hopes had been raised, and their disappointment left the

sense of frustration deeper than before. The League watched pensive in the

wings and observed the collapse not without signs of sardonic satisfaction.

It is perhaps too early to assess the exact cause of the breakdown. It is

certainthe Mahatma Gandhi took an unfavourable view and eventually

overbore the more generous instincts of Nehru and Rajagopalachari.One

consideration was the imminent Japanese threat; was it any use to draw a

cheque on a failing bank? But even if invasion did not occur immediately,

would not the situation again be critical when military movements again

became possible after the monsoon? The British had gone so far under the

stress of the Japanese threat that they might go further yet if they continued to

survive and the threat persisted. Communal considerations led Hindu minds in

the same direction.The offer represented almost but not quite a settlement

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with Congress on Congress terms.The provision for contracting out

represented, for its entire democratic colour, a concession to the League and

as such was distasteful.Congress still underrated the League’s hold over

Muslims and was confident that it could smother its agitation if given full power

at the Centre. A little waiting might give that full power.The stake of a united

India under Hindu control was one worth playing for. So the golden moment

passed and with it the last real chance of establishing a united independent

India. The rejection of the offer was the prelude to partition. This decision was

not made without some internal stress, the chief sign of which was the ejection

of Rajagopalachari from the Congress party. For the rest Congress was rallied

behind the one more ascendant Gandhi. The enigmatic Mahatma refashioned

his pacifist principles and non-violent technique to meet the new situation. The

presence of the British in India, he decalred, was a provocation to the

Japanese.He coined the ‘Quit India’ slogan, and prepared a resolution

demanding British abdication on pain of a revived civil disobedience

campaign.‘There is no question of one more chance’, he said. ‘After all, this is

open rebellion’. All the signs suggested that events would reach a crisis at the

moment the Japanese might be able tomove again at the beginning of

October.When, therefore, the resolution was passed by the All-India Congress

Committee on 7th August, the Viceroy, with the unanimous support of the

Executive Council, acted swiftly.The whole working committee was interned at

Poona. A serious but short outbreak of violence followed, which cost some

900 lives and caused damage estimated at a million pounds. Though

responsibility was disclaimed by the leaders, it is difficult to believe that all of

them were unaware of such large scale planning by extremists.

During this period India owed much to the rock-like firmness which the

Viceroy combined with his patience.The failure of the rebellion did much to

discredit the Congress and the improved military situation did still more. The

Congress had not only acted wrongly, they had made a mistake.They had

backed the wrong horse.The conviction spread that the British were immovable

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for the duration of the war, and was reinforced by the Viceroy’s firmness in

dealing with another Gandhian fast early in 1943. Mounting military success

and the vigorous measures of Lord Wavell to deal with the food crisis still

further strengthened the government’s position.Cautious feelers were put out for

breaking the deadlock with the British and abortive conversations held between

League and Congress leaders; but the end of the war in Europe found the

position apparently unchanged. It was, however, in appearance only. For in the

interval the League had greatly strengthened its position.The strength of Muslim

separatism was now plain for all to see. Even if the Congress should now

accept the Cripps offer in the hope of avoiding partition the League would reject

it in the hope of achieving it.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY

The beginning of the Communist Party may also be traced to this period.

Attempts were made to organize a Communist party in India since1921 by

M.N.Roy and others, who followed the traditional and now well-known

methods of organizing the working classes in Unions, teaching them the

principles of Communism, inciting them to strikes etc. – all preparatory to an

industrial and agrarian revolution.‘A Communist party of India and four

Workers’ and Peasants’ parties in Bombay, Bengal, the Punjab, and the

United Provinces, were formed.These bodies were given financial aid from

Moscow and their policy was dictated from Moscow, both directly, as well as

via England and the Continent’.But no conspicuous success attended the

efforts of M.N.Roy and his colleagues till the Communist party in Britain took

up the matter and sent a few agents to India. One of them, Philip Spratt, who

arrived in India in December, 1926, infused fresh life into the Party which,

though started in1924, had as yet very few members, probably and not even a

dozen. Spratt, with the financial help from Moscow, increased the number of

Unions, held organized demonstrations, edited newspapers, instituted youth

movements, initiated and conducted strikes, and used all possible methods of

propaganda, with the result that the number of Communists reached a high

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figure.But further activity of the Communist party was cut short by the arrest of

31 members, including almost all the prominent leaders, on 20March, 1929.

They were brought to Meerut for trial in what is known as the Merrut

Conspiracy Case.The arrests were accompanied by search operations

throughout the country, which brought to light a mass of records, including

plans, secret codes, letters written in cryptic terms or in invisible ink, and many

secret documents.These, together with other evidences and testimony of the

accused of the activity of the Communist party in India. It is interesting to note

that quite a large number of the accused did not know that they had fallen into

the traps of the Communists. Spratt himself bore testimony to the fact that

“almost half the accused were nationalists or trade unionists who were largely

ignorant of the real nature of the conspiracy and of its underhand methods.

When those were revealed during the trial, they were taken aback.The

demoralization and quarrels among the prisoners during the later stages of the

trial could partly be attributed to this factor”.

After a protracted trial 27 accused persons were found guilty and

sentenced to various terms of imprisonment on16 January, 1933.The High

Court considerably reduced the sentences, and by 1935 all the accused were

set free.It is interesting to note that the accused in the Meerut case gained the

sympathy of the Indian nationalists of all shades of opinion who were

presumably moved by the liberal professions and principles as well as the

anti-British sentiments cherished by the accused.The team of lawyers who

formed a defence committee to fight for them included Pandit Jawaharlal

Nehru and K.N. Katju.Nehru looked upon the trial as “one phase of the

offensive, which the Government here has started against the Labour

Movement”.He added: “There is a lot of shouting about Communists and

Communism in India. Undoubtedly there are some Communists in India, but it

is equally certain that this cry of Communism is meant to cover a multitude of

sins of the Government”.Gandhi also visited the jail and offered

encouragement to the prisoners.The attitude of the nationalists and the

publicity of the prolonged Meerut trial offered rare propaganda opportunities to

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the Communists, of which they took full advantage. Spratt says: “On the whole

the revelation of our secret methods caused people to admire us; we had

done what most young men wanted to do…… We had our opportunity in the

session court to make political statements, and these were widely published in

the press.Several of them were long enough to make a short book, and

altogether no doubt most of what can be said in favour of Communism was

said”. Saumyendra-nath Tagore observed that the Merrut Case “placed

Communism on a sure footing in India”. Spratt agreed.

Next to the Muslim League, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was fast

growing to be the most powerful political organization outside the Congress.

Its origin and history up to the Meerut Conspiracy Case has been discussed

above.The effect of this case upon CPI was twofold. On the one hand, the

prolonged trial of the Communist leaders from 1929 to 1933 gained for them

wide sympathy of the Indian nationalists. Jawaharlal Nehru and Ansari joined

the Committee set up to arrange for the defence of the communists under trial;

even Gandhi visited them in jail and offered encouragement. More important

still was the publicity and propaganda value of the longdrawn trial which the

Communists fully exploited.

On the other hand, the CPI suffered a heavy blow, at least for the time

being, by the sudden removal of almost all its prominent leaders. It not only

crippled the nascent organization and its activity, but makes it difficult for the

Communists to face new dangers and difficulties. The chief of these was the

new ultra-leftist policy laid down for India by the Comintern. “The CPI’s course

was now clearly and authoritatively mapped out; it was to dissolve any

remnants of the Workers and Peasants Party (WPP), severs connections with

all elements of the bourgeoisie, and launches a full-scale attack on Gandhi,

Nehru, and the Indian National Congress.The new policy, pursued during

1928-34, was revealed in the “Draft Platform of Action of the C.P. of India”

published in December, 1930.It described the Congress as a “class

organization of the capitalists working against the fundamental interests of the

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toiling masses of our country”.It called for ”ruthless war on the ‘Left’ national

reformists”. “The road to victory”, it declared, “is not the method or individual

terror but the struggle and the revolutionary armed insurrection of the widest

possible masses, of the working class, the peasantry, the poor of the towns

and the Indian soldiers, around the banner and under the leadership of the

Communist Party of India”.So far as the present stage of revolution was

concerned its main objects according to the platform were: “The confiscation

without compensation of all lands, forests and other property of the landlords,

ruling princes, churches, the British Government, officials and money lenders

and handing them over for use to the toiling peasantry; cancellation of slave

agreements and all the indebtedness of the peasantry to money-lenders and

banks”.Such a policy was sure to alienate the sympathy of all the politically

active elements in Indian society.“The Draft Platform was a bill of divorcement

from the main nationalist movement”.

While the ultra-leftist policy isolated the CPI from other political parties, its

effective strength was further reduced by internal differences. The old leaders

tried to direct affairs from the Meerut prison, but new leaders were actively

working in the trade-union movement. There was disagreement even among

the new leaders. While some of them were moderate, others tried to follow the

militant Comintern line. The party in Bombay was split into two groups and the

“major arena of their struggle, the trade-union movement, became badly riven

with factionalism”. But this was not all. Birendra-nath Chattopadhyaya and

Clemens Dutt established a Secretariat in Berlin, later removed to London,

from which they attempted to guide the Indian Communist movement.

Further, M.N. Roy, who was expelled from the Communist Party in December,

1929, arrived in India a year later on a forged passport.“Working underground,

with the police in vigorous pursuit, he succeeded in getting a major section of

the trade-union movement to abandon ultra-leftism and to adopt a more

moderate policy under his leadership”.According to the report of the British

Intelligence Department, “he made serious and by no means unsuccessful

endeavours to impregnate the Congress with his views and was received, and

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well received, by several of the Congress leaders in different parts of India”.

Roy certainly attended the Karachi Congress, and Gandhi was aware of it.

There is a general belief that the socialist resolution passed in Karachi was

really drafted by him, but Nehru denies it and claims the whole draft to be his

alone.Unfortunately, Roy was arrested in July, 1931, prosecuted as an

accused in the original Kanpur Conspiracy Case, and sentenced on 9

January, 1932, to imprisonment for twelve years. The period was reduced on

appeal and Roy was released on 20 November, 1936.Thus, during the period

1930-33, when Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement swept the country and

the nationalist movement reached its highest peak, the CPI, instead of joining

the fight for freedom, did their best to weaken and sabotage the greatest mass

campaign India had so far seen.

To judge by definite and concrete results, the Communist Party in India

achieved the greatest success in establishing its influence over the All-India

Trade Union Congress (AITUC). As a result, genuine Trade Unions seceded

from the All-India Trade Union Congress and formed a separate organization

called the National Trade Union Federation (N.T.U.F.).30 Unions joined the

latter while only twenty continued affiliation with the parent body. There was a

further split in this body in1931 when the Communists organized their own

labour front called the Red Trades Union Congress.After the Communist

leaders convicted in the Meerut Conspiracy Case were released, they tried to

organize the party and strengthen the Red Trades Union Congress.They

called for a wide strike of all textile workers on 23 April, 1934, and it received

overwhelming response all over the country.The Government of India took

alarm and the Communist party, along with some dozen Trade Unions under

their control, was declared illegal. The Communist party then went completely

underground.The Communist party soon realized that the extreme left and

anti-Congress views entertained by them had practically isolated them from

the political life in India which was gathering tremendous force under the

leadership of Gandhi.The Communist High Command also realized the

position and adopted an altogether new plan. It may be described as a policy

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of infiltration into the Indian National Congress, with a view to wrecking it from

within. The first step in this direction was to make an alliance with the recently

formed Congress Socialist Party dominated by Jayaprakash Narayan. The

task was not a difficult one.For, many Indians, particularly those with a leaning

to socialism, felt wide sympathy for Communist principles in general without

any attachment to the party itself, and sought from Russia inspiration minus

active control or direction. The Congress Socialist Party, without any suspicion

of the ‘Trojan Horse’ policy on the part of the Communists, welcomed their

proposal and formed a United Front. Rules were laid down for joint action by

the All-India Congress Socialist Party, the All-India Trade Union Congress,

National Trade Union Federation and the Red Trades Union Congress. This

United Front was not only a body for joint action on party basis; it also

permitted individual Communists to become members of the Congress

Socialist Party, and, therefore, also of the Indian National Congress. Thus

while the Communist Party, being declared an illegal organization by the

Government of India, could not function in its own name, it established its

influence in the left wing of the Congress, and used the Congress organization

itself for its own propaganda.Several Communists occupied high official

positions in the Congress Socialist Party, and some of them became members

of the All India Congress Committee. At about the beginning of 1937 the two

parties concluded the so-called “Lucknow Agreement” which, according to the

Socialist interpretation, signified that they would eventually merge in a single

organization. Unfortunately, secret documents of the Communist Party came

to light which clearly showed that the United Front was being used only as a

platform to serve its own ends. It opened the eyes of the Congress Socialists,

and matters came to a head in 1938 over the election of the new Executive of

the Congress Socialist Party. Jayaprakash Narayan made a proposal in which

the Communists were given one-third seats. The Communists produced their

own list which gave the Communists a clear majority in the Executive. Under

the open threat of secession by Jayaprakash and his party in case the

Communist list was accepted the Conference adopted, by a narrow majority,

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the composite list proposed by him. Two years later, in 1940, the Communists

were expelled from the Congress Socialist Party and the United Front was

dissolved. But the Communists carried with them the branches of the Socialist

Party in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The Communists also infiltrated heavily into students’ organizations. The

All-India Students’ Federation was hitherto dominated by nationalist ideas, but

a Communist faction soon made its influence felt, and the Students’

Federation was clearly divided into two groups, - Communist and non-

Communist. The split was complete and the two groups held rival

conferences. The conference of the Communist students in December, 1940,

led by Hiren Mukherji and K.M.Ashraf, challenged the right of the Congress to

speak for the whole of India, and passed a resolution declaring “that the future

India should be a voluntary federation of regional States based on mutual

confidence”.Thus, instead of a single nation comprising the people of India as

a whole, the Communists upheld the ideal of India as a multinational State.

This resolution was a clear bid to enlist the support of the Muslims by

conceding the claim of Pakistan.In various other ways; too, the CPI conciliated

the Muslims in an attempt to win them over to Communism. But it did not

prove very successful.About the same time the Communists also broke from

the Forward Bloc, a leftist organization founded by Subhas Bose. Bose, like

Jayaprakash, realized that the Communists had used the Left Consolidation

Committee merely as a platform for “popularizing their own organization”,

while carrying out “reprehensible propaganda” against the Forward Bloc. But

there was a deeper motive behind the Communist policy.The split with the

Forward Bloc was a deliberate attempt to reduce the prestige of what might

prove to be a dangerous rival, and which, therefore, must be prevented from

seizing the opportunity to build a mass following based on a radical

programme. P.C. Joshi, the General Secretary of the CPI, very frankly stated:

”Workers, peasants, and students have already adopted the proletarian

technique of struggle – mass action. They have already come under the

influence of socialism.The effort of the Forward Bloc to win over these

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movements has to be resisted as the infiltration of bourgeois influence over

the masses.Before the working class, Kisan, and student workers, the

Forward Bloc has to be opposed not as being too left but as being the

disruptive agency of bourgeoisie”.

The CPI also declared an open war against the Congress leadership.

They wanted to “free the national front from the influence of bourgeois

reformism and develop the political strength of the proletariat”.At the Ramgarh

session of the Congress (1940) the CPI issued a new statement of policy

entitled “Proletarian Path”. It demanded that India should “make revolutionary

use of the war crisis”; the first step toward this objective, it declared, would be

a “political general strike in the major industries together with country-wide no-

rent and no-tax action”. Next, the national movement would enter “a new and

higher phase – the phase of armed insurrection”. The principal features of this

forthcoming struggle, according to “Proletarian Path”, would be “storming of

military and police stations by armed bands of national militia in rural as well

as urban areas, destruction of Government institutions, and actual offensive

against the armed forces of the Government on the most extensive scale”. In

pursuance of this policy two Communist delegates proposed an amendment

to the main resolution at the Ramgarh Congress which urged “immediate

launching of the struggle” and condemned any talk of compromise with the

British. It was, of course, defeated.As a first instalment of the policy chalked

out in the “Proletarian Path”, the CPI organized a general strike in the textile

mills in the Bombay area, and 150,000 workers were involved at its peak.

These pronouncement and activities led the Government to take drastic action

against the CPI.They arrested and detained under the Defence of India Rules

480 persons who were “acknowledged Communists or else supporters of the

Communist programme of violent mass revolution”. The CPI was disorganized

and seriously crippled.

The Communists all over the world, outside Russia, were puzzled by the

Stalin-Hitler Pact in August, 1939. But they had to obey instructions from

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Moscow. So Hitler ceased to be a Fascist menace, and became a friend of

peace, while England and France were the imperialist war-mongers.The

Indian Communists were in a more happy position than their comrades in

Britain and France. For Indian National Congress, as noted above, declared

itself against the war and the Communist could, and did, easily fall in with the

popular opposition to the war, posing as genuine revolutionist and anti-

imperialist. But while the CPI was engaged in a bitter war against the British

imperialism for the freedom of India, Russia was invaded by Germany in June,

1941. It altered the whole international situation. Russia, the fountain source

of world Communism and the determinant of its policy, was now forced to

align herself with the capitalist countries and the bourgeois, and the

international Communist policy had to be suitably altered. This had a serious

reaction on Indian Communists. As mentioned above, the Congress refused

to help the war efforts of the British unless India’s freedom was assured, and

so far the CPI not only endorsed this view, but, as we have just shown, were

prepared to go to further extremes than the Congress to achieve this object.

The International Communist authorities, however, demanded that the CPI

must support war, with or without Indian freedom. This immediately created a

critical situation for the CPI. There were at this time two Communist Parties in

India, isolated from each other.The first was composed of the arrested leaders

and members kept in a detention camp at Deoli in Ajmer-Merwara; the

second, consisting of those outside prison, formed a disorganized

underground party led by P.C.Joshi. The “old guards” at Deoli fell in with the

view of the British Communist Party which was expressed as follows by R.

Palme Dutt: “The interest of the peoples of India and Ireland and of all the

colonial peoples, as of all the peoples of the world, is bound up with the victory

of the peoples against Fascism; that interest is absolute and unconditional,

and does not depend on any measures their rulers may promise or concede”.

The Deoli group accordingly decided that CPI must fully support the British

war efforts since this now contributed to the defence of the Soviet Union. The

fatherland of Communism. Whether the Deoli leaders independently arrived at

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this conclusion or merely followed the direction of the British Communist party,

is difficult to say.It has been alleged that the Home Secretary of the

Government of India arranged to transmit to the Communist detenus at Deoli

camp the letter from the Secretary of the British Communist Party

communicating the new policy.

In any case the so-called Deoli Thesis, propounding the “People’s War”

slogan, was smuggled out of prison to the underground party. They at first

refused to accept it, declaring that “the purpose of the war was broader than

the mere victory of the Soviet Union”, and included a “world-wide victory of the

people”, - or, in short, liberation from the old order as well as from Fascism”.

The underground CPI therefore adhered to the old view of fighting against

both the British Government and its imperialist war. As late as the end of

October, 1941,the party declared that those who urged support of the British

war effort” are following an imperialist policy” and” echoing the imperialist lie”.

During the whole period from June to November, 1941, the underground CPI

suited their action to these brave words. But then came the change. As blood

is thicker than water, so is Communism thicker than nationalism. Never was

this dictum more clearly established than by the complete volte-face of the

CPI, when, on15December, they passed the following resolution:

“We are a practical party and in a new situation it is our task not only to

evolve a new form of struggle for it, but also to advance new slogans…. The

key slogan of our Party (now) is “Make the Indian people play a people’s role

in the people’s war”.

Therefore the table was completely turned. The Communist leaders were

set free and on 24July, 1942, the ban against the Communist party was lifted.

Henceforth the Communists functioned as a lawful party and enjoyed the

favours of the Government of India who used them as counterpoise to the

Congress. The strange spectacle was thus witnessed of the leftist Communist

party being anti-National and pro-Imperial, and eating up the very words by

which till recently they had incited the people against the Imperial and war-

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monger British.The whilom Imperialist war turned overnight into a People’s

war. During the great national upsurge of 1942, the Communists acted as

stooges and spies of the British Government, and helped them against their

own countrymen fighting for freedom.The part played by the Communists can

be best understood from confidential correspondence during the years 1942,

1943 and 1944 between P.C. Joshi, the General Secretary of the Communist

Party in India, and Sir Reginald Maxwell, Home Member of the Government of

India.This file was seen by S.S. Bativala, a former member of the Central

Committee of the Communist Party, who referred to its contents in an

interview given to the Press on 22 February,1946. According to him, it is quite

clear from that correspondence that ”an alliance existed between the

Politbureau of the Communist Party and the Home Department of the

Government of India, by which Mr.Joshi was placing at the disposal of the

Government of India the services of his Party members”; that the various

political drives undertaken by the Party in the name of anti-Fascist campaigns

were a part of the arrangement which helped the Government of India to tide

over certain crises, and that P.C.Joshi had “detailed certain Party members,

without the knowledge of the Central Committee or the rank and file of the

Party, to be in touch with the Army Intelligence Department, and supplied the

CID chiefs with such information as they would require against nationalist

workers who were connected with the 1942 struggle, or against persons who

had come to India on behalf of the Azad Hind Government of Netaji Subhas

Chandra Bose”.

In a letter published in the Bombay Chronicle on 17 March, 1946, Batlivala

added further: “Joshi had, as General Secretary of the Party, written a letter in

which he offered ‘unconditional help’ to the then Government of India and the

Army GHQ to fight the 1942 underground workers and the Azad Hind Fauj

(Indian National Army) of Subhas Chandra Bose, even to the point of getting

them arrested.These men were characterized by Joshi in his letter as ’traitors’

and fifth columnists”.Joshi’s letter also revealed that the CPI was receiving

financial aid from the Government, had a secret pact with the Muslim League,

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and was undermining Congress activity in various ways. “On the industrial

front, the communists, using the control they exercised over the AITUC,

similarly exerted their utmost to keep the workers out of the national unrest.

The Party which had called for strikes, strikes and more strikes now

demanded work, work and no strikes”.The Communists did not rest satisfied

with sabotaging the national movement for freedom. They sought to destroy

the unity of India. “Not only did the communists support the demand for

Pakistan, but went much further by saying that every linguistic group in India

had a distinct nationality, and was therefore entitled, as they claimed was the

case in the USSR, to the right to secede”.

As most of the nationalist leaders were in jail or in hiding the Communists

had the field left to themselves, and were able to capture many organizations

of the labour, students and peasants.They even infiltrated into the All-India

Women’s Conference, and many members in non-party capacity set up

literary and cultural organizations which might serve as centres of

propaganda. But this success was shortlived. After the War was over, the

Communist Party was thoroughly discredited and lost the good faith and

esteem of the people for the anti-national part it had played in the recent

struggle for freedom. So when, in1945, the Congress began to function again,

the Communist Party tried to curry favour with Gandhi and the Congress. But

Gandhi was not impressed, and the Communists were excluded from the

Congress.The almost overnight transformation of the Communist attitude

towards the War at the bidding of Moscow showed the Communist Party of

India in its true colour, and it failed to win a single sea at the general election

to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1945.It lost the influence it had acquired

in the Women’s Conference and the various cultural organizations.The control

over the working class also passed from their hands.For, both the nationalists

and socialists formed their own trade union centres (National Trade Union

Congress and the Hind Mazdoor Sabha) which soon outstripped the All-India

Trade Union Congress in membership and importance.The Communists

realized their isolated position in Indian politics.So after independence was

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achieved in1947, they made one more bid to win the favour of the Congress.

They vigorously supported the Nehru administration and showed as much

enthusiasm for the Congress now as it had shown dislike and opposition to it

during the War.

SUBASH CHANDRA BOSE AND I.N.A.

BOSE’S FLIGHT TO GERMANY.

The failure of the ‘Quit India’ movement and the collapse of the outbreak of

1942 practically marked the end of the heroic fight for freedom in India under

the leadership of the Congress and revolutionary leaders. But it did not end

the struggle for India’s freedom which now took the shape of a grim fight

waged beyond the eastern frontier of India by the Indian National Army led by

Subhas Bose in co-operation with the Japanese army invading India. It was

not only an interesting incident in the Second Second World War, but also one

of the most important episodes in the long history of the freedom movement in

India.

Reference has been made above to the political activities of Bose and how,

after twice being elected President of the Indian national Congress, his

fundamental differences with Gandhi, in respect of both policy and tactics,

forced him to quiet the congress and form a new party known as the Forward

Bloc.The British Government naturally looked up on Bose as a dangerous

revolutionary, and arrested him on 2nd July, 1940, under section 129 of the

Defence of India Rules. Even while he was in detention in the Presidency Jail,

Calcutta, he was undergoing trials in two criminal suits brought against him by

the Government.He decided to go on hunger-strike, and on 26th November,

1940, addressed a letter to the Governor of Bengal and his minister, two

sentences of which read as follows: “The individual must die, so that the

nation may live.Today I must die so that India may win freedom and glory.”

He commenced his fast on 29th November, 1940, but as he developed

alarming symptoms the Government released him on 5th December.After his

release Bose remained quietly in his ancestral house in Elgin Road, Calcutta,

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which was under strict surveillance by the police. He was last seen there on

16 January, 1941, but ten days later it was reported that he was not to be

found in the house.His sudden disappearance long remained a mystery, but

his movements are now fairly well-known.

Bose left his home on 17th January, 1941, at about 1-25 a.m. and proceed

by car to Gomoh.Thence he went by Railway train to Peshawar, and then

passing through Jamurd and by passing the Landikotal fort, crossed the Indian

border and reached Kabul, via Jalalabad, traveling party on foot, partly in

Tonga and partly by motor bus or truck. He then proceeded to Russia with an

Italian passport, and on 28th March, 1941, flew from Moscow to Berlin. Bose’s

journey from Calcutta to Berlin, full of thrilling details, was a historic one, and

its nearest parellel is the escape of Shivaji from the clutches of

Aurangzeb.Bose was well received by Ribbontrop, the right-hand man of

Hitler, and proposed that (1) he would broadcast anti-British propaganda form

Berlin; and (2) raise “Free Indian” units form Indian prisoners of war in

Germany; while (3) the Axis Powers would jointly make a Declaration of Indian

Independence.Neither Germany nor Italy agreed to the third proposal, but the

other two were accepted.The idea of forming Indian military units got an

impetus when Germany declared war against Russia on 22nd June, 1941.

Bose had also founded Free India Centres in Rome and Paris and raised the

legion to its full strength of 3000. But further activities in Germany were

suddenly stopped when Bose heard of the phenomenal success of the

Japanese against the British, culminating in the fall of Singapore.He

instinctively felt that the Far East would provide a more advantageous base for

fight against the British, and his presence was needed there.

INDIANS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA.

The outbreak of war in the east in 1941 caused a great stirring among the

Indians in these regions.Those living in territories freed from European

domination organized themselves into associations with the twofold objects of

contributing their quota to the liberation of India from the British Yoke and

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serving the interests of the overseas Indians during the critical, transitory

period.Such associations were established in a large number of towns, even

in villages, and attained great popularity.Out of these associations was born

the idea of an Indian Independence League, of which they regarded

themselves as branches. A definite shape was given to this idea by the great

Indian revolutionary, Rash-behari Bose, whose early activities in India have

been referred to above.He had fled to Japan in June 1915, married a

Japanese girl, and became a Japanese citizen. But he never ceased to work

for his motherland, and it was mainly due to his inspiration and efforts that a

conference was held at Tokyo from 28 to 30 March, 1942, for the discussion

of political issues.

The Tokyo Conference passed a resolution to form an Indian National

Army.An Indian Independence League of overseas Indians was provisionally

established throughout Japanese Asia, and it was decided to hold a fully

representative conference of Indians at Bangkok in June.This conference was

held in Bangkok form 15th to 23rd June, 1942.It was attended by about 100

delegates form Burma, Malaya, Thailand, Indo-China, Philippines, Japan,

China, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Hong Kong and Andamans. Rash-behari Bose

was elected Chairman.The tricolour flag was raised by Rash-behari Bose, and

the Conference formally inaugurated the Indian Independence League (I.I.L)

with a definite constitution.The object of the League was defined to be the

attainment of complete and immediate independence of India.The Conference

passed altogether 35 resolutions, including one inviting Subhas Bose to East

Asia.In the meantime the nucleus of an Indian National Army had come into

being.In December, 1941, when the Japanese invaded North Malaya and

defeated the British forces there, Captain Mohan Singh and a small party with

him, wandering in the forest, surrendered to the Japanese. He was taken to

Bangkok by Giani Pritam Singh, a holy man who had set up an association

there for the independence of India, of the type described above.

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Both Giani Pritam Singh and Major Fuzihara, a Japanese military officer,

tried to induce Mohan Singh to work for the independence of India.After a

great deal of discussion Mohan Singh yielded to their persuasions.After the

fall of Singapore on 15th February, 1942, Colonial. Hunt, on behalf of the

British government, handed over 40,000 Indian prisoners of war to Major

Fujiwara, representative of the Japanese government, who, in his turn,

handed them over to Capt Mohan Singh.Mohan Singh now asked for

volunteers from among the prisoners to join the Indian National Army (I.N.A)

or Azad Hindusthan Fauz to be organized by him to fight along with the

Japanese army, against the British in order to drive the latter form India.

Many of them joined the I.N.A., but many refused to do so. By the end of

August, 1942, forty thousand prisoners of war signed. A number of young men

without any previous military training, also volunteered their services, and a

military camp was opened for training them.Captain Mohan Singh attended

the Bangkok conference, mentioned above which adopted the following

resolutions, among others;

(1).That an Indian National Army be formed comprising the Indian troops

and civilians of East Asia. Capt. Mohan Singh would be the Commander-in-

Chief of this ‘Army of Liberation’ for India.The Indian Independence League

would make arrangements for the supply of men, material, and money

required by the Indian National Army, and would request the Japanese

Government to supply the necessary arms and equipment, ships and

aeroplanes required by the Indian National Army which would be commended

entirely by Indian officers and would fight only for the liberation of India.

(2).That a Council occupation Action is established for carrying out all

necessary actions in connection with the independence movement and

prosecution of the War of Independence.

Rash-behari Bose was elected the President and Mohan Singh, one of the

four members, took up the portfolio of the Army as well as the position of the

Commander-in-Chief.On the 1st September, 1942, the Indian National Army

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(I.N.A) was formally established.The Military department was organized with

almost all its branches. Arrangements were also made for an intensive training

of the men of I.N.A.To the normal physical training of the soldiers was added a

type of mental training in order to rouse their national spirit and patriotism. For

this purpose arrangement was made for lectures on national history with

special reference to the condition of India under British rule.The trainees were

urged to free their motherland from the foreign yoke and exhorted to adopt the

three principles laid down by the Indian Independence League, viz. unity, faith

and sacrifice.Unfortunately, the progress of work was hampered by internal

dissensions and as soon as Subhas Bose arrived at Singapore, Rash-behari

Bose surrendered his power and position to him.

SUBASH BOSE IN THE EAST.

Subash Bose accepted the invitation of the Bangkok conference, and on 8th

February, 1943, accompanied by Abid Hassan (founder of the Indian legion at

Frankenburg), left Kiel in a German U-boat.The boat made a wide detour in

the Atlantic to avoid the British ships, and met the Japanese submarine 129,

which by previous arrangements, was waiting at a place four hundred miles

S.S.W. of Medagascar.On 28th April Bose and his colleague were transferred

by a rubber dinghy to the Japanese Submarine which took them across the

Indian Ocean to Sumatra. They were met by a Japanese officer and arrived at

Tokyo on 1st June, 1943. Bose was received by Tojo on the day after his

arrival. The Japanese Premier was frank; whether India was invaded or not.

She would come under Japanese control on the beyond the necessities of

war, and intended her to be independent. Bose was encouraged in his project

of a Provisional government which would take control of Indian territory as the

Japanese forces moved on; he then heard Tojo make a declaration about

India in the Diet: “Japan is firmly resolved to extend all means in order to help

to expel and eliminate form India the Anglo-Saxon influences which are the

enemy of the Indian people, and enable India to achieve full independence in

the true sense of the term”

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Subash Bose spoke form Tokyo, over the Radio, his determination to

launch an armed fight against the British form India’s eastern borders.The

overseas Indians were thrilled with delight at the prospect of participating in

this great venture.When Bose arrived at Singapore on 2nd July, 1943, he was

welcomed with tumultuous enthusiasm by an immense surging crowd who

instinctively felt that at last the Man of Destiny had come to lead them on as

victors to liberate their own motherland. On 4th July, Rash-behari Bose handed

over the leadership of the Indian independence Movement in East Asia.He

was hailed as Netaji-the supreme leader as in Germany, and henceforth he

was always referred to by this honorific title. Netaji revealed to the gathering

his decision to form a Professional Government of the Free India and to lead

the Indian National Army towards India. Next day, he reviewed the Indian

National Army and gave it the rousing war cries of “Chalo Delhi” (March to

Delhi) and “Total Mobilisation”.

Immediately after taking over the leadership of the movement Netaji put

through a comprehensive plan of reorganization and expansion of the League

with a view to achieving these two goals. There was a through re organization

of Recruitment and Training Departments.Training Campus were open for

men as well as women, commands, orders and instructions being given in

Hindustani.After about six month of intensive training the recruits were

absorbed in to the I.N.A. Netaji also organized the civil departments that were

already functioning at the headquarters and added new ones.Having thus

made a good start Netaji inaugurated the Provisional Government. Delegates

from all over Asia were summoned to Singapore. After discussing the matter

with them Netaji summoned a public meeting at Cathay Hall on 21st October,

1943.There, before an almost hysteric crowd who stormed the precincts of the

Cathay Hall and presented indescribable scenes of over powering feelings

and emotions, Netaji read his famous proclamation setting up the Provisional

Government of Free India at Singapore.On 23rd October, the Provisional

Government, at a Cabinet meeting, decided to declare war on Britain and

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U.S.A.The declaration was broad cast over radio by Boss himself and Sanskrit

Francisco Radio communicated it to the world.

In a few days, 9 world powers – Japan, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Burma,

Tai8land, Nationalist China, the Philippines and Manchuria-accorded there

recognition to the Provisional Government of Azad Hind.“On the 28th of

October, Netaji flew to Tokyo were he attended the Greater East Asia

Conference in the first week of November, and was received by the Japanese

Emperor with all honours due to the Head of the State and the Provisional

Government of the Free India.“At the Greater East Asia Conference, Premier

Tojo Announced on the 6th November, 1943, that Japan had decided to hand

over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Provisional Government of Azad

Hind.Thus the Provisional Government acquired its first stretch of territory in

Free India.”

I.N.A’s FIGHT FOR INDIA’S FREEDOM:

1. The status of I.N.A.

There was no doubt in the mind of Netaji and his followers that the main

task of the Provisional Government was to take part in the Japanese offensive

campaign against British India.Steps were accordingly taken to equip the

I.N.A. properly for these purpose. But an unexpected difficulty presented itself

at the very beginning.When Netaji first raised the question of I.N.A.

participating in the proposed Japanese campaign against Imphal (in Manipur,

India), Field-Marshal Count Terauchi, the Commander of all the Japanese

forces in South-East Asia, expressed unwillingness to accept the proposal. Its

soldiers, he said, had been demoralized by defeat in Malaya; they could not

stand up to the rigours of the Japanese campaign, and would have an

irresistible compulsion to cross over to their old friends and easier

circumstances.He proposed that the Japanese Army should do all that was

necessary to liberate India, that Bose himself should assist by enlisting the

goodwill and co-operation of the Indian population, that the main part of the

I.N.A. should be left in Singapore, and that only espionage and propaganda

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groups should be used in the field.This proposal, which virtually meant that

Netaji should merely play the role of the fifth columnist, gave a rude shock to

him. He made a proud and dignified reply. “Any liberation of India secured

through Japanese sacrifices” he said, “is worse than slavery”. He talked about

the national honour of India, insisted that Indians must make the maximum

contribution of blood and sacrifices themselves, and urged that the I.N.A. be

allowed to form the spearhead of the coming offensive.Terauchi at last

consented to the employment of one regiment as a trial. If this regiment came

up to Japanese standard the rest of the army would be sent into action. He

also agreed that some I.N.A. troops should remain attached to the different

units of the Japanese army as irregulars.

2. General Plan and Military Operations.

After the main issue was thus settled, Netaji decided to raise a new brigade by

selecting the best soldiers from the other three brigades, named after Gandhi,

Azad, and Nehru, and that this brigade should go into action first. The regiment

was raised at Taiping in Malaya, in September, 1943, and Shahnawaz Khan was

appointed its commander.The soldiers themselves called it Subhas Brigade

much against the will of Bose.On 24th January, 1944, General Katakura, Chief

of the Japanese General Staff in Burma, met Netaji and Shahnawaz and

discussed, behind closed doors, the general strategy of the impending campaign

against India, and the role that had been assigned in it to the I.N.A.. Thereupon

the Subhas Brigade was placed, for purposes of operations only, under the direct

command of Japanese General Headquarters in Burma. The role allotted to the

Subhas Brigade was as follows:

Battalion No. 1 was to proceed via. Prome to the Kaladan Valley in

Arakan.The Battalions Nos. 2 and 3 were to proceed via Mandalay and

Kalewa to the Chin Hill areas of Haka and Falam.On 4th February, 1944, the

1st Battalion of the Subhas Brigade left Rangoon by train for Prome. From

Prome they marched on foot and arrived at Kyauktaw (in Akyab) on the

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Kaladan River, suffering casualties on the way from aerial bombing of the

enemy. Here they formed the base in the middle of March, 1944, and inflicted

a defeat upon the much-praised Negro troops from West Africa in the British

army, while engaged in constructing a bridge over the Kaladan.

The Indian battalion, reinforced by Japanese troops, then advanced along

both the banks of the Kaladan for about fifty miles north to Paletwa. After a

severe fight they captured it and also another place, Daletme, in the

neighbourhood. From Daletme they could see the frontier of India forty miles

to the west, and were very eager to reach it.The nearest British post on the

Indian side was Mowdok, about fifty miles to the east of Cox Bazar.It was

captured by a surprise attck during night (May, 1944) and the enemy fled in

panic leaving large quantities of arms, ammunitions and rations. “The entry of

the I.N.A. on Indian Territory was a most touching scene.Soldiers laid

themselves flat on the ground and passionately kissed the sacred soil of their

motherland which they had set out to liberate. A regular flag-hosting ceremony

was held amidst great rejoicing and singing of the Azad Hind Fauz National

Anthem”.On account of the difficulty of supply as well as impending counter-

attack by the British forces, the Japanese forces decided to withdraw from

Mowdok and advised the I.N.A. commander to do the same.The I.N.A. officers

with one voice refused to do so. “No, Sir”, they told their Commander, “the

Japanese can retreat because Tokyo lies that way; our goal – the Red Fort,

Delhi – lies ahead, of us. We have orders to go to Delhi. There is no going

back for us”.

The Commanding Officer of the I.N.A. thereupon decided to leave one

Company under the command of Capt. Suraj Material at Mowdok to guard the

flag and withdraw the remainder.The Japanese, admiring the spirit – almost a

suicidal role – of the I.N.A. men, left one platoon of their own troops to share

the fate of the Indians.These Japanese troops were put under direct command

of Capt. Suraj Material. “It was probably the first time in the history of the ajp

army that their troops had been placed under command of a foreign officer”.

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Evidently moved by this heroic sacrifice and the brilliant record of the I.N.A.

men, “the Japanese Commander-in-Chief in Burma went to Netaji, and bowing

before hijm, said: “Your Excellency, we were wrong.We misjudged the soldiers

of the I.N.A. We know now that they are no mercenaries, but real

patriots”.Capt. Suraj Material and his band of heroic fighters stayed at

Mowdok from May to Sept, 1944. During this period they were constantly

attacked by the British forces but always succeeded in repulsing them.

The 2nd and the 3rd Battalion took over the charge of Falam and Haka from

the Japanese.The area was infested by British guerilla forces, and the I.N.A.,

by sudden attacks, inflicted severe defeats upon them. Some of their exploits

were highly creditable. Special mention may be made of the rout of Major

Manning’s forces at Klankhua, the successful defence of the post on the Klang

Klang Road by 20 men of the I.N.A. against 100, and the capture of the British

stronghold at Klang Klang.The Japanese were satisfied of the military skill and

efficiency of the I.N.A., and issued instructions “that the main body of the

Brigade would proceed to Kohima and would be prepared, on the fall if

Imphal, to advance rapidly and cross the brahmaputra into the heart of

Bengal”.Accordingly, about 150 and 300 men of the I.N.A. were left,

respectively at Haka and Falam, and the rest marched towards Kohima, the

capital of the Naga Hills in Assam.It had been already captured by the

Japanese forces accompanied by small detachments of I.N.A. who hoisted the

tricolour flag on the hill tops. But by the end of May when the regular I.N.A.

troops arrived, the military position of the Japanese forces in the area had

changed for the worse. A few days later the Japanese forces, and the I.N.A.

with them, had to withdraw to the east bank of the Chindwin River. Thus

ended the career of the Subhas Brigade.

The Gandhi Brigade was ordered to proceed towards Imphal which was

besieged by the Japanese forces. Its fall was supposed by both sides to be

impending, and a severe fight was gpomg pm a; pmg the Tavazhimu-Palel

road leading to Imphal.The Gandhi Brigade was instructed to carry out guerilla

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activity against the enemy forces and won several victories, the most

memorable operation being the successful defence of the height around

Mythun Khunou by 600 I.N.A. men against a whole British Brigade, 3,000

strong, supported by heavy artillery and aeroplanes.This happened in June,

1944, but shortly after this the position of the Japanese forces changed for the

worse for failure to take Imphal.Three special auxiliary units of the I.N.A. were

attached to the Japanese force attacking Imphal. These crossed the Indology-

Burma frontier and planted the national Tricolour flag for the first time on the

liberated Indian soil on 19 March, 1944.There was tremendous enthusiasm

and the Indian troops vied with one another to be the first set foot on the free

Indian soil. On the same day, Tojo, the Prime Minister of Japan, stated in the

Diet that the Provisional Government of Azad Hind would administer the

occupied territory.

As mentioned above, the Japanese were somewhat over-sanguine about

the capture of Imphal at an early date. Possibly the idea was due to the easy

capture of Singapore, and would most probably have been realized but for the

entanglements of the Japanese with the Americans in the Pacific.The

Japanese had to withdraw their aeroplanes from the Indology-Burma border to

the Pacific zone, and this enabled thebr to bring full one division by air from

the Arakans. The Japanese calculation was that they would capture Imphal by

the middle of May at the latest, and then the advent of monsoon would make

British counter-attack impossible, enabling the Japanese to consolidate their

position and, if possible, tocross the Brahmaputra into Bengal and Bihar. But

the monsoon started before the fall of Imphal, and by the end of June, 1944, it

became almost impossible to supply rations and ammunition to the forces

besieging Imphal. This, together with the constantly increasing pressure of the

British reinforcements – thanks to the absence of Japanese aeroplanes –

forced the Japanese, and the I.N.A. along with them, to withdraw to the east

bank of the Chindwin.Summing up the whole situation, Shahnawaz Khan, the

Commander of the Subhas Brigade, writes: “Thus ended the main I.N.A. and

Japanese offensive which had been started in March, 1944. During this period

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the I.N.A., with much inferior equipments and an extremely poor supply

system was able to advance as much as 150 miles into Indian Territory.

While the I.N.A. was on the offensive, there was not a single occasion on

which our forces were defeated on the battlefield, and there was never an

occasion when the enemy, despite their overwhelming superiority in men and

material, was able to capture any post held by the I.N.A. On the other hand,

there were very few cases where I.N.A. attacked British posts and failed to

capture them. In these operations the I.N.A. lost nearly 4000 men as killed

alone”.

3. The last Phase.

The British began their counter-offensive in the cold season of 1944-45.

Arakan was cleared of enemy troops and the British advanced towards

Burma. The Japanese retreated. Rangoon, which was left in the hands of the

I.N.A. after its evacuation by the Japanese, was occupied by the British early

in May, 1945.The I.N.A. men were disarmed and made prisoners.The Indian

Independence Movement in South-East Asia collapsed.Netaji left Burma in the

hope of renewing the fight – a hope that was never to be realized. It is

unnecessary to describe in detail his “historic twenty-one-day trek over three

hundred miles from Rangoon to Bangkok, his flight to Singapore to carry on

non-stop broadcasting campaign addressed to India against the Wavell offer

in June-July (1945), the Japanese surrender of mid-August, and finally his last

flight from (Bangkok via) Saigon”. After that there is a blank.

Netaji left Bangkok with a single companion in a twin-engined Japanese

bomber carrying senior Japanese officers to Tokyo via Dairen in Manchuria. It

arrived safely at Taipei (Taihoku) in Formosa at about 2 p.m. on18th August.

After lunch it left Taipei.This is all that is definitely known.What happened after

this is uncertain.The Japanese official version, issued at the time, was that

almost immediately after the plane had taken off, it caught fire. Netaji, badly

burnt, somehow came out of the plane, and was removed to a hospital where

he died that very night, between 8 and 9 p.m.This story was discredited in

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India from the very beginning.The Government of Free India evidently shared

the suspicions of the public and appointed a Committee of Inquiry.The

majority of the members held that the official versionwas substantially correct,

but one member – the elder brother of Netaji – disagreed and pointed out

many serious flaws in the method of inquiry.There the matter rests, and the

end of this valiant fighter for freedom is shrouded in mystery. Very few outside

the official circles attched any importance to the report of the Committee of

Inquiry which did not take the evidence of the fellow-passengers ofni, nor

visited the aero-drome of Taipei where the accident is supposed to have

occurred.A few years later, Satya Narain Sinha visited the site and met at

least one official who was there on 18 August, 1945, the day of the accident.

Sinha was convinced by his testimony as well as the records that no plane

accident occurred there on that date.Pursuing his inquiry with admirable

energy and patience; he could trace definitely the further progress ofni’s

journey. The result of this inquiry may be summed up as follows:

Netaji’s plane halted at Taipei for refueling and took off for Dairen (in

Manchuria) at 14:30 hours on 18th August.He arrived safely at Dairen and

stayed there in disguise even after it was occupied by the Russians. But his

identity was discovered by the Russian officers. He was looked upon as a

friend and partisan of the German Nazis and was transporoted to Siberia. No

further information could be gathered by Sinha about Netaji’s life behind the

iron curtain.The truth of Sinha’s story has not been tested by either the

Government of India or any other public body, though it regularly appeared in

the Sunday issues of the Hindusthan Standard, Calcutta, in April, 1965. A

large section of Indians believe that Netaji certainly did not die at Taipei, and

is probably still alive.

In spite of failure, the I.N.A. occupies an important place in the history of

India’s struggle for freedom.The formation of this force and its heroic exploits

proved beyond doubt that the British could no longer rely upon the Indian

sepoys to maintain their hold on India.The universal sympathy expressed all

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over India for the I.N.A. officers, when they were tried for treason in the Red

Fort at Delhi, gave a rude shock to the British, inasmuch as it clearly

demonstrated that Indians of all shades of opinion put a premium on the

disloyalty of the Indian troops to their foreign masters and looked upon it as a

true and welcome sign of nationalism.The honour and esteem with which every

Indian regarded the members of the I.N.A. offered a striking contrast to the ill-

concealed disgust and contempt for those sepoys who refused to join the I.N.A.

and remained true to their salt.Incredible though it may seem, it is none the less

true, that even the stories of oppression and torture suffered by the latter for

their loyalty evoked no sympathy for them in the hearts of the Indians who

remained absolutely unmoved.All these opened the eyes of the British to their

perilous situation in India.They realized that they were sitting on the brink of a

volcano which might erupt at any moment.As will be shown later, this

consideration played an important role in theirfinal decision to quit India.So the

members of the I.N.A. did not die or suffer in vain, and their leader, Netaji

Subhas Bose, has secured a place of honour in the history of India’s struggle for

freedom.

CHAPTER-V

INDEPENDENCE AND PARTITION

When the cease-fire sounded ine the position of the Indian government

seemed stronger than at any time since 1942. It enjoyed the prestige of

success and evident strength. The caravan was passing on steadily to victory.

But the apparent calm of Indian politics was superficial and deceptive. It was

the last manifestation in the British period of the Indian genius for accepting a

situation too intractable to be altered, and of biding one’s time for a more

favourable moment.Beneath the surface the same tensions persisted, and

indeed were growing more acute.The Congress was even more suspicious of

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the British in victory than they had been of them in defeat. Imperfectly aware,

in spite of the precedent of 1919, of the exhaustion which cripples even the

victorious in total war, Indian leaders could not believe that the British would

‘stand and deliver’ from the plenitude of power.Were not their express ions of

benevolence merely a further example of British hypocrisy, and was not their

constant harping on minority rights a subtle device to sabotage the idea of

anindt India by encouraging Muslim truculence?In spite of the long succession

of League victories inboth central and provincial elections, the Congress

leaders did not yet believe that there was substance behind the demand for

Pakistan,Firmness, they thought, could still secure a united independent India

on their own terms.Jinnah and the League leaders, on the other hand, were

equally suspicious of Congress intentions.They were also conscious of greatly

increased strength.They were not yet irrevocably committed to outright

partition, in spite of their public declarations, any more than the Congress itself

had been after its declaration of independence in 1928, but they believed that

the pressing of their claims was the only way to secure the future of their

community.Between Congress suspicion of the British, Muslim suspicion of

the Congress, and Congress underestimation of League strength, the path of

British statesmanship towards the goal of Indian self-government was bound

to be hard and stony.

Lord Wavell had succeeded Lord Linlithgow as Viceroy in the autumn of

1943.Thus far his administration had been conspicuously successful. He had

been conciliatory but quite firm towards Congress; he had dealt vigorously

with the Bengal famine and had instituted a steadily improving control over the

whole food administration; he had presided over a steadily expanding war

effort in an atmosphere of growing success; he had kept inflation within

bounds; his presence and prestige exuded strength and confidence. He had

now to face a wholly different task.He had first to convince two highly critical

bodies of the reality of British sincerity and then to persuade two mutually

highly suspicious bodies that co-operation, with its attendant give and take,

was both necessary and feasible.Failure meant partition with all its

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incalculable consequences.It is easy to see, at even this short distance of time

that the dice of fortune was heavily loaded against him. Nevertheless he bent

himself manfully to the task.

Wavell’s first move was to attempt the formation of a national

administration as contemplated in the Cripps proposals (which had never

been withdrawn).This would complete the war with Japan (then expected to

last another year) and then arrange for the promised Constituent Assembly.

Conversations were held in June 1945, but they broke down on the allotment

of seats in the Executive Council and the Congress refusal to accept the

League’s claim to be the sole representatives of Muslim opinion.The sudden

ending of the Japanese war in August made the situation more urgent. Wavell

now put the controversy over the League’s representative claim to the test of a

general election, both provincial and central. This occupied the winter of 1945-

6 while tension gradually mounted. It now became clear that the League

dominated Muslim opinion almost as completely as the Congress dominated

Hindu. In the key province of the Punjab, the Unionist party, long infiltrated by

League sentiment, almost disappeared, and its rump under Sir Khizr Hayat

Khan Tiwana could only continue in office with the help of the Congress.The

carefully devised weightage system here placed a minority government in

power in circumstances of rising passion.A short-lived naval mutiny in

February 1946 revealed the narrow margin by which the British continued to

maintain order of a kind.

The new British government now intervened directly. A cabinet mission led

by Lord Pethwick-Lawrence, now a leading member of the new government,

and consisting besides of Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. A.V. (later Viscount)

Alexander, visited India in April.After further efforts at mediation between the

parties the mission made its own proposals in May. The aim was still to

preserve a united India while giving reasonable satisfaction ot Muslim claims

to autonomy.The method proposed was an ingenious modification of the

earlier Cripps offer.There was to be a federal union controlling defence,

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foreign affairs, and communications, and consisting of the British Indian

provinces.The states were to be included after negotiation.There were two

new features.The powers of the federal government were reduced (in

accordance with Muslim desires) and individual provinces were to be at liberty

to form subordinate unions of their own. Each of these was to decide for itself

the p[owers it would exercise outside the range of the federal subjects. On

this basis a constituent Assembly would be convened representing all parties,

and once more it was proposed to form an interim national government. This

was Pakistan in parvo and seemed to open an avenue for the reconciliation of

a united India with Muslim autonomy.

For a moment there was a gleam of hope, for both sides accepted the plan

as a basis for action. But breakdown once more occurred over the communal

allotment of seats. The Congress insisted on appointing a Muslim to one of

their five seats and thus reducing League representation to four; the League

insisted on parity and refused to work with nationalist Muslims whom they

regarded as traitors to their cause. When the Congress refused to precede the

League offered to take office alone and resented the Viceroy’s refusal to

proceed with one party only. When, a few weeks later, the Congress repented

and the Viceroy admitted their leaders to office with Nehru as Vice-President

of the Council, the League denounced the action as a breach of faith and

proclaimed a ‘direct action day’ on 16th August. The tension could no longer

be restrained within peaceful bounds, and to the bloody August riots in

Calcutta (where Hindus were the sufferers) was added the communal

outbreak in Bihar (where Muslims were the victims). There were also

outbreaks in East Bengal and the United Provinces.The hope of a united

independent India was extinguished in the blood and monsoon passion of

1946. Partition was not the only possible solution, though it took another 9

months to convince all parties of the fact. These months were passed instrain

and mounting misery. In October 1946 the League joined the Executive

Concil. But it was soon seen that they had come to curse and not to bless.

Pandit Nehru found himself in real danger when he visited the north-west in

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the same month; it became obvious that the Frontier would not stand for

Hindu rule, Red Shirts, and the Frontier Gandhi notwithstanding.The

Constituent Assembly met in December only to be boycotted by the League.

Early in the New Year there followed the fall of the Khizr ministry in the Punjab

to the accompaniment of fighting which destroyed Amritsar and

Multan.Section 93 rule and suppressed civil war succeeded the feeble

directives of a minority ministry. Something had to be done and done quickly.

Once more the British cabinet directly intervened, Pandit Nehru, Mr. Jinnah

(now the Qaid-i-Azam or great leader), and Sardar Baldev Singh (a Sikh

leader) were called to London for discussion, but these were as fruitless as

before.In a last effort to dissipate suspicion it was announced on 20th

February 1947 that June 1948 had been determined as the date of the

withdrawal of British power.At the same time Lord Wavell was recalled in

favour of Lord Mountbatten, who was charged with the preparation of a

procedural plan. But neither the persuasions of London, nor the shock of an

imminent political vacuum, nor the stimulus of a new personality could now

break the Congress-League deadlock. Mr. Jinnah saw victory in sight, ‘The

Muslim League will not yield an inch in its demand for Pakistan’, he said. He

had so cast Congress tactics back upon itself that it was that body itself which

now began to see in partition the only alternative to prolonged civil war and

fearful destruction of human life.In May they themselves proposed the partition

of the Punjab as the only alternative to civil war.

Lord Mountbatten soon convinced himself that Pakistan was now the only

alternative to anarchy. A visit home secured the consent of the cabinet for this

plan. On 3rd June he announced the British government’s acceptance of the

principles of partition, a procedural plan for carrying it through, and an

acceleration of the date of British withdrawal to 14th August.The plan was

accepted on the same day by Congress, League, and Sikhs.Each party

professed dissatisfaction but each believed that they would gain nothing

further by fighting.The Sikhs were the least satisfied, and a powerful section

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determined to fight in any case, but they were the weakest party of the three

and suffered from divisions and poor leadership.The least common

denominator of Indian power politics had at last been discovered.

The plan worked smoothly and was carried through with remarkable

address by the Viceroy. In essence it was a further adaptation of the Cripps

offer of 1942, implemented by a master of ruch tactics. The partition of the

Punjab and Bengal was recognized, provided that the Legislative Assemblies,

voting if necessary by communities, asked for it. Boundary commissions were

to determine the actual frontiers. In Sind the decision for partition rested with

the Legislative Assembly.In the Frontier Province, where the Red Shirt

ministry retained a precarious hold, a referendum was to be held to decide the

future of the province, and the same held good for the district of Sylhet in

Assam.Thus Pakistan, with its eastern and western wings, came into

existence, and with India formed two new dominions in the British

Commonwealth of Nations.Each had its own Constituent Assembly and

arrangements were made for the proportional sharing of assets and liabilities.

Lord Mountbatten became the first Governor-General of the Indian dominion

and Mr. Jinnah of Pakistan.Only the states remained to be fitted into the

picture. The British treaties were ended and with it British paramountcy; each

state became in theory independent, but with a strong hint from the

departingbr that they should associate themselves with one or other of the

dominions.

Thus the British period in India came to an end after nearly three and a half

centuries of trading, two centuries of political power, and a hundred and thirty

years of general supremacy. The dream of Macaulay, Elphinstone, and their

contemporaries came true in a way that they would not have expected. They

might have disapproved in part, but on the whole they would have felt that

their prescience had been justified. For the India which the British left in 1947

differed greatly from the archaic country which their diplomacy and arms had

mastered a century and a half before. If there was not aclass ‘of Indians in

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blood and colour but English in taste, in morals and in intellect’, as Macaulay

and Munro had hoped for, a radical transformation had in fact taken place.

Not only the external conditions of life but the soul of India itself had been

greatly changed. The pessimism of the Punjab school of cuvukuabs had been

disproved.While the superstructure of Indian society remained impressive to

the casual observer, ideals and ideas from the West, new values along with

new institutions had taken root in the country.The process had continued with

gathering force beneath nostalgic cultural archaism fostered by growing

national sentiment.The very weapons and arguments used by Congress

against the British were largely of western provenance. India broke her British

fetters with western hammers. And it was significant of the community of ideas

between the two sides that the fetters were never in fact broken by force, but

began to be removed by one side as soon as they began to be rattled by the

other.

WHY ENGLAND GAVE INDIA INDEPENDENCE?

1. There were many reasons which forced the British Government to grant

independence to India and the most important was the strength of the

nationalist movement.The movement under the leadership of Mahatma

Gandhi had become so strong that the grant of independence could not be

postponed for long.The “Quit India” Movement had shown that the people of

India could go to any length to bring to an end the British Raj in the country.

They made tremendous sacrifices to paralyse the administrative machinery.

The British Government was fully aware of the slogans: “Do or Die” and “Now

or Never”.The organization of the Indian National Army under Subhash

Chandra Bose and the cry of “Delli Chalo” made the British Government

realize the folly of resisting the demand of the people of India for

independence.

2. Another cause was that the British Government lost faith in the loyalty of the

armed forces in India, particularly the Navy.Throughout; Great Britain had

relied upon force and military superiority for maintaining its hold over India.

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Force was always available to crush any revolt on the part of the Indians.

However, circumstances changed to such an extent during the Second World

War that theloyalty of the Indian forces could not be depended upon.

Thousands of Indians from all over India joined the armed forces during the

Second World War.They not only fought for the victory of the Allied Powers

but also hoped that India would get independence after the war. No wonder

when the war was over, these persons began to clamour for the freedom of

India.They were willing to give a helping hand to the nationalist movement in

the country.Political consciousness was visible in the armed forces of the

country.On 19 February 1946, the Ratings of the Royal Indian Navy stopped

work and gave a notice to the Government that unless their demands were

met by a particular date, they would resign en bloc.There were strikes at the

Air Force bases.Signs of open revolt were visible in Bombay, Calcutta and

Karachi.It is true that the revolts were crushed but a feeling was created

among the British that they could not keep India under their control with the

help of the Indian forces.The British troops in the Indian Ocean could help in

maintaining British control over India for some time, but that could not

continue for long.It was under these circumstances that the British

Government decided to withdraw from India.

3. After the end of the Second World War, the British authorities decided to try

Colonial. Shah Nawaz.Captain Sehgal and Dhillon and other members of the

Indian National Army for the crime of waging war against the King-Emperor

before a Court Martial.There was a lot of agitation in the country against the

decision of the Government.On 22 September 1945, the Co Working

Committee appointed a committee to defend the I.N.A. men. The trial started

on 5 November 1945 in the Red Fort of Delhi and lasted up to 31 December.

The decision was announced on 3 January 1946 and Shah Nawaz, Sehgal

andDhillon were found guilty and sentenced to transportation for life. Many

more trials were held and the accused were found guilty. During the trial, the

sufferings of the I.N.A. officers and men came to light. The arguments put

forward by the defence counsel were published in the newspapers and read

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by millions of Indians.Shah Nawaz, Sehgal and Dhillon became popular

heroes.There were mass demonstrations throughout the country for their

release.On certain occasion, the police resorted to firing and many Indians

lost their lives. The result was that Field Marshal Auchin leck, Commander-in-

Chief of India, granted clemency to Shah Nawaz, Sehgal and Dhillon. On 6

February 1946, the Government of India announced its decision not to

proceed any further with the trials and consequently cases against the rest of

the I.N.A. men were withdrawn. After their release, the I.N.A. officers and

men toured all over the country and they were greeted with cries of “Jai

Hindusthan”. So great was the enthusiasm among the people that the English

began to feel that it was not possible for them to keep India in chains.

3. There had been a feeling in India that the British power was invincible.

However, this impression was removed during the Second World War as a

result of themilitary reverses suffered by the British troops at thehands of the

Japanese.British troops were forced to evacuate Hong Kong, Singapore,

Malaya and Burma.Their best ships, “The Repulse” and “Prince of Wales”,

were sunk.Great Britain was not in a position “to demonstrate in Asia the

background of strength and influence which had for so long enabled her to

rule a million people with one man on the spot”.

4. Great Britain had to spend so much during the Second World War that she

was completely exhausted.She was forced to borrow on an enormous scale.

She had to depend upon other countries not only for foodstuffs but also for

raw materials to run her factories.She depended upon American help in every

field.The Englishmen had too many problems to tackle at home.It was felt that

it was not wise to keep herself involved in India when all her energy was

required at home.The American Government also put pressure on the British

Government to grant India independence as the Allied Powers had been

fighting for freedom and democracy.Even die-hards like Churchill began to

feel that it was not of any advantage to keep India under bondage.

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5. Mr. Attlee, Prime Minister of England at that time, had a lot to do with the

grant of independence to India.He had always taken keen interest in the

Indian affairs.When he became Prime Minister of England in 1945, he came to

the conclusion that even if Great Britain was able to keep India in bondage

with the help of force, that was not profitable to her as by doing so, she was

bound to lose the goodwill of the people of India and in that case, the

Indology-British relations were bound to suffer in the long run. His view was

that Great Britain was bound to gain if she was able to win the goodwill of the

people of India by giving them independence.To begin with, he sent the

Cabinet Mission to India, but when that failed, he sent Lord Mountbatten to

complete the process of transfer of power in India.

6. Another reason why Great Britain decided to leave India was that she got

involved in the cold war after the Second World War.Both the united States

and the Soviet Union accused each other.The Russians had an advantage

over the Americans in the cold war.They could always point out the fact that

Great Britain was keeping India in chains.Great Britain could be in a better

position if she granted India independence.

7. A large number of persons advocated the cause of India’s freedom abroad.

Among them were Louis Fischer, Pearl Buck, Lin Yu-tang, Norman Thomas

and J.J. Singh.The Indian viewpoint was put forward before the Conference at

Sanskrit Francisco which met to finalise the Charter of the United Nations.

Great Britain was not only a signatory to the Charted but her delegates played

an important part in framing it. This fact was bound to affect the attitude of the

British Government towards India. She could not talk of freedom for all while

keeping India in bondage.

8. Another factor which influenced the British decision to leave India was a

change in the concept of the British Commonwealth.In July 1947; the

Commonwealth Relations Office was set up. It the British could treat other

Dominions in that manner; there was no reason why the same could not be

done with regard to India.It was felt that even after India was given

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independence, she could be persuaded to be a part and parcel of the

Commonwealth of Nations and hence no loss to Great Britain.

9.The view of Maulana Azad was that the British Government decided to leave

India only after making sure that she could continue to have a foot-hold on the

Indian sub-continent.The British decision to partition India and then to transfer

power was the culmination of the policy of “divide and rule”.The partition of

India in which the Muslim majority provinces formed a separate and

independent state would give Britain a foot-hold in India.A state dominated by

the Muslim League would offer a permanent sphere of influence to Great

Britain.

10. We are reliably informed by some respectable Indians who returned to

India from England during the year immediately following the end of the

Second World War that British soldiers who had first-hand knowledge of the

poverty of the Indian masses spoke about it feelingly to their friends and

relatives.That knowledge filtered down to the people. A feeling was created in

England that perhaps with the independence, the Indians might be able to

improve their economic condition. That explains the unanimous support given

by the members of Parliament to the Indian Independence Bill in July 1947.

11. The view of Prime Minister Attlee was that the independence of India was

the fulfillment of Britain’s mission in India. The British were leaving India after

fulfilling their mission in the country. They had taught the Indians to govern

themselves and they were now leaving the reins of Government in their

hands.

THE FACTORS THAT MADE THE PARTITION OF THE COUNTRY

INEVITABLE.

The British Government throughout its rule in India followed a policy of

economic exploitation.As a result people lost all their faith in the British. So

much so that even the police and a part of the armed forces started showing

disrespect and disobedience towards the British Government. People in India

were bent on achieving independence for Indian and that they did. However,

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the way power was transferred from the British to the Indian hands was

unique in the history of the world. It was done with decency and good grace.

Besides the Indian attempts other factors also weighed with the British. These

were the weakened position of England during and after the Second World

War and the force of world opinion.That much about India’s achieving

independence. But now the question is whether this partition was inevitable.

The answer to this question is: yes, it was.The following were the factors

which made the partition imperative.

1. Hindu Communalism:- The blame for the culmination of Muslim

separation in the demand for Pakistan must also be shared by certain Hindu

organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha.In its early stages the Hindu

Mahasabha was led by certain staunch nationalists like Pt. Malvia and Lala

Lajpat Rai but later on certain conservative and reactionary elements

gradually assumed a dominating position.By 1937, V.D. Sararvar was

preaching his doctrine of Hindu Rashtra. In 1939, he asserted: “Our politics

henceforth will be purely Hindu politics. Such like ideas did not light the fire but

it did feed the flames of communal strife and helped to drive Muslims into the

arms of Pakistan.

2. Manoeuvres by the Muslim League: The British did not want to leave

India a powerful country and a great nation of the world. India undivided

would have been very strong.They wanted to make India weak and powerless.

Therefore, they encouraged the Muslim League to have the country

partitioned.This conspiracy of the English and the Muslim League made the

latter and its leader, Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, clamour for the creation of

Pakistan.Since they were encouraged by the British in every way, the

members of the Muslim League started Direct Action.A sort of conspiracy was

hatched against the innocent Hindus in Muslim majority provinces. Hindus

were slaughtered and their houses were burnt and so on.Then the Hindus

woke up and another round of slaughter, burning and loot went afoot. These

communal riots created anarchy in the whole of India. Law and order was

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always in danger.The British Government distinctly failed to cope with the

situation.This venom could be traced to the direct and indirect encouragement

given by the British Government to the Muslim League and their step-motherly

treatment to the Congress.

3. Interim Government and League: The Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 was

accepted by the Muslim League and the Congress.The then Viceroy and

Governor-General, Lord Wavell, invited Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru to form the

Interim Government.However the Muslims declined to join the Interim

Government and declared to observe16th August, 1946 as the Direct Action

Day.Riots broke out in Calcutta on August 16, 1946 and they ran for four days

or so. Thousands of innocent people were brutally slaughtered and immense

property was burnt or damaged.The Interim Government was formed by

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on September 2, 1946, without the representative of

the Muslim League. Later on, the Muslim League decided to join the Interim

Government with the idea of wrecking the administration from within.On 15th

October, 1946 five representatives of the Muslim League entered the

Government with their pre-plans.Naturally then when the Constituent

Assembly met on 9th December, 1946, the Muslims refused point blank to

participate in its deliberations. The Congress blamed the British Government,

particularly Lord Wavell for bring-

HOW INDEPENDENCE WAS ACHIEVED?

The Indian Independence Act drafted in Delhi which came into effect on

15th August 1947 provided for two Independent dominions – India and

Pakistan.Thus the long awaited dawn of independence by the Indians became

a reality.But the students of history is often baffled at the question that “Why

did the British decide to Quit India on 15th August 1947 “? The general feeling

about the decision of the British was that the foreigners were tired of the

prolonged struggle for freedom waged by the people of India.But the

withdrawal of the British from India was the logic of history.

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A small country with limited resources controlling a big country with

unlimited resources using the army and constabulary constituted by the

people of the conquered country will have to succumb if the rules demand

rulers to quit their home land. Although the British were able to withstand the

Non-violent agitations organized by the Indian National Congress and the

violent methods resorted by the revolutionary terrorists, the British

Government was totally helpless after the Second World World War.Indeed

Great Britain was able to bring the ‘Facist reactionaries’ to the knees.But

Britain was totally exhausted in this effort.The irreparable losses incurred by

the Great Britain in the Great War compelled her to abandon the ‘brightest

gem on the crown of English King – India. Added to this the defiant mood of

the Indian soldiers and sailors during the RIN mutiny of 1946 disheartened the

British Statesmen.So in an attempt to avert a pathetic and humiliating situation

for his countrymen who had been controlling India for the last 190 years,

Clement Atlee sent Lord Mount Batten to India to expedite the withdrawal of

the British.

A group of scholars believed that the British could not withstand the

popular struggle carried out by the Indian National Congress headed by

Mahatma Gandhi.Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi the congress

launched three major nation wide agitations based on the principle of Ahimsa.

They were the Non-co-operation Movement during the early 20’s the Civil-

Disobedience Movement during the early30’s and the Quit India Movement

during the early 40’s of the 20th century.The Gandhian struggle had already

attracted the world attention towards the grievances and demands of the

people of India, On the occasion of the Dandi March Gandhi had declared that

the purpose of the Dandi March. He said “I want World sympathy in this battle

of right against might “.The Irish people extended their moral support to the

Indians during the Home Rule Movement.Chiang-Kai Shek of China and

Franklin D Roosevelt of the U.S. exerted pressure on Wintson Churchill to

consider the demands of the Indians during World War II. All these incidents

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show that the Gandhian struggle were able to attract the attention of the

International community towards the ongoing freedom struggle of India.

Another group of scholars held the view that the change of guards in

England after the General Election of 1945 facilitated an atmosphere

favourable of India’s independence.The conservative party was defeated in

the General Election; the Indian masses heaved a sigh of relief, because

Churchill was dead against granting independence for India. He had already

stated that he is not going to be “the first minister of His Majesty’s Government

to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire “.But the labour party

headed by Clement Attlee voted to power was ideologically committed to the

cause of Indian freedom.As expected by the Indians Clement Attlee took a

bold step towardsa the demand of the Indians. He sent a Cabinet Mission to

India to take stock of the political situation in India. He then withdrew Viceroy

Lord Wavell and appointed Lord Mount Batten as new Viceroy with

plenipotentiary powers.The assignment given to Lord Mount Batten was “to

expedite the withdrawl” of the British from India. But leaders of the Communist

Party of India such as S.A. Dange and P.C.Joshi did not consider the transfer

of power that had taken place on 15th August 1947 as real independence of

India.They held the view that what has happened on 15th August 1947 was a

mere transfer of power from “imperialist bourgeoisie “to “National bourgeise “.

They held the view that only when the representatives of the toiling masses,

workers and peasants get the opportunity to take the rein of administration of

the country, the real independence of India can be achieved.

Historians like Sumit Sarkar held the view that the popular risings in various

parts of India in the wake of the Second World World War compelled the

British to Quit India.The sensational INA trial and the Rin mutiny created a

favourable political climate in India.Added to these developments the

peasants uprisings such as Punnapra Vayalar and Thebhaga Movement of

Bengal accelerated the process of Independence.But this view was countered

by Suchetha Mahajan who believed that the impact of the local uprisings is

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being exaggerated.The local uprisings of the last phase of the freedom

struggle can only be counted as “the last staw on Camels back”.

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