Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c3: Foreword
Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c3
- Language
- English
Foreword
c3.1
The ancients held that the highest form of knowledge is self-knowledge and that he who achieves that knowledge achieves all. It seems to me that the value of self-knowledge holds good for nations as well. No matter how one defines a nation—and it has not been found easy to do so—its essence seems to lie not in its outward attributes but in the mental world of those who comprise it. Of the ingredients of this inner world, the most important is self-image, that is, the image that the people comprising a nation have of themselves and their forefathers.
c3.2
During the British period, the needs of imperialist rule dictated that Indians be pictured as an inferior people in respect to material, moral and intellectual accomplishments. This deliberate denigration of the Indian nation was furthered by the incapacity of the foreigner to understand properly a civilisation so different from his own. So, in course of time, as our political subjugation became complete, we happened to accept as real the distorted image of ourselves that we saw reflected in the mirror the British held to us.
c3.3
Not a small part of the psychological impetus that our freedom movement received was from the few expressions of appreciation that happened to fall from the pens or lips of Western scholars about Sanskrit literature, Indian philosophy, art or science. Sometimes these foreign opinions about past Indian achievements were seized upon and inflated out of all proportions so as to feed the slowly emerging national ethos.
c3.4
After the first few years of euphoria since Independence, a period of self-denigration set in during which educated Indians, particularly those educated in the West, took the lead. Whether in the name of modernisation, science or ideology, they ran down most, if not all, things Indian. We are not yet out of this period. I am not suggesting that what is wrong and evil in Indian society or history should be glossed over. But breast-beating and self-flagellation are not conducive to the development of those psychological drives that are so essential for nation-building, nor so is slavish imitation of others.
c3.5
One of the reasons for this state of affairs is lack of sufficient knowledge about our history, particularly of the people's social, political and economic life. One of the faults of our forefathers was their lack of sense of history, and their proneness to present even historical fact in the guise of mythology. As a result, even after long years of modern historical research, in India and abroad, our knowledge happens to be limited—particularly in the field of social history. Also there are long gaps or periods of darkness about which not much of anything is known. One such period was that between the decline of the Mughal power and the arrival of the European trading companies and the ultimate consolidation of British power. That period was undoubtedly one of political disintegration. Yet, the material researched by Shri Dharampal and published herein reveals the survival of amazing powers of resistance to the state in the common people—'the Lohars, the Mistrees, the Jolahirs, the Hujams, the Durzees, the Kahars, the Bearers, every class of workmen', to quote the Acting Magistrate of Benares in 1810—when, in their opinion, it became oppressive or transgressed the limits of its authority.
c3.6
The behaviour of the five hundred and odd princes towards their people during British rule had created the general impression that the king in Hindu polity was a tyrant and there was no limit to his power as far as it related to his subjects, who were supposed to be traditionally docile and submissive. Foreign and Indian studies of Hindu polity, no doubt, had revealed quite a different type of relationship, which allowed even for the deposition of an unworthy king by his people. But that was considered to be a mere idealistic formulation, true more in theory than in practice. The fact that texts on Hindu polity were agreed that the king was never conceived to possess absolute power and that he was in practice limited by *dharma*, that is, the system of duties, responsibilities and privileges that had evolved through the ages and come to be accepted by all concerned, was also not taken seriously. Instances of autocratic monarchs who defied the established *dharma* and got away with it were looked upon not as exceptions but as the rule.
c3.7
The material brought together by Shri Dharampal in this volume throws quite a different light on the subject. The following pages describe, in the words of the then British officers, the *mass movements* of civil disobedience at Benares, Patna, Sarun, Moorshedabad and Bhaugulpore against the imposition of new taxes on houses and shops. Shri Dharampal is quite right when he declares: 'If the dates, (1810-12) were just advanced by some 110 to 120 years, the name of the tax altered and a few other verbal changes made, this narrative could be taken as a fair recital of most events in the still remembered civil disobedience campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s.' That the events described in the correspondence published here were not exceptions, is borne out by other instances given by Shri Dharampal of similar actions that were either contemporary or of earlier times in other parts of the country.
c3.8
It would appear from a perusal of the papers reproduced here that there had developed in the course of Indian history an understanding between the ruled and the ruler as to their respective rights and responsibilities. Whenever this traditional pattern of relationship was disturbed by an autocratic ruler, the people were entitled to offer resistance in the customary manner, that is, by peaceful non-cooperation and civil disobedience. It also appears that in the event of such action, the response of the ruling authority was not to treat it as unlawful defiance, rebellion or disloyalty that had to be put down at any cost before the issue in dispute could be taken up, but as rightful action that called for speedy negotiated settlement.
c3.9
Such powers, and apparently well-practised methods, of popular resistance as described herein could not have sprung up suddenly from nowhere. They must have come down from the past as part of a well-established socio-political tradition. The fact these powers should have survived until the beginning of the nineteenth century even in areas that had long been under autocratic Muslim rule bears testimony to both the validity and vitality of the ancient tradition.
c3.10
The saddest part of the story Shri Dharampal unfolds in the following pages tells of the conscious and calculated efforts of the British to destroy every vestige of the old tradition, which they looked upon as a continuing challenge to the very foundations of their rule. Whether it was to assert the 'dignity of the State' or for the 'maintenance of public tranquility' or for 'upholding those sentiments of respect which it appeared so essential that the community should entertain for the public authority' the traditional right of the people of peaceful resistance had to be given no quarter. The reason Shri Dharampal gives, with which I am in agreement, is the feeling the British rulers had of extreme insecurity. They could not feel safe until they had beaten the people into a state of unquestioning obedience. The ultimate sanction they relied upon to achieve this end was military force. Thus was brought about the spiritual death of the people of this country, which the Congress Working Committee must have had in mind when in its Declaration of Independence of 1930 (which used to be reiterated at tens of thousands of public meetings every 26th of January), speaking of the fourfold ruin of India—economic, political, cultural and spiritual—wrought by the British, it pinpointed ‘compulsory disarmament’ of the people and the ‘presence of an alien army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of resistance’ as being the means of the country’s spiritual ruin.
c3.11
In an interesting and valuable section of his introduction, Shri Dharampal discusses the origins of Gandhiji’s ideas of *satyagraha* and throws some new light on the subject. A point that emerges clearly from the discussion is that the primary source of inspiration behind Gandhiji’s science of satyagraha was India’s age-old traditional ruler-ruled relationship of which Gandhiji was well aware. In view of his explicit acknowledgement in *Hind Swaraj* of his debt to that tradition, it is rather surprising that none of his biographers or commentators, while they ranged far and wide in search of the origins, gave any attention to Gandhiji’s own words. May be the reason has been that no trace having been left of the old tradition except for the observant eyes of one like Gandhiji (think of the case of the small principality in Saurashtra which he mentions in the *Hind Swaraj*), nor there being any historical evidence available of the ‘nation at large’ having ‘generally used passive resistance in all departments of life’ or of our ceasing ‘to cooperate with our rulers when they displease us’, Gandhiji’s sweeping remarks were taken as examples of his ‘usual’ idealisation of the past. But Shri Dharampal’s findings show that Gandhiji, though not a student of history, had a much deeper insight into it than most historians. Undoubtedly it was this intuitive quality that was one of the secrets of his extraordinary success as a leader of the people.
c3.12
No less interesting and valuable is Shri Dharampal’s discussion of the place of *satyagraha* in post-independence and democratic India. An oft-repeated criticism of government in free India—and one which has not lost its significance by repetition—is that it adopted without change the bureaucratic machine that had originally been designed by the colonial power for purposes of economic exploitation and suppression of dissent. One of the more malignant features of that machine is its continued adherence to the British imperialist theory that it is the duty of the people to obey first and then to protest. In fact, that view has been further strengthened by the convenient plea that the bureaucracy is no longer an instrument of an alien government but that of a democratically established national government. As a result, whenever there is a fast, a stoppage of work, a withdrawal of cooperation, the official reaction is neither talk, nor settlement until the popular action is withdrawn or put down. The consequence is that more often than not, the people concerned are driven to violent action, after which the government usually surrenders or makes a compromise. There is no doubt that *satyagraha* has often been resorted to for partypolitical gains, but had government conceded the right of the people to disobey and resist peacefully whatever seemed unjust or oppressive to them, a code of conduct would have evolved through the past 25 years that would have set the limits of the people's and party's action on the one hand and of the government's action on the other. The plea that in a democracy the people have the ultimate sanction of removing an unpopular government at the next general election has been effectively answered by Acharya Kripalani in the passage Shri Dharampal quotes in the introduction.
c3.13
Jayaprakash Narayan