Imperialism and Satyagraha

BRITAIN AND INDIAN NATIONALISM - The Imprint of Ambiguity (1929- 1942): D. A. Low; Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP, U.K. Price not mentioned.

``WHAT IS REQUIRED'', wrote India's Viceroy Lord Irwin to a confidant in British Government in July 1929, ``is some facade which will leave the essential mechanism of power in our hands.''

And Winston Churchill, complimenting the Government for their deft handling of political India, told Sinclair, Liberal Chief Whip, in December 1931: ``I rather like the look of things in India. The late Lord Salisbury said, quoting an American, there were two ways of governing men - bamboozle or bamboo. You seem to be trying both at once!''

These two pithy quips quoted in the book under review seem to sum up the British author's astute assessment of governance of India during 1929-1942, showing how the ambiguity of the British position conditioned the distinctive character of India's freedom struggle. In a 40-page introduction, the author injects a larger perspective to the Indian scene of the period by dragging in unrelated contemporary encounters with foreign rule in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Brushing aside the conventional story of India's political history from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s and armed with an array of recently-surfaced details of ``the actualities of the interactive conflict with the British Raj, he recaptures the political scenario highlighting the major role played by India's surging nationalism in determining the course of Indo-British conflict.

The Congress movement, which was in doldrums after Gandhiji abruptly suspended the disobedience and non-cooperation programme in February 1922 and his subsequent imprisonment, got a shot in the arm with a nation-wide boycott of the all-White Simon Commission appointed by the British Government in November 1927 to report on the possibility of further constitutional reforms towards self-government. The author outlines the undercurrents during 1927-29 that precipitated the turning point when Gandhiji, at the Lahore session of the Indian National Congress held in December 1929, successfully sponsored the resolution proclaiming Poorna Swaraj (complete Independence) as the country's immediate goal.

The Congress vested Gandhiji with all powers to conduct the satyagraha campaign and it was left to him to choose the hour, place and the precise issue to launch the campaign.

``The ideal prescription'', the author writes, ``for a full- scale satyagraha confrontation was as always to conjoin a notorious public grievance with a quite particular place so as to create a controlled but spectacular public episode which would provoke the ugly face of British imperialism and thus evoke extensive publicity and very considerable public sympathy. ... Gandhi had quite brilliantly seized on the symbolic issue of salt to launch his countrywide campaign,'' and his Dandi salt march ``served his purpose very successfully.''

Skipping details of the salt satyagraha, the author devotes a whole chapter singling out the events in Lucknow in the last week of May 1930 to analyse ``the anatomy of a satyagraha''.

The confrontation which the Luknow Congress finally mounted on 25th May 1930 by routing a protest procession through the prohibited roads of the Civil Lines provoked the authorities to signal brutal and indiscriminate police lathicharge on the processionists as well as onlookers, assaulting all and sundry in the road and in adjacent open space. Angered by the police attack upon the attending crowds, the next day some 20,000 agitators shouting abuse proceeded to assault the police outpost that ended in police firing and rampage with random shots and lathicharges leaving four dead and hundreds injured. Army was called out to restore order.

The author appreciates the ``extraordinarily functional'' character of Gandhiji's non-violent satyagraha. ``Satyagraha had its cutting edge as well.

Whilst vigorously non-violent, carefully marshalled, avowedly peaceful and thus morally laudable, it was both physically defiant and formidably antagonistic too, and it was very specifically designed to force the British to some reprehensible action that would vest them moral authority...''

The rest of the chapters carry a refreshing analysis of the Gandhi-Irwin talks in February 1931 that paved the way for Gandhiji attending the Second Round Table Conference in London as the sole representative of the Congress, resumption of civil disobedience movement and British repression, office acceptance and formation of Congress Ministries in July 1937 in many provinces following the general elections held under the Government of India Act of 1935 which was but ``ambiguity institutionalised'', their resignation from office sequel to Viceroy Linlithgow's unilateral declaration that India was at war upon the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe on 3rd September 1939, individual satyagraha movement initiated by Gandhiji in late 1940, ``an otherwise remarkably ingenious campaign'' which however ``never really succeeded in arousing the public enthusiasm his previous campaigns had secured''.

The last chapter brings to the fore the little known decisive role of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and some moderates and their non- party conferences held in February 1942 that prompted the British War Cabinet to send Sir Stafford Cripps to India to discuss a draft declaration with India's political leaders.Based on a plethora of varied sources, this lively academic exposition of the political scenario of a crucial decade in India's freedom movement deflates the Churchillian stand that the process of decolonisation turned principally on imperialists' decisions to the extent of marginalising the Indian national movement to little more than a distant irritant.

The author also speculates with repetitive instances to show how Gandhiji, ``clearly concerned to retain his moral ascendancy'', ``scrambled back to the moral high ground'' which afforded him ``an astonishing reprieve from the very jaws of defeat!''

La. Su. RENGARAJAN

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