India's Struggle For Independence Part 5

Third, the Swades.h.i.+ Movement lacked an effective organization and party structure. The movement had thrown up programmatically almost the entire gamut of Gandhian techniques such as pa.s.sive resistance, non-violent non-cooperation, the call to fill the British jails, social reform, constructive work, etc. It was, however, unable to give these techniques a centralized, disciplined focus, carry the bulk of political India, and convert these techniques into actual, practical political practice, as Gandhiji was able to do later.

Lastly, the movement declined partially because of the very logic of ma.s.s movements itself - they cannot be sustained endlessly at the same pitch of militancy and self-sacrifice, especially when faced with severe repression, but need to pause, to consolidate its forces for yet another struggle.

However, the decline of the open movement by mid-1908 engendered yet another trend in the Swades.h.i.+ phase i.e., the rise of revolutionary terrorism. The youth of the country, who had been part of the ma.s.s movement, now found themselves unable to disappear tamely into the background once the movement itself grew moribund and Government repression was stepped up. Frustrated, some among them opted for 'individual heroism' as distinct from the earlier attempts at ma.s.s action.

With the subsiding of the ma.s.s movement, one era in the Indian freedom struggle was over. It would be wrong, however, to see the Swades.h.i.+ Movement as a failure. The movement made a major contribution in taking the idea of nationalism, in a truely creative fas.h.i.+on, to many sections of the people, hitherto untouched by it. By doing so, it further eroded the hegemony of colonial ideas and inst.i.tutions. Swades.h.i.+ influence in the realm of culture and ideas was crucial in this regard and has remained unparalleled in Indian history, except, perhaps, for the cultural upsurge of the 1930s, this time under the influence of the Left.

Further, the movement evolved several new methods and techniques of ma.s.s mobilization and ma.s.s action though it was not able to put them all into practice successfully. Just as the Moderates' achievement in the realm of developing an economic critique of colonialism is not minimized by the fact that they could not themselves carry this critique to large ma.s.ses of people, similarly the achievement of the Extremists and the Swades.h.i.+ Movement in evolving new methods of ma.s.s mobilization and action is not diminished by the fact that they could not themselves fully utilize these methods. The legacy they bequeathed was one on which the later national movement was to draw heavily.

The Swades.h.i.+ Movement was only the first round in the national popular struggle against colonialism. It was to borrow the imagery used by Antonio Gramsci an important 'battle' in the long drawn out and complex 'war of position' for Indian independence.

11.

The Split in the Congress and the Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism

The Indian National Congress split in December 1907. Almost at the same time revolutionary terrorism made its appearance in Bengal. The two events were not unconnected.

By 1907, the Moderate nationalists had exhausted their historical role. Their achievements, as we have seen in the previous chapter, were immense, considering the low level of political consciousness and the immense difficulties they had to face when they began.

Their failures too were numerous. They lacked faith in the common people, did no work among them and consequently failed to acquire any roots among them. Even their propaganda did not reach them. Nor did they organize any all-India campaigns and when, during 1905-07, such an all-India campaign did come up in the form of the Swades.h.i.+ and Boycott Movement, they were not its leaders (though the Bengal Moderates did play an active role in their own province). Their politics were based on the belief that they would be able to persuade the rulers to introduce economic and political reforms but their practical achievements in this respect were meagre. Instead of respecting them for their moderation, the British treated them with contempt, sneered at their politics, and met popular agitations with repression.

Their basic failure, however, was that of not keeping pace with events. They could not see that their own achievements had made their politics obsolete. They failed to meet the demands of the new stage of the national movement. Visible proof of this was their failure to attract the younger generation.

The British had been suspicious of the National Congress from its inception. But they had not been overtly hostile, in the first few years of its existence because they believed its activities would remain academic and confined to a handful of intellectuals. However, as soon as it became apparent that the Congress would not remain so narrowly confined, and that it was becoming a focus of Indian nationalism, the officials turned openly critical of the Congress, the nationalist leaders and the Press.

They now began to brand the nationalists as 'disloyal babus,' 'seditious Brahmins,' and 'violent villains.' The Congress was described as 'a factory of sedition' and Congressmen as 'disappointed candidates for office and discontented lawyers who represent no one but themselves.' In 1888, Dufferin, the Viceroy, attacked the National Congress in a public speech and ridiculed it as representing only the elite - 'a microscopic minority.'1 George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, accused the Congress leaders of possessing 'seditious and double sided character.'2 This hostility did not abate when the Moderates, who then controlled the Congress, began to distance themselves from the rising militant nationalist tendencies of certain sections of the Congress which became apparent when the government unleashed a repressive policy against the Indian Press in 1897. Instead the British appeared even more eager to attack and finish the Congress. Why was this so? First, because however moderate and loyal in their political perception the Moderates were, they were still nationalists and propagators of anti-colonialist politics and ideas. As Curzon, the Viceroy, put it in 1905: 'Gokhale either does not see where he is going, or if he does see it, then he is dishonest in his pretensions. You cannot awaken and appeal to the spirit of nationality in India and at the same time, profess loyal acceptance of British rule.'3 Or, as George Hamilton, the Secretary of State, had complained to Dadabhai Naoroji in 1900: 'You announce yourself as a sincere supporter of British rule; you vehemently denounce the conditions and consequences which are inseparable from the maintenance of that rule.'4 Second, the British policy-makers felt that the Moderate-led Congress could be easily finished because it was weak and without a popular base. Curzon, in particular, supported by George Hamilton, pursued this policy. He declared in 1900: 'The Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my greatest ambitions while in India is to a.s.sist it to a peaceful demise.'5 In 1903, he wrote to the Madras Governor: 'My policy, ever since I came to India, has been to reduce the Congress to impotence.'6 In 1904, he had insulted the Congress by refusing to meet its delegation headed by its President.

This policy was changed once the powerful Swades.h.i.+ and Boycott Movement began and the militant nationalist trend became strong. An alternative policy of weakening the nationalist movement was now to be followed. Instead of sneering at the Moderates, the policy was to be that of 'rallying' them as John Morley, the new Secretary of State for India, put it in 1907. The new policy, known as the policy of the carrot and the stick, was to be a three p.r.o.nged one. It may be described as a policy of repression-conciliation-suppression. The Extremists, as we shall refer to the militant nationalists from now on, were to be repressed, though mildly in the first stage, the purpose being to frighten the Moderates. The Moderates were then to be placated through some concessions and promises and hints were to be given that further concessions would be forthcoming if they disa.s.sociated themselves from the Extremists. The entire objective of the new policy was to isolate the Extremists. Once the Moderates fell into the trap, the Extremists could be suppressed through the use of the full might of the state. The Moderates, in turn, could then he ignored. Unfortunately for the national movement, neither the Moderates nor the Extremists were able to understand the official strategy and consequently suffered a number of reverses.

The Government of India, headed by Lord Minto as Viceroy and John Morley as the Secretary of State, offered a bait of fresh reforms in the Legislative Councils and in the beginning of 1906 began discussing them with the Moderate leaders.h.i.+p of the Congress. The Moderates agreed to cooperate with the Government and discuss reforms even while a vigorous popular movement, which the Government was trying to suppress, was going on in the country. The result was a total split in the nationalist ranks.

Before we take up this split at some length, it is of some interest to note that the British were to follow this tactic of dividing the Moderates from the militants in later years also - for example in 1924, vis-a-vis Swarajists, in 1936, vis-a-vis Nehru and the leftists, and so on. The difference was that in the later years the national leaders.h.i.+p had learnt a lesson from the events of 1907-1909, and refused to rise to the bait, remaining united despite deep differences.

There was a great deal of public debate and disagreement among Moderates and Extremists in the years 1905-1907, even when they were working together against the part.i.tioning of Bengal. The Extremists wanted to extend the Swades.h.i.+ and the Boycott Movement from Bengal to the rest of the country. They also wanted to gradually extend the boycott from foreign goods to every form of a.s.sociation or cooperation with the colonial Government. The Moderates wanted to confine the boycott part of the movement to Bengal and were totally opposed to its extension to the Government.

Matters nearly came to a head at the Calcutta Congress in 1906 over the question of its Presidents.h.i.+p. A split was avoided by choosing Dadabhai Naoroji, who was respected by all the nationalists as a great patriot. Four compromise resolutions on the Swades.h.i.+, Boycott, National Education, and Self-Government demands were pa.s.sed. Throughout 1907 the two sides fought over differing interpretations of the four resolutions. By the end of 1907, they were looking upon each other as the main political enemy. The Extremists were convinced that the battle for freedom had begun as the people had been roused. They felt it was time for the big push and in their view the Moderates were a big drag on the movement. Most of them, led by Aurobindo Ghose, felt that the time, had come to part company with the Moderates, push them out of the leaders.h.i.+p of the Congress, and split the organization if the Moderates could not be deposed.

Most of the Moderates, led by Pherozeshah Mehta, were no less determined on a split. To remain with the Extremists was, they felt, to enter dangerous waters. They were afraid that the Congress organization, built carefully over the last twenty years, would be shattered. The Government was bound to suppress any large-scale anti-imperialist movement; why invite premature repression? As Gokhale put it in 1907, 'You (the Extremists) do not realize the enormous reserve of power behind the Government. If the Congress were to do anything such as you suggest, the Government would have no difficulty in throttling it in five minutes.'7 Minto and Morley were holding up hopes of brighter prospects. Many Moderates thought that their dream of Indians sharing political and administrative power was going to come true. Any hasty action by the Congress under Extremist pressure could annoy the Liberals in power in Britain. Why not get rid of the Extremists while there was still time?

As H.A. Wadya. representing Pherozeshah Mehta's thinking, wrote in an article in which, after referring to the Extremists as 'the worst enemies of our cause,' said: 'The union of these men with the Congress is the union of a diseased limb to a healthy body, and the only remedy is surgical severance, if the Congress is to be saved from death by blood poisoning.'8 Both sides had it wrong - from the nationalist point of view as well as their own factional point of view. The Moderates did not see that the colonial state was negotiating with them not because of their inherent political strength but because of the fear of the Extremists. The Extremists did not see that the Moderates were their natural outer defence line (in terms of civil liberties and so on) and that they did not possess the required strength to face the colonial state's juggernaut. Neither saw that in a vast country like India ruled by a powerful imperialist nation only a broad-based united movement had any chance of success. It wasn't as though the whole leaders.h.i.+p was blind to the danger. The main public leaders of the two wings, Tilak (of the Extremists) and Gokhale (of the Moderates) were mature politicians who had a clear grasp of the dangers of disunity in the nationalist ranks. Tilak did not want the united national front to break. He saw clearly that a powerful movement could not be built up at that stage nor political demands successfully pressed on the rulers without the unity of different political trends. His tactics were to organize ma.s.sive support for his political line and, thus, force a favourable compromise on the Moderates. But having roused his followers in Maharashtra and pushed on by the more extreme elements of Bengal, Tilak found that he could not afford to dismount from the tiger he found himself riding. When it came to the crunch, he had to go with the more extreme leaders like Aurobindo Ghose.

Gokhale, too, saw the dangers of a split in the nationalist ranks and tried to avoid it. Already, in October 1907, he had written to a friend: 'If a split does come it means a disaster, for the Bureaucracy will then put down both sections without much difficulty.'9 But he did not have the personality to stand upto a wilful autocrat like Pherozeshah Mehta. He, too, knuckled under pressure of his own extremists.

The Congress session was held on 26 December, 1907 at Surat, on the banks of the river Tapti. The Extremists were excited by the rumours that the Moderates wanted to scuttle the four Calcutta resolutions. The Moderates were deeply hurt by the ridicule and venom poured on them in ma.s.s meetings held at Surat on the previous three days. The delegates, thus, met in an atmosphere surcharged with excitement and anger.

The Extremists wanted a guarantee that the four resolutions would be pa.s.sed. To force the Moderates to do so they decided to object to the duly elected President for the year, Rash Behari Ghose. Both sides came to the session prepared for a confrontation. In no time, the 1600 delegates were shouting, coming to blows and hurling chairs at each other. In the meantime, some unknown person hurled a shoe at the dais which hit Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjea. The police came and cleared the hall. The Congress session was over. The only victorious party was the rulers. Minto immediately wrote to Morley that the 'Congress collapse' at Surat was 'a great triumph for us.'10 Tilak had seen the coming danger and made last minute efforts to avoid it. But he was helpless before his followers. Lajpat Rai, a partic.i.p.ant in the events from the Extremist side, wrote later: 'Instead of leading his party, he (Tilak) allowed himself to be led by some of its wild spirits. Twice on my request, at Surat, he agreed to waive his opposition to the election of Dr. Rash Behari Ghose and leave the matter of the four Calcutta resolutions to the Subjects Committee, but the moment I left him he found himself helpless before the volume of opinion that surrounded him.'11 The suddenness of the Surat fiasco took Tilak by surprise. He had not bargained for it because, as Aurobindo Ghose wrote later, Tilak viewed the split as a 'catastrophe.' He valued the Congress 'as a great national fact and for its unrealized possibilities.'12 He now tried to undo the damage. He sent a virtual letter of regret to his opponents, accepted Rash Behari Ghose as the President of the Congress and offered his cooperation in working for Congress unity. But Pherozeshah Mehta and his colleagues would not relent. They thought they were on a sure wicket. The Government immediately launched a ma.s.sive attack on the Extremists. Extremist newspapers were suppressed. Tilak, their main leader, was sent to Mandalay jail for six years. Aurobindo Ghose, their ideologue, was involved in a revolutionary conspiracy case and immediately after being judged innocent gave up politics and escaped to Pondicherry to take up religion. B.C. Pal temporarily retired from politics and Lajpat Rai, who had been a helpless onlooker at Surat, left for Britain in 1908 to come back in 1909 and then to go off to the United States for an extended stay. The Extremists were not able to organize an effective alternative party or to sustain the movement. The Government had won, at least for the moment.

The Moderates were indulging their own foolish beliefs. They gave up all the radical measures adopted at the Benaras and Calcutta sessions of the Congress, spurned all overtures for unity from the Extremists and excluded them from the party. They thought they were going to rebuild, to quote Pherozeshah Mehta, a 'resuscitated, renovated, reincarnated Congress.' But the spirit had gone out of the Congress and all efforts to restore it failed. They had lost the respect and support of the political Indians, especially the youth, and were reduced to a small coterie. Most of the Moderate leaders withdrew into their sh.e.l.ls; only Gokhale plodded on, with the aid of a small band of co-workers from the Servants of India Society. And the vast majority of politically conscious Indians extended their support, however pa.s.sive, to Lokamanya Tilak and the militant nationalists.

After 1908 the national movement as a whole declined. In 1909, Aurobindo Ghose noted the change: 'When I went to jail the whole country was alive with the cry of Bande Matram, alive with the hope of a nation, the hope of millions of men who had newly risen out of degradation. When I came out of jail I listened for that cry, but there was instead a silence. A hush had fallen on the country.'13 But while the upsurge was gone, the aroused nationalist sentiments did not disappear. The people waited for the next phase. In 1914, Tilak was released and he picked up the threads of the movement.

The Moderates and the country as a whole were disappointed by the 'const.i.tutional' reforms of 1909. The Indian Councils Act of 1909 increased the number of elected members in the Imperial Legislative Council and the provincial legislative councils. Most of the elected members were still elected indirectly. An Indian was to be appointed a member of the Governor-General's Executive Council. Of the sixty-eight members of the Imperial Legislative Council, thirty-six were officials and five were nominated non-officials. Out of twenty-seven elected members, six were elected by big landlords and two by British capitalists. The Act permitted members to introduce resolutions; it also increased their power to ask questions. Voting on separate budget items was allowed. But the reformed councils still enjoyed no real power and remained mere advisory bodies. They also did not introduce an element of democracy or self-government. The undemocratic, foreign and exploitative character of British rule remained unchanged.

Morley openly declared in Parliament: 'If it could be said that this chapter of reforms led directly or necessarily up to the establishment of a Parliamentary system in India, I, for one, would have nothing at all to do with it.'14 The real purpose of the Morley-Minto Reforms was to divide the nationalist ranks and to check the growing unity among Indians by encouraging the growth of Muslim communalism. To achieve the latter objective, the Reforms introduced the system of separate electorates under which Muslims could only vote for Muslim candidates in const.i.tuencies specially reserved for them. This was done to encourage the notion that the political, economic and cultural interests of Hindus and Muslims were separate and not common. The inst.i.tution of separate electorates was one of the poisonous trees which was to yield a bitter harvest in later years.

The end of 1907 brought another political trend to the fore. The impatient young men of Bengal took to the path of individual heroism and revolutionary terrorism (a term we use without any pejorative meaning and for want of a different term). This was primarily because they could find no other way of expressing their patriotism. It is necessary at this point to reiterate the fact that, while the youth of Bengal might have been incensed at the official arrogance and repression and the 'mendicancy' of the Congress Moderates, they were also led to 'the politics of the bomb' by the Extremists' failure to give a positive lead to the people. The Extremists had made a sharp and on the whole correct and effective critique of the Moderates. They had rightly emphasized the role of the ma.s.ses and the need to go beyond propaganda and agitation. They had advocated persistent opposition to the Government and put forward a militant programme of pa.s.sive resistance and boycott of foreign cloth, foreigners' courts, education, and so on. They had demanded self-sacrifice from the youth. They had talked and written about direct action.

But they had failed to find forms through which all these ideas could find practical expression. They could neither create a viable organization to lead the movement nor could they really define the movement in a way that differed from that of the Moderates. They were more militant, their critique of British rule was couched in stronger language, they were willing to make greater sacrifices and undergo greater suffering, but they did not know how to go beyond more vigorous agitation. They were not able to put before people new forms of political struggle or ma.s.s movements. Consequently, they too had come to a political dead end by the end of 1907. Perhaps that is one reason why they expended so much of their energy in criticizing the Moderates and capturing the Congress. Unsurprisingly, the Extremists' waffling failed to impress the youth who decided to take recourse to physical force. The Yugantar, a newspaper echoing this feeling of disaffection, wrote in April 1906, after the police a.s.sault on the peaceful Barisal Conference: 'The thirty crores of people inhabiting India must raise their sixty crores of hands to stop this curse of oppression. Force must be stopped by force.'15 But the question was what form would this movement based on force take. Organizing a popular ma.s.s uprising would necessarily be an uphill and prolonged task. Many thought of trying to subvert the loyalty of the army, but they knew it would not be easy. However, these two objectives were kept as long-term goals and, for the present, revolutionary youth decided to copy the methods of the Irish nationalists and Russian nihilists and populists. That is to say, they decided to organize the a.s.sa.s.sination of unpopular British officials. Such a.s.sa.s.sinations would strike terror into the hearts of the rulers, arouse the patriotic instincts of the people, inspire them and remove the fear of authority from their minds. Each a.s.sa.s.sination, and if the a.s.sa.s.sins were caught, the consequent trial of the revolutionaries involved, would act as 'propaganda by deed.'All that this form of struggle needed was numbers of young people ready to sacrifice their lives. Inevitably, it appealed to the idealism of the youth; it aroused their latent sense of heroism. A steadily increasing number of young men turned to this form of political struggle.

Here again the Extremist leaders.h.i.+p let the young people down. While it praised their sense of self-sacrifice and courage, it failed to proyide a positive outlet for their revolutionary energies and to educate them on the political difference between a revolution based on the activity of the ma.s.ses and a revolutionary feeling based on individual action, however heroic. It also failed to oppose the notion that to be a revolutionary meant to be a believer in violent action. In. fact, Aurobindo Ghose encouraged this notion. Perhaps the actions of the Extremist leaders.h.i.+p were constrained by the feeling that it was not proper to politically criticize the heroic youth who were being condemned and hunted by the authorities. But this failure to politically and ideologically oppose the young revolutionaries proved a grievous error, for it enabled the individualistic and terrorist conception of revolution to take root in Bengal.

In 1904, V.D. Sarvarkar organized Abhinav Bharat as a secret society of revolutionaries. After 1905 several newspapers openly (and a few leaders secretly) began to advocate revolutionary terrorism. In 1907, an unsuccessful attempt was made on the life of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. In April 1908, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose threw a bomb at a carriage which they believed was occupied by Kingsford, the unpopular judge at Muzzafarpur. Unfortunately, they killed two English ladies instead. Prafulla Chaki shot himself dead while Khudiram Bose was tried and hanged. Thousands wept at his death and he and Chaki entered the ranks of popular nationalist heroes about whom folk songs were composed and sung all over the country.

The era of revolutionary terrorism had begun. Very soon secret societies of revolutionaries came up all over the country, the most famous and long lasting being a.n.u.s.h.i.+lan Samity, and Jugantar. Their activities took two forms - the a.s.sa.s.sination of oppressive officials and informers and traitors from their own ranks and dacqities to raise funds for purchase of arms, etc. The latter came to be popularly known as Swades.h.i.+ dacoities! Two of the most spectacular revolutionary terrorist actions of the period were the unsuccessful attempt under the leaders.h.i.+p of Rash Behari Bose and Sachin Sanyal to kill the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge who was wounded by the bomb thrown at him while he was riding an elephant in a state procession - and the a.s.sa.s.sination of Curzon-Wylie in London by Madan Lal Dhingra. In all 186 revolutionaries were killed or convicted between the years 1908-1918. The revolutionary terrorists also established centres abroad. The more famous of them were Shyamji Krishnavarma, V.D. Savarkar and Har Dayal in London and Madame Cama and Ajit Singh in Europe.

Revolutionary terrorism gradually petered out. Lacking a ma.s.s base, despite remarkable heroism, the individual revolutionaries, organized in small secret groups, could not withstand suppression by the still strong colonial state. But despite their small numbers and eventual failure, they made a valuable contribution to the growth of nationalism in India. As a historian has put it, 'they gave us back the pride of our manhood.'16

12.

World War I and Indian Nationalism: The Ghadar

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 gave a new lease of life to the nationalist movement which had been dormant since the heady days of the Swades.h.i.+ Movement. Britain's difficulty was India's 'opportunity.' This opportunity was seized, in different ways and with varying success, by the Ghadar revolutionaries based in North America and by Lokamanya Tilak, Annie Besant and their Home Rule Leagues in India. The Ghadarites attempted a violent overthrow of British rule, while the Home Rule Leaguers launched a nation-wide agitation for securing Home Rule or Swaraj.

The West Coast of North America had, since 1904, become home to a steadily increasing number of Punjabi immigrants. Many of these were land-hungry peasants from the crowded areas of Punjab, especially the Jullundur and Hos.h.i.+arpur districts, in search of some means of survival. Some of them came straight from their villages in Punjab while others had emigrated earlier to seek employment in various places in the Far East, in the Malay States, and in Fiji. Many among them were ex-soldiers whose service in the British Indian Army had taken them to distant lands and made them aware of the opportunities to be had there. Pushed out from their homes by economic hards.h.i.+p and lured by the prospect of building a new and prosperous life for themselves and their kin, they p.a.w.ned their belongings, mortgaged or sold their land, and set out for the promised lands.

The welcome that awaited the travel-weary immigrants in Canada and the USA was, however, not what they had expected. Many were refused entry, especially those who came straight from their villages and did not know Western ways and manners; those who were allowed to stay not only had to face racial contempt but also the brunt of the hostility of the White labour force and unions who resented the compet.i.tion they offered. Agitations against the entry of the Indians were launched by native American labourers and these were supported by politicians looking for the popular vote.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State for India had his own reasons for urging restrictions on immigration. For one, he believed that the terms of close familiarity of Indians with Whites which would inevitably take place in America was not good for British prestige; it was by prestige alone that India was held and not by force. Further, he was worried that the immigrants would get contaminated by socialist ideas, and that the racial discrimination to which they were bound to be subjected would become the source of nationalist agitation in India.1 The combined pressure resulted in an effective restriction on Indian immigration into Canada in 1908. Tarak Nath Das, an Indian student, and one of the first leaders of the Indian community in North America to start a paper (called Free Hindustan) realized that while the British government was keen on Indians going to Fiji to work as labourers for British planters, it did not want them to go to North America where they might be infected by ideas of liberty.

The discriminatory policies of the host countries soon resulted in a flurry of political activity among Indian nationalists. As early as 1907, Ramnath Puri, a political exile on the West Coast, issued a Circular-e-Azadi (Circular of Liberty) in which he also pledged support to the Swades.h.i.+ Movement; Tarak Nath Das in Vancouver started the Free Hindustan and adopted a very militant nationalist tone; G.D. k.u.mar set up a Swadesh Sevak Home in Vancouver on the lines of the India House in London and also began to bring out a Gurmukhi paper called Swadesh Sevak which advocated social reform and also asked Indian troops to rise in revolt against the British. In 1910, Tarak Nath Das and G.D. k.u.mar, by now forced out of Vancouver, set up the United India House in Seattle in the US, where every Sat.u.r.day they lectured to a group of twenty-five Indian labourers. Close links also developed between the United India House group, consisting mainly of radical nationalist students, and the Khalsa Diwan Society, and in 1913 they decided to send a deputation to meet the Colonial Secretary in London and the Viceroy and other officials in India. The Colonial Secretary in London could not find the time to see them even though they waited for a whole month, but in India they succeeded in meeting the Viceroy and the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab. But, more important, their visit became the occasion for a series of public meetings in Lah.o.r.e, Ludhiana, Ambala, Ferozepore, Jullundur, Amritsar, Lyallpur, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Simla and they received enthusiastic support from the Press and the general public.2 The result of this sustained agitation, both in Canada and the United States, was the creation of a nationalist consciousness and feeling of solidarity among immigrant Indians. Their inability to get the Government of India or the British Government to intercede on their behalf regarding immigration restrictions and other disabilities, such as those imposed by the, Alien Land law which practically prohibited Indians from owning land in the US, led to an impatience and a mood of discontent which blossomed into a revolutionary movement.

The first fillip to the revolutionary movement was provided by the visit to Vancouver, in early 1913, of Bhagwan Singh, a Sikh priest who had worked in Hong Kong and the Malay States. He openly preached the gospel of violent overthrow of British rule and urged the people to adopt Bande Mataram as a revolutionary salute. Bhagwan Singh was externed from Canada after a stay of three months.

The centre of revolutionary activity soon s.h.i.+fted to the US, which provided a relatively free political atmosphere. The crucial role was now played by Lala Har Dayal, a political exile from India. Har Dayal arrived in California in April 1911, taught briefly at Stanford University, and soon immersed himself in political activity. During the summer of 1912, he concentrated mainly on delivering lectures on the anarchist and syndicalist movements to various American groups of intellectuals, radicals and workers, and did not show much interest in the problems that were agitating the immigrant Indian community. But the bomb attack on Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, in Delhi on 23 December, 1912, excited his imagination and roused the dormant Indian revolutionary in him. His faith in the possibility of a revolutionary overthrow of the British regime in India was renewed, and he issued a Yugantar Circular praising the attack on the Viceroy.

Meanwhile, the Indians on the West Coast of the US had been in search of a leader and had even thought of inviting Ajit Singh, who had become famous in the agitation in Punjab in 1907. But Har Dayal was already there and, after December 1912, showed himself willing to play an active political role. Soon the Hindi a.s.sociation was set up in Portland in May 1913.

At the very first meeting of the a.s.sociation, held in the house of Kans.h.i.+ Ram, and attended among others by Bhai Parmanand, Sohan Singh Bhakna, and Harnam Singh 'Tundilat,' Har Dayal set forth his plan of action: 'Do not fight the Americans, but use the freedom that is available in the US to fight the British; you will never be treated as equals by the Americans until you are free in your own land; the root cause of Indian poverty and degradation is British rule and it must be overthrown, not by pet.i.tions but by armed revolt; carry this message to the ma.s.ses and to the soldiers in the Indian Army; go to India in large numbers and enlist their support.' Har Dayal's ideas found immediate acceptance. A Working Committee was set up and the decision was taken to start a weekly paper, The Ghadar, for free circulation, and to set up a headquarters called Yugantar Ashram in San Francisco. A series of meetings held in different towns and centres and finally a representatives' meeting in Astoria confirmed and approved the decisions of the first meeting at Portland. The Ghadar Movement had begun.

The Ghadar militants immediately began an extensive propaganda campaign they toured extensively, visiting mills and farms where most of the Punjabi immigrant labour worked. The Yugantar Ashram became the home and headquarters and refuge of these political workers.

On 1 November 1913, the first issue of Ghadar, in Urdu, was published and on 9 December, the Gurmukhi edition. The name of the paper left no doubts as to its aim. Ghadar meant Revolt. And if any doubt remained, they were to be dispelled by the captions on the masthead. Angrezi Raj ka Dushman or 'An Enemy of British Rule.' On the front page of each issue was a feature t.i.tled Angrezi Raj Ka Kacha Chittha or 'An Expose of British Rule.' This Chittha consisted of fourteen points enumerating the harmful effects of British rule, including the drain of wealth, the low per capita income of Indians, the high land tax, the contrast between the low expenditure on health and the high expenditure on the military, the destruction of Indian arts and industries, the recurrence of famines and plague that killed millions of Indians, the use of Indian tax payers' money for wars in Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Persia and China, the British policy of promoting discord in the Indian States to extend their own influence, the discriminatory lenient treatment given to Englishmen who were guilty of killing Indians or dishonouring Indian women, the policy of helping Christian missionaries with money raised from Hindus and Muslims, the effort to foment discord between Hindus and Muslims: in sum, the entire critique of British rule that had been formulated by the Indian national movement was summarized and presented every week to Ghadar readers. The last two points of the Chittha suggested the solution: (1) The Indian population numbers seven crores in the Indian States and 24 crores in British India, while there are only 79,614 officers and soldiers and 38,948 volunteers who are Englishmen. (2) Fifty-six years have lapsed since the Revolt of 1857; now there is urgent need for a second one.3 Besides the powerful simplicity of the Chittha, the message was also conveyed by serializing Savarkar's The Indian War of Independence - 1857. The Ghadar also contained references to the contributions of Lokamanya Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, V.D. Savarkar, Madame Cama, Shyamji Krishna Varma, Ajit Singh and Sufi Amba Prasad, as well as highlights of the daring deeds of the a.n.u.s.h.i.+lan Samiti, the Yugantar group and the Russian secret societies.4 But, perhaps, the most powerful impact was made by the poems that appeared in The Ghadar, soon collected and published as Ghadar di Goonj and distributed free of cost. These poems were marked as much by their secular tone as by their revolutionary zeal, as the following extract demonstrates:5 Hindus, Sikhs, Pathans and Muslims, Pay attention ye all people in the army.

Our country has been plundered by the British, We have to wage a war against them.

We do not need pandits and quazis, We do not want to get our s.h.i.+p sunk.

The time of wors.h.i.+p is over now, It is time to take up the sword.

The Ghadar was circulated widely among Indians in North America, and within a few months it had reached groups settled in the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, the Malay States, Singapore, Trinidad, the Honduras, and of course, India. It evoked an unprecedented response, becoming the subject of lively discussion and debate. The poems it carried were recited at gatherings of Punjabi immigrants, and were soon popular everywhere.

Unsurprisingly, The Ghadar, succeeded, in a very brief time, in changing the self-image of the Punjabi immigrant from that of a loyal soldier of the British Raj to that of a rebel whose only aim was to destroy the British hold on his motherland. The Ghadar consciously made the Punjabi aware of his loyalist past, made him feel ashamed of it, and challenged him to atone for it in the name of his earlier tradition of resistance to oppression:6 Why do you disgrace the name of Singhs?

How come! you have forgotten the majesty of 'Lions'

Had the like of Dip Singh been alive today How could the Singhs have been taunted?

People say that the Singhs are no good Why did you turn the tides during the Delhi mutiny?

Cry aloud. 'Let us kill the Whites'

Why do you sit quiet, shamelessly Let the earth give way so we may drown To what good were these thirty crores born.

The message went home, and ardent young militants began thirsting for 'action.' Har Dayal himself was surprised by the intensity of the response. He had, on occasion, spoken in terms of 'ten years' or 'some years' when asked how long it would take to organize the revolution in India. But those who read the heady exhortations of The Ghadar were too impatient, and ten years seemed a long time.

Finally, in 1914, three events influenced the course of the Ghadar movement: the arrest and escape of Har Dayal, the Komagata Marti incident, and the outbreak of the First World War.

Har Dayal was arrested on 25 March 1914 on the stated ground of his anarchist activities though everybody suspected that the British Government had much to do with it. Released on bail, he used the opportunity to slip out of the country. With that, his active a.s.sociation with the Ghadar Movement came to an abrupt end.

Meanwhile, in March 1914, the s.h.i.+p, Komagatu Maru had begun its fateful voyage to Canada. Canada had for some years imposed very strict restrictions on Indian immigration by means of a law that forbade entry to all, except those who made a continuous journey from India. This measure had proved effective because there were no s.h.i.+pping lines that offered such a route. But in November 1913, the Canadian Supreme Court allowed entry to thirty-five Indians who had not made a continuous journey. Encouraged by this judgement, Gurdit Singh, an Indian contractor living in Singapore, decided to charter a s.h.i.+p and carry to Vancouver, Indians who were living in various places in East and South-East Asia. Carrying a total of 376 Indian pa.s.sengers, the s.h.i.+p began its journey to Vancouver. Ghadar activists visited the s.h.i.+p at Yokohama in j.a.pan, gave lectures and distributed literature. The Press in Punjab warned of serious consequences if the Indians were not allowed entry into Canada. The Press in Canada took a different view and some newspapers in Vancouver alerted the people to the 'Mounting Oriental Invasion.' The Government of Canada had, meanwhile, plugged the legal loopholes that had resulted in the November Supreme Court judgement. The battle lines were clearly drawn.

When the s.h.i.+p arrived in Vancouver, it was not allowed into the port and was cordoned off by the police. To fight for the rights of the pa.s.sengers, a 'Sh.o.r.e Committee' was set up under the leaders.h.i.+p of Husain Rahim, Sohan Lal Pathak and Balwant Singh, funds were raised, and protest meetings organized. Rebellion against the British in India was threatened. In the United States, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Bhagwan Singh, Barkatullah, Ram Chandra and Sohan Singh Bhakna, a powerful campaign was organized and the people were advised to prepare for rebellion.

Soon the Komagata Maru was forced out of Canadian waters. Before it reached Yokohama, World War I broke out, and the British Government pa.s.sed orders that no pa.s.senger be allowed to disembark anywhere on the way - not even at the places from where they had joined the s.h.i.+p - but only at Calcutta. At every port that the s.h.i.+p touched, it triggered off a wave of resentment and anger among the Indian community and became the occasion for anti-British mobilization. On landing at Budge Budge near Calcutta, the hara.s.sed and irate pa.s.sengers, provoked by the hostile att.i.tude of the authorities, resisted the police and this led to a clash in which eighteen pa.s.sengers were killed, and 202 arrested. A few of them succeeded in escaping.

The third and most important development that made the Ghadar revolution imminent was the outbreak of the World War I. After all, this was the opportunity they had been told to seize. True, they were not really prepared, but should they now let it just pa.s.s by? A special meeting of the leading activists of the Ghadar Movement decided that the opportunity must be seized, that it was better to die than to do nothing at all, and that their major weakness, the lack of arms, could be overcome by going to India and winning over the Indian soldiers to their cause. The Ailan-e-Jung or Proclamation of War of the Ghadar Party was issued and circulated widely. Mohammed Barkatullah, Ram Chandra and Bhagwan Singh organized and addressed a series of public meetings to exhort Indians to go back to India and organize an armed revolt. Prominent leaders were sent to persuade Indians living in j.a.pan, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, The Malay States, Singapore and Burma to return home and join the rebels. The more impatient among the Ghadar activists, such as Kartar Singh Sarabha, later hanged by the British in a conspiracy case, and Raghubar Dayal Gupta, immediately left for India.

The Government of India, fully informed of the Ghadar plans, which were, in any case, hardly a secret, armed itself with the Ingress into India Ordinance and waited for the returning emigrants. On arrival, the emigrants, were scrutinized, the 'safe' ones allowed to proceed home, the more 'dangerous' ones arrested and the less 'dangerous' ones ordered not to leave their home villages. Of course, some of 'the dangerous' ones escaped detection and went to Punjab to foment rebellion. Of an estimated 8000 emigrants who returned to India, 5000 were allowed to proceed unhindered. Precautionary measures were taken for roughly 1500 men. Upto February 1915, 189 had been interned and 704 restricted to their villages. Many who came via Colombo and South India succeeded in reaching Punjab without being found out.

But Punjab in 1914 was very different from what the Ghadarites had been led to expect - they found the Punjabis were in no mood to join the romantic adventure of the Ghadar. The militants from abroad tried their best, they toured the villages, addressed gatherings at melas and testivals, all to no avail. The Chief Khalsa Diwan proclaiming its loyalty to the sovereign, declared them to be 'fallen' Sikhs and criminals, and helped the Government to track them down.7 Frustrated and disillusioned with the att.i.tude of the civilian population, the Ghadarites turned their attention to the army and made a number of naive attempts in November 1914 to get the army units to mutiny. But the lack of an organized leaders.h.i.+p and central command frustrated all the Ghadar's efforts.

Frantically, the Ghadar made an attempt to find a leader; Bengali revolutionaries were contacted and through the efforts of Sachindranath Sanyal and Vishnu Ganesh Pingley, Rash Behari Bose, the Bengali revolutionary who had become famous by his daring attack on Hardinge, the Viceroy, finally arrived in Punjab in mid-January 1915 to a.s.sume leaders.h.i.+p of the revolt.

Bose established a semblance of an organization and sent out men to contact army units in different centres, (from Bannu in the North-West Frontier to Faizabad and Lucknow in the U.P.) and report back by 11 February 1915. The emissaries returned with optimistic reports, and the date for the mutiny was set first for 21 and then for 19 February. But the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had succeeded in penetrating the organization, from the very highest level down, and the Government succeeded in taking effective pre-emptive measures. Most of the leaders were arrested, though Bose escaped. For all practical purposes, the Ghadar Movement was crushed. But the Government did not stop there. In what was perhaps the most repressive action experienced by the national movement this far, conspiracy trials were held in Punjab and Mandalay, forty-five revolutionaries were sentenced to death and over 200 to long terms of imprisonment. An entire generation of the nationalist leaders.h.i.+p of Punjab was, thus, politically beheaded.

Some Indian revolutionaries who were operating from Berlin, and who had links with the Ghadar leader Ram Chandra in America, continued, with German help, to make attempts to organize a mutiny among Indian troops stationed abroad. Raja Mahendra Pratap and Barkatullah tried to enlist the help of the Amir of Afghanistan and even, hopefully, set up a Provisional Government in Kabul, but these and other attempts failed to record any significant success. It appeared that violent opposition to British rule was fated to fail.

Should we, therefore, conclude that the Ghadarites fought in vain? Or that, because they could not drive out the British, their movement was a failure? Both these conclusions are not necessarily correct because the success or failure of a political movement is not always to be measured in terms of its achievement of stated objectives. By that measure, all the major national struggles whether of 1920-22, 1930-34, or 1942 would have to be cla.s.sified as failures, since none of them culminated in Indian independence. But if success and failure are to be measured in terms of the deepening of nationalist consciousness, the evolution and testing of new strategies and methods of struggle, the creation of tradition of resistance, of secularism, of democracy, and of egalitarianism, then, the Ghadarites certainly contributed their share to the struggle for India's freedom.

Ironic though it may seem, it was in the realm of ideology that Ghadar success was the greatest. Through the earlier papers, but most of all through The Ghadar itself, the entire nationalist critique of colonialism, which was the most solid and abiding contribution of the moderate nationalists, was carried, in a powerful and simple form, to the ma.s.s of Indian immigrants, many of whom were poor workers and agricultural labourers. This huge propaganda effort motivated and educated an entire generation. Though a majority of the leaders of the Ghadar Movement, and most of the partic.i.p.ants, were drawn from among the Sikhs, the ideology that was created and spread through The Ghadar and Ghadar di Goonj and other publications was strongly secular in tone. Concern with religion was seen as petty and narrow-minded, and unworthy of revolutionaries. That this was not mere brave talk is seen by the ease with which leaders belonging to different religions and regions were accepted by the movement. Lala Har Dayal was a Hindu, and so were Ram Chandra and many others, Barkatullah was a Muslim and Rash Behari Bose a Hindu and a Bengali! But perhaps much more important, the Ghadarites consciously set out to create a secular consciousness among the Punjabis. A good example of this is the way in which the term Turka Shahi (Turkish rule), which in Punjabi was a synonym for oppression and high-handed behaviour, was sought to be reinterpreted; and the Punjabis were urged to look upon the 'Turks' (read Muslims) as their brothers who fought hard for the country's freedom. Further, the nationalist salute Bande Mataram (and not any Sikh religious greeting such as Sat Sri Akal) was urged upon and adopted as the rallying cry of the Ghadar Movement. The Ghadarites sought to give a new meaning to religion as well. They urged that religion lay not in observing the outward forms such as those signified by long hair and Kirpan (sword), but in remaining true to the model of good behaviour that was enjoined by all religious teachings.8 The ambiguities that remained in the Ghadar ideological discourse, such as those evidenced by Har Dayal's advocacy of Khilafat as a religious cause of the Muslims, or when the British policy of not allowing Sikhs to carry arms was criticized, etc., were a product of the transitional stage in the evolution of a secular nationalist ideology that was spanned by the Ghadar Movement and its leaders. Also, the defence of religious interests has to be seen as part of the whole aspect of cultural defence against colonialism, and not necessarily as an aspect of communalism or communal ideology and consciousness.

Nor did the Ghadarites betray any narrow regional loyalties. Lokamanya Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose, Khudi Ram Bose, Kanhia Lal Dutt, Savarkar were all the heroes of the Ghadars. Rash Behari Bose was importuned and accepted as the leader of the abortive Ghadar revolt in 1915. Far from dwelling on the greatness of the Sikhs or the Punjabis, the Ghadars constantly criticized the loyalist role played by the Punjabis during 1857. Similarly, the large Sikh presence in the British Indian Army was not hailed as proof of the so-called 'martial' traditions of the Sikhs, as became common later, but was seen as a matter of shame and Sikh soldiers were asked to revolt against the British. The self-image of the Punjabi, and especially of the Punjabi Sikh, that was created by the Ghadar Movement was that of an Indian who had betrayed his motherland in 1857 by siding with the foreigner and who had, therefore, to make amends to Bharat Mata, by fighting for her honour. In the words of Sohan Singh Bhakna, who later became a major peasant and Communist leader: 'We were not Sikhs or Punjabis. Our religion was patriotism.'9 Another marked feature of Ghadar ideology was its democratic and egalitarian content. It was clearly stated by the Ghadarites that their objective was the establishment of an independent republic of India. Also, deeply influenced as he was by anarchist and syndicalist movements, and even by socialist ideas, Har Dayal imparted to the movement an egalitarian ideology. Perhaps this facilitated the transformation of many Ghadarites into peasant leaders and Communists in the '20s and '30s.

Har Dayal's other major contribution was the creation of a truly internationalist outlook among the Ghadar revolutionaries. His lectures and articles were full of references to Irish, Mexican, and Russian revolutionaries. For example, he referred to Mexican revolutionaries as 'Mexican Ghadarites.'10 Ghadar militants were thus distinguished by their secular, egalitarian, democratic and non-chauvinistic internationalist outlook.

This does not, however, mean that the Ghadar Movement did not suffer from any weaknesses. The major weakness of the Ghadar leaders was that they completely under-estimated the extent and amount of preparation at every level - organizational, ideological, strategic, tactical, financial - that was necessary before an attempt at an armed revolt could be organized. Taken by surprise by the outbreak of the war and roused to a fever-pitch by the Komagata Maru episode, they sounded the bugles of war without examining the state of their army. They forgot that to mobilize a few thousand discontented immigrant Indians, who were already in a highly charged emotional state because of the racial discrimination they suffered at the hands of white foreigners, was very different from the stupendous task of mobilizing and motivating lakhs of peasants and soldiers in India. They underestimated the strength of the British in India, both their armed and organizational might as well as the ideological foundations of their rule, and led themselves to imagine that all that the ma.s.ses of India lacked was a call to revolt, which, once given, would strike a fatal blow to the tottering structure of British rule.