Moderates Vs Extremists : Battle For “Swaraj” And “Swadesi” July 20, 2008

Even as loyalist pressures cast a long shadow on political currents that were to influence the Indian elite of the late nineteenth century, rapidly deteriorating economic conditions also led to a heightened degree of radicalization amongst the most advanced sections of the new Indian intelligentsia. Ajit Singh in Punjab, Bal Gangadhar Tilak in Maharashtra, Chidambaram Pillay in Tamil Nadu and Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal formed the nucleus of a new nationalist movement that tried valiantly, but mostly unsuccessfully to move the conservative leadership of the Indian National Congress in a more radical direction. Most charismatic amongst the new national leaders was Bal Gangadhar Tilak (b. 1856, d. 1920).

Portrayed as anti-Muslim by the Muslim-League, maligned by India’s colonial rulers and British loyalists as an “extremist”, and misrepresented as a sectarian Hindu revivalist by some historians, Tilak was in fact, one of the leading lights of the Indian freedom movement. Best remembered for his slogan “Swaraj is my birth-right “, he was one of the first to call for complete freedom from British rule, and fought a long and sometimes lonely political struggle against the forces of “moderation” that held sway over the Indian National Congress in the early part of the last century.

After the defeat of 1858, one of the most significant challenges to British imperial authority in India had appeared in the form of Vasudeo Balvant Phadke’s revolt of 1879, and amongst his many youthful followers and trainees in Pune was the young Tilak. Along with Chiplunkar, Agarkar and Namjoshi, Tilak initially concentrated on launching a nationalist weekly – the Kesari (1881), the publishing house – Kitabkhana, and developing Indian educational institutions such as the Deccan Education Society (1884). Tilak and his friends saw the right kind of education as being a crucial element in the task of national regeneration, and in this respect appeared to be continuing in the tradition of Jyotirao Phule (1827-1890) and Gopalrao Deshmukh (1823-1892) who was more known by his pen-name ‘Lokahitwadi’ .

Foremost amongst the social revolutionaries of nineteenth century Maharashtra, Phule and his wife Savitribai, had advocated a radical restructuring of Hindu society on the basis of equality of caste, gender and creed. Phule, (who belonged to the Mali caste) was unsparing in his criticism of Brahminical society that looked down upon the shudra jatis, prevented the atishudra (untouchable) jatis from attending school, and treated young widows (particularly Brahmin widows) as outcastes. One of the first to start a school for girls (1848), Phule went on to found the first school for the atishudras (1851), a home for young widows (1863), and also the first to open the family well to atishudra women (1868). Social reformers in Maharashtra also emerged from the upper castes, such as Gopalrao Deshmukh, who although a Chitpawan Brahmin was a sharp critic of Brahminical society, and worked primarily through reformist middle-class organizations such as the Prasthana Samaj and the Arya Samaj to fight against caste inequities.

But amongst Tilak’s colleagues, not all were well-disposed towards Phule and Deshmukh (Lokahitwadi). Chiplunkar was particularly vitriolic in his criticism of Phule. Tilak, on the other hand, was not unsympathetic to the need for social reforms, and was opposed to evils like child-marriage, casteism and untouchability. Many years later, (at a conference in Bombay in 1918), he was to declare: “If God were to tolerate untouchability, I would not recognize him as God at all”. However, he was reluctant to give precedence to social reforms over political struggle, believing that social change ought to come gradually, through the growth of enlightened public opinion, rather than through the legislative authority of an alien government. He was convinced that no significant social progress was possible in a country that wasn’t politically free. He was particularly critical of loyalist or moderate “reformers” who were unwilling to practice what they preached, yet frequently baited him as being against social reforms.

Neither a sectarian religious revivalist in the mold of Chiplunkar, nor willing to confine himself exclusively to the cause of radical social reforms like Agarkar, Tilak eventually parted ways with his colleagues in 1888. Working through the Kesari, (and later also the Maratha) he gradually developed a more advanced nationalist perspective based on the pillars of nationalist education, Swaraj (self-rule) and Swadeshi (self-reliance). One of the first to take the nationalist message to the Indian masses, he played a particularly important role in organizing western Maharashtra’s peasant and artisan communities during the 1897 famine under the auspices of the Sarvajanik Sabha. By 1905, popular resistance movements had developed in both Bengal and Maharashtra, calling for the boycott of British goods and non-payment of land revenues and other taxes. Between 1905 and 1908 the national movement intensified, workers participated in strikes and work-stoppages, women and students joined the boycott movements – picketing at shops that sold imported goods, and an ever-growing mass of people began joining mass meetings and street processions.

Only too aware of the economic devastation that British rule had brought on the country, India’s broad masses were responding eagerly to the nationalist message. But the nationalist movement was also becoming exceedingly divided between two poles representing radically different currents and tendencies. Whereas one side (even as it recognized the many negative aspects of alien rule) clung to the British umbilical chord, and attempted to restrict the national movement to a struggle for political reforms, the other side correctly saw British rule as an unmitigated disaster for the Indian people and called for the complete liberation from colonial rule.

Tilak eloquently and succinctly summarized the sentiments of the new and increasingly militant national movement. He spoke of British rule as having ruined trade, caused the collapse of industry, and destroyed the people’s courage and abilities. Under the colonial regimen, Tilak asserted that the country was offered neither education, nor rights, nor respect for public opinion. Without prosperity and contentment, the Indian people suffered constantly from the three ‘d’s’ – i.e. daridra (poverty), dushkal (famine) and dravyashosha (drain). And he saw only one remedy: for the Indian people to take political power without which Indian industry could not develop, without which the nation’s youth couldn’t be educated, and without which the country could win neither social reforms nor material welfare for it’s people. Tilak saw colonial rule as being inimical to India’s progress, and the contradictions between the British oppressors and the Indian people as being irreconcilable.

But “moderates” such as Gokhale (President of the Congress in 1905) while cognizant of how “deplorable” Britain’s industrial domination of India was, and how the economic drain from India to Britain was “bleeding India”, were nevertheless all praise for the British educational system in India, ascribing to the British the virtues of introducing liberal “social reforms”, governmental “peace and order” and such modern conveniences as the railways, post and telegraphs, and new industrial appliances. (That all these things benefited a miniscule Indian elite did not appear to bother such admirers of the empire, nor did it occur to them that this and much more could have just as easily been achieved under self-rule.)

Tilak and Gokhale were clearly seeing Indian reality from very different vantage points. From the point of view of the ordinary masses, British rule had already bankrupted the nation, left intolerable misery in it’s wake, and offered no hope for the future. Tilak’s assessment of the situation reflected bleak reality – as experienced not only by the oppressed and downtrodden Indian masses, but by an overwhelming majority of all Indians. But Gokhale’s ambivalence and his more cautiously expressed (though clearly articulated) concerns reflected the position of those who had at least partially shared in the spoils of the empire, but saw with some trepidation how the growing poverty of the nation might unravel the British empire. Reluctant to make common cause with the masses, “moderates” such as Gokhale did everything in their power to restrain the growing national movement – even branding Tilak and his allies as “extremists”.

The British took full advantage of this schism, and proceeded to bring the full weight of their administrative and military might in crushing the new national movement. Communal forces such as the Muslim League were also employed in the battle to extinguish radical tendencies. The years 1905-1908 were thus extremely critical in shaping the direction of the Indian national movement. Increasingly, the Indian masses were looking to Tilak and his compatriots for direction. But, in direct opposition to the energizing of the Indian peasantry, and mass of workers and students across the country, the elite was reasserting it’s loyalty to British rule.

In Punjab, the polarization was especially sharp. The boycott movement had struck deep roots within the peasantry, and made it difficult for British troops to find porters and other logistical help from the poor peasants. Roused by calls to protest the British land revenue policy, Sikh and Jat agricultural workers were becoming strongly politicized. In a rousing speech, Tilak’s close associate in Punjab, Ajit Singh made a secular appeal to the masses of Punjab to rise against the British: “Hindu brothers, Mohammedan brothers, Sepahi brothers – we are all one. The government is not even dust before us….What have you got to fear? ….Our numbers are much greater. True they have guns, but we have fists…You are dying from the plague and other diseases, so better sacrifice yourselves to your motherland. Our strength lies in unity…” (Excerpts from an April 21, 1907 speech in Rawalpindi)

On May 1, 1907, a spontaneous outburst of popular discontent shook the British administration in Rawalpindi when seething crowds, reinforced by striking workers marched through the streets – throwing mud and stones at passing Britishers, attacking government offices, cottages of Christian missionaries, British enterprises and commercial establishments. Although the uprising was effectively quelled by a large contingent of British troops who were close at hand, it shook the colonial administration enough to hastily evacuate families of colonial officials and military officers from Punjab, and extend term of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Lord Kitchener. The colonial police and troops were also ruthless in crushing such uprisings in Lahore and Amritsar. Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai were summarily deported to Burma, without trial or right of appeal. Arrests and persecution of other patriots followed, and a state of emergency was declared in a number of Punjab districts.

In 1908, uprisings on a similiar scale broke out in the South, in Trivandrum, Tirunelveli, and Tuticorin. In Trivandrum, police stations were attacked, prisoners liberated, and offices of the repressive colonial state were set on fire. When Chidambaram Pillay, another important Tilak ally was put on trial, he refused to disown his national goals, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Russian consular official Chirkin had been quite prophetic in his May 28, 1907 report when he wrote:“The outburst in Punjab is by it’s character more dangerous than the Bengal unrest…..This outburst has roused all India.” But equally powerful forces were working to stem and reverse the radical tide that had the potential of upturning colonial rule. Bengal zamindars who had agitated against the partition of Bengal declared their loyalty to the Raj. The Maharajas not only offered armed personnel to help the British but some (such as the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir) themselves initiated repressive measures against those deemed “extremist”.

The Congress who under the leadership of Dadabhai Naoroji had accepted the demands put forth by the Tilak group for Swaraj, Swadeshi and National Education in 1906, reneged on it’s previous position, and at it’s Surat session in 1907 decided to limit the struggle to a “constitutional manner”. “Swaraj” was reinterpreted to mean “self-rule” as a colony, and rather than fighting the colonial power, the Congress decided to cooperate with it in effecting “reforms”. A motion to elect Tilak (who was unquestionably the most popular leader of the national-liberation movement) was turned down, as was a compromise motion to elect Lala Lajpat Rai. The triumph of the “moderate” wing was total and complete. Gokhale’s “moderate nationalism” which was simply another face of loyalism succeeded to the utter exclusion of all the popular forces aligned with Tilak, and returned the Congress to a broadly loyalist track.

Tilak and his supporters were thus compelled to regroup outside the stifling confines of the Congress and continued a vigorous struggle against the British. But in July 1908, after having removed most of Tilak’s serious compatriots from the national scene, Tilak himself was brought to trial. The English majority outvoted the Indian jurors to issue a guilty verdict, and Tilak was sentenced to six years of transportation. This evoked a mass protest wave which swept a number of Indian cities culminating in a massive strike of 100,000 workers and a city-wide ‘hartal’ (shutdown) in Bombay. Tilak’s sentence had to be commuted to simple imprisonment, but it was sufficient to deal a severe blow to the Indian freedom movement.

By 1914, the Congress had so deteriorated that a majority of it’s members failed to admonish the young Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi when he embarked on a campaign to seek volunteers for the British war efforts in World War I. The man who was to repeatedly chastise the Indian masses for being insufficiently “non-violent”, had in 1914, no compunctions in seeking sacrificial lambs for a war in which India’s only interest should have been for the defeat of it’s colonial master. But Gandhi, who had been born the son of the Prime Minister of the princely state of Rajkot in Kathiawar, was simply following the lead of the Indian Maharajas, such as that of Bikaner – who needed little prodding in offering his troops for a war that essentially pitted Europe’s older and stronger imperial powers against their emerging rivals.

Unsurprisingly, it was to Gokhale that the young Gandhi looked for inspiration, not Tilak. But others recognized his pre-eminent role in giving new direction and leadership to the Indian freedom movement. Nehru pointed out that the “real symbol of the new age was Bal Gangadhar Tilak”, and recognized that “the vast majority of politically-minded people in India favored Tilak and his group”. This was acknowledge as much by Sir Valentine Chirol, foreign editor of the The Times, who noted how Tilak’s imprisonment deprived India of it’s most able and determined leader, perhaps the only one capable of providing the Indian national movement (with it’s different and often contradictory trends), the organization and unity that had been lacking thus far. N.C. Kelkar, a biographer and follower of Tilak echoed such sentiments.

PRESSURES OF LOYALISM

A characteristic illustration of the hostility of communal organizations such as the Muslim League, and the sections of the English-language press to the national movement is the following resolution of the Deccan provincial Organization of the All-India Muslim League published in the Times of India :

“This meeting puts on record its unalterable conviction that the maintenance of British rule in India, not only a titular supremacy, but a vigorous force permeating every branch of the administration is an absolute and paramount necessity. It, therefore, expresses its strong denunciation and abhorrence of the recent attempts made in this Province, by some political fanatics, to weaken that supremacy (by speeches and writings), tending to foster racial animosity between Europeans and Indians in this country. Further it resolves by all the means in its power to prevent the rise and growth of the spirit of sedition and insubordination among all classes of His Majesty’s subjects in the Deccan, and particularly among the followers of Islam.” (Published in the Times of India, Aug 15, 1908)

As early as 1893, Tilak had attributed tensions between Hindus and Muslims to the instigation of Anglo-Indian officers in the colonial administration. According to him, the ‘Divide and Rule’ policy of Lord Dufferin was at the bottom of all the mischief.

In 1906, Lord Curzon arbitrarily partitioned Bengal, and relied upon the Muslim League to provoke bloody clashes between Hindus and Muslims. To combat the Swadeshi movement in East Bengal, special ‘Swajati’ organizations were set up under the auspices of the Muslim League. Their members (with police protection) would beat up Swadeshi activists. Even Congress moderates, such as Surendranath Bannerjee noted the role of the East Bengal colonial administration in instigating fratricidal strife amongst Hindus and Muslims.

Freedom Struggle : Carved Milestones July 20, 2008

“Nadir Shah looted the country only once. But the British loot us every day. Every year wealth to the tune of 4.5 million dollar is being drained out, sucking our very blood. Britain should immediately quit India.” That’s what the Sindh Times wrote on May 20, 1884, a year before the Indian National Congress was born and 58 years before the ”Quit India” movement of 1942 was launched.

Contrary to the view that nationalist sentiments were awoken by the Indian National Congress only when M.K. Gandhi took over it’s leadership, nationalist feelings in India had been present as early as 1857, and expressions of Indian nationalism manifested themselves in various forms all through the course of British rule.

The Boycott of Foreign Goods

An early form of economic nationalism was seen in Shikarpur (Sindh), when the Pritam Dharma Sabha, set up in 1888, initiated various social reforms, but also inspired the setting up of swadeshi sugar, soap, and cloth mills. The literature produced by the Sabha was considered so revolutionary that, in 1909, three of it’s members, Seth Chetumal, Virumal Begraj and Govind Sharma were all sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment by the British administration.

The partition of Bengal along communal lines in 1905 by the British (”Vanga Bhanga”) triggered a nation-wide Swadeshi movement, giving a great fillip to the freedom movement throughout the country. A boycott of foreign goods was proclaimed on August 7, 1905. At this time, the Indian National Congress gave only conditional support to the plan, but a year later, under the influence of more radical leaders like Tilak from Maharashtra, Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh from Bengal and Lajpat Rai from Punjab, the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1906 proclaimed for the first time, the concept of ’swaraj’, i.e self-rule and called for support to the boycott movement. Although the demand for ’swaraj’ was only a partial step towards full political and economic freedom for India since India was to remain a part of the British empire, it was an important step towards real independence, and it encouraged several local nationalist groups to participate in the movement to boycott imported goods, and set up local stores where only locally manufactured goods would be sold.

Early Calls for Complete Independence: The Emergence of the Ghadar Party

The first Indian political organization to call for complete independence from British rule was the Ghadar (or Gadar) Party, organized in 1913 by Indian immigrants in California. The Ghadar movement was remarkable for many reasons. Although Sikhs from Punjab made up the majority of it’s founding members, the movement was completely devoid of any trace of regional or religious chauvinism. It’s platform was uncompromisingly secular and called for a total rejection of any form of caste discrimination. And unlike the Congress, it’s membership was primarily drawn from the working class and poor peasantry. Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus of all castes (including Dalits) were welcomed in the movement without bias or discrimination.

The literature of the Ghadar Party was also the clearest in describing the depth of misery that the common people of India experienced under British rule. They were also amongst the first to anticipate the outbreak of the First World War. Correctly sensing that it was an opportunity for the Indian people to liberate themselves from the yolk of colonial rule, they called for a mass movement for total independence. In their widely distributed poster, “Jang Da Hoka ” (Declaration of War) they warned of the danger of Indian soldiers being drawn into the British War effort in the First World War.

Unfortunately, the Congress failed to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity and leaders like Gandhi went as far as campaigning for the British War effort, calling upon Indians to enroll in the British Army. This treacherous and sycophantic policy of Gandhi not only drew biting criticism from Ghadar activists, but opposition from other quarters also emerged.

At a time when Gandhi was still addressing “War Recruitment Melas”, Dr. Tuljaram Khilnani of Nawabshah publicly campaigned against War Loan Bonds. Sindh was then part of Bombay Presidency and the Sindh Congress, part of Bombay Provincial Congress Committee. When Gandhi sought election to the AICC from Bombay PCC, the delegate from Sindh opposed his election in view of his support to the British war effort.

Nevertheless, by and large, the Congress was a relatively conservative organization at this time and drew stinging criticism from the Ghadarites. Rejecting the notion that freedom could be won by participating in the oppressive bureaucracy of the British or by pleading with the British for reforms or self-rule, the Ghadarites believed that only a militant mass movement that involved workers and peasants and all other sections of Indian society on a non-sectarian basis could succeed. They envisaged an India that would not only be free from exploitation by the British but would also be free from hunger, homelessness and disease. In their vision of India there would be no place for religious superstition or any socially sanctioned inequities.

Although the Ghadar movement started in California, chapters were established all over the world and by 1916, a million copies of their weekly pamphlet were published and circulated. As the movement grew in strength, there were plans to set up cells of the Ghadar party all over India and thousands of young volunteers attempted to return home and initiate local chapters wherever they could. The British, realizing the dangers posed by this extremely radical movement moved quickly and closed in on the revolutionaries. Hundreds were charged for sedition in the five Lahore Conspiracy Cases. According to one estimate, a total of 145 Ghadarites were hanged, and 308 were given sentences longer than 14 years. Several were sentenced to hard labour in the notorious prison known as Kala Pani in the Andamans.

The Ghadarites were especially successful in winning over Indian soldiers in the British Army and enticing them to revolt. Soldiers in the Hongkong regiments were arrested and court-martialed for distributing Ghadar and sent back to India and imprisoned. Two Singapore regiments rebelled in Penang, but the rebellion was brutally crushed. In Rangoon in January 1915, the 130th Baluchi regiment revolted. 200 soldiers of this regiment were court-martialed. Four soldiers were hanged, 69 were given life imprisonment and 126 were given rigorous imprisonment for varying terms. Pandit Sohan Lal Pathak, one of the outstanding leaders of the Ghadar Party was hanged on February 10, 1916 in Mandalay jail for inciting rebellion against the British rule. The Party was also active amongst Indian soldiers in Iraq and Iran. As a result of their work, the 15th Lancers, stationed in Basra revolted and 64 soldiers were court-martialed. Similarly, the 24th Punjabi and 22nd Pahari regiments also revolted.

But in spite of the tremendous repression unleashed by the British against the Ghadarites, the British were unable to stop a mass wave of revolutionary unrest in 1919. The closing months of 1918 and the first months of 1919 saw the opening of a strike movement on a scale never seen before. The Bombay mill strike extended to 125,000 workers. In spite of the Rowlatt Act of 1919 that sought to extend the provisions of martial law, a wave of mass demonstrations, strikes, and civil unrest confronted the British authorities. The British rulers were taken by surprise by the courageous resistance of the workers and the official Government Report for the year noted with alarmed amazement how Hindus and Muslims had resisted their power unitedly. Unsurprisingly, the British responded with extraordinary measures of repression.

General Dyer’s Jallianawala Bagh masssacre followed the strike wave, when an unarmed crowd of 10,000 Baisakhi celebrators was mercilessly attacked with over 1600 rounds of ammunition. Yet, Gandhi continued to advocate cooperation with the British in December 1919, even as the resistance of ordinary Indians continued. The first six months of 1920 saw an even greater level of mass resistance, with no less than 200 strikes taking place involving 1.5 million workers. It was in response to this rising mass revolutionary tide that the leadership of the Congress was forced to confront it’s conservatism and give a somewhat more militant face to it’s program. The “non-violent non-cooperation” movement was thus launched under the stewardship of Congress leaders like Lajpat Rai, Motilal Nehru and Gandhi.

Other Radical Forces

But in contrast to the foot-dragging of the Congress, other far more radical forces were already coalescing. The Communist Party of India was formed in 1920, who while demanding complete independence, also stressed the need for giving a radical content to the slogan of swaraj through a definite programme for social and economic change by including such vital questions as abolition of landlordism, end to feudal domination and elimination of caste oppression.

While participating in the freedom struggle, they devoted their energies to the task of organising workers in trade unions, peasants in the Kisan Sabhas, and students in their unions. It was due to these efforts that the national organisations like the All India Kisan Sabha and the All India Students Federation were founded and the All India Trade Union Congress strengthened. The Communists also took the initiative in founding progressive, cultural and literary organisations like the Progressive Writers’ Association and the Indian People’s Theatre Association.

But the British rulers were determined to stamp out communism in India. Just as they had repressed the Ghadarites, they unleashed brutal repression on the fledgling Communist groups and banned communist literature to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas. They conducted a series of conspiracy cases against the young leadership of the communist movement – Peshawar (1922); Kanpur (1924) and Meerut (1929). The Party was declared illegal soon after its formation in the 1920s and had to work in conditions of illegality for over two decades.

The Conservatism of the Congress

In many respects, the analysis of Indian conditions by the Ghadar Party and of the Indian Communists was very similiar, and in spite of the repression they faced, their message continued to draw followers. But the Ghadarites were far more critical of the Congress and were a good deal more skeptical of the Congress leadership than were the Communists who thought that the pressure of the mass movements would force the Congress to act more decisively against the British. But they had perhaps underestimated the depth of conservatism that held back the Congress leadership. In 1921, Republican Muslim leader Hasrat Mohani wanted to move a resolution defining Swaraj as complete independence, free from all foreign control. Much to the relief of the British, Gandhi led the opposition against the resolution and secured it’s rejection. In 1921, there was seething anger against the high taxes imposed by the British. Delegations from numerous districts approached Gandhi to lead a No-Tax campaign. In Guntur, the no-tax campaign began without the permission of the national leadership, but Gandhi responded by calling for all taxes to be paid by the due date. However, he agreed to lead a No-Tax campaign in the single district of Bardoli, but even that was withdrawn when he heard news of a peasant rebellion in Chauri Chaura village in UP.

Gandhi’s Bardoli decision created deep consternation in Congress circles. Subhas Chandra Bose wrote: “To sound the order of retreat just when public enthusiasm was reaching the boiling point was nothing short of a national calamity. The principal lieutenants of the Mahatma, Deshbandhu Das, Pandit Motilal Nehru and Lala Lajpat Rai, who were all in prison, shared the popular resentment. I was with the Deshbandu at the time, and I could see that he was beside himself with anger and sorrow.” (quoted from The Indian Struggle, p.90)

Motilal Nehru, Lajpat Rai and others sent from prison long and indignant letters to Gandhi protesting at his decision to which Gandhi replied that men in prison were “civilly dead” and had no claim to any say in policy. Following this deeply unpopular decision, the popularity of the Congress slipped dramatically, with Gandhi himself having to admit that in place of the proclaimed aim of the Congress reaching ten million members, it could barely count 200,000 in it’s favour.

It was thus inevitable that young revolutionaries would seek inspiration from other and more radical forces. Some like M.N. Roy were attracted by the idea of organizing a revolutionary armed struggle against the British and joined hands with Rash Behari Bose in trying to seek support for such a campaign abroad. For others, the message of the Ghadar Party struck a chord. The influence of the Gadharites was particularly notable in Punjab. The young and charismatic martyr, Shaheed Bhagat Singh was born into a family of Ghadar supporters and was deeply inspired by their message. The Naujawan Bharat Sabha (1925) was initiated by Shaheed Bhagat Singh who also coined the widely popular slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad‘ (Long Live The Revolution). Also in 1925, Ghadar supporters established a Workers and Peasant Party (Kirti Kisan Party) in the Punjab. The Kirti Party also worked amongst youth and enjoyed close relations with the the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, with Bhagat Singh working on the Kirti Urdu edition. Like the Ghadarites, the Kirti party also drew it’s membership from all ranks of society – cutting across religious barriers, with leaders drawn from all communities: Sikh, Hindu and Muslim.

With the Congress unable to initiate mass movements of any significance in the late 1920s, the opposition to British rule came largely from organizations such as the Workers and Peasants Party and militant unions like the Girni Kamgar Union or Red Flag Union of the Bombay textile workers. The Congress held on to it’s conservatism by once again rejecting a vote for complete independence at it’s 1928 session. (Gandhi prevailed over the more radical demands of Subhash Bose and Jawahar Lal Nehru). Nevertheless, 1929 was a year of significant peasant uprisings and strikes. It was also a year when small groups of underground revolutionaries organized attacks on police stations, British Army camps and other British controlled centres of repressions. Most were caught and either hanged or sentenced to hard labour in Kala Pani.

Emergence of the armed revolutionaries

Virtually all the armed revolutionaries had participated enthusiastically in the non-violent non-cooperation movement earlier. But when the non-cooperation movement was suddenly suspended by Gandhi, the more radically minded of the young leaders looked to other leaders for inspiration. In 1904, V.D. Savarkar had organized Abhinav Bharat as a secret society of revolutionaries. Anushilan Samiti and Yugantar were two other such societies. Ideas of armed resistance to British rule were propogated and international centres were established with Madame Cama and Ajit Singh representing the struggle in Europe, and Shyamji Krishnaverma and others organizing chapters in London.

Frustrated and disillusioned by the inaction of the Congress, the revolutionaries in northern India were the first to reorganize under the leadership of the older veterans, Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chatterjea and Sachindranath Sanyal whose Bandi Jiwan served as a textbook for the revolutionary movement. They met in Kanpur in October 1924 and founded the Hindustan Republican Association (or Army) to organize armed revolution to overthrow colonial rule.

The advance of the armed struggle required bold and risky actions. Volunteers had to be recruited and trained and arms had to be procured, requiring money – hence raids on the British treasury. On 9 August 1925, ten men held up the 8-Down train at Kakori (a village near Lucknow), to get access to its railway cash. British reaction was quick and hard. Ashfaqulla Khan, Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were hanged, four others were sent to the Andamans for life and seventeen others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The Kakori case was a major setback to the revolutionaries of northern India; but it was not a fatal blow. Younger men such as Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Varma and Jaidev Kapur in U.P., Bhagat Singh, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Sukhdev in Punjab set out to reorganize the HRA under the overall leadership of Chandrashekhar Azad. At this time, they were also strongly influenced by socialist ideas. At a Delhi meeting in September 1928, a new collective leadership adopted socialism as their official goal and changed their party’s name to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (Army).

On 8 April 1929, HSRA embarked on a plan to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly against the passage of two new repressive bills – the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. The aim was not to cause any loss of life, but to use the daring action to awaken and energize the Indian masses. It was intended to ‘make the deaf hear‘. The objective was to get arrested and to use the trial court as a vehicle to disseminate their dreams and ideas for a new and liberated India.

Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt were tried in the Assembly Bomb Case. Later Sukhdev, Rajguru and tens of other revolutionaries were also tried in a series of famous conspiracy cases. Their fearless and unswerving attitudes in court became legendary. Every day they entered the court-room chanting slogans ‘Inquilab Zindabad,’ ‘Down, Down with Imperialism,’ singing songs like Sarfaroshi ki tamanna hai (our heart is filled with the desire of martyrdom) and Mere rang de basanti chola (dye my clothes in saffron, the color of courage and sacrifice).

In March 1931, Rajguru, Sukhdev, and Bhagat Singh were hanged by the British in spite of tremendous popular opposition to their hanging. Bhagat Singh became a household hero, and his hanging led to an outpouring of grief and sorrow all over the nation. Although the Congress could have utilized the mood of popular anger to accelerate the mass struggle, it’s response to the Bhagat Singh trial was tepid. In his private negotiations with the British, it appears that Gandhi did not press the issue of Bhagat Singh’s impending death sentence. Supporters of Bhagat Singh became particularly bitter when Gandhi failed to fight hard on their behalf.

In Bengal too, armed revolutionary groups started reorganizing and developing underground activities even as some of the leaders maintained their links with the Congress. One of their planned actions was to assassinate Charles Tegart – the much hated Police Commissioner of Calcutta. The attempt failed and Gopinath Saha was arrested and hanged for the attempt despite massive popular protest. Despite the setback, attempts at armed revolt were not abandoned. Among the new ‘Revolt Groups,’ the most active and famous was the Chittagong group led by Surya Sen.

Surya Sen had actively participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement and had become a teacher in a national school in Chittagong. He had also been closely associated with Congress work in Chittagong. Along with other colleagues in the local Congress committees, and several young recruits, Surya Sen and his compatriots decided to organize a rebellion, on however small a scale, to demonstrate that it was possible to challenge the armed might of the British empire in India. Their action plan was to include occupation of the two main armories in Chittagong and the seizing of their arms with which four large band of revolutionaries could be formed into an armed detachment. In a fierce fight, (April, 1930) eighty British troops and twelve revolutionaries died, but Chittagong could not be held by the revolutionaries. When the armed revolutionaries dispersed into the Chittagong countryside, most of the Muslim villagers gave food and shelter to the revolutionaries in hiding, enabling them to survive for three years. The Chittagong Armoury Raid had a tremendous impact on the people of Bengal and inspired numerous other acts of armed resistance. But Surya Sen was eventually caught and hanged in 1934. Many of his co-fighters were also caught and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

Just as it seemed that the national movement was completely slipping away from the influence of the Congress, Gandhi returned to the mode of non-violent struggle and launched the salt satyagraha (1930-31). Campaigns to boycott imported goods were also launched. With the masses energized once again, a series of anti-British action took place, of which most notable were the raid on the Chittagong Armory and a mutiny by Garhwali soldiers in Peshawar. For ten days, British authority in Peshawar collapsed. But the brave soldiers of Peshawar who had resisted British orders to shoot at their civilian brethren during a mass demonstration received little sympathy from Gandhi.

Trade Union Resistance

In addition, a wave of strikes confronted the British authorities once again. Although the communists were officially outlawed, communist and socialist sympathizers remained active in the trade union movement. The industrial workers of Bombay offered the most heroic resistance, refusing to be daunted by lathi charges, beatings and indiscriminate firings. In response to such growing opposition, the British resorted to massive armed retaliation even calling in bombers from it’s Royal Air Force to bomb striking or protesting workers.

These actions by Bombay’s militant workers also had an impact on British businessmen in Bombay, who joined with Indian businessmen and the Bombay Chamber of Commerce in demanding immediate self-government for Indian on a dominion basis. Working class resistance continued throughout the 30s, but overall (barring minor and cosmetic concessions obtained from the British) the national movement made insufficient progress, hamstrung as it was by the conservatism of Gandhi and his followers in the Congress on one hand, and pushed back by the brutal repression of the British colonial overlords on the other.

Building up to the Quit India movement

Subhas Chandra Bose attempted to lead a radical revival of the Congress and tried to steer it in a more radical and socialist direction. In 1939, he defeated Gandhi’s nominee Pattabhi Sitaramayya to be re-elected Congress president. But he was ill-prepared to deal with a campaign of non-cooperation launched against him by Gandhi, and resigned a few months later to launch an alternative and more radical platform that eventually became the Forward Block in independent India.

The outbreak of the Second World War opened up a new and more determined phase of the struggle against British rule. In 1939 and 1940, strikes and peasant uprisings reached a fever pitch. In 1941, the Indian National Army (INA) was launched by General Mohan Singh in Malaya with the help of the Japanese. He belonged to Sialkot (Punjab) and had been greatly influenced by the killings of Jallianwala Bagh and hangings of the Ghadar Party members during his younger years. In 1943, Netaji Subhash Chander Bose (who had always been close to the armed revolutionaries of Bengal) took over the Indian National Army and it was renamed as the Azad Hind Fauj. More than two million Indian civilians living in South-east Asia responded to his call for “total mobilization”. In his army of liberation Punjabi, Muslim, Sikh and Pathan professional soldiers fought side by side with Tamil and Malayalee rubber plantation workers. In his Azad Hind Movement Netaji was able to demonstrate by example how to achieve Hindu-Muslim unity and amity and enable women to get their rightful role in public affairs.

By 1942, the Congress too was compelled to act boldly, and issued the Quit India call in August. The Quit India Movement of 1942 swept across the length and breadth of the country like a mighty tidal wave bringing in its fold people from all walks of life, arousing in them tremendous patriotic fervour and an irresistible urge to act. Volunteers from groups like the Hindu Mahasabha who had all this while remained aloof from the mass struggle joined in as well. Individual industrialists were emboldened too and encouraged strike actions against the British.

The Role of women

One of the important facets of India’s freedom movement was the growing participation of women. Women played an especially crucial role in the economic boycott campaigns and often participated in the non-cooperation movement with as much or even greater enthusiasm than their husbands or male relatives. In rallies organized by the Congress, women attended in large numbers often with little children in tow. Particularly notable was the participation of women in the armed struggle of Bengal. In the group led by Surya Sen, they provided shelter, acted as messengers and custodians of arms, and fought, guns in hand. Pritilata Waddedar died while conducting a raid, while Kalpana Dutt (now Joshi) was arrested and tried along with Surya Sen and given a life sentence. In December 1931, two school girls of Comilla, Santi Ghosh and Suniti Chowdhury, shot dead the District Magistrate. In February 1932, Bina Das fired point blank at the Governor while receiving her degree at the Convocation. When the entire Congress leadership was put in jail in 1942, women leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali and Sucheta Kripalani emerged with Achyut Patwardhan and Ram Manohar Lohia and others to lead the underground resistance. Usha Mehta ran the Congress radio. Congress socialists, Forward Bloc members, and other armed resistance factions were active in this period, working through underground cells in Mumbai, Pune, Satara, Baroda, and other parts of Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, UP, Bihar and Delhi.

The Revolutionary Peasantry, Adivasis and Dalits

The final phase of the Indian freedom struggle also saw peasant struggles rising to new heights of militancy. Throughout the country, Kisan Sabhas had been active in the 1930s. After the Quit-India call, peasants of all classes joined in the freedom struggle in Eastern UP, Bihar, Midnapur in Bengal, Satara in Mahrashtra, and also in Andhra, Gujarat and Kerala. Even some of the Zamindars (landlords) joined in. The Raja of Darbhanga was one of the most supportive of the resisting peasants. Adivasis and landless peasants were particularly heroic in their struggles. Crushed by the inhumane demands of the Zamindari system, they had to fight a dual war – one against the British and the other against the Indian landlords who collaborated with British rule. Amongst the most significant of these struggles were those of Tebhaga, Punnapra Vayalar, the Worli adivasis and above all the historic Telangana peasants armed struggle which was directed against the Nizam of Hyderabad who had collaborated with the British.

During the course of the freedom struggle, the issue of equality for Adivasis and Dalits came up again and again. Phule, Periyar and Ambedkar emerged as amongst the most prominent of the Dalit leaders. The Ghadar movement, the HSRA and later the INA led the way in breaking down caste and communal barriers. The Congress, while open to some reforms, often did not go far enough – leading to well-deserved criticism from the more radical of the Dalit and Adivasi leaders. Nevertheless, virtually all the advanced sections of the freedom struggle came to the conclusion that for India to succeed as a modern nation, the issue of equality for Dalits and Adivasis could not be dismissed.

Final push towards freedom

After the Second World War, the momentum created by the Quit India movement led to growing militant actions that weakened British authority in an irreparable way. The World War had compelled the British into setting up Indian Navy units that recruited officers from various parts of India. The Indian naval men were mistreated and discriminated against, leading to a strike call in Februrary 1946. It quickly drew support from the Indian crews of all the 20 vessels anchored in Bombay port. 20,000 naval ratings went on strike. ‘Victory to India‘, ‘Long live the Revolution’, and ‘Hindus and Muslims Unite’ were some of their slogans. The struggle soon spread to barracks in Thane and Delhi, and also to ships anchored in Karachi, Calcutta and Vishakapatnam. 200,000 workers in Bombay’s factories downed their tools in solidarity. But leaders of the Congress including Gandhi and Maulana Azad were critical of the strike as was Jinnah of the Muslim League. Patel attempted to assuage the strikers by promising that they would not be victimized. But the assurances of Patel did not prevent mass arrests or police actions that led to a death toll of 1700.

Nevertheless, the strike in the Indian Navy played an important role in energizing and emboldening the Indian masses. Militant acts of resistance accelerated. The British realized that they could no longer hold on to India and instead turned their attentions on partitioning India. The Muslim League was more than willing to play an active role in these dangerous and divisive maneuvers. In a bizarre interpretation of the ‘ right to self-determination ‘, the then legal Communist Party of India (who in their many years of being underground played a vital role in energizing the trade unions and Kisan Sabhas) endorsed the idea that India’s Muslims constituted a separate nation, thus providing ideological cover for the Muslim League’s incendiary propaganda. This led to a split with the Ghadarites and other communist organizations who fought vehemently against the ideology of the two-nation theory. Hindu and Muslim unity had been almost exemplary in the trade union and radical peasant movements. Yet, in a blunder of monumental proportions, the leaders of the Communist Party appeared to endorse the divisive message of the Muslim League.

The Congress although reluctant to accept partition put up a feeble fight. Decades of conservatism prevented it from moving the Indian masses into a struggle against the terror tactics of the Muslim League. The Indian Navy strike had shown that Hindus and Muslims were more than willing to unite against the British. In the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose, they were willing to take up arms together. But the Congress leadership remained wedded to non-violence even as the Muslim League was arming it’s separatist volunteers.

Independence was won but at a heavy price that continues to torment the people of the sub-continent through the creation of Pakistan, a state based on the thoroughly reactionary foundation of religious separatism and intolerance.

As we look to the future, it is important to recall that the fight against religious bigotry and fundamentalism played a key role in the European renaissance. It is exceedingly doubtful if the people of the Indian sub-continent will be able to fully utilize the benefits of freedom without completely dismantling all traces of religious superstition, bigotry and fundamentalist terror.

Although inspired minds were unable to prevail over the odium of religion-based divisiveness in 1947, it is imperative that the tragedy of partition not be repeated. India’s history provides several inspiring examples of how religious conservatism and social rigidity were challenged and defeated by rational and secular forces. But today’s secular movement in India is confused and disoriented. Today, Kashmir is the primary battleground for this fight and “secular” Indians who remain passive or indifferent to the struggle for saving Kashmir from the infiltration of Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists cannot hope to win any plaudits or gain mass influence. Neither can those who wish to defeat the cancer of Islamic separatism with Hindu chauvinism or obscurantism.

The struggle for secular society must also not be divorced from the numerous economic problems that hinder our progress and should go hand in hand with the struggle of the Adivasis, Dalits and OBCs for genuine equality. We must all endeavour to create an environment where the message of the greatest heroes of the Indian freedom struggle is more widely disseminated than ever before and the scourge of hunger, homelessness, illiteracy and disease is eliminated. Independence will not be complete until we build a nation where standards of living are raised across the board, and the benefits of modern science enable the construction of a truly humane and equitable social milieu offering genuinely equal opportunities for all.

Colonial Legacy : Myths Vs Beliefs July 20, 2008

While few educated South Asians would deny that British Colonial rule was detrimental to the interests of the common people of the sub-continent – several harbor an illusion that the British weren’t all bad. Didn’t they, perhaps, educate us – build us modern cities, build us irrigation canals – protect our ancient monuments – etc. etc. And then, there are some who might even say that their record was actually superior to that of independent India’s! Perhaps, it is time that the colonial record be retrieved from the archives and re-examined – so that those of us who weren’t alive during the freedom movement can learn to distinguish between the myths and the reality.

Literacy and Education

Several Indians are deeply concerned about why literacy rates in India are still so low. So in the last year, I have been making a point of asking English-speaking Indians to guess what India’s literacy rate in the colonial period might have been. These were Indians who went to school in the sixties and seventies (only two decades after independence) – and I was amazed to hear their fairly confident guesses. Most guessed the number to be between 30% and 40%. When I suggested that their guess was on the high side – they offered 25% to 35%. No one was prepared to believe that literacy in British India in 1911 was only 6%, in 1931 it was 8%, and by 1947 it had crawled to 11%! That fifty years of freedom had allowed the nation to quintuple it’s literacy rate was something that almost seemed unfathomable to them. Perhaps – the British had concentrated on higher education ….? But in 1935, only 4 in 10,000 were enrolled in universities or higher educational institutes. In a nation of then over 350 million people only 16,000 books (no circulation figures) were published in that year (i.e. 1 per 20,000).

Urban Development

It is undoubtedly true that the British built modern cities with modern conveniences for their administrative officers. But it should be noted that these were exclusive zones not intended for the “natives” to enjoy. Consider that in 1911, 69 per cent of Bombay’s population lived in one-room tenements (as against 6 per cent in London in the same year). The 1931 census revealed that the figure had increased to 74 per cent – with one-third living more than 5 to a room. The same was true of Karachi and Ahmedabad. After the Second World War, 13 per cent of Bombay’s population slept on the streets. As for sanitation, 10-15 tenements typically shared one water tap!

Yet, in 1757 (the year of the Plassey defeat), Clive of the East India Company had observed of Murshidabad in Bengal: “This city is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of London...” (so quoted in the Indian Industrial Commission Report of 1916-18). Dacca was even more famous as a manufacturing town, it’s muslin a source of many legends and it’s weavers had an international reputation that was unmatched in the medieval world. But in 1840 it was reported by Sir Charles Trevelyan to a parliamentary enquiry that Dacca’s population had fallen from 150,000 to 20,000. Montgomery Martin – an early historian of the British Empire observed that Surat and Murshidabad had suffered a similiar fate. (This phenomenon was to be replicated all over India – particularly in Awadh (modern U.P) and other areas that had offered the most heroic resistance to the British during the revolt of 1857.)

The percentage of population dependant on agriculture and pastoral pursuits actually rose to 73% in 1921 from 61% in 1891. (Reliable figures for earlier periods are not available.)

In 1854, Sir Arthur Cotton writing in “Public Works in India” noted: “Public works have been almost entirely neglected throughout India… The motto hitherto has been: ‘Do nothing, have nothing done, let nobody do anything..…” Adding that the Company was unconcerned if people died of famine, or if they lacked roads and water.

Nothing can be more revealing than the remark by John Bright in the House of Commons on June 24, 1858, “The single city of Manchester, in the supply of its inhabitants with the single article of water, has spent a larger sum of money than the East India Company has spent in the fourteen years from 1834 to 1848 in public works of every kind throughout the whole of its vast dominions.“

Irrigation and Agricultural Development

There is another popular belief about British rule: ‘The British modernized Indian agriculture by building canals’. But the actual record reveals a somewhat different story. ” The roads and tanks and canals,” noted an observer in 1838 (G. Thompson, “India and the Colonies,” 1838), ”which Hindu or Mussulman Governments constructed for the service of the nations and the good of the country have been suffered to fall into dilapidation; and now the want of the means of irrigation causes famines.” Montgomery Martin, in his standard work “The Indian Empire”, in 1858, noted that the old East India Company “omitted not only to initiate improvements, but even to keep in repair the old works upon which the revenue depended.“

The Report of the Bengal Irrigation Department Committee in 1930 reads: “In every district the Khals (canals) which carry the internal boat traffic become from time to time blocked up with silt. Its Khals and rivers are the roads end highways of Eastern Bengal, and it is impossible to overestimate the importance to the economic life of this part of the province of maintaining these in proper navigable order ……. ” “As regards the revival or maintenance of minor routes, … practically nothing has been done, with the result that, in some parts of the Province at least, channels have been silted up, navigation has become limited to a few months in the year, and crops can only be marketed when the Khals rise high enough in the monsoon to make transport possible“.

Sir William Willcock, a distinguished hydraulic engineer, whose name was associated with irrigation enterprises in Egypt and Mesopotamia had made an investigation of conditions in Bengal. He had discovered that innumerable small destructive rivers of the delta region, constantly changing their course, were originally canals which under the English regime were allowed to escape from their channels and run wild. Formerly these canals distributed the flood waters of the Ganges and provided for proper drainage of the land, undoubtedly accounting for that prosperity of Bengal which lured the rapacious East India merchants there in the early days of the eighteenth century.. He wrote” Not only was nothing done to utilize and improve the original canal system, but railway embankments were subsequently thrown up, entirely destroying it. Some areas, cut off from the supply of loam-bearing Ganges water, have gradually become sterile and unproductive, others improperly drained, show an advanced degree of water-logging, with the inevitable accompaniment of malaria. Nor has any attempt been made to construct proper embankments for the Gauges in its low course, to prevent the enormous erosion by which villages and groves and cultivated fields are swallowed up each year.“

“Sir William Willcock severely criticizes the modern administrators and officials, who, with every opportunity to call in expert technical assistance, have hitherto done nothing to remedy this disastrous situation, from decade to decade.” Thus wrote G. Emerson in “Voiceless Millions,” in 1931 quoting the views of Sir William Willcock in his “Lectures on the Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems” (Calcutta University Readership Lectures, University of Calcutta, 1930)

Modern Medicine and Life Expectancy

Even some serious critics of colonial rule grudgingly grant that the British brought modern medicine to India. Yet – all the statistical indicators show that access to modern medicine was severely restricted. A 1938 report by the ILO (International Labor Office) on “Industrial Labor in India” revealed that life expectancy in India was barely 25 years in 1921 (compared to 55 for England) and had actually fallen to 23 in 1931! In his recently published “Late Victorian Holocausts” Mike Davis reports that life expectancy fell by 20% between 1872 and 1921.

In 1934, there was one hospital bed for 3800 people in British India and this figure included hospital beds reserved for the British rulers. (In that same year, in the Soviet Union, there were ten times as many.) Infant mortality in Bombay was 255 per thousand in 1928. (In the same year, it was less than half that in Moscow.)

Poverty and Population Growth

Several Indians when confronted with such data from the colonial period argue that the British should not be specially targeted because India’s problems of poverty pre-date colonial rule, and in any case, were exacerbated by rapid population growth. Of course, no one who makes the first point is able to offer any substantive proof that such conditions prevailed long before the British arrived, and to counter such an argument would be difficult in the absence of reliable and comparable statistical data from earlier centuries. But some readers may find the anecdotal evidence intriguing. In any case, the population growth data is available and is quite remarkable in what it reveals.

Between 1870 and 1910, India’s population grew at an average rate of 19%. England and Wales’ population grew three times as fast – by 58%! Average population growth in Europe was 45%. Between 1921-40, the population in India grew faster at 21% but was still less than the 24% growth of population in the US!

In 1941, the density of population in India was roughly 250 per square mile almost a third of England’s 700 per square mile. Although Bengal was much more densely inhabited at almost 780 per square mile – that was only about 10% more than England. Yet, there was much more poverty in British India than in England and an unprecedented number of famines were recorded during the period of British rule.

In the first half of the 19th century, there were seven famines leading to a million and a half deaths. In the second half, there were 24 famines (18 between 1876 and 1900) causing over 20 million deaths (as per official records). W. Digby, noted in “Prosperous British India” in 1901 that “stated roughly, famines and scarcities have been four times as numerous, during the last thirty years of the 19th century as they were one hundred years ago, and four times as widespread.” In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.

Not surprising, since the export of food grains had increased by a factor of four just prior to that period. And export of other agricultural raw materials had also increased in similar proportions. Land that once produced grain for local consumption was now taken over by by former slave-owners from N. America who were permitted to set up plantations for the cultivation of lucrative cash crops exclusively for export. Particularly galling is how the British colonial rulers continued to export foodgrains from India to Britain even during famine years.

Annual British Government reports repeatedly published data that showed 70-80% of Indians were living on the margin of subsistence. That two-thirds were undernourished, and in Bengal, nearly four-fifths were undernourished.

Contrast this data with the following accounts of Indian life prior to colonization:-

” ….even in the smallest villages rice, flour, butter, milk, beans and other vegetables, sugar and sweetmeats can be procured in abundance …. Tavernier writing in the 17th century in his “Travels in India”.

Manouchi – the Venetian who became chief physician to Aurangzeb (also in the 17th century) wrote: “Bengal is of all the kingdoms of the Moghul, best known in France….. We may venture to say it is not inferior in anything to Egypt – and that it even exceeds that kingdom in its products of silks, cottons, sugar, and indigo. All things are in great plenty here, fruits, pulse, grain, muslins, cloths of gold and silk...”

The French traveller, Bernier also described 17th century Bengal in a similiar vein: “The knowledge I have acquired of Bengal in two visits inclines me to believe that it is richer than Egypt. It exports in abundance cottons and silks, rice, sugar and butter. It produces amply for it’s own consumption of wheat, vegetables, grains, fowls, ducks and geese. It has immense herds of pigs and flocks of sheep and goats. Fish of every kind it has in profusion. From Rajmahal to the sea is an endless number of canals, cut in bygone ages from the Ganges by immense labour for navigation and irrigation.”

The poverty of British India stood in stark contrast to these eye witness reports and has to be ascribed to the pitiful wages that working people in India received in that period. A 1927-28 report noted that “all but the most highly skilled workmen in India receive wages which are barely sufficient to feed and clothe them. Everywhere will be seen overcrowding, dirt and squalid misery…”

This in spite of the fact that in 1922 – an 11 hour day was the norm (as opposed to an 8 hour day in the Soviet Union.) In 1934, it had been reduced to 10 hours (whereas in the Soviet Union, the 7 hour day had been legislated as early as in 1927) What was worse, there were no enforced restrictions on the use of child labour and the Whitley Report found children as young as five – working a 12 hour day.

Ancient Monuments

Perhaps the least known aspect of the colonial legacy is the early British attitude towards India’s historic monuments and the extend of vandalism that took place. Instead, there is this pervasive myth of the Britisher as an unbiased “protector of the nation’s historic legacy”.

R.Nath in his ‘History of Decorative Art in Mughal Architecture’ records that scores of gardens, tombs and palaces that once adorned the suburbs of Sikandra at Agra were sold out or auctioned. “Relics of the glorious age of the Mughals were either destroyed or converted beyond recognition..”. “Out of 270 beautiful monuments which existed at Agra alone, before its capture by Lake in 1803, hardly 40 have survived“.

In the same vein, David Carroll (in ‘Taj Mahal’) observes: ” The forts in Agra and Delhi were commandeered at the beginning of the nineteenth century and turned into military garrisons. Marble reliefs were torn down, gardens were trampled, and lines of ugly barracks, still standing today, were installed in their stead. In the Delhi fort, the Hall of Public Audience was made into an arsenal and the arches of the outer colonnades were bricked over or replaced with rectangular wooden windows.”

The Mughal fort at Allahabad (one of Akbar’s favorite) experienced a fate far worse. Virtually nothing of architectural significance is to be seen in the barracks that now make up the fort. The Deccan fort at Ahmednagar was also converted into barracks. Now, only its outer walls can hint at its former magnificence.

Shockingly, even the Taj Mahal was not spared. David Carroll reports: “..By the nineteenth century, its grounds were a favorite trysting place for young Englishmen and their ladies. Open-air balls were held on the marble terrace in front of the main door, and there, beneath Shah Jahan”s lotus dome, brass bands um-pah-pahed and lords and ladies danced the quadrille. The minarets became a popular site for suicide leaps, and the mosques on either side of the Taj were rented out as bungalows to honeymooners. The gardens of the Taj were especially popular for open-air frolics…..”

“At an earlier date, when picnic parties were held in the garden of the Taj, related Lord Curzon, a governor general in the early twentieth century, “it was not an uncommon thing for the revellers to arm themselves with hammer and chisel, with which they wiled away the afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate and carnelian from the cenotaphs of the Emperor and his lamented Queen.” The Taj became a place where one could drink in private, and its parks were often strewn with the figures of inebriated British soldiers…”

Lord William Bentinck, (governor general of Bengal 1828-33, and later first governor general of all India), went so far as to announce plans to demolish the best Mogul monuments in Agra and Delhi and remove their marble facades. These were to be shipped to London, where they would be broken up and sold to members of the British aristocracy. Several of Shahjahan’s pavilions in the Red Fort at Delhi were indeed stripped to the brick, and the marble was shipped off to England (part of this shipment included pieces for King George IV himself). Plans to dismantle the Taj Mahal were in place, and wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds. Just as the demolition work was to begin, news from London indicated that the first auction had not been a success, and that all further sales were cancelled — it would not be worth the money to tear down the Taj Mahal.

Thus the Taj Mahal was spared, and so too, was the reputation of the British as “Protectors of India’s Historic Legacy” ! That innumerable other monuments were destroyed, or left to rack and ruin is a story that has yet to get beyond the specialists in the field.

India and the Industrial Revolution

Perhaps the most important aspect of colonial rule was the transfer of wealth from India to Britain. In his pioneering book, India Today, Rajni Palme Dutt conclusively demonstrates how vital this was to the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Several patents that had remained unfunded suddenly found industrial sponsors once the taxes from India started rolling in. Without capital from India, British banks would have found it impossible to fund the modernization of Britain that took place in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In addition, the scientific basis of the industrial revolution was not a uniquely European contribution. Several civilizations had been adding to the world’s scientific database – especially the civilizations of Asia, (including those of the Indian sub-continent). Without that aggregate of scientific knowledge the scientists of Britain and Europe would have found it impossible to make the rapid strides they made during the period of the Industrial revolution. Moreover, several of these patents, particularly those concerned with the textile industry relied on pre-industrial techniques perfected in the sub-continent. (In fact, many of the earliest textile machines in Britain were unable to match the complexity and finesse of the spinning and weaving machines of Dacca.)

Some euro-centric authors have attempted to deny any such linkage. They have tried to assert that not only was the Industrial Revolution a uniquely British/European event – that colonization and the the phenomenal transfer of wealth that took place was merely incidental to it’s fruition. But the words of Lord Curzon still ring loud and clear. The Viceroy of British India in 1894 was quite unequivocal, “India is the pivot of our Empire …. If the Empire loses any other part of its Dominion we can survive, but if we lose India the sun of our Empire will have set.”

Lord Curzon knew fully well, the value and importance of the Indian colony. It was the transfer of wealth through unprecedented levels of taxation on Indians of virtually all classes that funded the great “Industrial Revolution” and laid the ground for “modernization” in Britain. As early as 1812, an East India Company Report had stated “The importance of that immense empire to this country is rather to be estimated by the great annual addition it makes to the wealth and capital of the Kingdom..…”

Unfair Trade

Few would doubt that Indo-British trade may have been unfair – but it may be noteworthy to see how unfair. In the early 1800s imports of Indian cotton and silk goods faced duties of 70-80%. British imports faced duties of 2-4%! As a result, British imports of cotton manufactures into India increased by a factor of 50, and Indian exports dropped to one-fourth! A similiar trend was noted in silk goods, woollens, iron, pottery, glassware and paper. As a result, millions of ruined artisans and craftsmen, spinners, weavers, potters, smelters and smiths were rendered jobless and had to become landless agricultural workers.

Colonial Beneficiaries

Another aspect of colonial rule that has remained hidden from popular perception is that Britain was not the only beneficiary of colonial rule. British trade regulations even as they discriminated against Indian business interests created a favorable trading environment for other imperial powers. By 1939, only 25% of Indian imports came from Britain. 25% came from Japan, the US and Germany. In 1942-3, Canada and Australia contributed another 8%. In the period immediately before independence, Britain ruled as much on behalf of it’s imperial allies as it did in it’s own interest. The process of “globalization” was already taking shape. But none of this growth trickled down to India. In the last half of 19th century, India’s income fell by 50%. In the 190 years prior to independence, the Indian economy was literally stagnant – it experienced zero growth.

Those who wish India well might do well to re-read this history so the nation isn’t brought to the abyss once again, (and so soon after being liberated from the yoke of colonial rule). While some Indians may wax nostalgic for the return of their former overlords, and some may be ambivalent about colonial rule, most of us relish our freedom and wish to perfect it – not gift it away again.