India's Struggle For Independence Part 3

From the beginning, the Congress was conceived not as a party but as a movement. Except for agreement on the very broad objectives discussed earlier, it did not require any particular political or ideological commitment from its activists. It also did not try to limit its following to any social cla.s.s or group. As a movement, it incorporated different political trends, ideologies and social cla.s.ses and groups so long as the commitment to democratic and secular nationalism was there. From the outset, the Congress included in the ranks of its leaders.h.i.+p persons with diverse political thinking, widely disparate levels of political militancy and varying economic approaches.

To sum up: The basic objectives of the early nationalist leaders were to lay the foundations of a secular and democratic national movement, to politicize and politically educate the people, to form the headquarters of the movement, that is, to form an all-India leaders.h.i.+p group, and to develop and propagate an anti-colonial nationalist ideology.

History will judge the extent of the success or failure of the early national movement not by an abstract, ahistorical standard but by the extent to which it was able to attain the basic objectives it had laid down for itself. By this standard, its achievements were quite substantial and that is why it grew from humble beginnings in the 1880s into the most spectacular of popular ma.s.s movements in the 20th century. Historians are not likely to disagree with the a.s.sessment of its work in the early phase by two of its major leaders. Referring to the preparatory nature of the Congress work from 1885 to 1905, Dadabhai Naoroji wrote to D.E. Wacha in January 1905: 'The very discontent and impatience it (the Congress) has evoked against itself as slow and non-progressive among the rising generation are among its best results or fruit. It is its own evolution and progress . . . (the task is) to evolve the required revolution - whether it would be peaceful or violent. The character of the revolution will depend upon the wisdom or unwisdom of the British Government and action of the British people.'11 And this is how G.K. Gokhale evaluated this period in 1907: 'Let us not forget that we are at a stage of the country's progress when our achievements are bound to be small, and our disappointments frequent and trying. That is the place Which it has pleased Providence to a.s.sign to us in this struggle, and our responsibility is ended when we have done the work which belongs to that place. It will, no doubt, be given to our countrymen of future generations to serve India by their successes; we, of the present generation, must be content to serve her mainly by our failures. For, hard though it be, out of those failures the strength will come which in the end will accomplish great tasks.'12 *

As for the question of the role of A.O. Hume, if the founders of the Congress were such capable and patriotic men of high character, why did they need Hume to act as the chief organizer of the Congress? It is undoubtedly true that Hume impressed - and quite rightly - all his liberal and democratic contemporaries, including Lajpat Rai, as a man of high ideals with whom it was no dishonour to cooperate. But the real answer lies in the conditions of the time. Considering the size of the Indian subcontinent, there were very few political persons in the early 1880s and the tradition of open opposition to the rulers was not yet firmly entrenched.

Courageous and committed persons like Dadabhai Naoroji, Justice Ranade, Pherozeshah Mehta, G. Subramaniya Iyer and Surendranath Banerjea (one year later) cooperated with Hume because they did not want to arouse official hostility at such an early stage of their work. They a.s.sumed that the rulers would be less suspicious and less likely to attack a potentially subversive organization if its chief organizer was a retired British civil servant. Gokhale, with his characteristic modesty and political wisdom, stated this explicitly in 1913: 'No Indian could have started the Indian National Congress . . . if an Indian had . . . come forward to start such a movement embracing all India, the officials in India would not have allowed the movement to come into existence. If the founder of the Congress had not been a great Englishman and a distinguished ex-official, such was the distrust of political agitation in those days that the authorities would have at once found some way or the other to suppress the movement.'13 In other words, if Hume and other English liberals hoped to use the Congress as a safety-valve, the Congress leaders hoped to use Hume as a lightning conductor. And as later developments show, it was the Congress leaders whose hopes were fulfilled.

6.

Socio-Religious Reforms and the National Awakening

'I regret to say,' wrote Raja Rammohan Roy in 1828, 'that the present system of religion adhered to by the Hindus is not well calculated to promote their political interest. The distinctions of castes introducing innumerable divisions and sub-divisions among them has entirely deprived them of patriotic feeling, and the mult.i.tude of religious rites and ceremonies and the laws of purification have totally disqualified them from undertaking any difficult enterprise. It is, I think, necessary that some change should take place in their religion atleast for the sake of their political advantage and social comfort.'1 Written at a time when Indians had just begun to experience the intellectual and cultural turmoil that characterized social life in nineteenth century India this represented the immediate Indian response. The British conquest and the consequent dissemination of colonial culture and ideology had led to an inevitable introspection about the strengths and weaknesses of indigenous culture and inst.i.tutions. The response, indeed, was varied but the need to reform social and religious life was a commonly shared conviction. The social base of this quest which has generally, but not altogether appropriately been called the renaissance, was the newly emerging middle cla.s.s and the traditional as well as western educated intellectuals. The socio-cultural regeneration in nineteenth century India was occasioned by the colonial presence, but not created by it.

The spirit of reform embraced almost the whole of India beginning with the efforts of Raja Rammohan Roy in Bengal leading to the formation of the Brahmo Samaj in 1828. Apart from the Brahmo Samaj, which has branches in several parts of the country, the Paramahansa Mandali and the Prarthana Samaj in Maharashtra and the Arya Samaj in Punjab and North India were some of the prominent movements among the Hindus. There were several other regional and caste movements like the Kayasth Sabha in Uttar Pradesh and the Sarin Sabha in Punjab. The backward castes also started the work of reformation with the Satya Sodhak Samaj in Maharashtra and the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Sabha in Kerala. The Ahmadiya and Aligarh movements, the Singh Sabha and the Rehnumai Mazdeyasan Sabha represented the spirit of reform among the Muslims, the Sikhs and the Pa.r.s.ees respectively. Despite being regional in scope and content and confined to a particular religion, their general perspectives were remarkably similar; they were regional and religious manifestations of a common consciousness.

Although religious reformation was a major concern of these movements, none of them were exclusively religious in character. Strongly humanist in inspiration, the idea of otherworldliness and salvation were not a part of their agenda; instead their attention was focused on worldly existence. Raja Rammohan Roy was prepared to concede the possible existence of the otherworld mainly due to its utilitarian value. Akshay k.u.mar Dutt and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar were agnostics who refused to be drawn into any discussion on supernatural questions. Asked about the existence of G.o.d, Vidyasagar quipped that he had no time to think about G.o.d, since there was much to be done on earth. Bankimchandra Chatterjee and Vivekananda emphasized the secular use of religion and used spirituality to take cognizance of the material conditions of human existence.

Given the inter-connection between religious beliefs and social practices, religious reformation was a necessary pre-requisite for social reform. 'The Hindu meets his religion at every turn. In eating, in drinking, moving, sitting, standing, he is to adhere to sacred rules, to depart from which is sin and impiety.'2 Similarly, the social life of the Muslims was strongly influenced by religious tenets. Religion was the dominant ideology of the times and it was not possible to undertake any social action without coming to grips with it.

Indian society in the nineteenth century was caught in a vicious web created by religious superst.i.tions and social obscurantism. Hinduism, as Max Weber observed, had 'become a compound of magic, animism and superst.i.tion' and abominable rites like animal sacrifice and physical torture had replaced the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d. The priests exercised an overwhelming and, indeed, unhealthy influence on the minds of the people. Idolatry and polytheism helped to reinforce their position. As suggested by Raja Rammohan Roy, their monopoly of scriptural knowledge and of ritual interpretation imparted a deceptive character to all religious systems. The faithful lived in submission, not only to G.o.d, the powerful and unseen, but even to the whims, fancies and wishes of the priests. There was nothing that religious ideology could not persuade people to do - women even went to the extent of offering themselves to priests to satisfy their carnal pleasures.

Social conditions were equally depressing. The most distressing was the position of women. The birth of a girl was unwelcome, her marriage a burden and her widowhood inauspicious. Attempts to kill girl infants at birth were not unusual. Those who escaped this initial brutality were subjected to the violence of marriage at a tender age. Often the marriage was a device to escape social ignominy and, hence, marital life did not turn out to be a pleasant experience. An eighty-year-old Brahmin in Bengal had as many as two hundred wives, the youngest being just eight years old. Several women hardly had a married life worth the name, since their husbands partic.i.p.ated in nuptial ceremonies for a consideration and rarely set eyes on their wives after that. Yet when their husbands died they were expected to commit Sati which Rammohan described as 'murder according to every shastra.'3 If they succeeded in overcoming this social coercion, they were condemned, as widows, to life-long misery, neglect and humiliation.

Another debilitating factor was caste. It sought to maintain a system of segregation, hierarchically ordained on the basis of ritual status. The rules and regulations of caste hampered social mobility, fostered social divisions and sapped individual initiative. Above all was the humiliation of untouchability which militated against human dignity.

There were innumerable other practices marked by constraint, credulity, status, authority, bigotry and blind fatalism. Rejecting them as features of a decadent society, the reform movements sought to create a social climate for modernization. In doing so, they referred to a golden past when no such malaise existed. The nineteenth century situation was the result of an accretionary process; a distortion of a once ideal past. The reformers' vision of the future, however, was not based on this idealization. It was only an aid and an instrument - since practices based on faith cannot be challenged without bringing faith itself into question. Hence, Raja Rammohan Roy, demonstrated that sati had no religious sanction, Vidyasagar did not 'take up his pen in defence of widow marriage' without being convinced about scriptural support and Dayanand based his anti-casteism on Vedic authority.

This, however, did not mean a subjection of the present to the past nor a blind resurrection of tradition. 'The dead and the buried,' maintained Mahadev Govind Ranade, the doyen of reformers in Maharashtra, 'are dead, buried, and burnt once for all and the dead past cannot, therefore, be revived except by a reformation of the old materials into new organized forms.'4 Neither a revival of the past nor a total break with tradition was contemplated.

Two important intellectual criteria which informed the reform movements were rationalism and religious universalism. Social relevance was judged by a rationalist critique. It is difficult to match the uncompromising rationalism of the early Raja Rammohan Roy or Akshay k.u.mar Dutt. Rejecting supernatural explanations, Raja Rammohan Roy affirmed the principle of causality linking the whole phenomenal universe. To him demonstrability was the sole criterion of truth. In proclaiming that 'rationalism is our only preceptor,'Akshay k.u.mar went a step further.All natural and social phenomena, he held, could be a.n.a.lyzed and understood by purely mechanical processes. This perspective not only enabled them to adopt a rational approach to tradition but also to evaluate the contemporary socio-religious practices from the standpoint of social utility and to replace faith with rationality. In the Brahmo Samaj, it led to the repudiation of the infallibility of the Vedas, and in the Aligarh Movement, to the reconciliation of the teachings of Islam with the needs of the modern age. Holding that religious tenets were not immutable, Syed Ahmed Khan emphasized the role of religion in the progress of society: if religion did not keep pace with and meet the demands of the time it would get fossilized as in the case of Islam in India.

The perspectives on reform were not always influenced by religious considerations. A rational and secular outlook was very much evident in posing an alternative to prevalent social practices. In advocating widow marriage and opposing polygamy and child marriage, Akshay k.u.mar was not concerned about religious sanction or whether they existed in the past. His arguments were mainly based on their effects on society. Instead of depending on the scriptures, he cited medical opinion against child marriage. He held very advanced ideas about marriage and family: courts.h.i.+p before marriage, partners.h.i.+p and equality as the basis of married life and divorce by both law and custom. In Maharashtra, as compared to other regions, there was less dependence on religion as an aid to social reform. To Gopal Hari Deshmukh, popularly known as Lokahitavadi, whether social reforms had the sanction of religion was immaterial. If religion did not sanction these, he advocated that religion itself should be changed as it was made by man and what was laid down in the scriptures need not necessarily be of contemporary relevance.

Although the ambit of reforms were particularistic, their religious perspective was universalistic. Raja Rammohan Roy considered different religions as national embodiments of universal theism. The Brahmo Samaj was initially conceived by him as a universalist church. He was a defender of the basic and universal principles of all religions - the monotheism of the Vedas and the unitarianism of Christianity - and at the same time attacked polytheism of Hinduism and the trinitarianism of Christianity. Syed Ahmed Khan echoed the same idea: all prophets had the same din (faith) and every country and nation had different prophets. This perspective found clearer articulation in Keshub Chandra Sen's ideas. He said 'our position is not that truths are to be found in all religions, but all established religions of the world are true.' He also gave expression to the social implications of this universalist perspective: 'Whoever wors.h.i.+ps the True G.o.d daily must learn to recognize all his fellow countrymen as brethren. Caste would vanish in such a state of society. If I believe that my G.o.d is one, and that he has created us all, I must at the same time instinctively, and with all the warmth of natural feelings, look upon all around me - whether Pa.r.s.ees, Hindus, Mohammadans or Europeans - as my brethern.'5 The universalist perspective was not a purely philosophic concern; it strongly influenced the political and social outlook of the time, till religious particularism gained ground in the second half of the nineteenth century. For instance, Raja Rammohan Roy considered Muslim lawyers to be more honest than their Hindu counterparts and Vidyasagar did not discriminate against Muslims in his humanitarian activities. Even to Bankim, who is credited with a Hindu outlook, dharma rather than religious belonging was the criterion for determining superiority. Yet, 'Muslim yoke' and 'Muslim tyranny' were epithets often used to describe the pre-colonial rule. This, however, was not a religious but a political att.i.tude, influenced by the arbitrary character of pre-colonial political inst.i.tutions. The emphasis was not on the word 'Muslim' but on the word 'tyranny.' This is amply clear from Syed Ahmed Khan's description of the pre-colonial system: 'The rule of the former emperors and rajas was neither in accordance with the Hindu nor the Mohammadan religion. It was based upon nothing but tyranny and oppression; the law of might was that of right; the voice of the people was not listened to.'6 The yardstick obviously was not religious ident.i.ty, but liberal and democratic principles. This, however, does not imply that religious ident.i.ty did not influence the social outlook of the people; in fact, it did very strongly. The reformers' emphasis on universalism was an attempt to contend with it. However, faced with the challenge of colonial culture and ideology, universalism, instead of providing the basis for the development of a secular ethos, retreated into religious particularism.

The nineteenth century witnessed a cultural-ideological struggle against the backward elements of traditional culture, on the one hand, and the fast hegemonizing colonial culture and ideology on the other. The initial reforming efforts represented the former. In the religious sphere they sought to remove idolatry, polytheism and priestly monopoly of religious knowledge and to simplify religious rituals. They were important not for purely religious reasons but equally for their social implications. They contributed to the liberation of the individual from conformity born out of fear and from uncritical submission to the exploitation of the priests. The dissemination of religious knowledge through translation of religious texts into vernacular languages and the right granted to the laity to interpret scriptures represented an important initial breach in the stranglehold of misinterpreted religious dogmas. The simplification of rituals made wors.h.i.+p a more intensely personal experience without the mediation of intermediaries. The individual was, thus, encouraged to exercise his freedom.

The socially debilitating influence of the caste system which perpetuated social distinctions was universally recognized as an area which called for urgent reform. It was morally and ethically abhorrent; more importantly, it militated against patriotic feelings and negated the growth of democratic ideas. Raja Rammohan Roy initiated, in ideas but not in practice, the opposition which became loud and clear as the century progressed. Ranade, Dayanand and Vivekananda denounced the existing system of caste in no uncertain terms. While the reform movements generally stood for its abolition, Dayanand gave a utopian explanation for chaturvarna (four-fold varna division of Hindu society) and sought to maintain it on the basis of virtue. 'He deserves to be a Brahman who has acquired the best knowledge and character,' and an ignorant person is fit to be cla.s.sed as a shudra,' he argued.7 Understandably the most virulent opposition to caste came from lower caste movements. Jyotiba Phule and Narayana Guru were two unrelenting critics of the caste system and its consequences. A conversation between Gandhiji and Narayana Guru is significant. Gandhiji, in an obvious reference to Chaturvarna and the inherent differences in quality between man and man, observed that all leaves of the same tree are not identical in shape and texture. To this Narayana Guru pointed out that the difference is only superficial, but not in essence: the juice of all leaves of a particular tree would be the same in content.8 It was he who gave the call - 'one religion, one caste and one G.o.d for mankind' which one of his disciples, Sahadaran Ayyapan, changed into 'no religion, no caste and no G.o.d for mankind.'

The campaign for the improvement of the condition and status of women was not a purely humanitarian measure either. No reform could be really effective without changes in the domestic conditions, the social s.p.a.ce in which the initial socialization of the individual took place. A crucial role in this process was played by women. Therefore, there could be no reformed men and reformed homes without reformed women. Viewed from the standpoint of women, it was, indeed, a limited perspective. Nevertheless, it was realized that no country could ever make 'significant progress in civilization whose females were sunk in ignorance.'

If the reform movements had totally rejected tradition, Indian society would have easily undergone a process of westernization. But the reformers were aiming at modernization rather than westernization. A blind initiation of western cultural norms was never an integral part of reform.

To initiate and undertake these reforms which today appear to be modest, weak and limited was not an easy proposition. It brought about unprecedented mental agony and untold domestic and social tension. Breaking the bonds of tradition created emotional and sentimental crises for men and women caught between two worlds. The first widow marriage in Bengal attracted thousands of curious spectators. To the first such couple in Maharashtra the police had to give lathis to protect themselves! Rukmabhai, who refused to accept her uneducated and unaccomplished husband, virtually unleashed a storm. Faced with the prospect of marrying a young girl much against his conviction, Ranade spent several sleepless nights. So did Lokahitavadi, Telang and a host of others who were torn between traditional sentiments and modern commitments. Several however succ.u.mbed to the former, but it was out of this struggle that the new men and the new society evolved in India.

Faced with the challenge of the intrusion of colonial culture and ideology, an attempt to reinvigorate traditional inst.i.tutions and to realize the potential of traditional culture developed during the nineteenth century. The initial expression of the struggle against colonial domination manifested itself in the realm of culture as a result of the fact that the principles on which the colonial state functioned were not more retrogressive than those of the pre-colonial state. All intrusions into the cultural realm were more intensely felt. Therefore, a defence of indigenous culture developed almost simultaneously with the colonial conquest.

This concern embraced the entire cultural existence, the way of life and all signifying practices like language, religion, art and philosophy. Two features characterized this concern; the creation of an alternate cultural-ideological system and the regeneration of traditional inst.i.tutions. The cultivation of vernacular languages, the creation of an alternate system of education, the efforts to regenerate Indian art and literature, the emphasis on Indian dress and food, the defence of religion and the attempts to revitalize the Indian system of medicine, the attempt to probe the potentialities of pre-colonial technology and to reconstruct traditional knowledge were some of the expressions of this concern. The early inklings of this can be discerned in Raja Rammohan Roy's debates with the Christian missionaries, in the formation and activities of Tattvabodhini Sabha, in the memorial on education signed by 70,000 inhabitants of Madras and in the general resentment against the Lex Loci Act.9 (the Act proposed in 1845 and pa.s.sed in 1850 provided the right to inherit ancestral property to Hindu converts to Christianity). A more definite articulation, however, was in the ideas and activities of later movements generally characterized as conservative and revivalist. Strongly native in tendency, they were clearly influenced by the need to defend indigenous culture against colonial cultural hegemony. In this specific historical sense, they were not necessarily retrogressive, for underlying these efforts was the concern with the revival of the cultural personality, distorted, if not destroyed, by colonial domination. More so because it formed an integral element in the formation of national consciousness. Some of these tendencies however, were not able to transcend the limits of historical necessity and led to a sectarian and obscurantist outlook. This was possibly a consequence of the lack of integration between the cultural and political struggles, resulting in cultural backwardness, despite political advance.

The cultural-ideological struggle, represented by the socio-religious movements, was an integral part of the evolving national consciousness. This was so because it was instrumental in bringing about the initial intellectual and cultural break which made a new vision of the future possible. Second, it was a part of the resistance against colonial cultural and ideological hegemony. Out of this dual struggle evolved the modern cultural situation: new men, new homes and a new society.

7.

An Economic Critique of Colonialism

Of all the national movements in colonial countries, the Indian national movement was the most deeply and firmly rooted in an understanding of the nature and character of colonial economic domination and exploitation. Its early leaders, known as Moderates, were the first in the 19th century to develop an economic critique of colonialism. This critique was, also, perhaps their most important contribution to the development of the national movement in India - and the themes built around it were later popularized on a ma.s.sive scale and formed the very pith and marrow of the nationalist agitation through popular lectures, pamphlets, newspapers, dramas, songs, and prabhat pheries.

Indian intellectuals of the first half of the 19th century had adopted a positive att.i.tude towards British rule in the hope that Britain, the most advanced nation of the time, would help modernize India. In the economic realm, Britain, the emerging industrial giant of the world, was expected to develop India's productive forces through the introduction of modern sciences and technology and capitalist economic organization. It is not that the early Indian nationalists were unaware of the many political, psychological and economic disabilities of foreign domination, but they still supported colonial rule as they expected it to rebuild India as a spit image of the Western metropolis.

The process of disillusionment set in gradually after 1860 as the reality of social development in India failed to conform to their hopes. They began to notice that while progress in new directions was slow and halting, overall the country was regressing and underdeveloping. Gradually, their image of British rule began to take on darker hues; and they began to probe deeper into the reality of British rule and its impact on India.

Three names stand out among the large number of Indians who initiated and carried out the economic a.n.a.lysis of British rule during the years 1870-1905. The tallest of the three was Dadabhai Naoroji, known in the pre-Gandhian era as the Grand Old Man of India. Born in 1825, he became a successful businessman but devoted his entire life and wealth to the creation of a national movement in India. His near contemporary, Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, taught an entire generation of Indians the value of modern industrial development. Romesh Chandra Dutt, a retired ICS officer, published The Economic History of India at the beginning of the 20th century in which he examined in minute detail the entire economic record of colonial rule since 1757.

These three leaders along with G.V. Jos.h.i.+, G. Subramaniya Iyer, G.K. Gokhale, Prithwis Chandra Ray and hundreds of other political workers and journalists a.n.a.lysed every aspect of the economy and subjected the entire range of economic issues and colonial economic policies to minute scrutiny. They raised basic questions regarding the nature and purpose of British rule. Eventually, they were able to trace the process of the colonialization of the Indian economy and conclude that colonialism was the main obstacle to India's economic development.

They clearly understood the fact that the essence of British imperialism lay in the subordination of the Indian economy to the British economy. They delineated the colonial structure in all its three aspects of domination through trade, industry and finance. They were able to see that colonialism no longer functioned through the crude tools of plunder and tribute and mercantilism but operated through the more disguised and complex mechanism of free trade and foreign capital investment. The essence of 19th century colonialism, they said, lay in the transformation of India into a supplier of food stuffs and raw materials to the metropolis, a market for the metropolitan manufacturers, and a field for the investment of British capital.

The early Indian national leaders were simultaneously learners and teachers. They organized powerful intellectual agitations against nearly all the important official economic policies. They used these agitations to both understand and to explain to others the basis of these policies in the colonial structure. They advocated the severance of India's economic subservience to Britain in every sphere of life and agitated for an alternative path of development which would lead to an independent economy. An important feature of this agitation was the use of bold, hard-hitting and colourful language.

The nationalist economic agitation started with the a.s.sertion that Indians were poor and were growing poorer every day. Dadabhai Naoroji made poverty his special subject and spent his entire life awakening the Indian and British public to the 'continuous impoverishment and exhaustion of the country' and 'the wretched, heart-rending, blood-boiling condition of India.' Day after day he declaimed from public platforms and in the Press that the Indian 'is starving, he is dying off at the slightest touch, living on insufficient food.'1 The early nationalists did not see this all-encompa.s.sing poverty as inherent and unavoidable, a visitation from G.o.d or nature. It was seen as man-made and, therefore, capable of being explained and removed. As R.C. Dutt put it: 'If India is poor today, it is through the operation of economic causes.'2 In the course of their search for the causes of India's poverty, the nationalists underlined factors and forces which had been brought into play by the colonial rulers and the colonial structure.

The problem of poverty was, moreover, seen as the problem of increasing of the 'productive capacity and energy' of the people, in other words as the problem of national development. This approach made poverty a broad national issue and helped to unite, instead of divide, different regions and sections of Indian society.

Economic development was seen above all as the rapid development of modern industry. The early nationalists accepted with remarkable unanimity that the complete economic transformation of the country on the basis of modern technology and capitalist enterprise was the primary goal of all their economic policies. Industrialism, it was further believed, represented, to quote G.V. Jos.h.i.+, 'a superior type and a higher stage of civilization;'3 or, in the words of Ranade, factories could 'far more effectively than Schools and Colleges give a new birth to the activities of the Nation.'4 Modern industry was also seen as a major force which could help unite the diverse peoples of India into a single national ent.i.ty having common interests. Surendranath Banerjea's newspaper the Bengalee made the point on 18 January 1902: 'The agitation for political rights may bind the various nationalities of India together for a time. The community of interests may cease when these rights are achieved. But the commercial union of the various Indian nationalities, once established, will never cease to exist. Commercial and industrial activity is, therefore, a bond of very strong union and is, therefore, a mighty factor in the formation of a great Indian union.'

Consequently, because of their whole-hearted devotion to the cause of industrialization, the early nationalists looked upon all other issues such as foreign trade, railways, tariffs, currency and exchange, finance, and labour legislation in relation to this paramount aspect.

At the same time, nearly all the early nationalists were clear on one question: However great the need of India for industrialization, it had to be based on Indian capital and not foreign capital.5 Ever since the 1840s, British economists, statesman and officials had seen the investment of foreign capital, along with law and order, as the major instrument for the development of India. John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall had put forward this view in their economic treatises. In 1899, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, said that foreign capital was 'a sine qua non to the national advancement' of India.6 The early nationalists disagreed vehemently with this view. They saw foreign capital as an unmitigated evil which did not develop a country but exploited and impoverished it. Or, as Dadabhai Naoroji popularly put it, foreign capital represented the 'despoliation' and 'exploitation' of Indian resources.7 Similarly, the editor of the Hindustan Review and Kayastha Samachar described the use of foreign capital as 'a system of international depradation.'8 They further argued that instead of encouraging and augmenting Indian capital, foreign capital replaced and suppressed it, led to the drain of capital from India and further strengthened the British hold over the Indian economy. To try to develop a country through foreign capital, they said, was to barter the entire future for the petty gains of today. Bipin Chandra Pal summed up the nationalist point of view in 1901 as follows: 'The introduction of foreign, and mostly British, capital for working out the natural resources of the country, instead of being a help, is, in fact, the greatest of hindrances to all real improvements in the economic condition of the people. It is as much a political, as it is an economic danger. And the future of New India absolutely depends upon as early and radical remedy of this two-edged evil.'9 In essence, the early nationalists a.s.serted that genuine economic development was possible only if Indian capital itself initiated and developed the process of industrialization. Foreign capital would neither undertake nor could it fulfill this task.

According to the early nationalists, the political consequences of foreign capital investment were no less harmful, for the penetration of a country by foreign capital inevitably led to its political subjugation. Foreign capital investment created vested interests which demanded security for investors and, therefore, perpetuated foreign rule. 'Where foreign capital has been sunk in a country,' wrote the Hindu in its issue dated 23 September 1889, 'the administration' of that country becomes at once the concern of the bondholders.' It added: '(if) the influence of foreign capitalists in the land is allowed to increase, then adieu to all chances of success of the Indian National Congress whose voice will be drowned in the tremendous uproar of "the empire in danger" that will surely be raised by the foreign capitalists.'

A major problem the early nationalists highlighted was that of the progressive decline and ruin of India's traditional handicrafts. Nor was this industrial prostration accidental, they said. It was the result of the deliberate policy of stamping out Indian industries in the interests of British manufacturers.

The British administrators, on the other hand, pointed with pride to the rapid growth of India's foreign trade and the rapid construction of railways as instruments of India's development as well as proof of its growing prosperity. However, the nationalists said that because of their negative impact on indigenous industries, foreign trade and railways represented not economic development but colonialization and underdevelopment of the economy. What mattered in the case of foreign trade, they maintained, was not its volume but its pattern or the nature of goods internationally exchanged and their impact on national industry and agriculture. And this pattern had undergone drastic changes during the 19th century, the bias being overwhelmingly towards the export of raw materials and the import of manufactured goods.

Similarly, the early nationalists pointed out that the railways had not been coordinated with India's industrial needs. They had, therefore, ushered in a commercial and not an industrial revolution which enabled imported foreign goods to undersell domestic industrial products. Moreover, they said that the benefits of railway construction in terms of encouragement to the steel and machine industry and to capital investment - what today we would call backward and forward linkages - had been reaped by Britain and not India. In fact, remarked G.V. Jos.h.i.+, expenditure on railways should be seen as Indian subsidy to British industries.10 Or, as Tilak put it, it was like 'decorating another's wife.'11 According to the early nationalists, a major obstacle to rapid industrial development was the policy of free trade which was, on the one hand, ruining India's handicraft industries and, on the other, forcing the infant and underdeveloped modern industries into a premature and unequal and, hence, unfair and disastrous compet.i.tion with the highly organized and developed industries of the West. The tariff policy of the Government convinced the nationalists that British economic policies in India were basically guided by the interests of the British capitalist cla.s.s.

The early nationalists strongly criticized the colonial pattern of finance. Taxes were so raised, they averred, as to overburden the poor while letting the rich, especially the foreign capitalists and bureaucrats, go scot-free, To vitiate this, they demanded the reduction of land revenue and abolition of the salt tax and supported the imposition of income tax and import duties on products which the rich and the middle cla.s.ses consumed.

On the expenditure side, they pointed out that the emphasis was on serving Britain's imperial needs while the developmental and welfare departments were starved. In particular, they condemned the high expenditure on the army which was used by the British to conquer and maintain imperialist control over large parts of Asia and Africa.

The focal point of the nationalist critique of colonialism was the drain theory.12 The nationalist leaders pointed out that a large part of India's capital and wealth was being transferred or 'drained' to Britain in the form of salaries and pensions of British civil and military officials working in India, interest on loans taken by the Indian Government, profits of British capitalists in India, and the Home Charges or expenses of the Indian Government in Britain.

The drain took the form of an excess of exports over imports for which India got no economic or material return. According to the nationalist calculations, this drain amounted to one-half of government revenues, more than the entire land revenue collection, and over one-third of India's total savings. (In today's terms this would amount to eight per cent of India's national income).

The acknowledged high-priest of the drain theory was Dadabhai Naoroji. It was in May 1867 that Dadabhai Naoroji put forward the idea that Britain was draining and 'bleeding' India. From then on for nearly half a century he launched a raging campaign against the drain, hammering at the theme through every possible form of public communication.

The drain, he declared, was the basic cause of India's poverty and the fundamental evil of British rule in India. Thus, he argued in 1880: 'It is not the pitiless operations of economic laws, but it is the thoughtless and pitiless action of the British policy; it is the pitiless eating of India's substance in India, and the further pitiless drain to England; in short, it is the pitiless perversion of economic laws by the sad bleeding to which India is subjected, that is destroying India.'13 Other nationalist leaders, journalists and propagandists followed in the foot-steps of Dadabhai Naoroji. R.C. Dutt, for example, made the drain the major theme of his Economic History of India. He protested that 'taxation raised by a king, says the Indian poet, is like the moisture sucked up by the sun, to be returned to the earth as fertilizing rain; but the moisture raised from the Indian soil now descends as fertilizing rain largely on other lands, not on India . . . So great an Economic Drain out of the resources of a land would impoverish the most prosperous countries on earth; it has reduced India to a land of famines more frequent, more widespread, and more fatal, than any known before in the history of India, or of the world.'14 The drain theory incorporated all the threads of the nationalist critique of colonialism, for the drain denuded India of the productive capital its agriculture and industries so desperately needed. Indeed, the drain theory was the high water-mark of the nationalist leaders' comprehensive, inter-related and integrated economic a.n.a.lysis of the colonial situation. Through the drain theory, the exploitative character of British rule could be made visible. By attacking the drain, the nationalists were able to call into question, in an uncompromising manner, the economic essence of imperialism.

Moreover, the drain theory possessed the great political merit of being easily grasped by a nation of peasants. Money being transferred from one country to another was the most easily understood of the theories of economic exploitation, for the peasant daily underwent this experience vis-a-vis the state, landlords, moneylenders, lawyers and priests. No other idea could arouse people more than the thought that they were being taxed so that others in far off lands might live in comfort.

'No drain' was the type of slogan that all successful movements need - it did not have to be proved by sophisticated and complex arguments. It had a sort of immanent quality about it; it was practically self-evident. Nor could the foreign rulers do anything to appease the people on this question. Modern colonialism was inseparable from the drain. The contradiction between the Indian people and British imperialism was seen by people to be insoluble except by the overthrow of British rule. It was, therefore, inevitable that the drain theory became the main staple of nationalist political agitation during the Gandhian era.

This agitation on economic issues contributed to the undermining of the ideological hegemony of the alien rulers over Indian minds, that is, of the foundations of colonial rule in the minds of the people. Any regime is politically secure only so long as the people have a basic faith in its moral purpose, in its benevolent character - that is, they believe that the rulers are basically motivated by the desire to work for their welfare. It is this belief which leads them to support the regime or to at least acquiesce in its continuation. It provides legitimacy to a regime - in this belief lie its moral foundations.

The secret of British power in India lay not only in physical force but also in moral force, that is, in the belief sedulously inculcated by the rulers for over a century that the British were the Mai-Baap of the common people of India - the first lesson in primary school language textbooks was most often on 'the benefits of British rule.' The nationalist economic agitation gradually undermined these moral foundations. It corroded popular confidence in the benevolent character of British rule - in its good results as well as its good intentions.

The economic development of India was offered as the chief justification for British rule by the imperialist rulers and spokesmen. The Indian nationalists controverted it forcefully and a.s.serted that India was economically backward precisely because the British were ruling it in the interests of British trade, industry and capital, and that poverty and backwardness were the inevitable consequences of colonial rule. Tilak's newspaper, the Kesari, for example, wrote on 28 January 1896: 'Surely India is treated as a vast pasture for the Europeans to feed upon.' And P. Ananda Charlu, an ex-President of the Congress, said in the Legislative Council: 'While India is safe-guarded against foreign inroads by the strong arm of the British power, she is defenceless in matters where the English and Indian interests clash and where (as a Tamil saying puts it) the very fence begins to feed on the crop.'15 The young intellectual from Bihar, Sachidanand Sinha, summed up the Indian critique in a pithy manner in Indian People on 27 February 1903: 'Their work of administration in Lord Curzon's testimony is only the handmaid to the task of exploitation. Trade cannot thrive without efficient administration, while the latter is not worth attending to in the absence of profits of the former. So always with the a.s.sent and often to the dictates of the Chamber of Commerce, the Government of India is carried on, and this is the "White Man's Burden." '

It was above all Dadabhai Naoroji who in his almost daily articles and speeches hammered home this point. 'The face of beneficence,' he said, was a mask behind which the exploitation of the country was carried on by the British though 'unaccompanied with any open compulsion or violence to person or property which the world can see and be horrified with.'And, again: 'Under the present evil and unrighteous administration of Indian expenditure, the romance is the beneficence of the British Rule, the reality is the "bleeding" of the British Rule.'16 Regarding the British claim of having provided security of life and property, Dadabhai wrote: 'The romance is that there is security of life and property in India; the reality is that there is no such thing. There is security of life and property in one sense or way, i.e., the people are secure from any violence from each other or from Native despots . . . But from England's own grasp there is no security of property at all, and, as a consequence, no security for life . . . What is secure, and well secure, is that England is perfectly safe and secure . . . to carry away from India, and to eat up in India, her property at the present rate of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 a year . . . To millions in India life is simply "half-feeding," or starvation, or famine and disease.'17 With regard to the benefits of law and order, Dadabhai said: 'There is an Indian saying: "Pray strike on the back, but don't strike on the belly." - Under the 'native despot the people keep and enjoy what they produce, though at times they suffer some violence on the back. Under the British Indian despot the man is at peace, there is no violence; his substance is drained away, unseen, peaceably and subtly - he starves in peace, and peaceably perishes in peace, with law and order!'18 *

The corrosion of faith in British rule inevitably spread to the political field. In the course of their economic agitation, the nationalist leaders linked nearly every important economic question with the politically subordinated status of the country. Step by step, issue by issue, they began to draw the conclusion that since the British Indian administration was 'only the handmaid to the task of exploitation,' pro-Indian and developmental policies would be followed only by a regime in which Indians had control over political power.

The result was that even though most of the early nationalist leaders were moderate in politics and political methods, and many of them still professed loyalty to British rule, they cut at the political roots of the empire and sowed in the land the seeds of disaffection and disloyalty and even sedition. This was one of the major reasons why the period 1875 to 1905 became a period of intellectual unrest and of spreading national consciousness - the seed-time of the modern Indian national movement.

While until the end of the 19th century, Indian nationalists confined their political demands to a share in political power and control over the purse, by 1905 most of the prominent nationalists were putting forward the demand for some form of self-government. Here again, Dadabhai Naoroji was the most advanced. Speaking on the drain at the International Socialist Congress in 1904, he put forward the demand for 'self-government' and treatment of India 'like other British Colonies.'19 A year later in 1905, in a message to the Benares session of the Indian National Congress, Dadabhai categorically a.s.serted: 'Self-government is the only remedy for India's woes and wrongs.'20 And, then, as the President of the 1906 session of the Congress at Calcutta, he laid down the goal of the national movement as "self-government or Swaraj," like that of the United Kingdom or the Colonies.'21 While minds were being prepared and the goal formed, the ma.s.s struggle for the political emanc.i.p.ation of the country was still in the womb of time. But the early nationalists were laying strong and enduring foundations for the national movement to grow upon. They sowed the seeds of nationalism well and deep. They did not base their nationalism primarily on appeals to abstract or shallow sentiments or on obscurantist appeals to the past. They rooted their nationalism in a brilliant scientific a.n.a.lysis of the complex economic mechanism of modern colonialism and of the chief contradiction between the interests of the Indian people and British rule.

The nationalists of the 20th century were to rely heavily on the main themes of their economic critique of colonialism. These themes were then to reverberate in Indian cities, towns and villages, carried there by the youthful agitators of the Gandhian era. Based on this firm foundation, the later nationalists went on to stage powerful ma.s.s agitations and ma.s.s movements. At the same time, because of this firm foundation, they would not, unlike in China, Egypt and many other colonial and semi-colonial countries, waver in their anti-imperialism.

8.

The Fight to Secure Press Freedom

Almost from the beginning of the 19th century, politically conscious Indians had been attracted to modern civil rights, especially the freedom of the Press. As early as 1824, Raja Rammohan Roy had protested against a regulation restricting the freedom of the Press. In a memorandum to the Supreme Court, he had said that every good ruler 'will be anxious to afford every individual the readiest means of bringing to his notice whatever may require his interference. To secure this important object, the unrestricted liberty of publication is the only effectual means that can be employed.'1 In the period from 1870 to 1918, the national movement had not yet resorted to ma.s.s agitation through thousands of small and large maidan meetings, nor did political work consist of the active mobilization of people in ma.s.s struggles. The main political task still was that of politicization, political propaganda and education and formation and propagation of nationalist ideology. The Press was the chief instrument for carrying out this task, that is, for arousing, training, mobilizing and consolidating nationalist public opinion.

Even the work of the National Congress was accomplished during these years largely through the Press. The Congress had no organization of its own for carrying on political work. Its resolutions and proceedings had to be propagated through newspapers. Interestingly, nearly one-third of the founding fathers of the Congress in 1885 were journalists.

Powerful newspapers emerged during these years under distinguished and fearless journalists. These were the Hindu and Swadesamitran under the editors.h.i.+p of G. Subramaniya Iyer, Kesari and Mahratta under B.G. Tilak, Bengalee under Surendranath Banerjea, Amrita Bazar Patrika under Sisir k.u.mar Ghosh and Motilal Ghosh, Sudharak under G.K. Gokhale, Indian Mirror under N.N. Sen, Voice of India under Dadabhai Naoroji, Hindustani and Advocate under G.P. Varma and Tribune and Akhbar-i-Am in Punjab, Indu Prakash, Dnyan Prakash, Kal and Gujarati in Bombay, and Som Prakash, Banganivasi and Sadharani in Bengal. In fact, there hardly existed a major political leader in India who did not possess a newspaper or was not writing for one in some capacity or the other.

The influence of the Press extended far beyond its literate subscribers. Nor was it confined to cities and large towns. A newspaper would reach remote villages and would then be read by a reader to tens of others. Gradually library movements sprung up all over the country. A local 'library' would be organized around a single newspaper. A table, a bench or two or a charpoy would const.i.tute the capital equipment. Every piece of news or editorial comment would be read or heard and thoroughly discussed. The newspaper not only became the political educator; reading or discussing it became a form of political partic.i.p.ation.

Newspapers were not in those days business enterprises, nor were the editors and journalists professionals. Newspapers were published as a national or public service. They were often financed as objects of philanthropy. To be a journalist was often to be a political worker and an agitator at considerable self-sacrifice. It was, of course, not very expensive to start a newspaper, though the editor had usually to live at a semi-starvation level or earn his livelihood through a supplementary source. The Amrita Bazar Patrika was started in 1868 with printing equipment purchased for Rs. 32. Similarly, Surendranath Banerjea purchased the goodwill of the Bengalee in 1879 for Rs. 10 and the press for another Rs. 1600.

Nearly all the major political controversies of the day were conducted through the Press. It also played the inst.i.tutional role of opposition to the Government. Almost every act and every policy of the Government was subjected to sharp criticism, in many cases with great care and vast learning backing it up. 'Oppose, oppose, oppose' was the motto of the Indian Press. Regarding the role of the nationalist Press, Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy, wrote as early as March 1886: 'Day after day, hundreds of sharp-witted babus pour forth their indignation against their English oppressors in very pungent and effective diatribe.'And again in May: 'In this way there can be no doubt there is generated in the minds of those who read these papers . . . a sincere conviction that we are all of us the enemies of mankind in general and of India in particular.'2 To arouse political consciousness, to inculcate nationalism, to expose colonial rule, to 'preach disloyalty' was no easy task, for there had existed since 1870 Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code according to which 'whoever attempts to excite feelings of disaffection to the Government established by law in British India' was to be punished with transportation for life or for any term or with imprisonment upto three years. This clause was, moreover, later supplemented with even more strident measures.

Indian journalists adopted several clever strategems and evolved a distinctive style of writing to remain outside the reach of the law. Since Section 124A excluded writings of persons whose loyalty to the Government was undoubted, they invariably prefaced their vitriolic writing with effusive sentiments of loyalty to the Government and the Queen. Another strategem was to publish anti-imperialist extracts from London-based socialist and Irish newspapers or letters from radical British citizens knowing that the Indian Government could not discriminate against Indians by taking action against them without touching the offending Britishers. Sometimes the extract from the British newspaper would be taken without quotation marks and acknowledgement of the source, thus teasing the British-Indian bureaucracy into contemplating or taking action which would have to be given up once the real source of the comment became known. For example, a sympathetic treatment of the Russian terrorist activities against Tsarism would be published in such a way that the reader would immediately draw a parallel between the Indian Government and the Revolutionary Terrorists of Bengal and Maharashtra. The officials would later discover that it was an extract from the Times, London, or some such other British newspaper.

Often the radical expose would take the form of advice and warning to the Government as if from a well-wisher, as if the writer's main purpose was to save the authorities from their own follies! B.G. Tilak and Motilal Ghosh were experts at this form of writing. Some of the more daring writers took recourse to irony, sarcasm, banter, mock-seriousness and burlesque.

In all cases, nationalist journalists, especially of Indian language newspapers, had a difficult task to perform, for they had to combine simplicity with subtlety - simplicity was needed to educate a semi-literate public, subtlety to convey the true meaning without falling foul of the law. They performed the task brilliantly, often creatively developing the languages in which they were willing, including, surprisingly enough, the English language.

The national movement from the beginning zealously defended the freedom of the Press whenever the Government attacked it or tried to curtail it. In fact, the struggle for the freedom of the Press became an integral part of the struggle for freedom.