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September 26, 2004
REVIEW: The great divide
IT would appear that India’s modern politics has been characterized by two main trends from the beginning — Hindu communalism and liberal secularism. Modern politics started from the three “presidency” towns, as they were the first to be occupied by the British and, therefore, to feel the impact of modern civilization. In all the three places, the native intelligentsia took whole-heartedly to western learning and accepted it as true. However, when it came to defining the natives’ own nation, the early Indian leaders saw only Hindu India, while the Muslims, a fourth of the population, fell out of their sight. It was only later that the Muslims, so to say, began to enter the sight of the politicians, giving rise to the secular question. B.R. Nanda’s book on Gokhale, Gandhi and Nehru underlines this feature of Indian politics.
This secular-communal divide manifested itself in the Bombay Presidency in the form of rivalry between Gokhale and Tilak. While the former was a secular nationalist, the latter promoted Hindu symbols as a means of Indian self-expression. Tilak also promoted the Shivaji procession, not minding if Indian nationalism took on an anti-Muslim image.
Like most reactionaries, Tilak was a good intriguer and, like every good intriguer, a bad manager. He took over the Sarvajanik Sabha, a social organization created by Ranade, by intrigue and ran it aground within a year.
Gokhale, a Maratha like Tilak, came from a poor background. Even so, upon graduation, he chose not law or civil service but the teaching profession. At the same time, he wrote in Marathi and was involved in social work. Guided by Ranade, he joined the Indian National Congress and went on to become a member of the governor’s council and, later, the governor general’s legislative council.
This was the first phase of Indian politics. There was no thought of freedom. Politics consisted of making memorandums to the British Indian government requesting things like holding the ICS examination in India in addition to England, expanding the franchise, etc. There was request from one side and opposition from the other for the government to make social reforms like raising the age of consent for girls, permitting the Hindu widow to re-marry, etc. The liberals also opposed untouchability but without much success.
All the time, both kinds of politicians swore by the benefits and the desirability of continued British rule over India. But they were already voicing the concerns of the rising Indian bourgeoisie by demanding that the Indian rupee not be over-valued and that the Indian machine textile industry be protected from the British textile imports by eliminating the excise duty on Indian textiles and subjecting the foreign textiles to an import duty.
When the British officials did not listen to their pleadings, Gokhale was sent to England to persuade the British public of the Indian case.
Gokhale was very conscious of the need for carrying the Muslims with the majority. “He urged the Hindus to realize their special responsibilities for improving the relations between the two communities. They had the advantage of numbers, education, and wealth; it was their duty to understand the genuine fears of the Muslim minority, and to treat it with tact and forbearance.”
However, it appears that the Lajpat Rais and Tandons, the spiritual heirs of Tilak, always had greater weight inside the Congress.
Gokhale died in 1915, when not yet 50. He was much impressed with Gandhi and designated him as sort of his successor. However, Gandhi’s idea of the Indian nation was closer to that of Tilak, though he did not promote communal riots. But the fact remains that he was not able to come to terms with the existence of the huge Muslim population of India except as a minority which had to adjust itself to the Hindu Indian nation.
Nanda says that the Congress support to the Khilafat movement had been extended in the expectation that the Muslims would, in gratitude, support the nationalist movement but apparently their orientation was anti-nationalist. He is being disingenuous. The political leadership of the Muslims was in the Muslim League which represented their secular interests, not in the Khilafat. Gandhi, by raising a storm on an obscurantist issue, actually attempted to depoliticize the Muslims. He also, for the first time, brought the mullahs into politics.
Then he shattered the Muslim masses by abruptly withdrawing the movement. From the year 1924 onwards, he had no interest in the Muslims until 1946, when the Muslim League swept the polls. During the intervening period, he conducted the Congress as if the Muslims did not really matter. The Lucknow pact was undone in 1927. The movement of 1931 was entirely conducted by the Congress without any attempt to bring the Muslims into it. This disdain reached a peak in 1942 when Gandhi made no attempt to reach a prior agreement with the Muslim League in order to make the Quit India movement a success.
By the time the cabinet mission and Shimla Conference took place, the Muslim League was no longer prepared to negotiate on concessions. It demanded equality and the Congress, led by Gandhi, insisted on partition instead of sharing power with the Muslims.
Gokhale had been skeptical of Gandhi’s technique of satyagraha. However, it seems to have evoked a mass response from the Hindu peasantry and urban petite bourgeoisie. It was meant to be the weapon of the weak.
Gandhi’s greatest achievement was the regeneration of the Hindu community. Before him, the Hindus were atomized by their caste system and “don’t touchism”. He did not oppose the caste system while denouncing untouchability. He also opposed tooth and nail the classification of the Dalits as a separate community. Once the Hindus had acquired the consciousness of being a single community, it became possible for Gandhi to establish an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the peasants. This, in turn, made it possible for him to launch mass movements while preventing them from being radicalized.
Gandhi’s greatest failure was his inability to forge an alliance between the Muslims and the Hindus. This was due to his miscalculation that he would be able to get independence without a partnership with the Muslims.
Nanda, carried away by Nehru’s leftist vocabulary and posture, calls him a revolutionary. His greatest achievements were India’s industrialization, non-alignment and the consolidation of liberal democracy. Of course, in a country characterized by extreme poverty and untouchability, this democracy had to be that of the propertied and the upper castes. But it held the society together while huge investments went into heavy industries, which became the solid foundation of India’s industrialization.
Nanda is not only a right-wing historian but a plain good Indian. For him, Jinnah was a communalist, impervious to all offers of cooperation from the Congress. He absolves Nehru of the charge of sabotaging the proposal of a Congress-League coalition in UP after the 1937 elections and denies that the Muslim League’s withdrawal of its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission plan was provoked by Nehru. He describes the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 as a Chinese provocation and holds Pakistan in the wrong on all counts, specially on Kashmir.
This fat book, running into 1,100 pages, is not of much use to a Pakistani attempting to understand how modern politics evolved in India after 1857. However, it is a good means to understand a typical Indian mindset.
Judith Brown’s writing has a flow but adds little of substance to what we know of Nehru. She had seen him from a distance in her youth and apparently stays smitten.
Her history is a straightforward narrative reflecting the Indian point of view. She sees no contradictions between, for example, Nehru’s radicalism and his opposition to Bose on his professed beliefs and his rejection of a referendum in Kashmir.
On the Sino-Indian conflict, she finds fault with Beijing and says that India lost the bout because it was short of troops, having sent two battalions on UN duty to the Sinai and Congo. (Actually India had a brigade in Congo but that was nothing for India’s 20-division army).
On Kashmir, she asks how India could give up the state as it needed it to reach Aksai Chin. Obviously, she knows neither the location of Aksai Chin nor the nature of India’s claim to it.
She does come up with a few interesting pieces like her recognition that the use of non-violence by the Congress during the independence struggle was a method not a creed and that Nehru wanted Kashmir because he liked it personally. She also devotes some space to Nehru’s friendships with women. All in all, this is a good introduction to Nehru for a novice who knows little about India’s first prime minister. But if he is looking for something substantial, he won’t get it in these books.
Three Statesmen: Gokhale, Gandhi, and Nehru
By B.R. Nanda
ISBN 019-566876-6
312pp. Rs1,019.10
Nehru: A Political Life
By Judith M. Brown
ISBN 0-19-566795-6
407pp. Rs693.42
OUP, New Delhi. Available with Oxford University Press, Plot #38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area, Karachi. Tel: 111-693-673
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net Website: www.oup.com.pk
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