Knitting a popular movement
Gandhiji hoped that by coupling non-cooperation with
Khilafat, India�s two major religious communities,
Hindus and Muslims, could collectively bring an
end to colonial rule.
(more content follows the advertisement below) A D V E R T I S E M E N T
These movements certainly
unleashed a surge of popular action that was
altogether unprecedented in colonial India.
Students stopped going to schools and colleges
run by the government. Lawyers refused to attend
court. The working class went on strike in many
towns and cities: according to official figures, there
were 396 strikes in 1921, involving 600,000
workers and a loss of seven million workdays. The
countryside was seething with discontent too. Hill
tribes in northern Andhra violated the forest laws.
Farmers in Awadh did not pay taxes. Peasants in
Kumaun refused to carry loads for colonial officials.
These protest movements were sometimes carried
out in defiance of the local nationalist leadership.
Peasants, workers, and others interpreted and acted
upon the call to �non-cooperate� with colonial rule
in ways that best suited their interests, rather than
conform to the dictates laid down from above.
�Non-cooperation,� wrote Mahatma Gandhi�s
American biographer Louis Fischer, �became the name
of an epoch in the life of India and of Gandhiji.
Non-cooperation was negative enough to be peaceful
but positive enough to be effective. It entailed denial,
renunciation, and self-discipline. It was training for
self-rule.� As a consequence of the
Non-Cooperation Movement the
British Raj was shaken to its
foundations for the first time
since the Revolt of 1857. Then,
in February 1922, a group of
peasants attacked and torched a
police station in the hamlet of
Chauri Chaura, in the United
Provinces (now, Uttar Pradesh and
Uttaranchal). Several constables
perished in the conflagration. This
act of violence prompted Gandhiji
to call off the movement altogether.
�No provocation,� he insisted,
�can possibly justify (the) brutal
murder of men who had been rendered defenceless
and who had virtually thrown themselves on the
mercy of the mob.�
During the Non-Cooperation Movement thousands
of Indians were put in jail. Gandhiji himself
was arrested in March 1922, and charged with
sedition. The judge who presided over his trial,
Justice C.N. Broomfield, made a remarkable speech
while pronouncing his sentence. �It would be
impossible to ignore the fact,� remarked the judge,
�that you are in a different category from any person
I have ever tried or am likely to try. It would be
impossible to ignore the fact that, in the eyes of
millions of your countrymen, you are a great patriot
and a leader. Even those who differ from you in politics
look upon you as a man of high ideals and of even
saintly life.� Since Gandhiji had violated the law it
was obligatory for the Bench to sentence him to six
years� imprisonment, but, said Judge Broomfield, �If
the course of events in India should make it possible
for the Government to reduce the period and release
you, no one will be better pleased than I�.
A people�s leader
By 1922, Gandhiji had transformed Indian
nationalism, thereby redeeming the promise he made
in his BHU speech of February 1916. It was no longer
a movement of professionals and intellectuals; now,
hundreds of thousands of peasants, workers and
artisans also participated in it. Many of them
venerated Gandhiji, referring to him as their
�Mahatma�. They appreciated the fact that he
dressed like them, lived like them, and spoke their
language. Unlike other leaders he did not stand apart
from the common folk, but empathised and even
identified with them.
This identification was strikingly reflected in his
dress: while other nationalist leaders dressed
formally, wearing a Western suit or an Indian
bandgala, Gandhiji went among the people in a
simple dhoti or loincloth. Meanwhile, he spent part
of each day working on the charkha (spinning wheel),
and encouraged other nationalists to do likewise.
The act of spinning allowed Gandhiji to break the
boundaries that prevailed within the traditional caste
system, between mental labour and manual labour.
In a fascinating study, the historian Shahid Amin
has traced the image of Mahatma Gandhi among
the peasants of eastern Uttar Pradesh, as conveyed
by reports and rumours in the local press. When he
travelled through the region in February 1921,
Gandhiji was received by adoring crowds everywhere.
Wherever Gandhiji went, rumours spread of his
miraculous powers. In some places it was said that
he had been sent by the King to redress the
grievances of the farmers, and that he had the power
to overrule all local officials. In other places it was
claimed that Gandhiji�s power was superior to that
of the English monarch, and that with his arrival
the colonial rulers would flee the district. There were
also stories reporting dire consequences for those
who opposed him; rumours spread of how villagers
who criticised Gandhiji found their houses
mysteriously falling apart or their crops failing.
Known variously as �Gandhi baba�, �Gandhi
Maharaj�, or simply as �Mahatma�, Gandhiji appeared
to the Indian peasant as a saviour, who would rescue
them from high taxes and oppressive officials and
restore dignity and autonomy to their lives. Gandhiji�s
appeal among the poor, and peasants in particular,
was enhanced by his ascetic lifestyle, and by his
shrewd use of symbols such as the dhoti and the
charkha. Mahatma Gandhi was by caste a merchant,
and by profession a lawyer; but his simple lifestyle
and love of working with his hands allowed him to
empathise more fully with the labouring poor and for
them, in turn, to empathise with him. Where most
other politicians talked down to them, Gandhiji
appeared not just to look like them, but to
understand them and relate to their lives.
While Mahatma Gandhi�s mass appeal was
undoubtedly genuine � and in the context of Indian
politics, without precedent � it must also be stressed
that his success in broadening the basis of nationalism
was based on careful organisation. New branches of
the Congress were set up in various parts of India.
A series of �Praja Mandals� were established to promote
the nationalist creed in the princely states. Gandhiji
encouraged the communication of the nationalist
message in the mother tongue, rather than in the
language of the rulers, English. Thus the provincial
committees of the Congress were based on linguistic
regions, rather than on the artificial boundaries of
British India. In these different ways nationalism was
taken to the farthest corners of the country and
embraced by social groups previously untouched by it.
By now, among the supporters of the Congress
were some very prosperous businessmen and
industrialists. Indian entrepreneurs were quick to
recognise that, in a free India, the favours enjoyed
by their British competitors would come to an end.
Some of these entrepreneurs, such as G.D. Birla,
supported the national movement openly; others did
so tacitly. Thus, among Gandhiji�s admirers were
both poor peasants and rich industrialists, although
the reasons why peasants followed Gandhiji were
somewhat different from, and perhaps opposed to,
the reasons of the industrialists.
|