THE situation and atmosphere during this period was such that even large numbers of loyal Congressmen, despite the strictures Gandhi placed and despite their faith in him, often committed utterly un-Gandhian acts - in his name.
For instance, Surjya Sen, a faithful Congressman and the Secretary of the Chittagong Congress Committee, organised with five other committee members a raid on the Chittagong Armoury on April 18, 1930. Their plan for a simultaneous raid on the two main armouries, the disruption of communication, and the formation of armed detachments with the seized arms did not come off in all respects because they were unable to locate most of the ammunition. Nevertheless, the initial captures worked out well, and an Independence Proclamation was issued in the name of the "Indian Republican Army". Ironically, they seized the armoury with the cry, "Gandhi's Raj has been established!". Despite being surrounded later on Jalolabad hill by several thousand enemy troops, they put up a stiff fight in which 12 revolutionaries and 80 government troops were killed. Thereafter, they dispersed to the surrounding villages, where many continued to be active for the next three years. The peasants, mostly Muslims, actively assisted them. Surjya Sen himself could only be caught on February 16, 1933; he was hanged less than a year later.
It is in the light of this overall upsurge of labour, youth, Communists, various revolutionary groups, and even rank-and-file Congressmen, that the words and actions of the Congress leadership from 1929 to 1931 have to be seen.
As the 1929 Lahore Congress opened, the Workers' and Peasants' Party (the Communist front organisation) distributed a printed manifesto to all the delegates sharply attacking Gandhi, Nehru, and others, for so desperately trying to stave off the demand for complete independence. On the front page was the question: "Would you be protected by imperialist machine-guns along with Gandhi and Nehru, or would you face the fire of machine guns along with workers for the fight for complete independence?".
Already, during the Ahmedabad Congress, Gandhi had managed to block the demand for complete independence, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to control the ranks during 1929, He had committed himself to the deadline of December 1929 either to receive a positive sign on dominion status for India or to demand complete independence; and he was getting desperate in his wait for some reply from the Viceroy. He had specifically ruled out any civil disobedience, and in fact any Congress activities other than constructive work, prohibition, boycott of British goods, and a restricted number of movements for redress of specific grievances (eg., Bardoli).
On October 31, 1929, the Viceroy made a vague statement referring to the "goal of dominion status, to be reached at some future date (a stand no different from earlier British stands) and promised a Round Table Conference soon. Immediately Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Malaviya, the Liberal politicians, and even Jawaharlal (who claimed later that he was reluctant, but was persuaded by a "soothing letter from Gandhiji") leapt at the offer.
However, the talks, held on almost the eve of the 1929 Congress, came to nothing, as the Viceroy flatly rejected all the Congress conditions. Thus the Congress leadership came to the 1929 Congress, not enthusiastically insistent on complete independence as has been made out by official historians, but reluctantly dragged from their preferred option of dominion status.
On December 31, 1929, the Congress, after 45 years of existence, at last declared its goal (in a resolution on Article 1) to be "Purna Swaraj": complete independence. It was, no doubt, a remarkable victory of the nationalist forces both inside and outside the Congress that they could win this from a body whose declared aim was once "the consolidation of the union between England and India" (A.0.Hume on "The Aims and Objects of the Congress", April 30, 1888), whose "sole executive authority" (Mahatma Gandhi at the 1924 Congress) had declared only five years earlier that "if the British Government mean what they say and honestly help us to equality, it would be a greater triumph than complete severance of the British connection", elaborating that he would be willing to accept "complete equality within the Empire" (emphasis added). Now he directed: "Congressmen will henceforth devote their exclusive attention to the attainment of complete Independence for India."
But what was the nature of this victory? If it were to mean anything more than a superficial declaration, it would have to be backed up with a programme to execute it. Given the enormous ferment in the working class, given the peasant movements already going on in Bihar, U.P., Gujarat, Punjab, and Andhra Pradesh, given the terrible effects that the Depression was having on agricultural prices that ryots received for their products, and given the obvious preparedness of the masses to fight for freedom - the most natural programme for executing it would have been for the Congress to have declared a general strike of workers and an all-India no-revenue and no-rent movement of peasants.
In fact, a resolution to this effect, suggesting also the setting-up of parallel governments, was proposed by Subhas Bose. Bose further proposed that the reference in Gandhi's proposed resolution, to there being no point in attending the Round Table Conference "in the existing circumstances", be deleted, as it left room for such participation later (a prescient perception). Bose wanted a declaration that in no circumstances would the Congress negotiate.
Gandhi insisted that his own resolution be accepted or rejected in toto. The idea of parallel governments, he said, was impracticable, as "the Congress flag does not at present fly even in one thousand villages" (emphasis added). This was a remarkable and revealing statement.
First, it was obvious from the experience of 1919 and 1921-22 that, whenever the Congress gave a call, not a thousand villages but practically the entire country responded far in excess of all expectations. This, in fact, reveals the real logic of Gandhi's statement: he wanted to limit civil disobedience to only those areas in which a Congress Committee was in complete control of events. The years 1919 and 1921-22 had in fact taught him that, while the Indian masses in many thousands of villages responded to the Congress call, they ignored the Congress strictures against violence and against no-rent.
Secondly, if the situation were as weak as Gandhi suggested, on what basis were they going to fight for complete independence? This leads us to another facet of Gandhi's thinking. While the majority of Congress cadre felt that complete independence would be won, would be snatched from the British, on the basis of the mass strength of the nationalist movement, Gandhi had a different conception. He was proposing that independence be begged for by undergoing the maximum suffering and by changing the minds of the rulers. To be fair to him, he had consistently upheld this from the start. He defined Satyagraha as "vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one's self"; and in the 1921 non-co-operation he claimed that "Our triumph consists in thousands being led like lambs to the slaughter house".
Gandhi's resolution, which was eventually passed without amendment, thus (i) left totally undefined the actual course of civil disobedience, (ii) left room for future participation in the Round Table Conference or other such collaborative exercise with the British, and (iii) did not allow for "complete severance of the British connection".
An even sharper struggle took place on the Mahatma's proposed resolution offering congratulations to the Viceroy and his party for escaping the H.S.R.A. bomb attack on their train, and deploring the attempted assassination. The Mahatma wanted the resolution passed unanimously, but it got passed only by the extremely narrow majority of 935 to 897.
An imperialist historian remarked at the time: "Let us be sure that Lord Irwin's sense of humour will value the knowledge that 897 of the Congress gentlemen think it a pity he was not blown to bits, while 935 think otherwise." The H.S.R.A. manifesto, "The Philosophy of the Bomb", put the situation very well:
"Meanwhile what has the Congress been doing? It has changed its creed from Swaraj to complete independence. As a logical sequel to this, one would expect it to declare a war on the British Government. Instead, we find it has declared war on the revolutionaries! The first offensive of the Congress came in the form of a resolution deploring the attempt made on 23rd December 1929 to blow up the Viceroy's special. It was drafted by Gandhi and he fought tooth and nail for it with the result that it was passed by a trifling majority of 81 (sic) in a house of 1,713. Was even this bare majority a result of honest political convictions?Let us quote the opinion of Sarala Devi Choudhari who has been a devotee of the Congress all her life. She said, `I discovered in the course of my conversations with a good many of the Mahatma's followers that it was only their sense of personal loyalty to him that was keeping them back from an expression of their independent views and preventing them from voting against any resolution whatsoever that was fathered by Mahatmaji...' . There is one fact about this deplorable resolution we must not lose sight of. And that is this: In spite of the fact that the Congress is pledged to non-violence and has been actively engaged in carrying on propaganda in its favour for the last 10 years and, in spite of the fact, also, that the supporters of the resolution indulged in abuse, called the revolutionaries `cowards' and described their action as `dastardly' and one of them even threateningly remarked that if they wanted to be led by Gandhi they should pass this resolution without any opposition - in spite of all this the resolution could be adopted only by a dangerously narrow majority. That demonstrates beyond the shadow of doubt how solidly the country is backing the revolutionaries."
The above description gives a good sense of the atmosphere in the country, and even inside the Congress - an atmosphere of militant struggle, if necessary violent struggle, and if necessary in open defiance of that "sole executive authority" of the Congress, the Mahatma.
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