Gandhi

by Nalinaksha Bhattacharyya

Gandhi's Ahimsa was meant to defuse struggles by
masses against the imperialists. Never once did Gandhi ask the
state to be non-violent. All his sermons of non-violence were
reserved for the exploited masses when their anger tended to
coalescese into movements.

Once in the 1930s two platoons of Garhwal regiment were
stationed in Peshawar. They were asked to fire upon unarmed
demonstrators. They refused. They were court martialled. Gandhi
SUPPORTED THE ACTION OF THE BRITISH GOVT. Let us also
not forget that Gandhi actively recruited for British war effort during
the First World War.

Gandhi was also the first one to introduce religion in India's body
politic through a retrograde Khilafat movement. It is not taught in
our history books that Jinnah was one of the persons who advised
Gandhi against this. This is not to be taken as a defence for Jinnah
who had his own agenda and who later used the same tool that the
"Mahatma" had introduced-religion. Gandhi had a stranglehold on
Congress and had the least amount of regards for following
democratic conventions. Netaji Subhas Bose's departure from
Congress was due to this stranglehold. Fifty years later we stiil see
that the oldest political party in India, Congress, lacks inner party
democracy and this was also a creation of Gandhi.

People who want more details on the aspects I have mentioned are
requested to read:

1. India and the Raj - Suniti Kumar Ghosh
2. The sole spokesman - Ayesha Jalal
3. Partition of India-Legend and Reality - H.N.Seervai.

In particular, I would recommend  "India and the Raj" by Suniti
Kumar Ghosh.

The thesis of the book is that Gandhi and other higher echelons of
the Congress leadership (Nehru, Patel et al) were interested in
getting a share of power for the comprador capitalists preferrably
under the tutelage of the British Raj. Ghosh makes a distinction
between Nationalist Capitalist and Comprador Capitalist.
Nationalist capitalist were those fledgling industrialists who were
trying to build up an industrial base through indigeneous R&D, while
comprador capitalists were the rest of the big shots of Indian
industry (the list includes Tata, Birla and so on), who were
interested in collaborating with international and British capital and
derive monopoly rent as gatekeepers. Ghosh analyses all of
Gandhi's political movements and shows how Gandhi essentially
spiked all the popular resistances and how all his movements were
merely aimed at letting off steam and avoid dangerous revolts from
building up. Ghosh also shows that Gandhi's talk of ahimsa was
always made when people took up arms and never against the use
of arbitrary force by the state. 

The book is incredibly detailed and very tightly argued. Suniti
Kumar Ghosh was a Naxal and was the editor of Liberation-the
Naxalite mouthpiece. Everytime I have talked about this book-the
visceral reaction from the audience has been to dismiss the book
merely because Suniti Ghosh was a Naxal. The visceral reaction
can be understood as denial of having to confront unpalatable
statements that shakes the conditioning we have been subjected
to since childhood. My reaction to that is that a book should stand
on its own merit and not on the political beliefs of its authors. I
found the book to be detailed and very tightly argued. It has also
helped me in understanding why India is the way it is.

Before reading "India and the Raj", I havenot come across any
history book that told me about the refusal to fire by Garhwali
soldiers and Gandhi's strange support for the British punitive
action. Nor have I seen any other book, which systematically
examined Gandhi's life from South Africa onwards and showd the
common pattern of collaboration that occurred throughout. Neither
have I come across any book which pointed out the hypocricy of an
"Apostle of non-violence" recruiting people for "His Majesty's
Army". 

Here's a short quote from the book

"It is quite illuminating that on the same day - 30 May, 1919 - Gandhi
was writing to the Private Secretary to the Viceroy:"It is within His
Excellency's knowledge that I have made no public declaration
regarding the events in the Punjab.....I was not prepared to
condemn martial law as such; I was unwilling to do anything
calculated needlessly to irritate local authority." [India and the Raj-
Suniti Kr.Ghosh  Vol I, page 197-198]. 30th May, 1919 was the date
on which Rabindranath wrote his famous letter returning his
knighthood in protest against the Jalianwala Bagh killings. 


The second volume of the book is available on the net.
http://www.maoism.org/misc/india/india_raj_v2/india_raj_2.htm

The only thing that was great about Gandhi was that he was a
great politician who succeeded in promoting the interest of his real
constituents-the comprador capitalists.