7. J. Nehru, Discovery of India, (New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 274–275. Nehru emphasizes the connection between overcoming fear and “a new sense of freedom” in his Autobiography, p. 69.
8. Leonard Gordon has examined the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore and M. N. Roy as related to Gandhi in “Bengal’s Gandhi,” in David Kopf, ed., Bengal Regional Identity (Michigan, 1969), pp. 104–112.
9. CWMG 21: 288.
10. R. Tagore, Nationalism, p. 111.
11. Tagore, “The Sunset of the Century” in Nationalism, p. 133.
12. Ibid., p. 135.
13. R. Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings) London: Macmillan 1920), p. 27.
14. Tagore, Nationalism, p. 16.
15. Tagore, Nationalism, pp. 26–27.
16. Ibid., p. 26.
17. C.R. Das, India for Indians (Madras: Ganesh, 1918) p. 9.
18. Tagore, Nationalism, p. 97.
19. Ibid., p. 12.
20. Ibid., p. 113.
21. Ibid., pp. 113–114.
22. Ibid., p. 120.
23. Ibid., pp. 120–123.
24. CWMG 21: 291.
25. Tagore quoted in R. K. Prabhu and Ravindra Kelekav, eds., Truth Called Them Differently (Tagore-Gandhi Controversy) (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1961), pp. 14–17
26. R. Tagore, Letters to A Friend, C. F. Andrews, ed. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1928), p. 132.
27. R. Tagore, Towards Universal Man, (London: Asia Publishing House, 1961), p. 253.
28. Ibid., p. 254.
29. Ibid., p. 259–260.
30. Ibid., p. 262.
31. Ibid., pp. 262–263.
32. Ibid., p. 270.
33. Ibid., p. 268.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p. 272.
37. Ibid., p. 271.
38. CWMG 28: 427.
39. Ibid.
40. CWMG 20: 159.
41. CWMG 23: 640.
42. CWMG 22: 462.
43. Tendulkar, Mahatma 3: 273.
44. Charles Andrews quoted in CWMG 21: 41.
45. Ibid., p. 42.
46. Ibid.
47. R. Tagore, Reminiscences (London: Macmillan, 1920), p. 128.
48. Krishna Kripalani examines the differences between Tagore and Gandhi in Rabindranath Tagore. A Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). He observes that “What Tagore, however, feared was not the Mahatma’s spirit of exclusion—he knew the latter was above it—but that of his followers who would not scruple to appeal to any prejudice or passion to work up the fever of nationalism” (p. 295) Also see Kripalani’s informative comparisons of Gandhi and Tagore on, pp. 296–301, 320–323, 366–369, 374–389. In a rich comparative study of Tagore’s thought, Stephen N. Hay analyzes the clash between Tagore and Gandhi in these terms: “Essentially they differed because one was a reformer bent on changing the world, the other a poet listening for harmonies inaudible to less finely tuned ears. Beyond these basic differences in vocation and temperament, each man looked at India and the world through the lenses of his own regional, caste, and family traditions.” Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China and India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 284.
49. CWMG 39: 319.
50. M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, January 18, 1942.
51. J. Bandyopadhyaya, Social and Political Thought of Gandhi (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1969), 89.
52. M. K. Gandhi, Democracy: Real and Deceptive, Ahmedabad, Navijivan, 1961, p. 6.
53. Young India, July 30, 1931.
54. Young India, December 1, 1927.
55. CWMG 75: 148.
56. Young India, July 28, 1920.
57. Harijan, May 27, 1939.
58. Leonard A. Gordon, offers an excellent analysis of Roy’s background as a leader in “Portrait of a Bengal Revolutionary,” Journal of Asian Studies 27 (2) (February 1968): 197–216.
59. Roy acknowledges the brahmanical influence in his Memoirs (Bombay, 1964), pp. 163–64.
60. Roy, New Orientation (Calcutta, 1946), p. 27.
61. Edward Shils, “Ideology” in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 7: 69.
62. Robert C. North and X. J. Eudin, M. N Roy s Mission to China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963) p. 1.
63. Ibid. North believes that “Roy ranks with Lenin and Mao Tse-tung in the development of fundamental Communist policy for the underdeveloped…areas of the globe.”
64. One reference to Roy by Gandhi occurs in Young India, January 1, 1925, a criticism of Roy’s account of Bolshevism.
65. See the comment on Roy’s relation to his tradition by Edward Shils in “The Culture of the Indian Intellectual,” University of Chicago Reprint Series, pp. 15–16. (Reprinted from Sewanee Review, April and July 1959).
66. Roy, Memoirs, p. 379.
67. Ibid., p. 543
68. Ibid., p. 413.
69. G. D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959), p. 40.
70. Roy, India in Transition (Geneva, 1922), p. 205.
71. Ibid., p. 207.
72. Ibid., p. 235.
73. Ibid., p. 208.
74. Ibid., p. 209.
75. M. N. Roy and Evelyn Roy, One Year of Non-Cooperation (Calcutta, 1923), pp. 5658.
76. See especially: M. N. Roy, Crime and Karma, Cats and Women: Fragments of a Prisoner s Diary, 1 (Calcutta, 1957): 112–119; Indias Message: Fragments, etc. 2 (Calcutta, 1950).
77. Roy, India s Message, p. 307.
78. Ibid., p. 189.
79. Ibid., pp. 237–307.
80. Ibid., pp. 210–211.
81. Ibid., pp. 214, 215, 216, 222, 228, 236.
82. Independent India, October 16, 1938, p. 453.
83. At precisely the time when Roy says he was expressing his “appreciation” of Gandhi to one of the Mahatma’s colleagues, we find him writing to a Marxist comrade abroad: “Our real fight is against the right wing which is still very powerful thanks to the popularity of Gandhi …. I am striking at the very root. Gandhist ideology must go before the nationalist movement can develop its enormous revolutionary potentialities. And Gandhi has recognized in us his mortal enemy. As a matter of fact, in his inner circle I am branded as the enemy No. 1.” (Roy to Jay Lovestone, October 19, 1937, Bombay.) Exactly one year after writing his appreciation, Roy wrote to an Indian associate for help in the great effort “to destroy this curse of Gandhism.” (Roy to Makhan Lai Sen, September 12, 1939.) The quotations are from Roy’s correspondence examined in the M. N. Roy Archives of the Indian Renaissance Institute then at Dehradun, U.P., India.
84. P. Spratt, Foreword to Roy, New Orientation (Calcutta, 1946), p. xv.
85. Roy, New Orientation, p. 56.
86. Roy, Reason, Romanticism and Revolution (Calcutta, 1952), 1:v.
87. Philip Spratt, ‘Gandhi and Roy,’ unpublished article and interview with Philip Spratt in Madras, May, 1967.
88. Independent India, February 22, 1948, p. 67.
89. Independent India, April 18, 1948, p. 176.
90. John Haithcox examines Roy’s changing attitudes toward Gandhi and concludes that “After Gandhi’s death a new respect for him emerged in Roy’s thinking…Roy came closer to Gandhi in his emphasis on human solidarity, the relation of means to ends, the necessity of some form of economic and political decentralization, and the rejection of party politics.” Communism and Nationalism in India. M. N Roy and Comintern Policy 1920–1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1971, p. 256.
91. Independent India, January 30, 1949, p. 37.
92. Independent India, February 22, 1948, p. 67.
93. Roy, Politics, Politics, Power and Parties (Calcutta, 1960), p. 121.
94. Ibid., pp. 81–82. Compare this view with Gandhi’s address to the Hindustani Talimi Sangh Group in December, 1947, recorded in Tendulkar, Mahatma 8: 227–232.
95. Leonard Gordon, Brothers Aga
inst the Raj (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) offers a study of the Boses outstanding for its scholarship and originality.
Chapter 4
1. Young India, March 27, 1930, CWMG 42: 135.
2. This meant that 55% of a maund of salt, priced at Rs. 2–4–7 (82 cents), went for revenue. Of the total revenue collected by the Raj (Rs. 800,443,369 or $292,161,830), 8.4% came from the salt tax (Rs. 67,646,354 or $24,690,919) in 1929–1930. By Gandhi’s calculation, the tax could represent as much as three days’ income per year of an average villager, or as much as Rs 720 per year from an average village’s consumption of salt. See CWMG 43: 51–2, 62.
3. Details relating to the Dandi march are given in CWMG 43: 59–188; Gandhi’s periodical, Young India (Ahmedabad), March-April, 1930; Home Poll. File #122. 1930 and File #247/11/1930; Mahatma Gandhi: Source Material for a History of the Freedom Movement in India. 3, Part III, 1930–1931 (Bombay: Directorate of Printing and Stationery, 1969), pp. 8–114; Indian newspapers, especially Bombay Chronicle and Times of India (both published in Bombay); Mahadev Desai s Diary (Mahadevabhaini Dayari, in Gujarati), N. D. Parkh, ed. (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Prakasan Mandir, 1948–1949) 13 (1929–1931): 224–333; Kalyanji Vithalbhai Mehta and Ishwari Desai, Dandi Kutch [March] (in Gujarati) (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Rajya Samiti, 1969); S. R. Bakshi, Gandhi and Salt Satyagraha (Kerala: Vishwavidya Publishers, 1981); and Thomas Weber, “Historiography and the Dandi March: The Other Myths of Gandhi’s Salt March,” Gandhi Marg 8 (8) (November 1986): 457–476; Weber, “Kharag Bahadur Singh: The Eighth [sic] Marcher,” Gandhi Marg 6 (9) (December 1984): 661–673. The two articles by Thomas Weber are particularly useful because he tries to correct inaccuracies in previous accounts of the Dandi march. Thus he shows that while Gandhi began the march at Sabarmati with 78 followers, two more joined him at the village of Matar on March 14 to accompany the chosen group for most of the distance, raising the total number of official marchers to 81. Moreover, many accounts of the march report that the distance traveled was 241 miles. Weber walked the entire route of the march, interviewed those who witnessed it, and calculates that the distance covered was “somewhere between” 241 and 200 miles. Finally, he observes that what Gandhi collected on the beach of Dandi that early morning, April 6, was not really salt but “a handful of saline mud”; the pure salt crystals were not picked up by him until three days later near the village of Bhimrad, 15 miles from Dandi. Weber’s book on the salt march is forthcoming. But his comment on the purpose of the salt satyagraha in his article on “Historiogaphy and the Dandi March” states well the meaning of swaraj: “The revolution Gandhi sought to achieve was not merely political, it was also social. The independence he fought for was not only national but also personal. The Salt March was about empowerment. It told people that they were stronger than they thought and that the rulers were weaker than they imagined. It was about reforming society and about the self-reformation of the individual. For Gandhi the two were inextricably linked—reform yourself and you have started to reform the world, reform the world nonviolently and you will have reformed the self” (p. 460).
4. CWMG 42: 480.
5. The most informative single volume on the Bardoli satyagraha is Mahadev Desai, The Story of Bardoli: Being a History of the Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 and its Sequel (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1929). Desai (Gandhi’s personal secretary at this time) offers no criticism of the satyagraha, but his facts, when checked against the press and other critical sources seem substantially accurate. Also CWMG 36, pp. 35–36, 79–81, 88–90, 319–322, 353–354, 368–370, 384–386, 419–421, reflect Gandhi’s unusually strong response to the Bardoli resistance. Additional analysis of the significance of Bardoli is in, Ghanshyam Shah, “Traditional Society and Political Mobilization: The Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha (1920–1928)” in Contributions to Indian Sociology. No. 8, 1974 (Delhi): 89–107; Ishwarlal I. Desai ed., Bardoli Satyagraha (Surat, 1970) (in Gujarati); Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence, 1988, gives a short account of Bardoli pp. 53–64, and a concise historical analysis is in Judith M. Brown, Gandhi and Civil Disobedience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 28–33.
6. Times of India, Bombay, July 3, 1928, p. 7.
7. Ibid., 4, July 1928, p. 11.
8. July 2, 1928, Wilson wrote to Irwin. “I also must let you fully realize the strength of feeling which there is in the Presidency on this Bardoli question. This inflamed feeling has been worked up by the Gujaratis, but unfortunately most of the Indian businessmen come from Gujarat. If no settlement is arrived at, we are certainly in for a very great deal of trouble. I am, however, perfectly willing to face this, but, with Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel working together, it is no use my minimizing to you the difficulties which probably will arise, and eventually we may have to ask for full support, even of troops, to carry out a policy of insisting firmly on the rights of Government.” On July 6 Irwin wired Wilson in reply that it was “imperative” to “demonstrate unmistakably that Government can and will govern,” and that he will support fully any firm Government action in Bardoli including arrest of leaders and use of troops. IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/22, Lord Irwin’s Correspondence with Persons in India, Jan.-Dec. 1928. Nos. 462, 415, pp. 599, 279–280.
9. CWMG 36: 22–23, 79–81.
10. Ibid., pp. 169–170. for a comment on “Dyerism” see chapter 6, note 13.
11. Ibid., p. 353.
12. CWMG 37: 179.
13. Ibid., p. 200.
14. CWMG, 41: 164.
15. Ibid., pp. 208–209.
16. Ibid., 42: 194.
17. Ibid., p. 454.
18. When the final “report” on Bardoli appeared, written by an impartial investigative committee, and unfavorable to the Government position, Irwin asked Frederick Sykes (who had now replaced Wilson as Governor) “that you should confine yourself to saying the absolute minimum” about the report for publicity would inevitably be “embarrassing to your authority and…evoke strong criticism from home.” IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/23. Irwin Correspondence with Persons in India, 1929, No. 240. April 29, 1929, Telegram to Sykes, p. 183. Moreover, during the height of the Bardoli agitation, Irwin realized the weakness of the Government’s position and wrote to his father that “I am afraid we are in for very considerable trouble.” IOR/MSS. Eur. C. 152/27, Irwin Correspondence with Viscount Halifax, Apr. 1926–1931. No. 117, July 17, 1928, p. 186.
19. Judith Brown’s analysis confirms this judgement: “In Bardoli,” she concludes, “he [Gandhi] thought he had found the answer,” for his preparation of the salt satyagraha. Gandhi and Civil Disobedience, pp. 32–33.
20. See the succinct statement of Patel’s position on partition as opposed to Gandhi’s in C. S. Venktachar, “1937–1947 in Retrospect: A Civil Servant’s View,” C.H. Philips and M.D. Wainwright eds., The Partition of India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 474–476. Also, Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, II (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1958), pp. 254–255,694–695.
21. Fenner Brockway to M. K. Gandhi, Oct. 31, 1929, Gandhi Papers, Gandhi Memorial Library, Rajghat, Delhi, (S.N. 15730).
22. Horace Alexander to M. K. Gandhi, Oct. 12,1929, Gandhi Papers (S.N. 16278).
23. Henry S.L. Polak to M. K. Gandhi, December 13, 1929, Gandhi Papers (S.N. 16211). Also Polak to Gandhi, December 5, 1929 (S.N. 16286) and cable of December 19, 1929 (S.N. 16205). All correspondence from Polak begins, “Dear Bhai” [Brother] and concludes “Love, Henry.”
24. Dr. M.A. Ansari to M. K. Gandhi, March 5, 1930, Gandhi Papers (S.N. 16598). Ansari would later retract this diagnosis by writing to Gandhi on July 5, 1933 that the civil disobedience movement “has definitely succeeded …. It has revolutionized the mentality of the people and it has moreover consolidated that revolution.” (S.N. 21514).
25. Asaf Ali to Gandhi, February 25, 1930. Gandhi Papers (S.N. 16528).
26. The Gandhi Papers in Delhi has on file copies of 30 letters from students that Gandhi received during the week before the march began, asking him to enr
oll them as volunteers (S.N. 16594—16675).
27. Miss J. Kabraj to M. K. Gandhi, Feb. 26, 1930. Gandhi Papers, (S.N. 16537).
28. D. V. Ranga Rao and Asankaran, Students in Youth League, Kalahasti, Chittore District, Madras, To M. K. Gandhi, March 3, 1930, Gandhi Papers, (S.N. 16735).
29. Bhupendra Marayen Sen Gupta to M. R. Gandhi, February 24, 1930, from Bairampur, Bengal, Gandhi Papers (S.N. 16527).
30. Interview with Satish Kalelkar, Ahmedabad, March 13, 1975.
31. Sir Chiminlal Setalvad. Quoted in B. D. Shukla, A History of the Indian Liberal Party (Allahabad: Inidan Press Publications, 1960), p 306.
32. The question has intrigued writers on Gandhi, and explanations range from the plausible to the absurd. At one extreme, E. Victor Wolfenstein observes that one of “the basic symbolic significances of salt is human semen. If it had this unconscious meaning for Gandhi, then we may understand his depriving himself of condiments, including salt, as a form of sexual abstinence …. In the context of the Salt March, Gandhi’s taking of salt from the British can thus be seen as reclaiming for the Indian people the manhood and potency which was properly theirs.” The Revolutionary Personality: Lenin, Trotsky, Gandhi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); p. 221. To his credit, Erikson is critical of this psychological reductionism, saying that except in cases of demonstrable “irrationality…one should take any interpretation that explains a human act by recourse to sexual symbolism with a grain of salt.” “On the Nature of Psycho-Historical Evidence: In Search of Gandhi,” Daedalus (Summer 1968): 722. See also Robert Coles, Erik H. Erikson (Boston: Little Brown, 1970), p. 292. Perhaps the clearest explanation for the choice of the salt tax is given by Mira Behn (Madeleine Slade). She was with Gandhi in early 1930 as a close associate and later recalled: “Gradually it became clear that he was searching in his mind for some sort of all-India Satyagraha which would rouse the spirit of the masses down to the poorest in the land. Everyone was expecting an obvious choice, such as refusal to pay revenue, boycott of law courts or something of that sort, but Bapu [“father,” honorific term of endearment often given to Gandhi] saw snags for the masses in all these things. It must be something that touched each villager, and his mind fixed on salt. Salt was a necessity of life for all, both man and beast, and could be garnered from the sea as well as from so many soils. And yet salt was taxed, and man was forbidden to collect it for himself. The more Bapu thought about it the more convinced he became that to break the salt laws was the thing to decide on.” The Spirits Pilgrimage (London: Longmans, 1960), p. 109; and interview with Mira Behn in Vienna, August 1975. This subject was also discussed at length with other members of the ashram who were in daily contact with Gandhi in February, 1930, especially Pyarelal Nayar, and with a member of the Working Committee of the Congress, present at the meeting of February 14–15, C. Rajagopalachari, the latter in an interview in Madras, May 1967. They agreed with the interpretation of Mira Behn. From another perspective, however, salt may be seen as limiting rather than enlarging the campaign because it did not appeal sufficiently to the urban poor, or to those where salt production was unfeasible. These and related issues are analyzed in Sumit Sarkar, “The Logic of Gandhian Nationalism: Civil Disobedience and the Gandhi-Irwin Pact” The Indian Historical Review 3 (1) (July 1976): 114–146. Yet what has become the historical consensus was expressed only months after the salt march when Professor L. F. Rushbrook Williams, British scholar of India, declared that “It was nothing less than a stroke of genius on his [Gandhi’s] part to seize upon the salt tax as the centre point of his campaign.” “Indian Unrest and American Opinion,” in The Asiatic Reviewed (87) (July 1930): 491.
Mahatma Gandhi Page 36