Topic: A Religious Approach to Politics - Gandhi’s Ahimsa and the Indian Independence Movement
No studiers of the history of British Empire would have denied the significance of India’s independence in 1947, nor would they belittle the hardship that the Indian people had experienced throughout their thirty-years struggle. However, for the historians who viewed from the imperial perspective, they would often emphasize on how the WWII had weakened the British Empire and thus led to her subsequent decolonization,[1] while the scholars of nationalism would often regarded India’s independence as a natural outcome of her process of democratization since 1909, as the India Government gradually needed to yield to the public demand and devolved power to the provinces.[2] My study does not aim to dispute the above two views, but would like to add one more perspective to this topic, which I name it as the religious-national perspective. Indeed, what makes India a unique case in the history of decolonization is that aside from her earliness in attaining independence, her nationalism was inseparably bounded to her religion Hinduism, and scholars sometimes might tend to overlook this aspect despite its importance to almost every mass mobilizations in India since Amritsar. In this paper, I would argue that the Ahimsa (non-violence, a concept mainly derived from Jainism) strategy that Gandhi applied in his campaigns throughout the 1920s to 1940s was not just a mean to expose the British brutality in suppressing individuals’ political rights, but was also itself a tacit response to the humiliation and defilement that his country as well as his religion had suffered since the British reign in 1857. And only by this method could India national dignity be restored, and could the largest extent of population be mobilized spontaneously and flexibly under the British authoritarian governance. Lastly, my paper would suggest that it was the abstractness of the Hindu mythology plus the hastiness of Gandhi’s last speech made before his arrest on 9 August 1942, which allowed people to understand and interpret them arbitrarily, and also the British Government mis-dissemination of the Congress’ “message”, that fortuitously turned the Quit India Movement from non-violence to violence. To illuminate the above points, I would mainly focus on the three most symbolic events in the whole Indian independence movement, namely the 1919 Amritsar Massacre, the 1930 Salt March, and the 1942 Quit India Movement. For the first event, I would say it had best manifested both the British brutality in dealing with protesters and the humiliation that the Indian civilians had experienced, and thus consolidating the anti-colonial sentiment in India. For the second event, it was widely regarded as the most successful instance of Gandhi’s non-cooperative movement. And the last event, as mentioned before, had marked the transition of the whole movement from non-violence to violence, and also from following Gandhi as its leader, to the stage of complete “leaderless”.
A collective trauma: the 1919 Amritsar Massacre
The Amritsar Massacre in 1919 was probably one of the most atrocious episode in modern colonial history. For some British of the time, the event might just be like “a tragic aberration” of their imperial past, as they saw the blame should lie solely and only on the Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, and nothing more need be said about the case.[3] However, for almost every Indian, it was a haunting and lasting memory, as the event had not only revealed the oppressive nature of the colonial Government, but it also symbolized the humiliation and trauma that the nation had suffered under the reign of a foreign regime. The protest in 1919 was mainly a reaction to the Rowlatt Act that passed on 18 March, as it empowered the government to make arbitrary arrest or to search households without warrant under “emergencies”. Also, the trials would have no jury, and the “offenders” would also have no right of appeal.[4] And although protests broke out all over the nation, it was the event happened in Amritsar that drew most of the spotlight. As on 13 April, General Dyer ordered his men to open fire on an unarmed crowd, while no warning was given beforehand. The day was also the traditional festival of Baisakhi, so a large portion of the crowd were not even protesters. They were just passersby of the Jallianwala Bagh.[5] And according to Sayer’s account, “The firing continued for ten minutes... Dyer ordered fire to be focused where the crowd was thickest, including the exits. He only gave the order to cease fire when his ammunition was virtually exhausted. According to official figures, 379 people were killed and over 1,200 wounded; Indian estimates are much higher.”[6] Notably, Dyer had never expressed remorse for his decision. He had once even stated that “I could not disperse them for some time; then they would all come back and laugh at me, and I considered I would be making myself a fool”, which certainly echoed what George Orwell told in his story Shooting the Elephant.[7] And for the subsequent report written by the Hunter Commission which investigated the event, it also concluded that Dyer’s action “were not seen as systematic”, and both Michael O’Dwyer, who was Dyer’s senior and also the Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab, and the Punjab government were deemed free of responsibility of the somewhat “unfortunate” outcome. Dyer was asked to retire from the army, but no further punishment was delivered.[8] Viewing from the imperial perspective, the Amritsar massacre was likely to be seen as just a stain of the empire’s history, and what made it important is just because that there were “real” people died in the event, so the death toll suggested that there were a “real” harm done by the British to the Indian people, while such harm was kind of “quantifiable”. However, given that peoples’ focal point were usually on the massacre, what was often omitted is the other less conspicuous “punishments” that the British had inflicted on their subjects. As a blatant massacre could be defended as an “aberration”, practices could not, especially for the practices that were specifically and deliberately directed against one’s religion. In fact, what was most striking and despicable about the British oppression on her colonial dissenters, was the collective and ritualistic punishments that they used in more than a few occasions. As Anderson points out, back to the time of the 1857 mutiny, there had already been cases of forcing ritual defilement on the convicted Indian, as “Hindus were forced to eat beef, Muslims’ bodies were smeared with the fat of pigs, and different castes were forced to eat together in prison mess halls.”[9] These kind of records might be sporadic, but they nonetheless suggested that ritualistic punishments had long been existed as a part of the British “convention” in dealing with the disobedient Indians. And thanked primarily to the momentary spotlight brought by the Amritsar Massacre, the two reports that subsequently produced, namely the Hunter’s report and the Congress’ report, both contained accounts about the extensive ritualistic punishments that the British employed in their clampdown on protesters, or sometimes even more often, on the non-protesters. One most infamous example would be the “crawling order” imposed on April 19 by Dyer, after Miss Marcella Sherwood, an elderly English missionary had been attacked by a mob in a lane on 10 April. The order lasted for eight days, and every Indian who wished to cross that lane must pass by “crawl”. The Congress’ report, which was published a year later, provided a meticulous account to the woeful scenario,
“The lane in which the crawling took place is a narrow and thickly populated place... For the inhabitants of the lane, if they wanted to make any purchases or to go the city, there was no option but to pass through some part of it... Sanitary or medical service could only be rendered on condition of crawling. The full length to the lane... is about 150 yards. In the middle of it will be seen... an oblong marked “tiktiki”(lizard), which was the specially erected flogging booth... Although General Dyer has called it “going on all fours”... the process consisted in the persons lying flat on their bellies and crawling exactly like reptiles. Any lifting of the knees or bending thereof brought the rifle-butts on the backs of the persons who were made to crawl.” [10]
And when was asked why such a measure was necessary, Dyer simply answered, “I felt women have been beaten. We look upon women as sacred... (so) I felt the street ought to be looked upon as sacred; therefore, I posted pickets at both ends, and told them: “No Indians are to be allowed to pass along here.” I then also said, “If they have to pass they must go on all fours.” If never entered my brain that any sensible man, any sane man, would under the circumstances voluntarily go through that street."[11] In another occasion, he had even explained his act with cruel mockery to the Indian’s religion,
“It is a complete misunderstanding to suppose that I meant this Order to be an insulting mark of race inferiority. The Order meant that the street should be regarded as holy ground, and that, to mark this fact, no one was to traverse it except in a manner in which a place of special sanctity might naturally in the East be traversed. My object was not merely to impress the inhabitants, but to appeal to their moral sense in a way which I knew they would understand. It is a small point, but in fact 'Crawling Order' is a misnomer; the Order was to go on all fours in an attitude well understood by natives of India in relation to holy places.”[12]
It is shocking to see that the above deplorable words was delivered in such a “decent” and “well-reasoned” manner. And if one thought Dyer was just an exceptional case during the turmoil of 1919, then here are some other examples occurred in Kasur, which is also not far away from Amritsar, as the Indian there were maliciously whitewashed by soldiers, or being compelled to do menial work, and even schoolboys were also punished with flogging.[13] What is most remarkable about these punishments is that they were not only “ethnic oriented” but also “religious oriented”, and that they all emphasized on the humiliation of one’s belief as well as his dignity. For example, Captain Doveton, the “capricious” officer who was known for inventing a number of fancy punishments to his victims, had even demanded Mohammedans to “compose verses in his praise”. He also introduced “skipping” as a sort of punishment, as his victim had to skip 20 times in front of him without a break, and those who forgot to salaam every white man must rub their noses on the ground in turns.[14] Floggings were common all over the nation, and except the fact that they were usually done publicly, prostitutes were also required to witness the process.[15] For the Indians who were well-educated, their treatment might be less harsh, but often they were also coerced to give false evidence to their fellows’ cases.[16] So along with other collective punishments such as imposing curfew, cutting off electricity and water supplies of certain regions, barring Indians’ access from mass transportation, forbidding peasants to harvest their crops, and expelling students from college not by names but by quota,[17] the oppression that most Indian had undergone was not just physical but also mental. And although the Government of India Act was passed subsequently in the same year as an attempt to appease the public, grievance had already established throughout the Indian society, and it was not something that could be easily redeemed. Perhaps the Labor MP Josiah Wedgwood was the first British politician to realize this reality, as he put it forthrightly during the “Dyer Debate”, “It seems to me that it is hopeless now, after this Debate. I could hope in the old days that the Indians would listen to what I said and would take it as coming from a friend. Now they will have faith no longer—because I am an Englishman.”[18] This sober statement alone pretty much sum up the effect of the Amritsar massacre on the Indian-British relations. The persecution that took place in 1919 was unprecedented, and the humiliation as well as the trauma that most Indian had suffered was not something quantifiable as mere death toll. Therefore, it would be fair to say that the Amritsar massacre was a watershed of the whole Indian independence movement, as it had consolidated the anti-colonial mentality across the nation. And in the face of this critical juncture of history, Gandhi himself must have also realized the role (or potentiality) that the Hindu religion could play in mobilizing the mass into actual political movement, though it does not necessarily mean that his strategy was at odd with his belief. And as history had proven, his strategy did enable him to attain an extent of support within India that was sometimes enough for him to bargain with the colonial Government on her policies. The following part of the paper would discuss how Gandhi made use of the Hindu religious elements to construct his own political image, and also how his principle of Ahimsa was embodied most conspicuously in the 1930 Salt March.
Gandhi’s religious approach to politics, and the Salt March
It should be note that when Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915, mass nationalism had not yet established in India. There were both Moderates’ (e.g. G. K. Gokhale) and Extremists’ (e.g. B. G. Tilak) factions existed in the Indian National Congress, but neither of them could hold a significant mass base in India, nor was their leaders likely to have any appeal once they were outside of their home region. In fact, scholars Grillo and Kaufman have even described the Congress “was just an annual convention of part-time publicists”, which indicates that in 1915 political consciousness was still undeveloped in many people’s mind, and the “public affairs” of India in that time had not yet evolved into politics.[19] And Gandhi himself had also admitted in 1920 that he adopted the principle of Ahimsa in his political movement was because most Indian “had no weapons and were weak. If they killed one white man, 2000 Indians will be killed in return.”[20] So despite the widespread grievance of the society, Gandhi still had to find a way to motivate his meek fellows to take part in his arduous (and also seemingly despairing) campaigns. And the most feasible and efficient way to “access” the mass of that time would be to through religious cause, as after all it was the most evident common ground between the Indian people. The inspiration as well as consolation that the Hindu religion could offer was also an apt remedy to the humiliation that people had previously suffered in the Amritsar “tragedy”. Admittedly, Gandi’s satyagraha (firmness in truth) was not a direct product of the Amritsar Massacre, as his philosophy had already begun to develop since his years in South Africa, yet it does not change the fact that this maxim was put into wide practice only after 1919. And the most remarkable thing about Gandhi was not just regarding his adoption of religion as a guide for his political campaigns, but was also about his ingenuity in employing the old Hindu mythology to justify his belief as well as to construct a saint-like political image for himself. For the former point, we could see Gandhi always referred to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita in both his writings and speeches, as he interpreted the Gita’s great war as an allegory to a person’s inner struggle. Grillo and Kaufman have once pointed out that Gandhi had construed the Jainist scripture as advocating that “because all life is sacred, any violence toward humans, animals, or even plant life that is not used for sustenance is prohibited”, though they have not specified the provenance of such assertion.[21] Nonetheless, we can find certain echos in Gandhi’s own writing, such as the below passage written in 1920,
“... I have not changed my views on ahimsa. I still believe that man not having been given the power of creation does not possess the right of destroying the meanest creature that lives. The prerogative of destruction belongs solely to the Creator of all that lives.”[22]
And for some people who deemed the Gita’s war as a justification for the usage of violence in certain circumstances, Gandhi had once explained at length in his leaflet,
“... the Bhagavad Gita is not a historical work, it is a great religious book... The poet has seized the occasion of the war... for drawing attention to the war going on in our bodies between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil ... In Islam, Christianity, Judaism, it is a war between God and Satan, in Zoroastrianism between Aurmazd and Ahriman. To confuse the description of this universally acknowledged spiritual war with a momentary world strife is to call holy unholy... Everywhere in that Divine Song, we note the following advice given to Arjuna: Fight without anger, conquer the two great enemies, desire and anger, be the same to friend and foe... Only an Arjuna who destroys the devil within him can live without attachment... It is only too true that we often find an echo of our sentiments in what we read and see... I have found nothing but love in every page of the Gita.”[23]
While his interpretation might not be a-hundred-percent faithful to Gita’s content, one should nonetheless find his writing engaging. And apart from his reinterpretation of scripture, he had also consciously built a religious image for himself. For example, in many of his photos, he was always accompanied by cattle and children, which was actually an imitation of the image of the Hindu-deity Krishna. Aside from this, the spinning wheel (Charkha) that Gandhi used for spinning his own cloth was also a reference to Krishna’s Sudarshan Chakra, which would also later adopted on the Indian National Flag. There was even instance that in his early letters he had once hinted to his cousin that he might be a divine avatar.[24] In Grillo and Kaufman’s words, he was actually putting his life into a “well-documented experiment” that combined all the symbols and cultural elements of the Hindu mythology, which I would add, the experiment was actually the “deification” of himself.[25] And simultaneously, to prevent himself from looking too aloof from the mass, he had also employed a lot of grassroots products in his public appearances, such as the white cloth cap and khādī clothes, and it was also his habit to spin khādī when he spoke. As Grillo and Kaufman noted, “Weapons were not easily available, but the spinning wheel and khādī cloth were available to all.”[26] So what was implicit in Gandhi’s strategy, is that precisely because of the humiliation that the nation had suffered in 1919, Gandhi believed that the Indian should even more treasure and find ways to revive their religion and culture, and only by such method could Swaraj (self-rule) be possibly realized someday. And the most worth-noting thing among all the Gandhi’s symbolistic acts was in fact not about their religious content but their simplicity, as for no matter his clothes, his diet, his lifestyle, or his speeches, they were all somewhat simple. It was also the most impressive thing about Gandhi’s strategy, as he was actually leading the Indian to respond to the ritualistic punishments that they had previously received from the British, with acts of great simplicity, and yet still achieving the effect of symbolism so as to restore their national dignity. As a decade later in the Salt March we can see, the one who was humiliated was no longer the Indian but the British. Gandhi’s Ahimsa movement was able to gain widespread coverage in international news, as the most famous story written by the US journalist Webb Miller had even appeared in more than 1,350 newspapers throughout the world, and “was read by tens of millions around the world, and discussed and debated on radio, in political forums, and in tea and coffee saloons”.[27][28] The Salt March was also the first coordinated mass campaign in India that was successful in gaining substantial concession from the Government, as in 1931, the latter finally agreed to permit free collection of salt by persons near the sea-coast, and to release all political prisoners, except those who had committed violence.[29] Maybe its significance was already best summarized by Jawaharlal Nehru’s words, as he once mentioned in a letter in 1936, that “Non-cooperation dragged the people out of the mire and gave them self-respect and self-reliance... They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole... It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi's leadership, must have the credit for it.” [30]
From non-violence to violence: the Quit India Movement
There are general consensus among academia that the Quit India Movement was a patent response to the military failure of British during WWII. As Bhattacharya remarks, “The history of this period possibly would have been different had there not been the direct threat of war on Indian soil.”[31] With the fall of Burma in early 1942, the Indian were now able to eye by themselves of how their mighty colonisers were humiliated by another Asiatic nation, as “trainloads of defeated soldiers” and more than 450000 Indian refugees flooded back from Burma.[32] Fear was felt ubiquitously in the Indian society, and the war looked more and more like a lost cause for most Indian.[33] And predictably, the war had exposed the selfishness and brutality of British more clearly than ever, as conscription was widely imposed, discriminatory treatments between European and Indian refugees were customary, and the scorched-earth policy that initiated by March 1942 had caused great disturbance to the livelihood of countless Indian.[34] Apparently, most Indian saw no cause to fight for a government which had oppressed them for so long, and there were even rumors that “the Japanese were also Hindus, so the Indian should not fear from their invasion”.[35] However, all these above accounts still omit the part of what made the original Ahimsa movement in India turned violent. As if we look at Gandhi’s Quit India speech made on 9 August 1942, he still maintained that non-violence should be the prioritize principle of the whole movement,
“Let me, however, hasten to assure that I am the same Gandhi as I was in 1920... I attach the same importance to nonviolence that I did then... If, therefore, there is any among you who has lost faith in Ahimsa or is wearied of it, let him not vote for this resolution... The (Indian) people make no distinction between British imperialism and the British people... This hatred would even make them welcome the Japanese. It is most dangerous. It means that they will exchange one slavery for another... Our quarrel is not with the British people, we fight their imperialism... We cannot evoke the true spirit of sacrifice and velour, so long as we are not free... As a matter of fact, I feel myself to be a greater friend of the British now than ever before. One reason is that they are today in distress... As I view the situation, they are on the brink of an abyss.” [36]
From the above,we could see that Gandhi’s stance was actually not anti-British. He did not even deny the necessity of the war, nor did he vow to “stay out of it” once if India gained independence. He just demanded that India should fight the war on an equal ground with the British, instead of as an “expendable British subject”. And given that both Gandhi and most Congress leaders were arrested swiftly right after the resolution was passed, and the press was also muffled by censorship, it is hard to see how the Congress could later “re-instruct” the public to “turn violent” in their campaign.[37] In the view of this puzzle, Greenough has offered a well-reasoned argument, as he points out that it was in fact the government’s mis-dissemination of the Congress’ “message” which had unintentionally sparked off the subsequent violence.[38] The most ironic thing about the 1942 movement is that it was not initiated by the Congress but rather by the government itself, as Greenough elaborates, after Gandhi was detained, the India Government had to justify their action to the world’s opinion, and the best way to do so would be to “explain their anxiety” with regard to the objective impact that the movement could bring. And in a speech made by Leopold Amery, the Secretary of State for India on August 10, he mentioned that the Congress leaders had planned to mobilize its people to
“strikes, not only in industry and commerce, but in the administration and law courts, schools and colleges, the interruption of traffic and public utility services, the cutting of telegraph and telephone wires, the picketing of troops and recruiting stations... The success of the proposed campaign would paralyze not only the ordinary civil administration of India but her whole war effort. It would stop the output of munitions, the construction of aerodromes, and, above all, shelters against air attack; it would put an end to recruiting; it would immobilize the forces. No worse stab in the back could be devised to all the gallant men, Indian or British, American or Chinese, now engaged on Indian soil in the task of defending India herself and of preparing from India as their base to strike at the enemy.” [39]
While none of the above instructions had been truly given out by the Congress leaders (as they were already arrested before they could make any more specific guidances to their supporters), Amery had given credibility to such “directives”, as his speech was widely reprinted in Indian newspapers.[40] In other words, while the British were hasty in explaining their concern, the Indian were also hasty to comply, which had fortuitously made an uncoordinated movement coordinated, and the unspecific actions specific. Greenough’s argument is reasonable and well-grounded, yet my paper would like to supplement one more explanation to this final outcome of violence, which is with regard to the Hindu mythology and also to Gandhi’s last speech. Undoubtedly, since Gandhi’s return in 1915, he had long remained the key figure of the whole Indian independence movement, so as long as he was still opposed to violence, it was hard for all violence-involving campaigns to not get discredited. However, if we examine Gandhi’s ideology as well as the Hindu myths more closely, we might find that they were actually more complicated than we often think, and they both had room for more than a single orthodox interpretation. As discussed previously, Gandhi’s doctrine of Ahimsa might seem absolute and rigid, and one might be surprised by the fact that in a private letter written in 1918, Gandhi had actually confessed that he should “kill” in certain circumstance,
“As for my offer you know that, in my letter to Maffey, I have said I should kill; neither friend nor foe. Regarding those who want to fight but will not, either out of cowardice or spite against the British, what is my duty? Must I not say, “If you can follow my path, so much the better, but if you cannot, you ought to give up cowardice or spite and fight.” You cannot teach ahimsa to a man who cannot kill. You cannot make a dumb man appreciate the beauty and the merit of silence. Although I know that silence is most excellent, I do not hesitate to take means that would enable the dumb man to regain his speech. I do not believe in any Government, —but Parliamentary Government is perhaps better than capricious rule. I think it will be clear to you that I shall best spread the gospel of ahimsa, or satyagraha by asking the himsak (militant) men to work out their himsa (to harm) in the least offensive manner, and may succeed, in the very act, in making them realize the better worth of ahinsa.”[41]
The honesty reflected in the above letter is particularly invaluable. In some other public occasion, Gandhi had also made it explicit that “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”[42] And given the widespread censorship that took place after 9 August, it is highly doubtful that if Gandhi’s speech could reach the public in an intact manner, and the message that would most likely catch its audience attention would not be Ahimsa, but rather the “Do or Die” mantra that Gandhi devised in his speech, which had originally nothing to do with meaning of violence.[43] And considering the desperate tone of the mantra as well as the social atmosphere of the time, and also the fact that illiteracy was still widespread in Indian society, it is foreseeable that such mantra would be comprehended by many as suggestive to violence. And violence did break out all over India within a week,[44] and as Hutchins has noticed, “everyone acted on his own authority, and interpreted Gandhi according to his own lights-and desires. Gandhi's name was freely quoted on fugitive leaflets, and his vague general instructions were placed at the head of detailed plans for sabotage.”[45] This was certainly unexpected for Gandhi and many of the Congress leaders. Therefore, it was the hastiness in the process of disseminating Gandhi’s message that had eventually made his meaning being misconstrued by the public, and thus led to the violent Quit India Movement that we saw in history. Another point that I would like to make is that although Gandhi was doubtlessly successful in mobilizing the mass by his religious appeal, it is rash to assume his thought was the “representative” one for the whole Hindu mythology. In fact, sometimes his interpretations on myths were quite subjective or even consciously romanticized, and some sensitive parts of the scripture was also deliberately eschewed. For example, with regard to the aforementioned scripture the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi claimed that he had found “nothing but love in every page of the Gita”, yet he did not mention that one of the main theme that the Bhagavad Gita copes with is “the moral dilemma of (one) having to fight against his own kin”.[46] And the story was about how the god Krishna guided the protagonist Arjuna to overcome this dilemma by the way of “fighting without attachment”, as it elaborates,
“Man, musing on the objects of sense, conceiveth an attachment to these; from attachment ariseth desire; from desire anger cometh forth; From anger proceedeth delusion; from delusion confused memory; from confused memory the destruction of Reason; from destruction of Reason he perishes... Therefore, without attachment, constantly perform action which is duty, for by performing action without attachment, man verily reacheth the Supreme.”[47]
So when we look back to Gandhi’s interpretation that “Only an Arjuna who destroys the devil within him can live without attachment”, we might not say he was entirely wrong, but his version surely simplified the whole reasoning of the scripture, and had made it more “saturated” with emotion. In fact, if we just see it by words, “to fight without attachment” could even be a synonym to the word “ruthless”, and the Bhagavad Gita had also emphasized more than once that people should not “grieve over the mere destruction of transient bodies”,[48] as it goes
“He is not born, nor doth he die... he is not slain when the body is slaughtered... As a man, casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new... Or if thou thinkest of him as being constantly born and constantly dying, even then, O mighty-armed, thou shouldst not grieve.”[49]
And the scripture also underscored the importance for a man to do his duty even if violence was involved as a necessary mean,
“there is nothing more welcome to a Kshattriya than righteous war. Happy the Kshattriyrs, O Partha, who obtain such a fight, offered unsought as an open door to heaven. But if thou wilt not carry on this righteous warfare, then, casting away thine own duty and thine honour, thou wilt incur sin... Men will recount thy perpetual dishonor, and, to one highly esteemed, dishonor exceedeth death.”[50]
Therefore, from the above we could see that even though violence was dismissed by Gandhi, it does not mean that the idea have absolutely no place in the traditional Hindu mythology, so it is unclear whether this “violent side” of the mythology have had an actual effect for the Quit India Movement to turn violent. And remarkably, if we view the Gita as an allegory, its theme of “fighting with one’s own kin” also gloomily forecast the later Hindu-Muslim split as well as the eventual partition of India in 1947. In short, Gandhi’s religious approach to the Indian politics since 1920s was a wise judgement in dealing with the national trauma after Amritsar, yet it was also because of his “identification with Hinduism” that had made him unable to resolve the subsequent religious conflict occurred in India. Gandhi had no doubt done his duty in uniting India in a national sense, yet for the doctrine of non-attachment in Hindu teaching, it was still somehow unfulfilled in his political life, which was also kind of regrettable, if only was it possible in politics.
20 Dec, 2020
Footnotes
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Gandhi’s "Quit India" Speeches, Aug 8, 1942. From (https://www.mkgandhi.org/speeches/qui.htm)
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John Gallagher and Anil Seal, Britain and India between the Wars, Modern Asian Studies, 1981, Vol. 15, No. 3, Power, Profit and Politics: Essays on Imperialism, Nationalism and Change in Twentieth-Century India (1981), Cambridge University Press, pp. 387-414
Michael C. Grillo and Stuart J. Kaufman (2015), Gandhi’s Nonviolence, Communal Conflict, and the Salt March. In Stuart J. Kaufman (Ed.). Nationalist Passions (pp.148-175), Cornell University Press.
Miller, Webb, Natives beaten down by police in India salt bed raid, May 21, 1930. From (https://100years.upi.com/sta_1930-05-21.html)
PUNJAB DISTURBANCES: THE CASE OF GENERAL DYER. Lords Sitting of 19 July 1920. From (https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1920/jul/19/punjab-disturbances-the-case-of-general)
PUNJAB DISTURBANCES: THE CASE OF GENERAL DYER. Lords Sitting of 20 July 1920.
From (https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1920/jul/20/punjab-disturbances-the-case-of-general)
Report of the commissioners appointed by the Punjab Sub-Committee of the Indian National Congress, 1920, p.112-113. From (https://gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL020.PDF)
Richard Gordon, Non-Cooperation and Council Entry, 1919 to 1920, Modern Asian Studies, 1973, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1973), pp. 443-473.
Sayer Derek, British Reaction to the Amritsar Massacre 1919-1920, Past & Present , May, 1991, No. 131 (May, 1991), Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society, pp. 130-164
Sudheshna Bhattacharya, The Making of a Popular Base for the Quit India Movement: The Impact of the Pacific War on the People and the Colonial State in India (1941-42), Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 2002, Vol. 63 (2002), pp. 683-694
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book) (New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 vols.) From (https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php)
Tidrick, Kathryn, Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life (New York: IB Tauris, 2006).
