DURING the period immediately after the calling-off of the Satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act, popular unrest continued to intensify in other forms, particularly in direct class struggles. Among the peasantry, powerful anti-feudal movements developed in the vast Darbhanga raj (covering five districts in Bihar), in the princely states of Mewar and Bijolia, and, most spectacularly, in the Rae Bareli-Pratapgarh region of U.P. At the same time, an unprecedented strike-wave swept the country. To quote a 1923 account:
"November 4 to December 2, 1919, woollen mills, Caunpore, 17,000 men out; December 7, 1919, to January 9, 1920, railway workers, Jamalpur, 16,000 men out; January 9-18, 1920, jute mills, Calcutta, 35,000 men out; January 2 to February 3, general strike, Bombay, 200,000 men out; January 20-31, mill workers, Rangoon, 20,000 men out; January 31, British India Navigation Company, Bombay, 10,000 men out; January 26 to February 16, mill workers, Sholapur, 16,000 men out; February 24 to March 29, Tata Iron and Steel workers, 40,000 men out; March 9, mill workers, Bombay, 60,000 men out; March 20-26, mill workers, Madras, 17,000 men out; May 1920, mill workers, Ahmedabad, 25,000 men out." (Quoted in Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947.)
Even as workers' and peasants' struggles were emerging spontaneously and finding or throwing up new leadership, it was possible that a resurgence of the national movement might get out of the hands of the Congress. Yet the Congress hesitated.
Khilafat politicians were pressing the Congress to take up some form of militant action. Gandhi advised them in February 1920 to take up non-violent non-co-operation, which, on June 9, the Khilafat committee agreed to, authorising Gandhi to lead the movement. Gandhi further delayed, writing a letter to the Viceroy on June 22 and placing a deadline of August 1, 1920.
The Viceroy ignored his letter, and on August 1 Gandhi had little choice but to initiate the movement. Even so, no activities were chalked out till the December 1920 Congress at Nagpur.
It was this Congress that passed the famous resolution for "Swaraj". The pressures had been building up enormously from below. A growing number of militant delegates in the Congress forced more radical stances on the leadership.
For instance, at the Bihar Provincial Conference at Bhagalpur in August 1920, the sheer presence of 180 peasant delegates forced support for non-co-operation. Similarly, the Nagpur session had the highest-ever number of delegates in Congress history - 14,582 - who were demanding a militant nationalist slogan.
It was Gandhi's genius that he could contrive a slogan to fit the mood of the delegates and yet not commit the Congress to a full- fledged fight for complete independence. The famous Resolution on Article 1 of the Constitution reads:
"The object of the Indian National Congress is the attainment of Swarajya by the people of India by all legitimate and peaceful means."
What if it could not be won by "legitimate and peaceful means"? There was no answer. And why was the ambiguous word "Swarajya" used rather than "complete independence" when the whole resolution was in English? Gandhi himself stated in his speech at the Congress that he chose it in order to preserve a certain crucial ambiguity:
"I do not for one moment suggest that we want to end the British connection at all costs unconditionally. If the British connection is for the advancement of India, we do not want to destroy it. But if it is inconsistent with our national self-respect, then it is our bounden duty to destroy it. Therefore, this creed is elastic enough to take in both shades of opinion...." (emphasis added)
What was even more typically ambiguous was his remarkable statement that he would obtain Swarajya "within a year". He even asserted it would be won by a specific date, viz, December 31, 1921. On the one hand, this gave hope to the militant delegates, thus keeping them within the fold of the Congress. On the other hand, it reassured the British and the compradors that by Swaraj he did not mean complete independence, as complete independence could hardly be won so easily.
The 1920 Congress was notable also for deliberately transforming itself into a mass organisation. The Rowlatt Satyagraha had taught Gandhi a bitter lesson. The masses, left to themselves, tended to be militant, willing en masse to take on the Raj in hand-to-hand combat. If Satyagraha was to be repeated, it would have to be under the strictest controls of Gandhi's men.
Now the Congress was to have a 15-member working committee to look after its day-to-day affairs. It constituted regional Provincial Congress Committees under the control of the Working Committee, and the PCCs were to constitute Congress organisations down to the ward and mohalla level. But the Mahatma would still dictate the entire movement. The official History of the Indian National Congress (Pattabhi Sitaramayya, Bombay, 1947) says:
"Mass civil disobedience was the thing that was luring the people. What was it, what would it be? Gandhi himself never defined it, never elaborated it, never visualised it even to himself. It must unfold itself to a discerning vision, to a pure heart, from step to step, much as the pathway in a dense forest would reveal itself to the wayfarer's feet as he wends his weary way until a ray of light brightens the hopes of an all but despairing wanderer."
Gandhi put off even civil disobedience as much as possible. He chalked out four stages of non-co-operation, proceeding by gradual and controlled movements. The first was deliberately restricted to a small section, largely of the better-off: From January to March 1921, the call was for students to boycott Government-controlled schools and for lawyers to boycott practice. Besides, charkha spinning was encouraged.
This pallid programme evoked only a temporary and partial response, on the basis of which, in April, the All-India Congress Committee found the country "not yet sufficiently disciplined, organised and ripe" for civil disobedience. It concentrated instead on raising funds (which now came in larger quantities from Indian businessmen).
However, pressures from below forced the July AICC meeting to agree to boycott of foreign cloth (including public bonfires) and boycott of the coming visit of the Prince of Wales. (Khilafat leaders had already given a call to Muslims that they should not serve in the Army any more, and the Congress was obliged to take up this call for all Indians three months later.)
The boycott and hartal during the Prince of Wales's visit on November 17 again went beyond Gandhi's strictures, despite his presence at the very site of unrest. Gandhi had only called for flooding the prisons peacefully ("Our triumph", he said, "consists in thousands being led to prisons like lambs to the slaughter-house".) Instead, there were mass attacks on those who were identifiable loyalists - eg, those returning from the poorly-attended welcome meeting for the Prince.
The riots continued for three days and faced repeated police firings, resulting in 58 deaths. Gandhi, of course, fasted against the "mob violence" for the full three days, and declared that "Swarajya... has stunk in my nostrils". Immediately, he again postponed the plans for civil disobedience, which were at any rate to be implemented only in the single taluka of Bardoli.
By this time, militant Khilafat leaders such as Hasrat Mohani were demanding complete independence and the giving up of the non-violence dogma. The first demand was not to be conceded by Gandhi, despite powerful pressures, for another eight years; and the second was, of course, never to be conceded. In fact, Hasrat Mohani's demand too, as enunciated at the Ahmedabad Congress of December 1921, was never to be conceded. He had demanded "complete independence, free from all foreign control" (emphasis added). Even the last deal the Congress was to strike a quarter century later with the British did not grant that.
The Ahmedabad Congress was an occasion for increasing ideological demarcation. Gandhi sharply rebuked Mohani, spoke against his demand ("it has grieved me because it shows lack of responsibility"), and got it rejected.
It was the Ahmedabad Congress that received a message from the emigre Communist Party of India (based in Tashkent, Russia) stating that "the poor workers and peasants are hungry. If they are to be led on to fight, it must be for the betterment of their condition". Deliberately countering Gandhi, it declared:
"If the Congress would lead the revolution which is shaking India to the very foundation, let it not put its faith in the demonstration of temporary wild enthusiasm. Let it make the immediate demands of the trade-unions, as summarised by the Caunpur workers, its own demands; let it make the programme of kishan sabhas its own programme; and the time will come when it will not have to stop before any obstacle; it will not have to comment that Swarajya cannot be declared on a fixed date because people have not made enough sacrifice. It will be backed by the irresistible strength of the entire people consciously fighting for the material interest."
But Gandhi at the Ahmedabad Congress defeated these and other influences. The Viceroy himself telegraphed in satisfaction to the Secretary of State in London:
"During Christmas week, the Congress held its annual meeting at Ahmedabad. Gandhi had been deeply impressed by the rioting at Bombay, as statements made by him at the time had indicated, and the rioting had brought home to him the dangers of mass civil disobedience; and the resolutions of the Congress give evidence of this, since they not only rejected the proposals which the extreme wing of the Khilafat party had advanced for abandoning the policy of non-violence, but, whilst the organisation of civil disobedience when fulfilment of the Delhi conditions had taken place was urged in them, omitted any reference to the non-payment of taxes."
Thus the Ahmedabad Congress placed further checks and again concentrated power in the hands of "Mahatma Gandhi, the sole Executive authority of the Congress".
The non-co-operation period saw a labour upsurge (in 1921 official records list 396 strikes involving 6,00,351 workers and the loss of 69,94,426 mandays) and the intensification of peasant movements, particularly in U.P., in Andhra (no-revenue movement and forest Satyagraha), in Punjab (the Akali upsurge against the British-backed feudal mahants who controlled the gurudwaras), Rajasthan (anti-feudal movements in Mewar), and most strikingly in Malabar.
It was already evident that Gandhi was attempting to keep these in check: in an open letter to Gandhi on May 5, 1921, Singaravelu condemned the brakes he was placing on the kisan movement. Certainly the Congress outright betrayed the massive Moplah rebellion, which was an uprising of the Muslim peasantry of Malabar against Hindu money-lenders, landlords, and the Raj.
The armed Moplah revolt of August-November 1921 focussed basically on attacking the Government, destroying the records of landlords and moneylenders, and killing the bare minimum of die-hard elements. (K.M. Panikkar, "Peasant Revolts in Malabar", in A.R. Desai, ed., Peasant Struggles in India, Delhi, 1979) The Moplahs managed to set up "Khilafat republics" at various places in Malabar with the participation of poorer Hindus (among the first rebel prisoners the British took were Hindus). Yet Hindu communalist opinion, and the Congress with it, condemned the Moplahs as "communal fanatics". Even those Congressmen who had been connected with peasant movements (as Nehru supposedly had been with Rae Bareli) shrank in horror not at the British atrocities (2,377 killed, 1,652 wounded, 45,404 taken prisoner), but at the Moplahs' bravery. The Congress organised no national campaign against the British reign of terror in Malabar thereafter.
Strict checks were placed by the Congress, whenever it could, on peasant and tribal movements in U.P., Bengal and Bihar, but it was clear that mere restraint would not suffice. Gandhi finally agreed to undertake mass civil disobedience - but in only one taluka, ie, his home ground of Bardoli; and even then, he announced that he did not want, at the same time, any other movement - even a non-violent one - in any other part of the country. He insisted that the Andhra PCC withdraw the permission it had given for District Congress Committees to begin no-revenue campaigns.
It was the height of the nationwide non-co-operation movement; even with active discouragement from the Congress leadership, the country was seething. Peasant (including tribal) movements in A.P., Assam, Bengal, Bihar, and U.P. against taxes, rents, sale of liquor, and restrictions on forest rights were constantly violating Gandhian instructions, to the helpless dismay of the Congress leadership. Over 30,000 non-co-operators were in jails at the start of 1922 (which figure, however, we should remember, was less than 75 per cent of the number arrested from just the two talukas of Ernad and Wallauvanad in the Moplah rebellion).
The Governor of Bombay was later to recall that, if the no-tax movement had been started, "God knows where we should have been!" It was at this height of the agitation that Gandhi was searching, not for ways of raising it to a higher level, but of altogether abandoning it. He sent his last ultimatum to the Viceroy on February 1, 1922. But he seized his opportunity to surrender with the incident at Chauri Chaura on February 5, 1922.
Chauri Chaura, a village in Gorakhpur which had spontaneously joined in non-co-operation without the direct guidance of Congress committees, perhaps illustrates most exactly Gandhi's values.
A well-organised local volunteer body in the village had started picketing the local bazaar against liquor sales and high food prices. The police arrested and beat up the volunteer leader, a pensioner named Bhagwan Amit. A crowd came to the police station to protest, and the police responded by firing. The angry peasants burnt down the police station, killing 22 policemen inside it.
Immediately upon hearing of the incident, sitting in Bardoli, the "sole executive authority of the Congress", the Mahatma, unilaterally called off the entire non-co-operation movement. Not even other Congress leaders were consulted (though they, of course, buckled soon enough, despite initial amazement).
Even as British courts sentenced 172 of the 225 Chauri Chaura accused to death, there were no Congress protests. (The only protests were those from the emigre Communist Party.) Eventually, 19 were hanged and the rest transported. As historian Sumit Sarkar points out, "even today at Chauri Chaura there remains a police memorial, but nothing in honour of the peasant martyrs".
Gandhi quickly persuaded the Congress Working Committee, which assembled at Bardoli on February 12, 1922, to pass a resolution. It is a central document in the history of the Congress:
"Clause 1: The Working Committee deplores the inhuman conduct of the mob at Chauri Chaura in having brutally murdered constables and wantonly burned police thana."Clause 2: In view of the violent outbreaks every time mass civil disobedience is inaugurated, indicating that the country is not non-violent enough, the Working Committee of the Congress resolves that mass civil disobedience... be suspended, and instructs the local Congress Committees to advise the cultivators to pay land revenue and other taxes due to the Government and to suspend every other activity of an offensive character.
"Clause 3: The suspension of mass civil disobedience shall be continued until the atmosphere is so non-violent as to ensure the non-repetition of atrocities such as Gorakhpur, of the hooliganism such as at Bombay and Madras on the 17th of November and the 13th of January...
"Clause 5: All volunteer processions and public meetings for the defiance of authority should be stopped.
"Clause 6: The Congress Working Committee advises the Congress workers and organisations to inform the ryots (peasants) that withholding rent payment to the zamindars (landlords) is contrary to the Congress resolutions and injurious to the best interests of the country.
"Clause 7: The Working Committee assures the zamindars that the Congress movement is in no way intended to attack their legal rights, and that even where the ryots have grievances, the Committee desires that redress be sought by mutual consultation and arbitration." (emphasis added)
This remarkable about-face did not earn Gandhi enormous popularity. It is significant that the British waited until March 10 (ie, until the resolution had been properly implemented) to arrest the peace-keeping Mahatma. Being arrested should have recovered some of his prestige, but it is interesting that, unlike in 1919, there was no protest anywhere in India as Gandhi went to jail.
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