Ever since Plessey (1757) British rule had meant a constant exploitation of India, the main burden of which had fallen on its peasants, artisans and the labouring poor. It has been the great intellectual achievement of the early nationalists that they were able to show how the twin processes of drain of wealth and de-industrialisation had ruined India. Gandhiji himself summarised these findings in his Hind Swaraj (1909), originally written in Gujarati.

 The impoverishment of India which the early nationalists so ably exposed was largely accomplished through means in which Englishmen themselves hardly ever appeared as the exploiters: the land revenue was exacted through zamindars or native officials; English goods, destroying Indian crafts, were sold by Indian shopkeepers and hawkers. It was mainly in plantations and mines that the Englishman appeared directly as the oppressor. And among plantations, it was the indigo plantations where such oppression had the longest history. Indigo was a celebrated product of India, down the centuries, raised and processed locally by peasants. But in the seventeenth century European-owned slave-plantations in West Indies also began to produce it, the extraction process they used being improved immensely by use of boilers. When the English conquered Bengal, European indigo planters appeared there soon enough. Obtaining zamindaris they coerced peasants into raising indigo, for the dye to be processed out of the plants in their ‘factories’. The coercion exercised by European planters on peasants to raise indigo and sell it cheaply to them – was strikingly portrayed in Bandhu Mitra’s famous Nil Darpan (1860).
Indigo plantations extended into Bihar where too European planters used the zamindari system to force their peasant tenants to bow to their will. Where they could not buy zamindaris they obtained leases from local zamindars, and in the form of ‘thekadars’ exercised the same rights over peasants as they would have had as zamindars. In Champaran district of Bihar, most European planters obtained thekas or leases for whole villages from the large Bettiah zamindari. Here, as the demand for indigo grew with expanding textile imports, the planters imposed what came to be known as the tinkathia system, the peasants being forced to raise indigo on the best parts of their rented lands.

A crisis occurred when a synthetic dye was developed in Germany in the late 1880s. Since natural indigo dye could not compete with it, indigo exports from India declined in value from Rs 4.75 crore in 1894-95 to Rs 2.96 crore five years later. As indigo prices and the planters’ profits from indigo manufacture fell, the planters began correspondingly to increase the rent-burden on the peasants, invoking their rights as zamindars. The impositions took two major forms: As zamindars or thekadars the planters simply increased the rents paid by peasants, the increase in rent being called sharahbeshi, usually amounting to 50 to 60 per cent of the previous rent. The second form was a curious one. Since indigo prices fell, the peasants did not now wish to produce indigo, as they had to under the tinkathia system. The planters, who did not wish to buy it either, allowed the peasant to shift to other crops only if he agreed to pay them a large amount, known as tawan, ‘compensation’. The amounts imposed were so large that the peasants had to undergo much hardship only to pay interest on it at the rate of 12 per cent per annum, let alone pay the principal. Another imposition on the peasants took the form of transferring to them plots out of the indigo factories’ own cultivated lands (zira‘at) charging high rents, under threat of throwing them out of their tenancies, if they declined to agree to take these on rent. The planters also collected illegal dues (abwab) and imposed fines. Alongside these exactions the planters made full use of the traditional zamindari practice of begar, forced unpaid or ill-paid labour, requisitioning at will the peasant’s cattle, plough and carts or compelling them to provide labour for their plantations. In other words, the planters tried to throw the entire burden of the crisis caused by competition from synthetic indigo on to the shoulders of the peasants, while safeguarding or even increasing their own profits.

That crisis for the planters eased in 1914 owing to the outbreak of World War I. Germany, the main producer of synthetic indigo, being one of the belligerent powers, the competition from it ceased and planters’ profits from indigo revived. Many of them now began to compel peasants to grow indigo again under the tinkathia system, while underpaying them for the crop by taking into account not the actual produce, but the area sown with the crop. The earlier burdens on the peasants under both sharahbeshi and tawan continued as before, along with forms of begar. Peasants were thus faced with a situation where while prices increased owing to the War, they were themselves subjected to rack-renting and forced to grow indigo despite a manipulated low return on it. They faced other kinds of ill-treatment as well at the hands of the planters and their staff, including beatings and petty bribery.  The planters’ raj was complete and there was no relief for peasants forthcoming from the Bettiah Estate (now under Court of Wards), which, having given leases (thekas) to the planters, shared in the gains made out of the oppression of the peasants.

How a delegation from Champaran, attracted by news of the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress in December 1916 went to the session to draw attention to the Champaran peasants’ plight and how later Raj Kumar Shukla brought Gandhiji from Calcutta to Patna and inexplicably left him there in April 1917 are matters now of traditional lore. It is what followed that is of the utmost importance.

Gandhi’s handling of the Champaran struggle can be truly seen as a model of serious leadership. He was stepping into an area where the peasants had been kept suppressed for so long that no ‘satyagraha’ of the form he had led in South Africa could here be organised. He, therefore, announced that he had come only to study the conditions and collect information, for which he was able to gather a group of intrepid men, including his principal assistant here, Brajkishore Prasad and the future principal Congress leaders, Rajendra Prasad and Acharya Kripalani. What he and his group began to do was to move among peasants and just record their grievances. To the end, this was the form and substance of the Champaran Satyagraha.

The British authorities knew that this was not as harmless an enterprise as it seemed. The very fact that once an individual peasant could go and record his complaints meant that others would follow him from the ranks of what uptill now had been a subdued demoralised raiyat. On April 16, the English district magistrate ordered Gandhiji to leave the district, under Sec. 144 Cr. P.C. Defying the ban, Gandhiji pleaded “guilty” before the district magistrate at Motihari on April 18, ready to face imprisonment for following “the voice of conscience”. It was this combination of moderation with determination that won the day. The administration trying to tie down Gandhiji with a long drawn-out case was flabbergasted at his cutting it short by the “guilty” plea. On the other hand, now not only the volunteers, including the famous Bihar Congress leader Mazharul Haq, but also a crowd of peasants gathered at the court, this being perhaps, the first real peasant demonstration taking place in Champaran. The English magistrate adjourned the court, releasing Gandhiji on his own assurance of presence! Finally, the government climbed down: On April 21, Gandhiji received intimation from the Lt. Governor of Bihar and Orissa of the withdrawal of the proceedings against him with even instructions issued to local officials to assist his “enquiry”.

This success opened the gates to the voicing and recording of complaints from peasants. Local vakils in large numbers joined his band of volunteers. The recording project turned into a real mass movement. As many as 8000 peasants came and recorded their complaints, defying the planters and their men whose authority visibly crumbled. Peasants also began defiantly to return the high-rent carrying zira‘at lands that planters had imposed on them.

The work of collection of peasants’ complaints took Gandhiji and his volunteers to poverty-stricken villages, where peasants could at last obtain some hope that things could change. Not long afterwards, he received an invitation from another quarter: he was graciously invited to meet a high official of government, W Maude at Ranchi on May 10. Gandhiji duly met Maude whom he promised to send a preliminary report on his findings, which he did on May 13. But he politely rejected Maude’s suggestion that he dissolve his team and abandon further pursuit of the enquiry into peasant grievances.

By now the planters and their association had exhausted all their arsenal: threats and inducements to individual peasants, manufactured incidents of violence or arson, canvassing of English officials as men of their own race, and overtures to the great zamindars of Bihar. Gandhiji, on his part, won the moral battle by being ever ready to meet the planters and being unfailingly polite and courteous with them. But he never left the side of the peasants.

Finally, the government capitulated. No less a person than EA Gait, the Lieut. Governor of Bihar and Orissa, along with the chief secretary, H McPherson, held a long meeting with Gandhiji on June 5 at Ranchi, and here a settlement was worked out. A committee of enquiry, into peasants’ grievances was to be instituted, the committee to include Gandhiji, as member along with a representative of planters and another of zamindars and three British officials, including the president of the committee. It was assumed that its recommendations would be honoured by government. In return, Gandhiji at last agreed to terminate his campaign of collecting peasant grievances.

The mass movement at Champaran, revolving around the recording of grievances was over. But the actual work of alleviating the grievances had now to be taken up. Again, it is a sign of Gandhiji’s mature leadership that he took up work on this committee with the greatest care and earnestness. He attended all its meetings, presented full evidence before it and was alert in assessing promptly all the proposals that were put before it.

Gandhiji kept the European planters’ transgressions alone as the target of attack. The planters expressed their readiness to reduce the sharahbeshi rent by only 25 per cent, while Gandhiji demanded a reduction, at least, of 40 per cent. When the official members proposed that the balance of 15 per cent might be met from the revenues of the Bettiah Estate, Gandhiji at once demurred. Clearly, he did not wish to annoy the zamindars of Bihar, who had remarkably remained neutral in the matter. Ultimately, he accepted a 26 per cent reduction in sharahbeshi, this to be entirely at the cost of planters.

It is remarkable that the committee was able to present a unanimous detailed report by October 3, 1917. It practically conceded the truth of all the grievances that Gandhiji’s own “enquiries” had brought out. It recommended the abolition of the tinkathia system and gave freedom to the peasants to grow whatever crop they chose. It denounced the payment by planters for indigo by the area sown and not actual outturn. The reduction of sharahbeshi rent by 26 per cent was approved; and it was recommended that the tawan be abolished, no further payment of principal or interest on this account to be levied on the peasants. All abwabs or additional levies and perquisites as well as fines were held illegal. It recommended that a proclamation to this effect, with penalties to be prescribed, be issued. Above all, the thekadari or village-contracting system by which the planters gained zamindari rights over peasants in villages outside their plantations was to be phased out. Rights in hides were to belong to the peasant owners of the animals, not the planters. The minutes of the committee meetings show how Gandhiji took up every issue of interest to the peasants and argued their case mostly successfully.

The major recommendations of the committee required certain changes to be embodied in law and so government ordered a law to be prepared in the very month of October 1917, this taking the form of the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918. It is characteristic of Gandhiji that he also scrutinised the draft bill and suggested changes in its text to protect the tenants’ interests. Characteristically too, he spent little time in celebrating the huge success he had achieved for the peasants and the poor of Champaran.  

The Champaran Satyagraha was the first struggle that Gandhiji undertook on Indian soil after his great 20-year long movement for the defence of Indians’ rights in South Africa. It was to be followed quickly by the Ahmedabad workers’ strike against indigenous millowners and by the Kheda satyagraha against revenue enhancements, both in 1918; and then the all-India April satyagraha of 1919 against the Rowlatt Acts and, finally, the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat Movement of 1920-22. But the Champaran satyagraha will always remain the crucial starting point, the yoking, for the first time, of peasant unrest to the national movement, an assured guarantee for the ultimate success of the latter. As we observe the centenary of the event, one wonders how any tribute could be adequate for the firmness and determination shown by Mahatma Gandhi and the unflinching resistance offered by the long-oppressed Champaran peasants at his call.  

Courtesy: People’s Democracy
 
 

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As in the preliminary remarks it was said that the concept of India is a growing one, I propose to discuss how the concept of India arose, how it developed and how India became a nation; and what are the dangers today that face the nation. We are at a very sad moment in our history. Rationalists—people who believe in science—like Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi […Kalburgi very recently] have been murdered in our country. In the name of GauRaksha(cow protection), Mohammad Akhlaq has been murdered! So, our country’s name is being dragged into dirt and it is, therefore, time for all of us to reflect and consider what our country is about and how best it can be served.

We must remember that far from its becoming a nation in the relatively recent past our BJP friends and their RSS mentors are fond of saying that India was a nation since Rig-Vedic times. But, in fact, neither in the Rigveda nor in the other three Vedas, nor even in the Brahmana which followed them, or, even for that matter, in the still later Upanishads, is India mentioned at all. In the Rig Veda, there is not even a mention of any geographical region; but only rivers and tribes. Even Sapta Saindhava (seven rivers) did not mean the region of Punjab, as it meant later on, but just the main seven rivers that form the Indus. The area in which the Vedic hymns were written was limited to the Punjab and parts of Afghanistan, and it was a inhabited by migratory tribes; so there was not even the concept of a region, least of all, the concept of “country”.

As culture developed, political entities arose. The first name of our country was in Prakrit Sola Maha-Janapada (Sixteen Great States), which occurs in texts going back to 500 BC Remember, Solah is a Prakrit word and many of our languages, including Hindi and Urdu, go back to Prakrit. These maha-janapadas ranged from Kamboja or Kabul to Anga in eastern Bihar but they were confined only to northern India; and there was not yet any concept of India as we now conceive it. In some Dharma Søtras, the term Aryavarta, ‘the land of the noble,’ begins to occur and Manusmriti defined Aryavarta as the country from Himalayas to the Vindhyas; but then again it is only a large part of India and not the whole country that the term encompasses.

The first perception of the whole of India as a country comes with the Mauryan Empire. Those of you, who have studied Indian history would know that the inscriptions of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka range from Kandahar and north of Kabul to Karnataka and Andhra and they are in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. So it was with such political unity that the concept of India came, and its first name was Jambudvipa a name which Ashoka uses in his Minor Rock Edict-1, meaning 'the land of the Jamun fruit.' The term Bharata was also used in Prakrit in an inscription in Orissa, at Hathigumpha, of the Kalinga ruler, Kharavela in 1st century BC; that is the first instance of the use of Bharat, and Kharavela uses it for the whole of India. So, gradually the concept of India as a country began to arise and a cultural unity was also seen within it as religions like Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism spread to all parts of the country. Prakrit was spoken, at least literary Prakrit, all over the country, becoming its lingua franca. So, there were things which, as people could see, united us.

There were also foreigners who could see that this was a culturally distinct country and it often happens [and this is an interesting part] that foreigners regard a country much more easily than its natives because they realize that there is difference between, say, Indians and Persians; whether you went to the Punjab or the South, Prakrit was the literary language and Sanskrit the priestly language. So, it is the Iranians who first time gave us the name ‘Hindu’, and Hindu is the Persian form of Sindhu river, that is, the Indus River. So, every region east of the Sindhu river, which was called Hindu in ancient Persian, was ‘Hindu’ and from this the name, ‘India’ comes. For Greeks, Hindu became Indu as Greeks did not pronounce the initial ‘H’, and the Chinese name for India, ‘Intu,’ also came from the same source. And then came the later Persian name ‘Hindustan.’ Remember, there is no such word in Sanskrit as Hindusthan. Sthan always means in Sanskrit a ‘particular spot’.But ‘stan’ in Persian is a territorial suffix, so, we have Seistan, Gurjistan, Hindustan and so on. This name is used in Sasanid inscriptions in the fourth century AD. So these words and the word Hindu itself are of non-Indian origin. Those talk about Hindutva and rejection of everything foreign, forget that their own name Hindu is Iranian in origin, and is not found in Sanskrit before the fourteenth century. Its first use in Sanskrit inscriptions comes from the Vijaynagar Empire where the Vijaynagar emperors call themselves Hindu raya suratrana, ‘Sultans over Hindu Rays.’ They regarded themselves as Sultans and their subordinates as ‘Hindu Rays’. So, our country as its name indicates is of a composite nature, illustrated by the very name Hindu, derived from ancient Iranian, then used by Iranian and Arab Muslims, and entering Sanskrit usage only in the 14^th century.

I say all this because it means that the concept of India as a country was ancient, the assertion made by Perry Anderson in his book The Indian Ideology that the India is a name given by foreigners particularly Europeans in modern times, is a totally misleading statement. It is particularly misleading because there is another very interesting matter: True, there was a conception of India in ancient times, even before Christ, but when was there a conception of love for India i.e. patriotism? It is surprising that throughout ancient India you have no patriotic verse in Sanskrit expressing love for India.

The first patriotic poem in which India is praised, India is loved, Indians are acclaimed is Amir Khusrau’s long poem in his Nuh Sipihir written in 1318. I am very sorry that now we are losing this heritage. How many people here would be able to read Amir Khusrau, and so appreciate that here is the praise for India for the first time in its history. What does Amir Khusrau praise India for? For its climate first of all which I think is very unconvincing statement, its natural beauty, its animals and along with its animals its women, their beauty as well as faithfulness. Then he comes to Brahmans. He praises their learning. He praises their language Sanskrit. He identifies India not only with Brahmans, but also with Muslims. Those who speak Persian, as well as those who speak Turkish, he says, are to be found throughout India. He praises all the languages of India from Kashmiri to Mabari i.e. Tamil. All these languages that were spoken in India, not only north India but also in the south India, are listed there. He called them Hindavi. He adds that besides these languages there is the Sanskrit language, which is the language of science, and of learning. And had Arabic not been the language of the Quran, he would have preferred Sanskrit to Arabic. He then says India has given many things to the world: India has given Panchtantra tales, as well as chess, and most surprisingly, he says India has given the world the decimal numerals what are known as Arab numerals or International numerals. He is correct in all the three points. And, as for decimal notation Aryabhatta theoretically recommended its use in 4th century AD.

In the Mughal period patriotism turned into a more insistent assertion particularly with Akbar and Abul Fazl. They argued that India is a special country, India has a large number of religious communities, and so there must be tolerance, under the umbrella of Sulh-i Kul i.e. absolute peace.

Other historians, other writers, other poets also praised India but not in such detail, not with such fervor and not, of course, with such mastery of language as Amir Khusrau. In 1350 the poet, Isami said in a poem dedicated to the praise of India.

“Praise be to the splendour of the country of Hindustan for paradise is jealous of the beauty of this flower garden.”

So, you begin to find patriotic verses. I will not go in to details because they are all in Persian and Persian for Indians is almost a dead language now.

In the Mughal period patriotism turned into a more insistent assertion particularly with Akbar and Abul Fazl. They argued that India is a special country, India has a large number of religious communities, and so there must be tolerance, under the umbrella of Sulh-i Kul i.e. absolute peace.’ It was argued that the King, like God, must favour all without discrimination. It was not only Akbar and Abul Fazl who made this assertion but even Aurangzeb (when a prince), in 1658, using it to win Rajput support. Does God, it was asked, discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims when He makes rain to fall or make sun shine on people? Does the sun not shine on Hindus, and only on Muslims? Does rain fall only on Muslims and not on non-Muslims? Where God is fair, where God is just, how can the emperor as a representative of God be different? There was thus a concept not of a secular state but of a “tolerant state” suited to the conditions of India. It was again and again said that in India every religion must be tolerated. Jahangir says that in Turan it is, only Sunnis and in Iran it only the Shias who are tolerated, but in India every religion has to be tolerated. And there was thus something new in the Mughal experience, and political development.

Dr. Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited. This concept of political India, is also very strongly present in the revolt of 1857. Those of you who know or who have studied Modern India probably know that the rebellion of 1857 occurred with the revolt of the Bengal Army. A hundred thousand men out of 130 thousand, one of the largest armies in the world at the time, revolted and they were in majority Brahmans sepoys. But what did they say? ‘Let us go to Delhi and crown Bahadur Shah Zafar, emperor of India’. Those of you who know Urdu, I invite them to read the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, the major organ of rebels in Delhi. For five months, it was the major organ through which the rebels spoke and it is of ‘Hindustan’ that they speak. They quote Sa‘di who said that all human beings must be one—Ayza-e-Yak-Digar and—“they are organs of each other”; if one is hurt the other is hurt. So Hindus and Muslims, the rebels proclaimed, must come together. The Delhi Urdu Akhbar actually issued a public declaration against the Wahabis who said Hindus and Muslims could not join in a rebellion against People of the Book (English). And in fact, the Wahabis did not support the 1857 revolt! They occupied the Jama Masjid at Eid-uz-Zuha, and demanded cow slaughter. Bakht Khan, the mutineers’ commander drove them out and threatened to suppress them if they persisted in this demand.

Syed Ahmad Khan in his Sarkashi-e-Zila Bijnor says in fact that the whole people of India were guilty in 1857 and rightly punished. So whether they are rightly punished or wrongly punished, we must remember that those who revolted considered themselves to be standing up for India. In my old age, I have now often taken to quoting Urdu poets. I quote now a simple couplet of Bahadur Shah Zafar which he wrote after he became a prisoner and he wrote in commendation/ memory of fallen martyrs of the mutiny:
 
Ay Zafar Qayam rahegi Jab Talak Iqleem-e-Hind,
Akhtar-e-Iqbal Is Gul Ka Chamakta Jayega
 
[O Zafar, so long as the country of India endures, The star of the glory of this [fallen] flower would go on shining]
So, a concept of India, politically independent, is already present in 1857. But was it sufficient? If the rebellion of 1857 failed, the reason was partly that it was not supported in large regions of the country. While the Bengal Army revolted, Madras and Bombay Armies didn’t. The rebels in their reply to Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858 themselves spoke up for the whole of India reminding people of how the English had treated rulers from Tipu Sultan of Mysore to Dilip Singh of the Punjab. Yet though the rebel leaders thought of the country as a whole, the rebellion did not actually extend outside the Hindustani-speaking region.

Indeed, something more was needed to turn India from a ‘country’ into a ‘nation’. Two stages seem to me to be very important for such conversion. First of all, there had to be a realization that an independent country, a free India would be different. It would be better than India governed by the British. The whole point of very sincere people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Syed Ahmad Khan in supporting British rule was the belief that the British rule was the best India could get. It was for people to understand that we could have an India which could be much better off than that governed by the British. And here the role of people like Dada Bhai Naoroji, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Justice Ranade and a number of others was extremely important. They showed that Britain was exploiting India. From 1874 to 1901, Dada Bhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of the Indian National Movement, wrote essays and papers showing how India was being exploited, as the very title of his book of 1901, Poverty and the UnBritish Rule in India; shows so clearly. India was being impoverished by the tribute British were extorting and the de-industrialization of India, caused through free trade. Dada Bhai Naoroji was least interested in his own community, Parsi community and you see him pleading the case of all kinds of Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Bengalis, Punjabis, etc. And that’s a particular thing for us to remember when we think of these early writers like Ramesh Chandra Dutt or others. They have no element of communalism in their approach. They were talking about all Indians. Yet they were speaking to English speaking people, and so to a very small minority. They were taking about peasants, poor people, unemployed, the weavers and spinners, but they were writing in English and so addressing only small circles of people. How could this audience be enlarged? Well.. one way was by supporting movements for social reforms. The initial voice was that of Ram Mohan Roy, who by the way knew Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, English, French, and Hebrew, being really a polymath. He wrote his first book (Tuhfatu’l Muwahhidin)’ in Persian. He said in 1828 that Indians can’t be patriotic because they are divided up among castes. If caste affinities continue, how can there be any patriotism for the country? And therefore the social reform movement, particularly as initiated by Keshav Chandra Sen (1838-84) was so important. He has practically been forgotten today; but look at the man who at the age of 18 or 20 was writing that untouchability must be abolished, intercaste marriages should be allowed, women should have equality with men in inheritance and every other right, modern education should be spread among women. And he created a new Brahmo Samaj some of whose members by the way ate beef which show that there were Indians who could defy religious orthodoxy. But that was a small thing; the real thing was that they made social reform movement possible. Everywhere these demands arose—abolition of untouchability, equal rights for women, and modern education. And Keshav Chandra Sen said in 1870 that as social reform progresses, India will become a nation, since India could only become a nation if its division into castes and religious communities was overcome.

I will not go into the early nationalist movement here, or to people who sacrificed their lives for the nation. I will only refer to the Ghadar movement that gave us the largest number of martyrs (before the INA), after acts of armed violence occurred in Maharashtrians, and under revolutionary nationalists of Bengal. The Ghadar movement arose in the Punjab and among Punjabi settlers in Canada and the United States in 1913-15. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, particularly Sikhs, were greatly involved.  But the biggest uprising was the mutiny in Singapore by the Muslim sepoys of 5th Light Infantry, inspired by the Ghadar propaganda and Ghadar agents. 45 of them were shot in a public display in Singapore after the Mutiny had been suppressed. By their bold demeanor in facing death, they deprived the British of the propaganda value of public executions. This was the biggest mutiny in the Indian army after 1857 with the largest number of martyrs. In the Punjab, itself and other places over 50 people were executed in 1914-15 including Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. But some of the records left by the Ghadaritis in India are painful to read. Few among the public were supporting them. The people whom they sought refuge with went and reported the police. They died seemingly unsung. Because the national movement was still limited to a very small number, India was a nation in the eyes of very small number of people. Here, I think, one must with almost unconditional, unqualified assertion, say that Mahatma Gandhi was one person responsible for bringing the masses in to the National Movement, and so hastening the true creation of India as a nation. In the whole of Indian history before 1913 was there a case of 200 women—Hindus and Muslim—offering to go to prison because Indians were being ill-treated in South Africa? There had been no such protest against the British in India. Against acts of gross injustice, had anyone mobilized 200 in India before? Speaking of 1913, 2000 miners marched into the Transvaal—the Great March of Indian Miners in South Africa. Indian history had never seen such a thing! Who was that man behind it? M.K. Gandhi had done it and he came to India in 1915 because after this agitation, the South African Prime Minister Smuts surrendered: he abolished Native Poll Tax, he legalized Indian marriages, and he gave some other rights. So Gandhi Ji came to India. In 1917, there was the Peasant Satyagraha in Bihar the Champaran Satyagraha, which he led. For the first time in India peasants were brought into a political agitation. And Gandhi said: “when I met peasants I saw God”. He realized that the national movement could only succeed if the Indian peasants and masses of the poor joined the national movement. So we had the April Satyagraha of 1919 and then the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920. Can I quote an Urdu verse here. Akbar Allahabadi had once said that people regarded the British with such awe that he was led to say in his famous misra: Main To Allah Ko Collector Samjha—I thought God was a Collector—since there could not be anything more powerful, more absolute, than the English Collector. But when Gandhiji began his Non-Cooperation everything changed. Then Akbar Allahbadi wrote ‘Buddhu Miyan Bhi Hazrate Gandhi Ke Sath Hain, Ek Musht-e-Khak Hain Magar Andhi Ke Sath Hain’. What was earlier the role of Buddhu Miyan or the Ordinary Man in Indian history? Nothing! He was nowhere. He is now brought into history. And as more and more ordinary peasants, ordinary women, joined the national movement, India became more and more of a ‘nation’. Because there is no nation unless the larger number or mass of the people feel that they should be independent and they should rule themselves. With the poor coming to the movement, what do you offer them? What is to be their future? And here I submit JawaharLal Nehru is very, very important, for from late 1920s he urged that the National Movement should have precise goals for peasants, workers, women, etc. fully worked out. There are also others who were important; I am not saying that Gandhi and Nehru together make the Indian national movement, but they were in fact the two crucial persons.

Dr. Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited.

What did Gandhi Ji have to offer the common man? When you ask this difficult question, you will go back to his book Hind Swaraj (1909).  Muslims may find it very gratifying that unlike other Congress leaders Gandhi supported the Indian Councils Act 1909 and its concessions to Muslims. He says, in Hind Swaraj, that those Hindu leaders who opposed the concessions to Muslims were wrong. If our Muslim brothers get extra benefits, what is the harm? Should your brother get something, ought you to be pleased or displeased?—This is what he says in Hind Swaraj. To him, India’s past is not Hindu or Muslim but both. India was very good under the rule of Maharajas and Badshahs who were guided by Pandits and Maulvis. I myself consider it a horrible state but in Hind Swaraj he considers the government of Badshahs and Maulvis as very good government as compared to that of the British and equates that with those of Rajas and Pandits. But he even doesn’t condemn the caste system although he opposed untouchability in South Africa and in India too right from the time of his arrival in India in 1915. But this is not criticized in Hind Swaraj. All these things he believed would be left to private efforts—his own constructive programme, not government. Government should keep aloof. It is only through private efforts that people should be served. Peasants should be served by the Zamindars or landlords who should be their custodians. In factories, workers should be helped by the owners who should see themselves as their custodians. But in real life this was not sufficient, this was not going to draw the masses to national movement. Here then was the importance of Left and particularly of Jawaharlal Nehru. Right from 1928, he demanded not only independence, he also demanded that in independent India, peasant should get land, workers should get protection, women should get equal rights with men, and there should be total democracy with mass suffrage.

These demands were pushed in the Congress by Jawaharlal Nehru with the help of the Left and actually the Karachi resolution of 1931—which I strongly recommend all to read—it was emphasized that the state should pursue “neutrality” towards religions, women should have equal rights with men, peasants should get land and rent-relief, and the State should control the basic industries, indebtedness to moneylenders should be scaled down, etc., etc.

Now, without the Karachi resolution, without these promises, I don’t think there could have been that support for national movement which it obtained in 1930s and 1940s. In Civil-Disobedience Movement unprecedented number of peasants went to prison and lost their properties. Remember, going to prison in British rule was not the same as going to prison now; you lost your property, you lost everything, you couldn’t get employment, yet over hundred thousand people went to jail in the Civil-Disobedience movement of 1930. Many lost their lands, properties, everything. They were mostly poor.  Unlike the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921, Civil-Disobedience movement was the movement largely of the poor and that was the new thing. Once the movement took this form it became increasingly difficult for British rule to continue.

I want here to bring to your attention something which appeared in the Dawn, the Muslim League organ from pre-1947 days which comes out daily from Karachi. There was an article abstracted from it, which I read. In that article, the writer said that we have a problem in Pakistan our movement for Pakistan as a nation has no martyr, no hero. Because it never opposed the British rulers, it only opposed our fellow subjects (the Hindus). What shall we look to? Indeed those went to prison against British rule in what became Pakistan, they were Khudai Khidmatgars, Congressmen of the Punjab, nationalists of Sindh, and not the Pakistan leaders. Pakistan is, however, not alone in this problem. It shares it with those who are now in power in India.

The Hindu Mahasabha, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have the same psychological problem. The RSS was founded in 1925 and if you ask them what did you do for twenty two years [till 1947]? Why didn’t you join the National Movement and go to the prison? Why don’t you do something against the British if you are such great patriots? You ask the Hindu Mahasabha the same question. Savarkar in the Andamans gave an apology thus washing away his whole patriotic past saying he will not oppose British government. He never did so, he only opposed Muslims, propounding a two-nation theory even before Mohammad Ali Jinnah.  

What is RSS doing now; It is looking for other figures like Bhagat Singh to count among its heroes! What Bhagat Singh has to do with the RSS, the man who in the night before execution wrote Why I am An Atheist, the man who said that if there can be any leader from the Congress he supports, it is JawaharLal Nehru. The man who wrote that Hindu communalism is worse than any other opponent of the National Movement, how can he be your hero! As for Vallabh Bhai Patel, do not you know that he always said that he was a close follower of Mahatma Gandhi?

Another hero—they claim—is Subhash Chandra Bose. Did Subash Chandra Bose ever say that there should be Hindu Rashtra? He even made Iqbal’s poem “Sare Jahan Se Achchha Hindostan Hamara” the National Anthem of the Indian National Army. He made Urdu and Hindi official languages of Azad Hind Fauj. Look at the name –Azad Hind Fauj! He said—Jai Hind; he never said Hindu Rashtra! RSS men never say ‘Jai Hind’, nor ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ the slogan Bhagat Singh used to employ. Before 1947 I was present at many Congress meetings and I remember that the meetings always started with the audience shouting—Inquilab Zindabad in homage to Bhagat Singh. So, it is wrong when our newspapers say that Bhagat Singh had been forgotten by the Congress or that Subhash Bose once praised the RSS. Serious biographies of Subhash Chandra Bose show that he never had any dealings with the RSS.

RSS heroes like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee or Deen Dayal Upadhyay did nothing against British rule. Why are you exhibiting the latter’s photographs in the JawaharLal Nehru Museum? What did he do in the national Movement? Where was he? Nowhere! Shayama Prasad Mukherjee was a minister in Bengal along with the Muslim League at the time of the Quit India movement (1942). He remained a minister. He never lifted his finger against British rule but only against Muslims. So the Hindutva forces can claim no hero in the National Movement. Their entire theory and entire beliefs are totally opposed to those of the National Movement. Who in the National Movement ever said “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”? None, It was only Hindu Mahasabha! Who in the National Movement said “Hindu Raj Amar Rahe”? None It was only RSS! So, you had those slogans, then you say that you actually opposed the British government! Or is it that you really supported the British government because you tried to divide the National Movement; you tried to separate the Hindus and Muslims and so weaken the National Movement. You always raised the issue of communalism! The RSS men have not changed, they are the same! People say why does not the Prime Minister Modi issue a statement [on Akhlaq’s lynching]? I say what is the use that would be always hypocritical, so let him remain silent about Dadri!

I now turn to two things: Fight for Secular India and Fight for Prosperous India. These are the two objects for people of the nation. Since you are students of Aligarh Muslim University, I want you to remember August 1947. Aligarh had been described as the fortress of the Muslim League. We had insulted Abul Kalam Azad when he passed through the Aligarh railway station. What was to be our fate now? The first thing was that Nehru sent the Kumaon Regiment to protect the Aligarh Muslim University. But could it protect the whole district, when the whole of what is now Haryana was in flames? In Tappal, there was a massacre of Muslims. Muslim corpses were coming, to the morgue in our neighborhood from somewhere. All the time the Kumaon Regiment was trying to protect the city and the university with huge flares by which they could see a crowd at a distance at night. Any time the crowd could come. Only one man seemed to stood forth to prevent the destruction of this University and massacres of Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh, and that was Mahatma Gandhi. He was insulted when he went to Muslim refugee camps at Jama Masjid and he was insulted when he went to Hindu refugee camps! Day in and day out, he suffered insults. He went to Panipat trying to protect Muslims. On 13^th January 1948, he went on fast. And what were the demands of the fast? One was that Muslims must be protected and those people who had been leading mobs against Muslims must sign that they would not do such thing again. And there were names of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha leaders in his list. And Muslims should be allowed as have not gone to Pakistan to return to their homes so that refugees from Pakistan were being asked to vacate for Muslims. This was the first demand and you can see what a huge demand it was in the circumstances. The second demand was that Rs. fifty five crores, an immense amount at that time, should be paid to Pakistan because Pakistan officials had not received salaries for a month and India had withheld that pledged amount. Can you imagine a man going against his own government in favour of a foreign government? And when he was asked, he said I am as much an Indian as I am Pakistani. I belong to both countries!

When the fast began on 13 January 2015 all through Delhi the slogan was ‘Gandhi Murdabad’. There was a procession marching with such slogans towards Gandhi Ji’s prayer meetings. But on the third day of the fast JawaharLal Nehru addressed a meeting of ten thousand people in front of the Red Fort. I always ask who called that meeting? Did Patel call that meeting? Did Rajendra Prasad call it? Who had the courage to call it and face the crowd? And yet by the time Nehru had spoken the crowd was with him. And then within two further days there was a procession of a hundred thousand people in Delhi. Peasants of Aligarh, peasants of Meerut, peasants also from Muzaffar Nagar—perhaps fathers and grandfathers of some of those who participated the riots recently—were in that procession along with. Sweeper unions, tongawalas and factory workders. Thereafter crowds surrounded the houses of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders forcing them to agree to sign pledges and bringing them practically by force to Gandhi Ji’s site of fast until all of them had so submitted. And when Gandhi Ji ended his fast, and the government paid fifty five crores of rupees to Pakistan, violence was over, almost simultaneously in both countries. So, you are not speaking of an ordinary man when you speak of Gandhi. We are speaking of a man of immense courage who didn’t care for his personal status or dignity for the larger cause. He was always walking barefoot in total dirt among the homeless victims but he never minded it. He would go again and again to both Hindu and Muslim refugee camps for giving his message that Hindu and Muslims should be brothers and sisters.

So, it has been such people who have made us a nation. Things didn’t fall of themselves from the heavens. What happened after independence, I would not go into in great details but shortly one must remember –To a Muslim audience it may not sound very great, but for India, it was an immense thing that the Hindu Code was legislated in 1955-56. Hindu women had no right to inheritance, they have now. They had now equal rights except in very few matters. It represented a total overthrow of Dharma Shastra and not through a coup but through a general election. The Congress (and the Communist Party) went into that election saying that women should have equal rights with men. Jan Sangh and Ram Rajya Parishad stood up for the Dharmashastra, and surely need to be asked today, why did you oppose the Hindu Code in 1950s? Don’t you think men and women should have equal rights? But they were totally rejected by the electorate—Jan Sangh, the pre-cursor of the BJP as well as Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad. So, India became a democracy, it changed civil laws where men and women, at least 80 percent of population, were made equal though unfortunately unfavorable social customs continue, like dowry. And simultaneously came the agrarian reforms. Millions of peasants throughout India got land. UP once had of the most radical Zamindari Abolition Acts besides Kashmir but every state had such Acts. Finally came the ceilings legislations of 1960s and the construction of the Indian public sector. The basis of new India, with all its weaknesses that still remain, was thus laid in the 1950s and 1960s.

Coming to this university, when I was a student (1947-53), only 900 students were left in this university in 1949. This was a private university run by donations under the British government the total amount, of whose grant was a few lakhs. In 1951 the Indian government took over the finances of the university. They didn’t touch the organization of the university. The government would fund everything. Otherwise AMU would have been in the dustbin! I was a student in 1947, what a small university it was at the maximum, about 2500 students. Now, I don’t know what the current number is? 28,000… or more, with huge buildings and so on! It’s all the nation’s gift!

Well, the real thing is how the poor have fared? They haven’t fared very well. If you read an essay by Utsa Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger, you will see that until 1989 the per capita calorie intake continuously increased. Even in years of drought this was maintained by Food Corporation’s, operations subsidies and so on. Do you know what has happened after 1991? Calorie intake per capita declined! By 2003, it reached the level that it was under British rule. When Mr. Modi and Co. speak of capital inflow, or go to various countries where, they can give away billion dollars, as in Mongolia, they are only supporting the corporations. The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, very much like Muslim League, never had an economic programme. The poor mean nothing to them; only the rich fund-givers are important. I read today in the newspaper that the upper castes, ‘of course’, support the BJP in Bihar [VidhanSabha election 2015]. The word “of course” I liked. Not only upper castes but upper classes support the BJP. Therefore, in order to rule they must continue to raise the communal issues, which is the only way in which they can continue to get votes. They are not the first to do so, the Nazis did it by raising the racial question in Germany. Golwalkar, the RSS guru, actually praised Hitler for his policy towards the Jews saying that same policy should be resorted to in India against Muslims. So, to keep up the anti-Muslim fervor is now the RSS watchword. No opposition to religious fanaticism i.e. Hindutva can be tolerated. Even an ordinary history text book which says that the Rigveda was compiled in 1500 BC—and by implication not in 8000 BC—is unacceptable. Therefore, what is happening today—the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare, and Kalburgi—is part of a pre-determined pattern: by threats they want to silence people. The Congress didn’t much care who served in the ICHR, ICSSR, JawaharLal Nehru Museum but RSS cares! Everywhere they are filling places with fanatics. Everywhere they are giving a totally wrong picture of Indian history and of Indian Constitution. Therefore, on the shoulders of the educated people in India or those who can answer them in print, on paper, in speech, a great responsibility rests today. A massacre of Muslims is not just an attack on Muslim community, it is an attack on India and large number of people are realizing it. Read Indian Express, or The Times of India, and other dailies, the realization is amply there on their pages every day. And I am very glad to see that in Hindi press too, they are realizing it. This is the time for us to forget our small grouses and grievances and stand up against the conspiracy of the BJP and RSS against the very “Idea of India”.
 
(This is a complete transcription of the lecture delivered by Professor Irfan Habib in the “Idea of India” Series at the Kennedy Hall, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh on October 7, 2015)
 
 
 

The post Building the Idea of India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Courtesy: Arun Kumar / governancenow.com
 
Professor Mushirul Hasan, members of Sahmat, organisers and management of India International Centre, ladies and gentlemen, it is a very great privilege to have been asked to initiate the series commemorating one of the greatest sons of India. at the same time I am more than a little nervous that Professor Mushirul Hasan is presiding over the function because this is debatable whether I am great or not but I mix up my dates awfully, so I will try to be very careful about them hopefully.

I should begin by making an assertion which is seldom made that the Indian National movement is the greatest creation so far of the Indian people. This may or may not be debated by the Indian national movement is a phenomenon in our history, unique, can hardly be questioned. These days it is becoming very common to run down the concept of nation. The Cambridge school had told us that in India, family and caste are the basic units and not anything else, all other things are illusionary.

Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities thought that nation was just an imagined community created by print media. And Perry Anderson in his recent book, his elder brother, Indian ideology 2012, which in a review I thought should have been called Indian Illusions, says that the Indian National Movement was not necessary at all, a statement that even Cambridge scholars had not made, that the act of 1935 and Japanese military successes were sufficient. It is therefore important first to see what the national movement was about and then to see in the present occasion why Jawaharlal Nehru’s intervention and leadership was so crucially important.

Now what the Cambridge School and the Andersons forget is that one of the major factors behind the creations of nations all over the world, in most cases conversions of countries into nations has been the phenomenon of colonial and imperialist exploitation. India was long regarded as a country, there is no dispute about that, but that it was a nation before the 19^th century will be doubted. As Ram Mohan Roy had said, Indians are not patriotic; their basic affiliations are to their caste, 1828.

So what happened and why and how did this turnaround come? One of the major reasons for this was the work, as Pandit Nehru realised and indeed celebrated, the work of early nationalist, economist Dadabhai Naoroji, the grand old man of India, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Subramaniam Iyer, Deoskar, Justice Ranade and others. They told us, they explored what the Indian poor could never have done for themselves, how Britain was living tribute on India and how hatred was causing de-industrialisation. Whatever the subalterns may say, these discoveries could not have come out of subaltern efforts. By 1905, as Professor Bipin Chandra in his classic work, the Rise and growth of Indian Economic Nationalism, points out the total picture of England’s exploitation of India in the writings of these moderates was complete.

Even today one might mention that if you take Sivasubramaniam’s National Income of India statistics, the major effort so far, then the per capita income of India between 1900 and 1947 rose by dramatic percentage 0.2% or less, 0.2% per annum. If between 1946-47 and 1990-91 under free India, the growth was not very spectacular, yet it was sensational compared to what happened under British rule in 47 years. It now amounted to 1.1%, five times the per capita growth attained under British Raj and complete conditions of free trade which now all the good newspapers in India want us to go over to.

What happened in the next stage that one would call roughly, after 1905 particularly after the partition of Bengal and notably after the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi in 1915, he left south Africa in 1914, was that the message increasingly got across to the Indian poor and one of the channels through which it got across was Gandhi and his followers. In Hind Swaraj in 1909, Gandhi argued that religion has nothing to do with a nation, that Indian and India, therefore people of all religions should live in amity and he summarized the picture that the nationalists had drawn of British exploitation of India, an adequate and capable summary.

The second thing which Gandhi did on which his experience of south Africa counted so much and above all his own personality was to link the national movement to the agitations for the rectifications of the grievances of the poor. Not mere pamphlets, not mere articles in journals and books but actual agitation. To that extent, in that sense, the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, the subsequent Kheda Satyagraha of Gujarat peasants and the textile workers strike of 1918 were outstanding events. Now one need not recount the spread of the national movement immediately after these agitations, notably the April Satyagraha against Rowlatt Act of 1919. And then the Khilafat and non-cooperation movement of 1920-22. These were unprecedented in the number of masses brought into the movement.

Here however a point of crisis was reached and I think this is a point of crisis which must be understood, why it was reached. Gandhiji had brought about a revolution. There is an Urdu verse which I have often quoted, so I ask the forgiveness of people who have heard me quote it before. Akbar Allahabadi’s verse, Buddhu miyan bhi hazrat e Gandhi ke saath hain, e musht e khakh hain magar aandhi ke saath hain. Buddhu Miyan didn’t come before, he countered but what for? If we now turn to Hind Swaraj, we see a problem there. Gandhi is against British rule. He knows how India is being exploited by England. Dadabhai Naoroji and Ramesh Dutt have told him, Gokhale his mentor had told him. But when you come to the solution, what is the solution there. not even social reform. Not even a denunciation of the caste system, of untouchability, not even a declaration of women’s rights in Hind Swaraj, a minimal state, all left to self-help.

Characteristically I forget the date but when he came to AMU for the first time, the lecture he gave was on such an uninviting topic as self-help. Indians were to overthrow British rule and after their liberation live by self-help, minimal state. He thought that was the kind of state which the rajas and baadshahs has ruled with the support of pundits and maulvis. To many of us this would look like an awful idea but he thought that this was the ideal that India should look to. In other words Gandhiji was all the time appealing to people for self-correction, to landlords to be good custodians, establish schools and hospitals for their peasants. Similarly capitalists were to be good custodians, the state will have nothing to do with all these things, perhaps a minimum of law and order. And since he believed in non-violence, a minimum of the army. Could this make an appeal to… he had moved the middle classes like never before on Rowlatt Acts, he had moved a larger mass on the issue of Khilafat and Punjab wrongs but all the time you see hesitation in Gandhiji in demanding independence. Curiously he was very much a constitutionalist like the moderates.

In 1919 December even after Amritsar, he was counselling that we should rework the reforms without carping criticism, the 1919 government of India Act reforms.

By 1905, as Professor Bipin Chandra in his classic work, the Rise and growth of Indian Economic Nationalism, points out the total picture of England’s exploitation of India in the writings of these moderates was complete

The breakdown of the Khilafat movement, its withdrawal in early 1922 brought the crisis up. Atleast CR Das said he wanted an Indian state for the 98%. But Gandhi did not want a state at all in effect. He wanted a minimal state. And so behind the issue of individual non-cooperation or limited cooperation in which the Swarajists and Gandhians fought was this issue lurking behind what kind of India.

The second difficulty with Gandhiji was what Nehru called his metaphysics, his lack of rational approach, his declarations in the nature of arbitrary diktat rather than reasoned arguments. Throughout Hind Swaraj there is no celebration of reason and rationalism, there is only celebration of religion.
This to my mind is the reason why Jawaharlal Nehru had that particular mental crisis of which is major biographer, Sarvapalli Gopal, speaks. Although he does not relate them to these two issues but rather to his personal relations with Motilal Nehru, the Swarajist leader, his own father and Gandhiji on the other hand. They were at opposing sides and Jawaharlal Nehru supported Gandhiji against his own father. Motilal Nehru said bitterly to Jawaharlal that you want to live without working as a non-co-operator all the time expecting me to demand higher and higher fees so that I should support you.

So obviously these issues were there but behind these individual problems were this particular problem which perhaps one can only see by way of hindsight. At that time they were probably not clear. And so Nehru went to Europe. And again, I am not saying anything radical, that is what Gopal has said, this brought about a total change in his outlook. He came into association with people resisting colonialism throughout the world. The Brussels congress was particularly important. He went to soviet Russia and had his first glimpse of socialism which he undoubtedly studied critically but which still made a great appeal to him because he heard things in Russia about the equality and resistance to class exploitation which he had not heard elsewhere. In both Glimpses of World History and his autobiography he makes statements that to him, Lenin and Gandhi were the greatest leaders of the poor in his century.

When he comes back there is a sudden shift in the national movement, not at all realized by Nehru himself. Everyone thought that the Madras Congress Resolution for total independence in 1927 was an aberration. But why did it get passed at Nehru’s and Subhas Bose’s insistence. It got passed because there was a sickness in the national movement about the lack of radicalism in congress demands. Behind that, behind the moderation of the leadership was the anxiety that the congress should say something which should make or appeal to the mass of the population.

And I think here Nehru’s greatest contributions come. He wrote, as you know, two major works in this period, the period of civil disobedience and its aftermath, civil disobedience lasted from 1930 in the first phase to 1931 and he was in prison and then he again went back to prison. And Jawaharlal Nehru wrote Glimpses of World History for his daughter which was published in, if I am not mistaken, 1934 and then subsequently the autobiography published three years later. In both these works which were written in prison, Nehru makes certain points which are extremely important and which demarcate him from Mahatma Gandhi’s positions very sharply.

The first point is his celebration of reason. In Glimpses of World History what is remarkable is that although religions are described, they take a very secondary place. he is not prepared to accept at that time that religion contributed anything positive to humanity because that ends reason. And incidentally another colleague of his whom you would not think of asking such an embarrassing question, Abul Kalam Azad in 1907 asked the same question, Has religion done anything good to humanity? His major complaint against religion was it deadens reason and it makes the human being servile to the illusion of an afterlife. Both in his glimpses of world history and autobiography, he proclaimed his indifference even to Hinduism and Hindu practices and also to the concept of God and regarded this as an unnecessary concept.

In Glimpses of World History he picked a very important statement of the Jesuit fathers about Akbar. The statement was, Thus we see in this prince Akbar the common fault of an atheist who refuses to make reason subservient to faith. Now that Nehru should pick this out in order to commend Akbar and that he should add, if this is a definition of an atheist, the more we have of them, the better. Similar statements occur in autobiography.
 
I have often wondered at the curious shiftiness of the Indian people. Then when Nehru said all that, they celebrated him, they idolized him. What has changed in these two generations that the reverse is the case today. In any case here he was in total conflict with Gandhiji whom he regarded as his master. He said in autobiography that Gandhiji’s dangerous affiliation to metaphysics and to his declarations of policies and statements without reason makes it very difficult for the national movement. He describes Gandhiji’s immediate followers as people who had been reduced to mental pulp, thoughtless fellows.

That brings me to another wonderful thing, that Nehru should say all this and Gandhi should still declare him his heir. One feels that one is talking of some other country. The second important thing that Nehru brought in was what he thought was socialism but indeed he did distinguish also between a welfare state and a socialist state.

The second important thing was the difference on the role of the state. Pandit Nehru was I think in communist language sectarian when he declared that the communists were wrong in thinking that the national movement can be directed towards a proletarian and pro-peasant movement. The very idea of nation he said is bourgeois, a statement that even Stalin didn’t make. He said, the national question is a peasant question. not necessarily a correct judgment but still a better judgement perhaps that Nehru’s bourgeois nation. And since Indian National Congress is a national organization, it is a movement to build a nation, it must be a bourgeois party. the concept that the congress or national movement can be a multiclass movement had not even developed within the communist movement at that time. that was largely left to the Dutt-Bradley thesis of 1936 but that is another question. I say that because Nehru was very familiar with communist opinions and he in fact says that on many matters what the communists have said have proved correct and they have been very insightful. This does not mean however that he agreed with them on other matters. However the main issue was that the congress should present in Nehru’s mind a picture of what India would be when it is independent. A picture that would be totally different from Hind Swaraj which would not appeal to the Indian people. They didn’t want a minimal state, they wanted a supportive, they wanted a democratic, they wanted a welfare state at the least. And here there was a major issue between the two. This lasted till the last days of Gandhiji.

The second thing which Gandhi did on which his experience of South Africa counted so much and above all his own personality was to link the national movement to the agitations for the rectifications of the grievances of the poor.

In 1945 Gandhiji wrote to Nehru, I have said that I will stand by the system of government envisaged in Hind Swaraj, the village of my dreams is still in my mind. Nehru replies in astonishment that he should think of a state in India in such a way and believe in what he said almost 36 years ago in Hind Swaraj. Gandhiji, in fact, in practice set up Mashruwala to write against rationing and promoted this article in Harijan and also in his statements that there should be no rationing which would have meant in practice the death of a large number of poor people just because he hated state intervention in these matters. So there was a total difference of opinion.

And here therefore comes the second intervention, the first intervention is a celebration of reason in the national movement, a celebration of rationalism, and the second important element and that was the welfare state. Unfortunately because of Nehru’s innate modesty he does not celebrate the Karachi resolution of 1931 in his autobiography. He says these things could be done by any capitalist state, they had not been done by any capitalist state till that time, later also post-second world war years, but not in 1935. This fundamental rights resolution after the discontinuance of the civil disobedience movement in 1931 as modified and in fact strengthened by the all-India congress committee in august 1931 lays down many fundamental things about India including the secular state about which I shall have soon something to say. It for the first time proclaimed the equality of men and women which Gandhiji had not until then and certainly not in Hind Swaraj ever recognized. Later on, yes, but even then he would not recognize equality, he would say women are superior to men, they should be generals because they are compassionate whereas men are cruel and idiots. He could say that and get away with it but the concept of equality, the modern concepts of equality had passed Gandhiji by.

This resolution says, no disability. You know this is what the picture would be of India when it is free, no disability attaches to any citizen by reasons of his or her religion, caste, creed or sex in regard to public employment, office of power or honour and in the exercise of any trade or calling, totally against Hind Swaraj. And labour protection, women protection, all that is there but then also land to the tiller which Gandhiji had until then opposed and was to oppose even later.

The system of land tenure and revenue and rent shall be reformed and an equitable adjustment made of the burden on agricultural land immediately giving relief to the smaller peasantry by substantial reduction of agricultural rent and revenue now paid by them etcetera etcetera.
Then come to Clause 15, the state shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport. Public sector, control of industry anathema to Gandhiji.

Now the Karachi Resolution was made the basis of the election manifesto of the Congress in 1937 and it had astonishing success. It was again made the basis of the election manifesto in 1940 for 1946 elections. No one can say that these were hidden. Gandhiji had actually moved the resolution and he had added one particular para to strengthen it, Relief of agricultural indebtedness and control of usury, direct and indirect, are in his hand writing.

The state shall provide for military training of citizens, totally against Gandhiji’s philosophy. This is a picture that Nehru’s draft presented to the Indian people and even Gandhiji realized, I think, in his heart of hearts that the Swaraj type of state would make no appeal to the Indian peasant and labour.

The third matter that flows from it and that actually flows from both, the concept of supremacy of reason and the concept of a welfare state is the secular state. Nehru had the international notion of secularism and it is important to know what the worldwide view of secularism is and not the view of this Indian Supreme Court. The worldwide view of secularism is that the state is bound to take all efforts of welfare, human welfare, which are only in terms of the material and spiritual comforts of those people in this world. anything done because that would bring reward in afterlife is anathema to secularism. In fact, Holyoake who first used secularism was looking for a definition of a philosophy of morality in which afterlife won’t count, religion won’t count. It is no business of the state to ensure that Muslims should pray five times a day although that may lead them to heaven but this is no business of the state. Or that Hindus should perform pilgrimages is their personal matter, for their being born better in afterlife that is no business of the state.

This is Nehru’s position throughout. He is one of the few Indian leaders who used the word secular in 1930s and 40s. In fact, the word secular therefore did not appear in the Constitution at all, it was added in 1976 through an amendment to the preamble.

The ground has been infinitely muddied by that doubtful philosopher Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. In his book, Recovery of Faith, he says, when India is said to be a secular state, not France or England but India, it does not mean that we reject the reality of an unseen spirit. If the spirit is unseen, how do you know it is real. So the very formula is ridiculous. Or the relevance of religion to life which is totally against the philosophy of Holyoake, the French revolution and human secular values throughout the world.

We hold that not one religion should be given preferential status. And on the basis of this kind of nonsense, the Supreme Court went further and made a statement of absolute fantasy that all the great values in this world have come from sants and saints which gave us democracy, equality of women and men, socialist values and so forth. But this is the law of the land today. And when the constitution prohibits religious instruction, the Supreme Court allows instruction in religion in government institutions.

Now clearly it was Nehru’s position and not the position of others who believed in a kind of religiously tolerant state that strengthened the national movement and gave it an argument against the Muslim league and other splinter parties. Nehru, in fact, argued in his autobiography that whereas Muslim separatism can be identified as such because they are in a minority, Hindu communalism masquerades as Indian nationalism. I doubt if they even masqueraded. I doubt very much that they even masqueraded. RSS has no record of any agitation against the British government.

Here if you permit me I shall bring to your notice a joke from Pakistan. In Dawn recently or about six months ago and that article was published in the journal of Pakistani Historical Society, so I came to know of it and published without any challenging note and that was that there is a psychological problem in Pakistan. The problem in Pakistan is that the whole national movement of Pakistan was not dead against a ruling power but against fellow subjects. We had nothing, no quarrel with the British who governed the areas that are Pakistan, our only quarrel was with Hindus. The same applies also to RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, they had no quarrel with the British, they had only quarrel with their Muslim fellow subjects. So before we laugh at the joke in Pakistan, we should consider that we have just elected a government whose entire national credentials are anti-Muslim credentials.

Well, coming back to the importance of secularism, this a very great misfortune that a debate in 1940s did not occur and it did not occur because of the Quit India Movement when for three years all congress publications were closed, students had been put in jail and therefore Muslim League propaganda had an open field. So Nehru’s secularism never had the chance.

This brings me now to 40s and here I am afraid I must take issue with what Pandit Nehru did in the 40s. when the war broke out between two bits of colonial or aspiring colonial power groups, the congress took the position that the Nazis are the worst side and they should therefore be opposed but an agitation against the government should continue. The agitation was to be individual satyagraha so that the government is not embarrassed. When in 1941 and 1942 the pendulum swung on the other side, there was the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union and there was a very powerful Japanese offensive not only against Kuomintang China but then in Southeast Asia, occupation of Burma and so forth, Gandhiji’s position changes. For a man of moral authority this is an astonishing change. He believed, as many said, as Pandit Nehru himself said, and as Sarvapalli Gopal considers to be the case in his biography of Nehru, he believed that Russia and China would be defeated. He did not play much attention to the German defeat before Moscow. He believed in the Nazi propaganda that the Germans were about to cross the Volga near Stalingrad. Similarly he thought and he wrote in fact that Japan had no intentions against India. How did he know? That if therefore, now was the time to agitate when the allies were at their weakest, then the British could be made to yield but they had not yielded through Kripps Mission. And therefore Gandhiji began through his supporters even before anything was decided by the Congress to develop a movement towards civil disobedience. Nehru speaks in his Discovery of India 1945, of the continuous increase in excitement which Gandhiji’s statement made.

In 1947 both Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s dreams united as never before. Both wanted that communal slaughter should stop, both wanted that even if division came Muslims should live in India and Hindus and Sikhs should live in Pakistan. They both felt that their primary duty was to do their duty in India

Here what is not very relevant is still a joke from 1942. After his rejection of Kripps Mission, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru began touring, as was his wont, he was a man of action and he didn’t tour only for elections, he toured to build a party. he came to Aligarh. Characteristically his hosts forgot that being a human being he needs lunch. They took him from place to place and every time said lunch, but we were never told about your lunch. And so he got very annoyed and he said that I know a person called Professor Habib, you take me there. And so around 3.30 when we were playing, my elder brother and I, in the garden, we found Nehru arriving by Tonga, getting down, breaking into house, practically shouting Habib, Habib, make me an omelette and as we hid behind doors and as he consumed the omelette, my father told him, Panditji, why did you reject the Kripps Mission, we had atleast hope of being a dominion. And we watched Nehru looking scornfully at my father, saying, Habib, just remain professor, within five years this country will be free. And it took five and a half years, he was wrong by six months. I remember the incident and this tells you something of the man. I don’t know whether he did in fact want to reject the Kripps Mission proposals but he certainly was very loyal to that decision.

But was he loyal to his views subsequently. How could anyone then attack the British government and agitate against the British government, launch a civil disobedience which only would benefit the axis powers. And then not only that but making statements, running down the world, he says in a quotation from Pandit Nehru himself in his Discovery of India and he gives this quotation and I have again a grouse against Pandit Nehru that he should have selected this quotation, in which he says, we must learn, Gandhiji said on 8^th August, we must learn to look calmly at a world which has blood thirsty eyes at this time.

What was this world? Russians and Chinese defending their homeland or Nazis and Japanese generals strutting over the subject countries. the world has done us no harm, so why should we look calmly and scorn at the world. and why should Jawaharlal Nehru have quoted it, quoted it sympathetically. In his Discovery of India, he concedes that nationalism triumphed over internationalism in the Quit India Resolution. But why then Sir did you support it? Why then did Abul kalam Azad support it? It was a kind of blackmail that you would be then condemned as people who were not brave enough to face British rule but was this enough reason. Were you not being metaphysical like your critics. I think that that was a very great error. To my mind it was not only immoral to do that at that time, to do it for opportunistic reasons but it was also an ideologically very wrong step. And one of the results was that, in fact, congress was wiped out in Muslim localities. It had no Urdu paper, it had no support left. Its all newspapers or publications were banned, its offices closed, its ordinary workers put in prison.

This brings me to the apologia that is Discovery of India for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s conduct. I feel with Gopal that Discovery of India in quality is very inferior to his two worldly books. That is Gopal’s judgement. But then more than fall in quality, the statements he makes, we are proud of the achievements of our race, the past achievements of our race. Race? Are you a Nazi? You had said that nation is a bourgeois idea. So India comes into focus, let other countries suffer, India is my particular, I have discovered India. the history is also despite its great insights, very dangerously tilted. I have already mentioned Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, that a knight obtaining knighthood from the British government, the most obviously foreign rulers should tell us that Indian philosophical thought languished because of foreign rulers from Greeks, Shakas, Kushanas, Muslims, not of course British but all these foreign rulers and that Nehru should accept it. He only changes it, yes, we were great thinkers in the past as if he had never heard of Shankaracharya in the 9^th century, he had never heard of other thinkers, he had never heard of Abul Fazl. We had great thinkers in the past but it was not foreign rulers by acts of which we fell. We became imitative and so lost our creativity.

If you look at history, a country which does imitate never creates. Europe became, as in Glimpses of World History, he himself pointed out, because it imitated Chinese inventions and Arab science.

Now all that is past. There is an Indian nationalism which is totally rational. I have said again that there are great merits in the book and those merits of course remain. They still are a very good treatment of Muslim political movements. There is a very good treatment and an honest treatment even of the events that led to the Quit India Movement. Nevertheless, now we hear Nehru saying, “Religions have contributed a lot to the good of humanity.” The ideas of Glimpses of world History, the ideas of Autobiography are forgotten. Even religion is exalted.

So I did think that if Nehru solved the crisis of nationalism without knowing that he was solving it in late 1920s and early 1930s he became a victim of that crisis, Gandhiji’s irrationalism in 1940s and Discovery of India is an attempt to justify, partly to justify it.

I will end Mr. Chairman however with a final tribute.

In 1947 both Gandhiji’s and Nehru’s dreams united as never before. Both wanted that communal slaughter should stop, both wanted that even if division came Muslims should live in India and Hindus and Sikhs should live in Pakistan. They both felt that their primary duty was to do their duty in India. Frankly, very few top leaders of the Congress felt that. That could be seen in the Meerut session of the ICC where Patel made his speech, Sword to be replied with Sword. When Gandhiji went on his fast on 13^th of January, 1948, that was the testing hour. What he was demanding was that refugees in Delhi who had occupied Muslims houses should vacate them. Not an easy thing. They had been thrown out in Punjab, massacred there, come here, taken houses. They were to vacate them and let back Muslim owners.

Second demand, that India should pay 55 crores to Pakistan whose government was by that non-payment, bankrupt. Most unpopular demand.

I believe that Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad went to Gandhiji to protest against his fast. That demarcated the leadership.

Now if you read any account of that time and we were of course, I was a school boy…no, I think I was a first year student in the AMU at that time, I read the Hindustan Times. I read that on the first day of the hunger strike, stones were thrown at Gandhi and ‘Gandhi murdabad’ were slogans shouted in lanes and bye lanes of Delhi. On the 15^th, Nehru addresses a crowd of 10,000 in front of the Red Fort and to my mind that is the kind of leadership that he signified, it liberates.

So whenever one disagrees with Nehru or even with Gandhiji, one has to do it with the greatest respect and ask the question, Would I have done it, Would anyone else have done it? Well, thank you very much for your patience. 

(Lecture Delivered by Professor Irfan Habib at the India International Centre on November 22, 2014 as part of the 125th Birth Anniversary Celebrations of Jawaharlal Nehru organised by SAHMAT, New Delhi)

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