Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c5.s2: III
Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition, with Some Early Nineteenth Century Documents c5.s2
- Language
- English
III
c5.s2.1
This story of the 1810-11 protest in Benares and other towns, as it emerges in more vivid detail from the documents, seems not really very different from what has happened during the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements of the 1920s and 1930s in different parts of India. It may, however, be worthwhile here to recapture the main elements of the 1810-11 happenings at Benares and other places.
c5.s2.2
The immediate cause of the protest was the levy of the house tax. Yet unhappiness and revulsion had been simmering for a considerable time previous to this levy. By 1810, these areas had been under British domination for about 50 years and the people in general (whether at Benares, Bhagalpur or Murshedabad) had begun to be apprehensive of the doings of Government. As stated by the people of Benares, the levy of the house tax felt ‘like salt scattered on a wound.’ The people of Murshedabad felt it like ‘a new oppression’ and stated that it had ‘in truth struck us like a destructive blast.’
c5.s2.3
The main elements behind the organisation of civil disobedience at Benares were:
c5.s2.4
1. Closing of all shops and activity to the extent that even ‘the dead bodies were actually cast neglected into the Ganges, because the proper people could not be prevailed upon to administer the customary rites.’ (p.62)
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2. Continuous assemblage of people in thousands (one estimate²⁴ puts the number at more than 200,000 for many days) sitting in *dhurna*, ‘declaring that they will not separate till the tax shall be abolished.’ (p.71)
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3. The close links made by the various artisans and craftsmen with the protest through their craft guilds and associations.
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4. The *Lohars*, at that time a strong and well-knit group, taking the lead, calling upon other *Lohars* in different areas to join them. (p.71)
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5. A total close-down by the *Mullahs* (boatmen). (p.70)
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6. The assembled peopled who ‘bound themselves by oath never to disperse’ till they had achieved their object. (p.69)
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7. The dispatch of emissaries ‘to convey a *Dhurm Puttree* to every village in the province, summoning one individual of each family to repair to the assembly at Benares.’ (p.69)
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8. ‘Individuals of every class contributed each in proportion to his means to enable them to persevere’, and ‘for the support of those, whose families depended for subsistence on their daily labour.’ (p.69)
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9. ‘The religious orders’ exerting all their influence to keep the people ‘unanimous.’ (p.69)
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10. ‘The combination was so general, that’, according to the magistrate ‘the police were scarcely able to protect the few who had courage to secede, from being plundered and insulted.’ (p.69)
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11. The displaying of protesting posters about the streets of Benares. The magistrate called them ‘inflammatory papers of the most objectionable tendency’ and ‘offered a reward of Rs.500 for every man on whom such a paper may be found.’ (p.85)
c5.s2.15
Regarding the people’s own view of the unarmed resistance they had put up, the collector reported: ‘Open violence does not seem their aim, they seem rather to vaunt their security in being unarmed in that a military force would not use deadly weapons against such inoffensive foes. And in this confidence they collect and increase, knowing that the civil power cannot disperse them, and thinking that the military will not.’ (p.71) The taking of such steps seems to have come to them naturally. Further, their protesting in this manner in itself did not imply any enmity between them and state power. It is in this context that the rejected petition quoted some prevalent saying: ‘to whom can appeal for redress of what I have sustained from you, to whom but to you who have inflicted it.’ The concept of ruler-ruled relationship which they seem to have held, and which till then had perhaps been widely accepted, was of continuing interaction between the two. Such a dialogue seems to have been resorted to whenever required, and its instrumentalities included all that the people of Benares employed in this particular protest.
c5.s2.16
It was, perhaps, only belatedly that the people of India began to comprehend the futility of such traditional protests in relation to authorities wholly subscribing to an alien value system and who thus had nothing in common with themselves. Such a realisation on the one hand, would have made them turn to violence; and on the other, reduced them more and more to passivity and inertness.
c5.s2.17
The happenings at Patna, Saran, Murshedabad (though seemingly of lesser intensity) and at Bhagalpur appear to be of the same nature and similarly conducted as at Benares. Even at Bhagalpur, where the collector, seemingly forgetting where he was, began to mete out summary justice in the manner of contemporary British justices of the peace, the people, though enraged, remained peaceful. They continued assembling in thousands, totally unarmed and even the ‘women, and their children seemed to have no dread of the consequences of firing among them, but rather sought it.’
c5.s2.18
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. The way the people organised themselves, the measures they adopted, the steps they took to sustain their unity and the underlying logic in their minds from which all else flowed are essentially similar in the two periods. (It is by no means implied here that there are no differences at all between the non-cooperation and civil disobedience in 1810-11 and what is termed as “Satyagraha”. To an extent the concept of satyagraha, since this term was coined by Mahatma Gandhi has become more and more involved. For many, it cannot be resorted to be by any who have not been trained to an ashram life etc. But ordinarily satyagraha can only mean non-cooperation and civil disobedience of the type resorted to in Benares in 1810-11. And when Gandhiji recommended to the Czechs and the Poles to resort to satyagraha, it could only have been this Benares type of protest (suitably modified according to their talents) which he had in mind)
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There is one major difference, however. While the people in 1810-11 could still act and move on their own, the people of India a century later could not. The century which intervened between the two (or a larger or shorter period for some other areas) wholly sapped their courage and confidence and, at least on the surface, made them docile, inert and submissive in the extreme. It is this condition which Gandhiji overcame to put the people back on the path of courage and confidence.
c5.s2.20
A contributory factor leading to the extensive adoption and success of Gandhian non-cooperation and civil disobedience has perhaps been the relative mellowness and a certain reflective quality which the twentieth century British rulers had acquired by the time Mahatma Gandhi came to launch his various movements. His own personality may have further added to this reflective quality inducing many of the British in their more private moments to share his views about the great injury which British rule had done to the Indian people. In contrast, the British rulers of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century were by and large, not only the agents of a most callous and inhuman state system, but individually and collectively subscribed to and practised such callousness and inhumanity. What primarily brought about the change and the comparatively mellower attitudes is a matter for a different enquiry.