Various official estimates of the debts of the agricultural classes have been made by Government committees. In 1930 it was estimated that the total indebtedness of these classes in the whole of India (excluding Burma) amounted to the prodigious figure of 8,030,000,000 rupees. This includes the debts of both landlords and cultivators. This figure went up greatly during the years of economic slump and later.
Thus the agricultural classes, the smaller zamindars and tenants alike, are sinking deeper and deeper into the morass, and there is no way out except a radical way which would cut at the root of the present land system. Taxation is so arranged that the greatest burden of it falls on the class which is the poorest and the least able to bear it. Expenditure goes largely to the army, to the civil services and to other British charges, from which the masses do not benefit. The expenditure on education is about ninepence per head, as compared with £2 15s per head in Britain; thus the British rate of educational expenditure is 73 1/3 times the Indian.
Attempts have often been made in the past to estimate the national income per head of population in India. This is a difficult matter, and estimates vary greatly. Dadabhai Naoroji calculated it in 1870 as Rs 20 per head. Recent estimates have gone up to Rs 67, and even the most favourable, made by some Englishmen, do not go beyond Rs 116. It is interesting to compare this with other countries. In the United States of America the corresponding figure is Rs 1,925, and even this has been greatly exceeded since; in Britain it is Rs 1,000 per head.1
162
Peaceful Rebellion in India
May 17, 1933
I have written many letters to you about India and her past—far more than about any other country. But the past is now merging into the present, and this letter that I am beginning will, I hope, bring up the story to the India of today. I shall refer to some recent happenings which are fresh in our minds. The time for writing about them is not yet, for the tale is but half told. But all history ends rather abruptly in the present, and the remaining chapters of the story remain hidden in the future. And indeed the story has no ending; it goes on and on.
Towards the end of 1927 the British Government announced that they would send a commission to India to make inquiries about future reforms and changes in the structure of government. This announcement was received by all political India with anger and condemnation. The Congress objected to it because it resented the idea that India should be periodically examined for her fitness of self-government. This was the phrase used by the British to cover their desire to hold on to the country as long as possible. The Congress had long claimed for the country the right of self-determination, which had been so much advertised by the Allies during the World War, and it refused to admit the right of the British Parliament to dictate to India or to be the final arbiter of her future destiny. On these grounds the Congress objected to the new parliamentary commission. The moderate groups in India objected to the commission on other grounds, chiefly because there was no Indian member of it. It was a purely British commission. Although the grounds of objection were different, the fact remains that almost every group in India, including the most moderate, joined together in condemning it and in advocating its boycott.
About that time, in December 1927, the Congress met in annual session in Madras, and resolved that its goal was national independence for India. This was the first time that the Congress had declared for independence. Two years later, in Lahore, independence became definitely the creed of the National Congress. The Madras Congress also created the All-Parties Conference which had a brief but active career.
The next year, 1928, saw the British commission in India. As I have said, it was generally boycotted, and there were big demonstrations against it wherever it went. The Simon Commission it was called, from the name of its chairman, and “Simon go back” became a familiar cry all over India. On many occasions the police indulged in lathi charges on the demonstrators; in Lahore even Lala Lajpat Rai was beaten by the police. Some months later Lalaji died, and it was considered probable by doctors that the police beating had hastened his death. All this naturally created great excitement and anger in the country.
Meanwhile, the All-Parties Conference was trying to draw up a constitution and to find a solution for the communal tangle. It produced a report containing proposals for a constitution and the communal question. This report is known as the Nehru Report, as Pandit Motilal Nehru was the chairman of the committee which drafted it.
Another notable event of the year was a great peasant campaign at Bardoli in Gujrat against the increase in the revenue assessment by the Government. Gujrat has no big zamindari system, as in the United Provinces; there are peasant proprietors there. Under the leadership of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, these peasants put up a remarkably gallant fight and won a great victory.
The Calcutta Congress of December 1928 adopted the Nehru Report, which recommended a constitution similar to that of the British Dominions. But even in adopting it, the Congress did so provisionally, and fixed a time-limit of one year. If there were no agreement with the British Government on this basis within a year, then the Congress was to revert to independence. Thus the Congress and the country were inevitably heading towards a crisis.
Labour also was very restive, and in some of the big industrial centres was becoming aggressive as attempts were made to reduce wages. In Bombay it was particularly well organized, and great strikes took place in which 100,000 or more workers took part. Socialistic, and to some extent communistic, ideas began to spread among the workers, and the Government, frightened by the revolutionary development, and by labour’s growing strength, suddenly arrested thirty-two labour leaders early in 1929 and started a big conspiracy case against them. This case became famous all over the world as the Meerut case. After a trial lasting nearly four years almost all the accused were sentenced to prodigious terms of imprisonment. And the curious part of it was that none of them was charged with any actual act of rebellion or even breach of the peace. Their offence seems to have been the holding of and the attempt to spread certain opinions. These sentences were greatly reduced on appeal.
Another form of activity, smouldering underneath and sometimes appearing on the surface, was that of the people believing in violent methods to bring about a revolution. This was chiefly in Bengal, to some extent in the Punjab, and a little in the United Provinces. The British Government tried to suppress it in many ways and there were numerous conspiracy cases. A special law, called the “Bengal Ordinance”, was issued by the Government to enable them to arrest and keep in prison without trial any one they chose to suspect. Under this ordinance many hundreds of Bengali youths were arrested and imprisoned; “detenus” they were called, and there was no time-limit to the period of their imprisonment. It is interesting to note that when this extraordinary ordinance was issued a Labour Government was in office in England, and was thus responsible for the ordinance.
There were a number of acts of terrorism by these revolutionaries, most of them in Bengal. Three events, however, attracted special attention. One was the shooting of a British police officer in Lahore, who was supposed to have hit Lala Lajpat Rai at the demonstration against the Simon Commission. The second was the throwing of a bomb in the Assembly building in Delhi by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwara Dutt. This bomb, however, did little damage and seems to have been meant merely to create a big noise and attract the country’s attention. The third occurrence was in Chittagong in 1930 just about the time when the Civil Disobedience movement was beginning. It was a daring and big-scale raid on the armoury, and it met with some success. The government adopted every conceivable device to crush this movement. There were spies and informers and large numbers of arrests and conspiracy cases, and detenus (sometimes people, acquitted in a court of law, were immediately re-arrested and kept as detenus under the Ordinance), and parts of East Bengal were under military occupation, and people could not move without permits, nor could they go on bicycles, or even wear any dress they chose. There were
heavy fines on whole towns and villages for the offence of not giving information to the police.
In one of the conspiracy cases in Lahore in 1929 one of the prisoners, Jatindranath Das, went on hunger strike as a protest against gaol treatment. This boy stuck to it to the very end, and died of it on the sixty-first day. Jatin Das’s self-immolation deeply affected India. Another event that shocked and pained the country was the execution of Bhagat Singh early in 1931.
I must go back to Congress politics now. The year of grace fixed by the Calcutta Congress was expiring. Towards the end of 1929 the British Government made an effort to prevent the serious developments which were in the air. It made a vague declaration about future progress. Even then the Congress offered its cooperation, subject to certain conditions. These conditions not being fulfilled, the Lahore Congress of December 1929 inevitably decided in favour of independence and a struggle to attain it.
So 1930 opened with the air dark with the shadow of coming events. There were preparations for Civil Disobedience. The Assembly and Councils were boycotted again and Congress members resigned from them. On January 26, a special pledge of independence was taken all over the country at innumerable gatherings in the cities and villages, and the anniversary of that day is celebrated annually as Independence Day. In March began Gandhi’s famous march to Dandi on the sea coast to break the salt law there. He had chosen the salt tax to initiate his campaign, because this tax fell heavily on the poor, and was thus an especially bad tax.
By the middle of April 1930 the Civil Disobedience campaign was in full swing; and not only was the salt law violated everywhere, but other laws also. There was peaceful rebellion all over the country, and new laws and ordinances came in rapid succession in order to crush it. But these very ordinances became the objects of Civil Disobedience. There were mass arrests, and brutal lathi charges became frequent occurrences, and firing at peaceful crowds, and a proscription of Congress committees, and gagging of the Press, and censorship, and beatings, and harsh gaol treatment. There was ordinance rule on the one side, and a determined and systematic breach of these ordinances on the other, as well as a boycott of foreign cloth and British goods. Nearly 100,000 persons went to prison, and for a while this peaceful and yet determined struggle in India held the world’s attention.
Three facts I should like to bring to your notice. The first was the remarkable political awakening of the North-West Frontier Province. Right at the beginning of the struggle, in April 1930 there was a tremendous shooting down of peaceful crowds in Peshawar, and right through the year our frontier countrymen endured an amazing amount of brutal treatment with gallant fortitude. This was doubly remarkable, as the frontier people are very far from being peaceful and they flare up at the slightest provocation. And yet they held their peace. It was surprising, and most creditable, for newcomers to the political field, like the Pathans, to come immediately to the forefront and play such a brave part.
The second noteworthy fact, and certainly the most outstanding event of a great year, was the remarkable awakening of Indian women. The way hundreds of thousands of them shed their veils and, leaving their sheltered homes, came into the street and the marketplace to fight side by side in the struggle with their brothers, and often put to shame their menfolk, was something that could hardly be believed by those who did not see it.
The third fact worth noting was that, as the movement developed, economic factors came into play so far as the peasantry were concerned. The year 1930 was the first year of a great world crisis, and prices of agricultural produce fell greatly. The peasantry were hard hit by this, as their income depends on their selling their produce. The non-payment of taxes, therefore, fitted in with their distress, and Swaraj became for them not just a distant political goal but, what was more important, an immediate economic question. Thus the movement began to have a new and a more intimate meaning for them, and an element of class conflict, as between landlords and tenants, came in. This was so especially in the United Provinces and in western India.
While Civil Disobedience was flourishing in India, across the seas in London a Round Table Conference was held by the British Government with much pomp and circumstance. The Congress had nothing to do with it. The Indians who went to it were all Government nominees. Like marionettes, or shadow figures without substance, they flitted about that London stage, well realizing that the real struggle was taking place in India. The Government kept the communal problem in the forefront of the discussions to show up the weaknesses of the Indians; they had taken care to nominate the most extreme communalists and reactionaries to the conference, so that there was no chance whatever of a settlement.
In March 1931 there came a truce or a provisional settlement between the Congress and the Government to enable further discussions to take place. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact this was called. Civil Disobedience was discontinued and thousands of Civil-Disobedience prisoners were released and the ordinances were withdrawn.
The year 1931 saw Gandhi attend the second Round Table Conference in London on behalf of the Congress. In India itself three problems assumed importance and held the attention both of the Congress and the Government. The first was Bengal, where the Government carried on a severe campaign against political workers under the guise of putting down terrorism. A new and far stiffer ordinance was issued, and Bengal knew no peace in spite of the Delhi settlement.
The second problem was in the Frontier Province, where the political awakening was still driving the people to action. Under the leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a huge, disciplined but peaceful organization was spreading. The Khudai Khidmatgar they were called, and sometimes “Red-shirts”, because they wore a red uniform (and not because of any affiliation with socialists or communists). Government did not like this movement at all. It was afraid of it, as it knew the worth of a good Pathan fighter.
The third problem arose in the United Provinces. The poor tenant had been very hard hit by the world depression and the fall in prices. He could not pay his rent. Some remissions were given to him, but they were not considered enough. The Congress tried to mediate for him, without much result. Matters came to a head when the time for rent collections came in November 1931. The Congress, beginning with Allahabad district, advised the tenants as well as the zamindars to withhold the payment of rent and revenue pending a settlement of the question of remissions. Forthwith the Government countered this by an ordinance for the United Provinces. It was a very stiff and comprehensive ordinance, giving full powers to the district officials to crush every kind of activity, and even to prevent the movements of individuals.
Close on the heels of this came two amazing ordinances for the Frontier Province, and both there and in the U.P. arrests of leading Congressmen took place.
Such was the position that faced Gandhi when he returned, without success, from London in the last week of the year—three provinces under ordinance rule and several of his colleagues already in prison. Within a week the Congress had declared Civil Disobedience again and the Government, on its part, had outlawed thousands of Congress committees and a host of allied organizations.
This struggle was far stiffer than the one of 1930. The Government prepared themselves carefully for it, profiting by previous experience. The veil of legality and the forms of law were set aside and, under all-embracing ordinances, a kind of martial law under civil officers prevailed over the country. The real brute force of the State was very much in evidence. This was a natural development, for the more powerful grows the nationalist movement, and the more it threatens the very basis of the foreign Government, the fiercer becomes the latter’s resistance. The pious phrases of trusteeship and goodwill are put aside, and the bludgeon and the bayonet appear as the real props of foreign rule. Law becomes the will not only of the Viceroy at the top, but of each petty official, who can do what he wills, well knowing that he will be supported by his superiors. The Secret Service and the C.I.D. especially spread out everywhere, as in the Russia of Tsarist da
ys, and grow in power. There are no checks, and the appetite for unrestrained power grows with use. A government which governs chiefly through its Secret Service, and a country which suffers under this, are soon demoralized. For every Secret Service luxuriates in an atmosphere of intrigue, spies, lies, terrorism, provocation, frame-ups, blackmail and the like. During the last three years in India the excessive powers given to petty officials and the police and the C.I.D. and the use made of them have resulted in a progressive brutalization and deterioration of these services. The object aimed at was terrorization.
I must not go into details. One interesting feature of the Government’s policy on this occasion was a widespread confiscation of property, houses, motor-cars, moneys in banks, etc., both of organizations and individuals. This was meant to strike at the middle-class supporters of the Congress. A minor but striking feature of one of the ordinances was that parents and guardians were to be punished for the offences of their children or wards!
While all this was taking place, the British propaganda machine was busy in painting a rosy picture of India. In India itself no newspaper dared to print the truth for fear of consequences—even the publication of the names of persons arrested was an offence.
But the most revealing feature of British policy in India has been its attempt to form an alliance with all the most reactionary elements in India. The British Empire stands today relying on feudal and other extreme forces of reaction in its attempt to fight the forces of progress. They have tried to rally “vested interests” to their support, frightening them with fear of social revolution if the British authority were removed from India. The feudal princes are the first line of defence; then come the big zamindar classes. By clever manoeuvring and pushing the extreme communalists to the front, the problem of minorities has been made a barrier to Indian freedom. Recently, the remarkable sight was witnessed of the British Government expressing every sympathy and cordiality with the extreme religious reactionaries among the Hindus over the temple entry question. Everywhere the British seek their support in reaction and narrow bigotry and a misguided self-interest.
Glimpses of World History Page 108