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Gobbets
The following are various Gobbets that will be used in seminars. You may also make use
of them in writing essays, giving full references in a footnote. In most cases, these are
original source material, dating back to the period in question. A few are later
commentaries that will be used as a basis for discussion.
Topic 1. The Imperial Mission
Gobbet 1
The following quotation is by the British reformer William Wilberforce, Substance of the Speeches of William
Wilberforce Esq., on the Clauses in the East-India Bill for Promoting the Religious Instruction and Moral
Improvement of the Natives of British Dominions in India, on the 22nd June and the 1st & 12th of July 1813, pp.
92-3. Quoted in Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959, p35.
…let us endeavour to strike our roots into the soil by the gradual introduction and establishment of our
own principles and opinions; of our laws, institutions, and manners; above all, as the source of every
other improvement, of our religion, and consequently of our morals. … Are we so little aware of the
vast superiority even of European laws and institutions, and far more of British institutions, over those of
Asia, as not to be prepared to predict with confidence, that the Indian community which should have
exchanged its dark and bloody superstitions for the genial influence of Christian light and truth, would
have experienced such an increase of civil order and security, of social pleasures and domestic comforts,
as to be desirous of preserving the blessings it should have acquired; and can we doubt that it would be
bound even by the ties of gratitude to those who have been the honoured instruments of communicating
them.
Gobbet 2
Speech by Thomas Macaulay of 10 July 1833, in Macaulay, Complete Works, Vol.xi, pp.585-6. Quoted in Eric
Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1959, p.45.
It may be that the public mind in India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that
system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government;
that, having been instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand
European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to
avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history. To have found a
great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled them as to have
made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all
our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most
profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which
are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those
triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of
our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.
Gobbet 3
K.L Datta, Official report on the Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in India, Superintendent of Government
Printing, Calcutta 1914, pp.135-6.
The standard of living among all classes of the population, especially among land-holders, traders
and ryots [peasants], has increased very considerably in recent years, and extravagance on occasions of
marriage and other social ceremonies has seriously increased. The average villager lives in a better
house and eats better food than did his father; brass and other metal vessels have taken the place of
coarse earthenware and the clothing of his family in quality and quantity has improved. We may also
say that the increase in passenger miles travelled predicates the existence of spare money to pay for
railway fares.
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Gobbet 4
Romesh Dutt, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.
Ltd., London 1903, pp. 603-04.
The income of the people of India, per head, was estimated by Lord Cromer and Sir David
Barbour in 1882 to be 27 rupees. Their present income is estimated by Lord Curzon at 30 rupees.
Exception has been taken to both these estimates as being too high; but we shall accept them for
our present calculation. 30 rupees are equivalent to 40 shillings; and the economic condition of the
country can be judged from the fact that the average income of the people of all classes, including
the richest, is 40 shillings a year against £42 a year in the United Kingdom. A tax of 4s. 8d. on 40
shillings is tax of 2s. 4d. on the pound. This is a crushing burden on a nation which earns very
little more than its food. In the United Kingdom, with its heavy taxation of £144,000,000
(excluding the cost of the late war), the incidence of the tax per head of a population of 42 millions
is less than £3 10s. The proportion of this tax on the earnings of each individual inhabitant (£42)
is only 8d. in the pound. The Indian taxpayer, who earns little more than his food, is taxed 40 per
cent more than the taxpayer of Great Britain and Ireland.
Topic 2. Imperial culture
Gobbet 1
Thomas Macaulay, ‘Minute of 2 February 1835 on Education,’ in Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G.
M. Young, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1957, pp-721-24.
All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of
this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and
rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter it will not be possible to translate any
valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of
those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected
only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
What then shall that language be? One-half of the Committee maintain that it should be the
English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me
to be, which language is the best worth knowing?
I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.-But I have done what I could to form a correct
estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I
have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern
tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I
have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was
worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western
literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan
of education.
It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers
stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that
the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we
pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles
investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no
exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books
written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry
abridgements used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral
philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same... Whether we look at the
intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest
reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful
to our native subjects.
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Gobbet 2
The following Gobbet is from a book called Prayer (1932) by a theologian called Heiler, quoted in Ronald
Inden, Imagining India (Oxford 1990), p.97. Heiler is contrasting Indian and western religion.
Mysticism is the religion of feminine nature. Enthusiasts surrender, a delicate capacity for feeling, soft
passiveness are its characteristics. Prophetic religion, on the contrary, has an unmistakably masculine
character, ethical severity, bold resoluteness, and disregard of consequence, energetic activity.
Gobbet 3
Gobbet from Philip Woodruffe, The Guardians (London 1954), p.180.
The game of games, easily first in the estimation of all who practised it, was pig-sticking. It was
generally encouraged and, though it would not be true that a main had to hunt pig to be thought well of,
there is no doubt he had a better chance if he did. To be good after a pig a man must be a horseman,
which was in any case a great asset to a district officer. And he must also have just the same qualities the power of quick but cool judgement, a stout heart, a controlled but fiery ardour and a determination
not to be beaten - that are needed at the crisis of a riot, or for that matter of a battle. The kind of man
who has those qualities needs to exercise them; it was an old saying in India that pigsticking had saved
many a man's liver but it had saved much more than that. The danger and excitement, the ferocity thus
harmlessly given an outlet, sweetened men who might otherwise have been soured by files and hot
weather and disappointment, as lime sweetens grass soured by poultry. Ugly lusts for power and
revenge melted away and even the lust for women assumed - so it was said - reasonable proportions after
a day in pursuit of pig.
Gobbet 4
Gobbet from Sir Walter Lawrence, The India we Served (1928) quoted in Ian Copland, India 1885-1947,
Longman, Harlow 2001, pp.91-92. Lawrence was senior Indian civil servant of the early 20th century.
Our life in India, our very work more or less, rests on illusion. I had the illusion, wherever I was, that I
was infallible and invulnerable in my dealing with Indians. How else could I have dealt with angry
mobs, with cholera-stricken masses, and with processions of religious fanatics? It was not conceit,
Heaven knows: it was not the prestige of the British Raj, but it was the illusion which is the very air of
India. They expressed something of the idea when they called us the ‘Heaven born’, and the idea is
really make believe – mutual make believe. They, the millions made us believe we had a divine
mission. We made them believe they were right. Unconsciously perhaps, I may have had at the back
of my mind that there was a British Battalion and a Battery of Artillery at the Cantonment near Ajmere;
but I never thought of this, and I do not think that many of the primitive and simple Mers [community
of the area] had ever heard of or seen English soldiers. But they saw the head of the Queen-Empress
on the rupee, and worshipped it. They had a vague conception of the Raj, which they looked on as a
power, omnipotent, all-pervading, benevolent for the most part but capricious, a deity of many shapes
and many moods.
Topic 3. Early Nationalism
Gobbet 1
Memorandum by Rivers Thompson (Lieutenant Governor of Bengal), 14 July 1885, enclosed in a letter from
Thompson to Lord Dufferin (Viceroy of India), 15 July 1885, on the ‘advanced party’ of Indian nationalists.
Quoted in Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968,
p.224.
They have caught very rapidly the idea of the uses of political platforms in England; and meetings on
any question of public notoriety, in which they wish to promote their own opinions, are organised by
half-a-dozen wire-pullers in Calcutta, and are represented by sensational posters and large-types
telegrams in the newspapers as the unanimous views of the public-spirited and enthusiastic community.
They do not even limit the publicity of their operations to Calcutta and India, but carry the game further
by extending the publicity to England.
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Gobbet 2
Alan Octavian Hume, ‘Why India needs the Congress’ (1885) in C.H. Philips (ed.) The Evolution of India
and Pakistan: Select Documents, Oxford University Press 1962, pp.141-3.
Do you not realise that by getting hold of the great lower middle classes before the development of
the reckless demagogues, to which the next quarter of a century must otherwise give birth, and
carefully inoculating them with a mild and harmless form of the political fever, we are adopting the
only certain precautionary method against the otherwise inevitable ravages of a violent and epidemic
burst of the disorder? I know that both in these provinces and the Punjab there are many officials –
good men and true though not far-seeing – who are publicly and privately doing their utmost to
impede the progress and hinder the happy development of this great and beneficent movement; but.
Gentlemen, as they are good men, acting, though ignorantly, in all good faith, they will be very sorry
later for this, and they will regret that before opposing they did not first take the trouble of
thoroughly understanding the movement...
Gobbet 3
C. Sankaran Nair ( President of the Indian National Congress in 1897) in his memoirs, as quoted in K.P.S.
Menon, C. Sankaran Nair, Delhi 1967, p.35. Nair, who was from South India and not a Brahman, stated that
the position of those in the Congress who were not Brahmans:
…was not very agreeable. On the journey to the north to attend the Congress meetings our Brahman
friends would often ostentatiously avoid our company when taking meals. This is done by
Brahmans in the north only in the case of low castes. They would tell us we were Sudras, which in
North India meant a low caste. to us, who belonged to the old ruling race in this Province, this was
repellent; and as we did not want to create a scene, we stayed away from the Congress.
Gobbet 4
Lord Curzon (Viceroy of India) to Lord George Hamilton, 18 November 1900, quoted in C.H. Philips (ed.)
The Evolution of India and Pakistan: Select Documents, Oxford University Press 1962, pp.150-51. Sir
William Wedderburn, like Hume, was a British official who supported Congress as a moderate party.
My own belief is that the Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my greatest ambitions while in
India is to assist it to a peaceful demise. I told him [Sir William Wedderburn] plainly, therefore, that
I felt incapacitated from giving any opinion about, or offering any advice to, the Congress; but I
added that, while I was myself sensible of the desirability of consulting and conciliating public
opinion in India, the composition of the Congress at any rate in recent years, had deprived them of
any right to pose as the representatives of more than a small section of the community. My belief is
that the best men in the Congress are more and more seeing the hopelessness of their cause, and
indeed many of their papers have begun to argue that they had better trust to me to give them as
much as I can instead of wasting their energies in clamouring for what no Viceroy is likely to give
them at all.
Gobbet 5
Article in the Liberal and New Dispensation (Calcutta), 10 August 1884, in Bruce McCully, English
Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism, Peter Smith, Gloucester, M.A, 1966, p. 229.
...We would advise our countrymen in all parts of India to reflect that, if they ever aspire again to be
a great nation and to restore their motherland to its former greatness, they must forget that they
spring from various races and nationalities and learn now that they are children of the same soil. We
must clearly see that it is only by insisting on the identity of our interests as the people of India ...
that we can keep down and stamp out our provincial jealousies; and as to religious differences, they
surely should not be allowed to stand in the way of the assertion of our political rights, since though
differing in the forms of worshipping, we equally worship the same God. Whenever we shall be able
to show one unbroken front of a united people of India, bound by a complete identity of interests and
animated by a perfect similarity of aspirations, the hour of the regeneration of India to begin will
surely have come. It should be the duty of all true patriots to inculcate in the popular mind by
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precept and example the imperative necessity of union and harmony to the welfare and progress of
the native races.
Gobbet 6
Address given by B.G. Tilak during the Shivaji Festival, Pune, 1897, in J.R. McLane (ed.), The Political
Awakening in India, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J, 1970, p.56.
Let us even assume that Shivaji first planned and then executed the murder of Afzal Khan. Was this act
of the Maharaja good or bad? This question which has to be considered should not be viewed from the
standpoint of the Penal Code or even the Smritis [law books] of Manu or Yajnavalkya, or even the
principles of morality laid down in the Western and Eastern ethical systems. The laws which bind
society are for common men like yourselves and myself. No one seeks to trace the genealogy of a Rishi
[legendary sage], nor to fasten guilt upon a king. Great men are above the common principles of
morality. These principles fail in their scope to reach the pedestal of great men. Did Shivaji commit a sin
in killing Afzal Khan? The answer to this question can be found in the Mahabharata itself. Shrimat
Krishna’s teaching in the Bhagavad Gita is to kill even our teachers and our kinsmen. No blame attaches
to any person if he is doing deeds without being motivated by a desire to reap the fruit of his deeds. Shri
Shivaji Maharaja did nothing with a view to fill the small void of his own stomach [from interested
motives]. With benevolent intentions he murdered Afzal Khan for the good of others. If thieves enter our
house and we have not sufficient strength in our wrists to drive them out, we should shut them up and
burn them alive. God has not conferred upon the Miechhas [a barbarian or foreigner] the grant inscribed
on a copperplate of the kingdom of Hindustan. The Maharaja strove to drive them away from the land of
his birth; he did not thereby commit the sin of coveting what belonged to others. Do not circumscribe
your vision like a frog in a well. Get out of the Penal Code, enter into the extremely high atmosphere of
the Bhagavad Gita and then consider the actions of great men.
Gobbet 7
Gobbet from N. Gerald Barrier, ‘The Punjab Disturbances of 1907: The Response of the British Government in
India to Agrarian Unrest’, in Modern Asian Studies, 1:4, 1967, p.368.
The new Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Denzil Ibbetson, was convinced that the agitation had
been engineered by ‘Lahore pleaders’ and after taking office in early March he began to examine
measures for stemming the protests. His first step was the publication of a resolution postponing for a
year the rate enhancements on the ground that crop conditions and plague made the increases unwise.
This did not stop the agitation. In fact, the unrest became more serious with riots in Amritsar, Lahore
and Rawalpindi. Ibbetson then re-examined the situation and decided that the rural demonstrations, talk
of sedition in the army, and rioting were part of a secret plot to overthrow the British government. He
consequently sent the Viceroy, Lord Minto, a lengthy minute on the deteriorating political condition in
the Punjab and requested extensive executive powers to quell a rebellion. Sedition, according to
Ibbetson, took two direction in the Punjab. First, Ajit Singh was trying to spread disaffection among the
troops and the students and secondly the ‘fomenters of unrest’ were corrupting the ‘yeomanry’. Ibbeston
maintained that the Colonization Bill and Bari Doab agitation had been entirely worked up. The Arya
Samaj, under the leadership of Ajit Singh and Lajpat Rai, had succeeded in getting the rural population
to suspend revenue payments. The next step would be open revolt. Ibbetson therefore requested the
power to ban public meetings, to seize presses, and to arrest individuals inciting zamindars not to pay
revenue. He also asked that Ajit Singh and Lajpat Rai be deported ‘to strike terror into the minds of
those concerned.’
Gobbet 8
Gobbet from Aurobindo Ghose, ‘The Doctrine of Passive Resistance’, from the daily paper Bande Mataram, 1123 April 1907. Reprinted in Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram: Early Political Writings, Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry 1973. The problem which Aurobindo Ghose addresses here is how best India can obtain self-rule
from the British.
There are, we pointed out, three possible policies: petitioning, an unprecedented way of
attempting a nation's liberty, which cannot possibly succeed except under conditions which
have not yet existed among human beings; self-development and self-help; and the old
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orthodox historical method of organised resistance to the existing form of government....
Self-development of an independent nation is one thing; self-development from a state of
servitude under an alien and despotic rule without the forcible or peaceful removal of that rule
as an indispensable preliminary, is quite another. No national self-development is possible
without the support of rajasakti, organised political strength, commanding, and whenever
necessary compelling general allegiance and obedience.... It is only by organised national
resistance, passive or aggressive, that we can make our self-development effectual....
Organised national resistance to existing conditions, whether directed against the system of
Government as such or against some particular feature of it, has three courses open to it. It
may attempt to make administration under existing conditions impossible by an organised
passive resistance.... It may attempt to make administration under existing conditions
impossible by an untiring and implacable campaign of assassination and a confused welter of
riots, strikes and agrarian risings all over the country. This is the spectacle we have all
watched with such eager interest in Russia..... Only by concessions and compromises could
such a resistance be overcome. The third course open to an oppressed nation is that of armed
revolt, which instead of bringing existing conditions to an end by making their continuance
impossible sweeps them bodily out of existence....
The choice by a subject nation of the means it will use for vindicating its liberty, is best
determined by the circumstances of its servitude. The present circumstances in India seem to
point to passive resistance as our most natural and suitable weapon.... ...where the oppression
is legal and subtle in its methods and respects life, liberty and property and there is still
breathing time, the circumstances demand that we should make the experiment of a method of
resolute but peaceful resistance which, while less bold and aggressive than other methods,
calls for perhaps as much heroism of a kind and certainly more universal endurance and
suffering. In other methods, a daring minority purchase with their blood the freedom of the
millions; but for passive resistance it is necessary that all should share in the struggle and the
privation.
Topic 4. Gandhi: Early Career and Thought; his Emergence as
Leader of the Nationalist Movement
Gobbet 1
This Gobbet is from M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (Free India) in R. lyer (ed.), The Moral and Political
Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 1: Civilisation, Politics and Religion (Oxford, 1986), pp. 213-14.
It has been stated that, as men progress, they shall be able to travel in airships and reach any part of the
world in a few hours. Men will not need the use of their hands and feet. They will press a button, and
they will have their clothing by their side. They will press another button, and they will have their
newspaper. A third, and a motor-car will be waiting for them. They will have a variety of delicately
dished-up food. Everything will be done by machinery. Formerly, when people wanted to fight with one
another, they measured between them their bodily strength; now it is possible to take away thousands of
lives by one man working behind a gun from a hill. This is civilisation. Formerly, people worked in the
open air only as much as they liked. Now, thousands of workmen meet together and for the sake of
maintenance work in factories or mines. Their condition is worse than that of beasts. They are obliged to
work, at the risk of their lives, at most dangerous occupations, for the sake of millionaires. Formerly,
men were made slaves under physical compulsion. Now they are enslaved by temptation of money and
of the luxuries that money can buy. There are now diseases of which people never dreamt before, and an
army of doctors is engaged in finding out their cures, and so hospitals have increased. This is a test of
civilisation. Formerly, special messengers were required and much expense was incurred in order to
send letters; today, anyone can abuse his fellow by means of a letter for one penny. True, at the same
cost, one can send ones thanks also. Formerly, people had two or three meals consisting of home-made
bread and vegetables; now, they require something to eat every two hours so that they have hardly
leisure for anything else. ...
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Gobbet 2
Gandhi on Satyagraha. Gobbet from Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (Columbia
University Press, New York 1993), p.38. The first and second paragraphs are taken from Gandhi’s weekly
paper Young India, 23 March 1921, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XIX, (Publications
Division, Delhi 1966), p.466. The third and last paragraph is taken from Gandhi’s statement to the Disorders
Inquiry Committee, 5 January 1920, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XVI, (Publications
Division, Delhi 1965), pp.368-9.
Satyagraha, then, is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or
spirit. It is, therefore, known as soul-force. It excludes the use of violence because man is not capable
of knowing the absolute truth and, therefore, not competent to punish. The word was coined in South
Africa to distinguish the nonviolent resistance of the Indians of South Africa from the contemporary
‘passive resistance’ of the suffragettes and others. It is not conceived as a weapon of the weak.
Passive resistance is used in the orthodox English sense and covers the suffragette movement as well
as the resistance of the nonconformists. Passive resistance has been conceived and is regarded as a
weapon of the weak. Whilst it avoids violence, being not open to the weak, it does not exclude its use if,
in the opinion of a passive resister, the occasion demands it.
For the past thirty years I have been preaching and practicing Satyagraha. The principle of
Satyagraha differs from Passive Resistance as the North Pole from the South. The latter has been
conceived as a weapon of the weak and does not exclude the use of physical force or violence for the
purpose of gaining one’s end, whereas the former has been conceived as a weapon of the strongest and
excludes the use of violence in any shape or form… In the application of Satyagraha I discovered in
the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but
that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears to be truth to the one
may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean
vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one’s self.
Gobbet 3
Statement made by Gandhi before the Court at Motihari, Chamaparan District, Bihar, 18 April 1917. In The
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume XIII (January 1915-October 1917), The Publications Division,
Delhi 1964, pp.374-5.
With the permission of the Court, I would like to make a brief statement showing why I have taken
the very serious step of seemingly disobeying the order made under Section 144 of the criminal
Procedure Code. In my humble opinion, it is a question of difference of opinion between the local
administration and myself. I have entered the country with motives of rendering humanitarian and
national service. I have done so in response to a pressing invitation to come and help the ryots, who
urge they are not being fairly treated by the indigo planters. I could not render any help without
studying the problem. I have, therefore, come to study it with the assistance, if possible, of the
administration and the planters. I have no other motive and I cannot believe that my coming here can
in nay way disturb the public peace or cause loss of life. I claim to have considerable experience in
such matters. The administration, however, have thought differently. I fully appreciate their difficulty,
and I admit too, that they can only proceed upon information they receive. As a law-abiding citizen,
my first instinct would be, as it was, to obey the order served upon me. I could not do so without doing
violence to my sense of duty to those for whom I have come. I feel that I could just now serve them
only by remaining in their midst. I could not, therefore, voluntarily retire. Amid this conflict of duty, I
could only throw the responsibility of removing me from them on the administration.
I am fully conscious of the fact that a person, holding in the public life of India a position such as I do,
has to be most careful in setting examples. It is my firm belief that in the complex circumstances such as
face me, to do what I have decided to do, that is, to submit without protest to the penalty of
disobedience. I have ventured to make this statement not in any way in extenuation of the penalty to be
awarded against me, but to show that I have disregarded the order served upon me, not for want of
respect for lawful authority, but in obedience of the higher law of our being – the voice of conscience.
Gobbet 4
Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India, to King George V, 21 May 1919, in P.N. Chopra and P. Jha (eds.), Secret
Papers from the British Royal Archives, Konark Publishers, Delhi, 1998, p.194.
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Mr. Gandhi is a man of great saintliness of character, an ascetic, but hopelessly unpractical and
unversed in everyday affairs. Your Majesty may remember that he was responsible for the Passive
Resistance movement amongst the Indians in South Africa some ten years ago, and that it was with
the very greatest difficulty that the South African Government of the time found themselves able to
cope with him. Indeed, they were only able to do so by persuading him to leave South Africa. As a
proof of the esteem in which Mr. Gandhi is held by even those who most strongly opposed his
action, I may say that rumour has it that when he was imprisoned in South Africa General Smuts
used to visit him in prison to discuss philosophy with him… This is a digression, but it has this
importance, that it shows the veneration in which Mr. Gandhi is held by everyone who comes across
him, and this fact renders the task of dealing with him much more difficult than if he were a mere
agitating politician.
Gobbet 5
Gandhi to Viceroy of India, 1 August 1920, in B.N. Pandey, (ed.), The Indian Nationalist Movement, 18851947: Select Documents, Macmillan, 1979, pp.52-4.
It is not without a pang that I return the Kaiser-I-Hind gold medal granted to me by your predecessor
for my humanitarian work in South Africa, the Zulu War medal granted in South Africa for my war
services as officer in charge of the Indian Volunteers Service Corps in 1906 and the Boer War medal
for my services as Assistant Superintendent of the Indian Volunteer Stretcher-Bearer Corps during
the Boer War of 1899. I venture to return these medals in pursuance of the scheme of noncooperation, inaugurated today in connection with the khilafat movement. Valuable as these honours
have been to me I cannot wear them with an easy conscience so long as my Mussulman countrymen
have to labour under a wrong done to their religious sentiments. Events, which have happened
during the last month, have confirmed me in the opinion that the Imperial Government have acted in
an unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner and have been moving from wrong to wrong in order
to defend their immorality. I can retain neither respect nor affection for such a Government. The
attitude of the Imperial of the Imperial and Your Excellency s Governments on the Punjab question
has given me an additional sense for grave dissatisfaction.
Your Excellency’s light-hearted treatment of the official crime, your exoneration of Sir Michael
O’Dwyer, Mr. Montagu’s dispatch and above all the shameful ignorance of the Punjab events and the
callous disregard of the feelings of the Indians betrayed by the House of Lords, have filled me with the
gravest misgivings regarding the future of the Empire, have estranged me completely from the present
Government and have disabled me from tendering as I have hitherto whole-heartedly tendered my loyal
cooperation. In my humble opinion, the ordinary method of agitating by way of petitions, deputations
and the like is no remedy for moving to repentance a Government so hopelessly indifferent to the
welfare of its charge as the Government of India has proved to be.
In European countries, the condonation of such grievous wrongs as the khilafat and the Punjab would
have resulted in a bloody revolution by the people. They would have resisted at all cost the national
emasculation such as the said wrongs imply. But one half of India is too weak to offer a violent
resistance and the other half is unwilling to do so. I have therefore ventured to suggest a remedy of noncooperation, which enables those who wish to dissociate themselves from the Government and which, if
it is unattended by violence and undertaken in an ordered manner, must compel it to retrace its steps and
undo wrongs committed.
Gobbet 6
Letter by M.K. Gandhi to members of the Congress Working Committee, Bardoli 8 February 1922. In The
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol.XXII, The Publications Division, Delhi 1966, pp.350-1.
This is the third time I have received a rude shock when I have been on the eve of embarking upon
mass civil disobedience. The first was in April 1919, the second in November last, and now I am
violently agitated by the events in the Gorakhpur District. ...The civil disobedience of Bardoli can make
no impression upon the country when disobedience of a criminal character goes on in other parts of the
country, both for the same ends. The whole conception of civil disobedience is based upon the
assumption that it works in and through its completely non-violent character. I may be a bad judge of
human nature to believe that such an atmosphere can ever be brought about in a vast country such as
India, but that would be an argument for condemning my capacity for sound judgement, not for
continuing a movement which is in that case bound to be unsuccessful. I personally can never be party
9
to a movement half violent and half non-violent, even though it may result in the attainment of socalled swaraj, for it will not be real swaraj as I have conceived it.
Gobbet 7
R. Palme Dutt, India Today, London 1940, pp.307-08.
The new programme inaugurated By Gandhi [in 1920] marked a giant’s advance for the National
Congress…. But the new programme and policy contained also another element, an element alien to
the mass struggle, an element of petty-bourgeois moralising speculation and reformist pacifism,
which found its chosen expression in the innocent-seeming term “non-violent”. That term was
intended by Gandhi to represent a whole religious-philosophical conception, preached by him with
eloquence and devotion, akin in certain respects to older schools of Indian speculative thought, but
more closely elated to and deriving from late Western schools of thought closely associated with
Tolstoy, Thoreau and Emerson, which had their vogue and influence during Gandhi’s earlier years in
the West and in the formation of his thought. That same term was accepted by many of Gandhi’s
associates, who were far from sharing his philosophical conception, as an apparently common-sense
rule of expediency for at any rate the earlier stages of struggle of an unarmed people against a
powerfully armed ruling enemy. But in fact, as the subsequent experience of events were to
demonstrate, that seemingly innocent humanitarian or expedient term contained concealed within it,
not only the refusal of the final struggle, but the thwarting also of the immediate struggle by the
attempt to conciliate the interests of the masses with the big bourgeois and landlord interests which
were inevitably opposed to any decisive mass struggle.
Topic 5. Gandhi and the Peasantry
1.Gandhi’s understanding of the peasants
Gobbet 1
M.K. Gandhi, in Harijan, 4 April 1936 (1st paragraph), and Young India, 17 April 1924 (2nd paragraph).
I have believed and repeated times without number that India is to be found not in its few cities but in
its 700,000 villages. We town-dwellers have believed that India is to be found in its towns and the
villages were created to minister to our needs. We have hardly ever paused to inquire if those poor folk
get sufficient to eat and clothe themselves with and whether they have a roof to shelter themselves from
sun and rain.
Hitherto the villagers have died in their thousands so that we might live. Now we might have to die so
that they may live. The difference will be fundamental. The former have died unknowingly and
involuntarily. Their enforced sacrifice has degraded us. If now we die knowingly, our sacrifice will
ennoble us and the whole nation. Let us not flinch from the necessary sacrifice, if we will live as an
independent, self-respecting nation.
Gobbet 2
M.K. Gandhi, in Harijan, 28 January 1939.
The moment you talk to them [the Indian peasants] and they begin to speak, you will find wisdom
drops from their lips. Behind the crude exterior you will find a deep reservoir of spirituality. I call this
culture – you will not find such a thing in the West. You try to engage an European peasant in
conversation and you will find that he is uninterested in things spiritual.
In the case of the Indian villager, an age-old culture is hidden under an encrustment of crudeness.
Take away the encrustation, remove his chronic poverty and his illiteracy and you will find the finest
specimen of what a cultured, cultivated, free citizen should be.
Gobbet 3
M.K. Gandhi, in Young India, 30 April 1931 (1st paragraph) and in Harijan, 1 March 1935 (2nd
paragraph).
10
We must identify ourselves with the villagers who toil under the hot sun beating on their bent backs
and see how we would like to drink water from the pool in which the villagers bathe, wash their clothes
and pots, and in which their cattle drink and roll. Then and not till then shall we truly represent the
masses and they will, as surely as I am writing this, respond to every call.
The cities are capable of taking care of themselves. It is the villages we have to turn to. We have to
disabuse them of their prejudices, their superstitions, their narrow outlook, and we can do so in no other
manner than that of staying amongst them and sharing their joys and sorrows and spGobbet education
amongst them and intelligent information among them
Gobbet 4
M.K. Gandhi, in Young India, 11 September 1924.
We have got to be ideal villagers, not the villagers with their queer ideas or absence of ideas about
sanitation and giving no thought to how they eat and what they eat. Let us not, like most of them, cook
anyhow, eat anyhow, live anyhow. Let us show them the ideal diet…We have got to show them that
they can grow their vegetables, their greens, without much expense, and keep good health. We have
also to show that most of the vitamins are lost when they cook the leaves…
We have to teach them how to economise time, health and money. … Lionel Curtis described our
villages as dung-heaps. We have to turn them into model villages. Our village-folk do not get fresh air
though they are surrounded by fresh air; they don’t get fresh food though they are surrounded by the
freshest foods. I am talking like a missionary in this matter of food, because my mission is to make
villages a thing of beauty.
2. Peasant understandings of Gandhi
Gobbet 1
Report in Swadesh, 27 February 1921. Translated from Hindi and cited in Shahid Amin, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma,’
in Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies III, Oxford university press, New Delhi 1984, p.24.
It had not occurred to us in our wildest dreams that the same Gorakhpur which was politically dormant
would suddenly wake up like this. A crowd of 2-2½ lakhs for the darshan of Gandhiji is no ordinary
thing. It can probably be said that this is the biggest crowd that has ever gathered for the darshan of the
Mahatma… But let no one think that this vast multitude came like sheep, inspired by blind faith
(andhbhakti) and went back empty handed. Those with eyes can see that the darshan of ‘Gandhi
Mahatam’ (this is the phrase used in villages) have not been in vain. The janta (people) came with
devotion (bhakti) in their hearts and returned with feelings and ideas (bhav). The name of Guru-Gandhi
has now spread in all four corners of the district…
But roses have thorns as well… A zamindar of the city had it proclaimed in his ilaqa (territorial
domain) that anyone going for Gandhi’s darshan would be fined Rs 25 and receive twenty-five shoe
beatings to boot… The people of this area wring their hands in despair…. A Ramlila procession goes
in front of the house with so much fanfare and the children are locked up in the attic! … I know there
are other creatures like the above-mentioned raees in this district.
Gobbet 2
Report in Swadesh, 1921. Translated from Hindi and cited in Shahid Amin, ‘Gandhi as Mahatma,’ in Ranajit
Guha, Subaltern Studies III, Oxford University press, New Delhi 1984, p.41.
A well-known zamindar of mauza Samogar (tahsil Deoria) had taken a minnat (vow to propitiate a deity
through worship) of Bhagwatiji and offered a goat as a sacrifice. Many took the meat as prasad. After
some time the son of the zamindar found his hands stuck to his chest and his wife went mad. It was only
when the zamindar vowed to contribute the price of the sacrificial goat to the National School Fund and
feast Brahmans that both the son and the daughter-in-law began to feel well.
11
3. Gandhi’s handling of peasant participation in the nationalist movement
Gobbet 1
M.K. Gandhi, ‘Instructions to U.P. Peasants,’ in Young India, 9 March 1921.
Attainment of swaraj or redress of grievances is impossible unless the following rules are strictly
observed.
1. We may not hurt anybody. We may not use our sticks against anybody. We may not use abusive
language or exercise any other undue pressure.
2. We may not loot shops.
3. We should influence our opponents by kindness, not by using physical force nor stopping their
water supply nor the services of the barber and the washerman.
4. We may not withhold taxes from government or rent from the landlord.
5. Should there be any grievance against zamindars they should be reported to Pandit Motilal Nehru
and his advice followed.
6. It should be borne in mind that we want to turn zamindars into friends….
Gobbet 2
M.K. Gandhi, ‘Democracy “Versus” Mobocracy,’ in Young India, 8 September 1920.
India is today quickly passing through the mob-law stage. The use of the adverb signifies my hope.
It may be our misfortune to have to pass through that process even in slow stages. But it is wisdom to
adopt every means at our disposal to have done with that stage as quickly as possible.
[Gandhi describes his recent tour of the Punjab, where he was besieged by noisy and undisciplined
crowds.] …this is mobocracy. You are at the mercy of the mob. So long as there is sympathy
between you and the mob, everything goes well. Immediately that cord is broken, there is horror….
We must evolve order out of chaos…
Much greater discipline, method and knowledge must be exacted from volunteers and no chance
comer should be accepted as a full-fledged volunteer. He only hinders rather than helping. Imagine
the consequence of the introduction of one untrained soldier finding his way into an army at war. He
can disorganise it in a second. My greatest anxiety about non-co-operation is not the slow response of
the leaders, certainly not the well-meant and even ill-meant criticism, never unadulterated repression.
The movement will overcome these obstacles. It will gain even strength from them. But the greatest
obstacle is that we have not yet emerged from the mobocractic stage.
Gobbet 3
Gobbet from Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian Struggle 1920-1942, Oxford University Press, New Delhi 1997,
pp.77-8.
...the Mahatma opens a campaign in a brilliant fashion; he works it up with unerring skill; he moves
from success to success till he reaches the zenith of his campaign - but after that he loses his nerve
and begins to falter. ...It is necessary in this connection to refer to some of the shortcomings inherent
in the movement from the very beginning and which were to reveal themselves more and more with
the lapse of time. In the first place, too much power and responsibility was handed over to one man.
...the entire intellect of the Congress has been mortgaged to one man, and those who dare to think
freely and speak out openly are regarded by the Mahatma and his disciples as heretics and treated as
such. Secondly, the promise of `Swaraj' within one year was not only unwise but childish. It made the
Congress appear so foolish before all reasonable men. No doubt the Mahatma's disciples have tried
subsequently to explain away the point by saying that the country did not fulfil the conditions and so
Swaraj could not be won in one year. The explanation is as unsatisfactory as the original promise was
unwise - because arguing in the same way, any leader can say that if you fulfil certain conditions you
can be free in one hour. In making political forecasts, no leader worth the name should impose
impossible conditions. He should estimate what conditions are likely to be achieved in a given set of
circumstances. Thirdly, the introduction of the Khilafat question into Indian politics was unfortunate.
.....if the Khilafatist Moslems had not started a separate organisation but had joined the Indian
National Congress, the consequences would not have been so undesirable. Looking at the surface
there is but a thin dividing line between mob-law and the people’s law. And yet the division is
complete and will persist for all time.
12
Gobbet 4
M.K. Gandhi, in Harijan, 5 December 1936.
I do not want to destroy the zamindar, but neither do I feel the zamindar is inevitable…. I expect to
convert the zamindars and other capitalists by the non-violent method, and, therefore, there is for me
nothing like an inevitability of class conflict….
The moment the cultivators of the soil realise their power, the zamindari evil will be sterilized.
What can the poor zamindar do when they say that they will simply not work the land unless they are
paid enough to feed and cloth and educate themselves and their children in a decent manner? In
reality, the toiler is the owner of what he produces. If the toilers intelligently combine, they will
become an irresistible power.
4. The Bardoli Satyagraha
Gobbet 1
K.M. Munshi, I Follow the Mahatma, Allied publishers, Bombay 1940, pp. 26-7. Munshi was a leading
lawyer of Bombay, a politician and a novelist. He became a follower of Gandhi as a result of the Bardoli
Satygaraha of 1928.
I decided to visit Bardoli and see things for myself…. Accordingly, I visited Bardoli on June 16,
1928.
I came away in a very agitated frame of mind. I had seen Gandhian doctrines in action. What I had
looked upon as the caprices of a visionary had in them the vitality to create in his countrymen, a new
strength that would hasten the pace of freedom.
For the first time, I realised the tremendous power which Gandhiji possessed of transvaluing values.
He was an alchemist of life and had, above all, the unwavering self-confidence of a prophet. Because
of him, Truth and Non-violence – only words of moral import till then – had come to be accepted as
principles of practical statesmanship. Thick unbleached khadi had become the symbol of refinement
and culture, and grim self-abnegation had come to characterize luxury-loving Gujarat. Intrigues had
given way to fearlessness. Fastidiousness had been transformed into unflinching heroism. Effective
organisation had altered the basis of politics. Little Bardoli had become a byword for limitless
heroism. Who can escape the effects of this alchemy?
Gobbet 2
Gobbets from speeches by Vallabhbhai Patel during the Bardoli Satyagraha, from Satyagraha Patrika,
translated from Gujarati and quoted in Ghanshyam Shah, ‘Traditional Society and Political Mobilisation: the
Experience of Bardoli Satyagraha (1920-1928), Contributions to Indian Sociology (NS), 8, 1974.
Why are you so fear-stricken and inarticulate? A peasant has no reason to be afraid of anything
because he was a son of the soil who worked with hard rocks, amid wild animals, in heavy rain, biting
cold, or scorching heat, and against so many odds in life.
Who is the government? Does government mean the Collector? Does it mean the Mamalatdar or
Fozedar? Or Talati? Or Patel? Or Vartaniya? How can you find out as it is formed of all of them?
There is no one individual whom we should consider the government. Out of fear we consider any
one person as the government and are afraid of him. Therefore, we should remove the illusory fear
from our mind. … Have you ever seen the government? It is a ghost or an illusion. It rules over you
till you are nervous. You throw away your fear and you will see that nobody bothers you.
…I want to see the people of Gujarat full of fire and courage. I say to them, you may be weak
physically, but that does not mean that you cannot have the heart of a lion. For the sake of your selfrespect, have the courage to die. You may spend lakhs of rupees but you cannot obtain these two
things, which you are getting today through this fight – courage and self-respect. Indeed the goddess
Lakshmi [goddess of wealth] has come to your house to garland you and you must think yourselves
13
fortunate indeed that the government has put this increased assessment on you. … To fight against
injustice was the dharma of all.
Let us organise and strengthen our caste associations. They are required to support the weak persons
amongst us… Why should the peasant not make his own social arrangements to fight against
injustice? … Our organisations are only for self-protection. And, no one should object to that.
Topic 6. Untouchability – statements by Gandhi
Gobbet 1
M.K. Gandhi, Harijan, 24 December 1938.
Love of the people brought the problem of untouchability early into my life. My mother said, ‘You
must not touch this boy, he is an untouchable.’ ‘Why not?’ I questioned back, and from that day my
revolt began.
Gobbet 2
M.K Gandhi, in Young India, 5 November 1931.
I was wedded to the work for the extinction of ‘untouchability’ long before I was wedded to my wife.
There were two occasions in our joint life when there was a choice between working for the
untouchables and remaining with my wife and I would have preferred the first. But thanks to my good
wife, the crisis was averted. In my Ashram, which is my family, I have several untouchables….
Gobbet 3
M.K. Gandhi, Young India, 25 May 1921.
Swaraj is a meaningless term, if we desire to keep a fifth of India under perpetual subjection, and
deliberately deny to them the fruits of national culture. We are seeking the aid of God in this great
purifying movement, but we deny to the most deserving among His creatures the rights of humanity.
Inhuman ourselves, we may not plead before the Throne for deliverance from the inhumanity of others.
Topic 7. Capitalism, class struggle and trusteeship
Gobbet 1
M.K. Gandhi, in Harijan, 28 July 1940.
Exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires, but by
removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to non-co-operate with their exploiters. That will
convert the exploiters also. I have even suggested that ultimately it will lead to both being equal
partners. Capital as such is not evil; it is the wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will
always be needed.
Gobbet 2
M.K. Gandhi, in Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta), 3 August 1934.
The idea of class war does not appeal to me. In India a class war is not only not inevitable, it is
avoidable if we have understood the message of non-violence. Those who talk about class war as being
inevitable have not understood the implications of non-violence or have understood them only skindeep.
Gobbet 3
M.K. Gandhi, in Harijan, 24 February 1940.
Communism of the Russian type, that is communism which is imposed on the people, would be
repugnant to India. If communism came without any violence, it would be welcome. For then no
property would be held by anybody except on behalf of the people and for the people. A millionaire
may have his millions, but he will hold them for the people.
14
Gobbet 4
M.K. Gandhi, in Harijan, 31 March 1946.
As for the present owners of wealth, they will have to make their choice between class war and
voluntarily converting themselves into trustees of their wealth. They will be allowed to retain the
stewardship of their possessions and to use their talent, to increase their wealth, not for their own sakes,
but for the sakes of the nation and, therefore, without exploitation.
The State will regulate the rate of commission which they get commensurate with the service
rendered and its value to society. Their children will inherit the stewardship only if they prove their
fitness for it.
Supposing India becomes a free country tomorrow, all the capitalists will have an opportunity of
becoming statutory trustees. But such a statute will not be imposed from above. It will have to
come from below.
When the people understand the implications of trusteeship and the atmosphere is ripe for it, the
people themselves, beginning with gram panchayats, will begin to introduce such statues. Such a
thing coming from below is easy to swallow. Coming from above it is liable to prove a dead weight.
Gobbet 5
M.K. Gandhi, in Young India, 20 August 1925.
I have always said that my ideal is that capital and labour should supplement and help each other.
They should be a great family living in unity and harmony, capital not only looking to the material
welfare of the labourers, but their moral welfare also – capitalists being trustees for the welfare of
the labouring classes under them.
Gobbet 6. A Communist on Gandhi
R. Palme Dutt, India Today, London 1940, pp.516-7.
…We have already had occasion to note Gandhi’s …defence of the industrial capitalists and
opposition to labour organisation based on class struggle.
Herein lies the practical significance of this preaching from the standpoint of the big bourgeoisie,
who tolerate and even encourage its Utopian yearnings and naïve fantasies with a smile, because
they know its business value for protecting their class interests and assisting to hold in the masses
and maintain class peace. The social significance of Gandhi’s historical rôle as the chosen
representative and ablest leader of bourgeois nationalism in the critical transitions of the modern
period has in practice coincided with his political rôle, despite the superficial contradiction between
his social philosophy and the bourgeois outlook. The glaring contradictions and inadequacies of his
many utterances and teaching, which can be easily picked out and exposed by the most elementary
critic, are in fact the key to his unique significance and achievement.
No other leader could have bridged the gap, during this transitional period, between the actual
bourgeois direction of the national movement and the awakening, but not yet conscious masses.
Both for good and for evil Gandhi achieved this, and led the movement, even appearing to create it.
This rôle only comes to an end in proportion as the masses begin to reach class consciousness of
their known interests, and the actual class forces and class relations begin to stand out clear in the
Indian scene, without need of mythological concealments.
Gobbet 7. News item on Dalits of 2009
S. Dorairaj, ‘No Entry’, Frontline, Volume 26, issue 15, 18-31 July 2009
A study reveals that discrimination against Dalits at places of worship continues more or less
unchanged despite various campaigns.
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
15
Mahatma Gandhi offering prayers at the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple in Madurai on
February 4, 1946, along with Dalits and members of certain other "excluded communities".
“I AM delighted that my many-year-old desire has been fulfilled today.” This is how Mahatma Gandhi
wrote in the visitors’ book shortly after offering worship at the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple in
Madurai, Tamil Nadu, along with Dalits and members of certain other “excluded communities” on
February 4, 1946.
Speaking at a rally in Palani soon afterwards, he said worship of God’s image would serve no good
unless people cleansed their hearts of hardness against fellow beings. God should be enshrined not in
images but in human hearts. He said he worshipped the deities at the Madurai temple because that
shrine was now open to Dalits. At the temple, he said he realised a new spiritual significance – worship
in the temples must mean change of heart towards Dalits.
Historians recall that Gandhi was reluctant to enter the shrine during all his four previous visits to
Madurai – in 1919, 1921, 1927 and 1934 – because Dalits were denied entry. This was not the case
when he visited Madurai for the fifth and final time. Thanks to the movement launched by progressive
and democratic forces under the leadership of A. Vaidhyanatha Iyer, a Gandhian and freedom fighter,
Dalits were allowed entry into the Meenakshi temple on July 8, 1939.
More than six decades have rolled by since Gandhi’s visit to the Madurai temple and 70 years have
passed since the success of the temple entry struggle that preceded it. Ahead of these two significant
events, the Vaikom satyagraha in Kerala, aimed at securing freedom of movement for all sections of
society along the roads leading to the Mahadeva temple, was spearheaded by “Periyar” E.V.
Ramasamy in 1924. In spite of these campaigns, discrimination against Dalits at places of worship
continues in different forms to this day.
The issue has come to the fore and found its echo in the State Assembly and other public fora in the
wake of the temple entry campaign launched by the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front
(TNUEF) headed by P. Sampath, State Secretariat member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Sampath said denial of temple entry to Dalits should be seen as part of the social oppression that was
intertwined with class oppression as 90 per cent of Dalits were working people. He accused the
government of not taking firm steps to end caste oppression and defend the democratic rights of the
oppressed. Whenever Dalits attempted to assert their rights, the government tried to treat their
resurgence as a law and order issue. He also expressed dismay at the attitude of certain Dalit outfits that
did not want to join hands with the Left and democratic forces in their fight to protect the rights of
Dalits.
16
A recent report released by Evidence, a Madurai-based non-governmental organisation, based on a
survey has highlighted the discrimination against Dalits at places of worship in five southern districts –
Madurai, Tirunelveli, Virudhunagar, Sivaganga and Dindigul.
The survey was conducted in April-May in 85 panchayats having a total population of 4,46,366,
including 1,56,756 Dalits. It brought to light different types of discriminatory practices at 200 temples
out of a total of 658 that are not under the purview of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment
(HR & CE) Department.
Dalits have been denied entry into 121 temples. In 128 temples they do not have access to the sanctum
sanctorum. They are not permitted to perform pujas at 106 shrines. Temple cars skip Dalit colonies at
174 places. Dalits are allowed to enter the places of worship only during specific hours fixed for them
in 103 cases. In 86 temples, the honour of tying “parivattam” (a cloth tied around the head) has been
denied to Dalits.
According to the survey, in 49 panchayats Dalits have not been allowed to touch the rope of the temple
car; bias persists in the distribution of prasadam at 110 temples; they are debarred from using chairs in
96 places of worship; discrimination is shown to them by priests in 115 places of worship; they are not
allowed to touch the wooden peetam (seat) of the idol in 40 shrines; and at 114 places they are not
allowed to participate in the festivals connected to temples or churches. In 51 temples, Dalits cannot
perform rituals in fulfilment of a vow. Their movement is temporarily restricted during festivals in 13
villages, the survey claims.
Bias prevails in some form or the other in temples situated in 17 panchayats although tax is collected
from Dalits. Atrocities are committed against them in 49 panchayats during temple festivals or at the
time of performing rituals. Reports from the majority of the panchayats speak of humiliation of Dalits
by calling out their caste names, hurling abuses at women, and causing physical injuries.
A visit to some of the villages where discriminatory practices are adopted showed that the status
quoists and conservatives are determined to thwart Dalit assertiveness and ensure that their sociocultural aspirations are suppressed.
Interaction with the local people revealed that in villages where Dalits own land, they have withstood
the onslaught of the forces that want to perpetuate feudal ideas and practices in the socio-cultural arena.
In some other areas where landless Dalits have to depend on caste-Hindu landholders for their
livelihood, their response is muted.
However, the overall impression one gathered is that Dalits, more particularly the youth, by and large
want to continue the organised response witnessed in the 1990s in a different form. The intervention of
the Left, democratic and progressive forces to help Dalits to achieve their aspirations with regard to
temple entry, equal treatment at places of worship and an end to discrimination against them at tea
stalls, haircutting saloons and public water sources has provided a clear political orientation to their
struggle. In many places they do not want to be carried away by fancy ideas such as “Dalit
exclusivism”.
Panthapuli village in Sankarankovil taluk in Tirunelveli district provides a striking instance of Dalits’
determination to fight for a legitimate share of power and public space with particular reference to
places of worship. Caste Hindus had been keeping away from the Kannanallur Mariamman temple in
the village ever since Dalits entered it on December 24, 2008. The district administration came forward
to allow Dalits entry into the temple a week after 379 activists of the CPI(M) courted arrest demanding
the implementation of a munsif court order in this regard.
G. Nagarajan, an activist of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), said that for the past
several years there was a dispute between Dalits and caste Hindus over the issue of entry into the
temple. In 2000, a compromise formula was evolved by Dalits, according to which both sides would
perform puja in alternate weeks. It was not acceptable to the caste Hindus. Several rounds of peace
meetings did not yield any positive result. So Dalits continued to offer worship from outside the
temple.
17
After a local court allowed them entry into the temple, Dalits started preparing for puja on September
23, 2008. But the priest who kept the temple key left the village. Although the officials promised to
arrange for entry into the temple on September 29, Dalits could not do so as caste Hindus went in
appeal to the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court.
Inaction on the issue led to untoward incidents such as stone throwing in the village. The situation
reached a flashpoint with Dalits leaving the village and settling on the hillock at Karichattan hamlet
close on the heels of the violence during Deepavali last year. Alleging that the issue was politicised,
caste Hindus also moved over to a hillock at Yettiserry on December 12, 2008. The authorities had a
tough time persuading both the sections to return to the village. Police pickets were posted in the
village.
Caste Hindus boycotted the Lok Sabha elections and even said they would resume worship at the
shrine only after the High Court gave its verdict. “Most of us are peasants. At no point of time we have
gone to them seeking their help for survival. It is unfair on their part to deny us entry into the temple as
we have made contributions to the construction of the shrine’s compound wall. Now we have
appointed a Dalit to perform puja,” said I. Chelliah, (72), a Dalit farmer.
U. Muthupandian, taluk secretary of the CPI(M), said worst forms of discrimination against Dalits
persisted in Kuruvikulam block. Until recently, tea was served to them in banana leaf cups at
Marudankinaru, Sayamalaivalasai and other villages. Now, as a compromise, tea stall owners have
started using disposable plastic cups, he pointed out.
The residents of Paavali in Virudhunagar district have their own tale of woe. The gates of the
Kannimar alias Kamatchi Amman temple in the village have remained locked for some years now. For
generations, people belonging to different castes offered prayers at the temple. The key of the temple
used to be in the possession of a Dalit.
Following a dispute raised by persons belonging to the Uravugollavar Reddiar community residing at
Vilathikulam in neighbouring Thoothukudi district, the revenue authorities denied all the communities
entry to the temple in 2003. The orders were withdrawn in February 2004. The High Court, in its order
on February 18, 2004, closed the writ petition on the grounds that the temple was open for public
worship.
The Uravugollavar Reddiars went in appeal against the HR & CE Department’s move to bring the
temple under its purview. Taking advantage of the situation, the Reddiars locked the temple, denying
the local people – most of whom are Dalits – an opportunity to offer worship. They were irked by the
Dalits’ opposition to their move to sell the temple land, said M. Muthukumar, a local resident and taluk
secretary of the CPI(M). According to him, the village was known for communal harmony. “The unity
dates back to the period of the East India Company. We have heard from our elders that the local
people did not oblige the alien rulers who sought their help to capture the rebel Poligar of
Panchalamkurichi, Kattabomman, and his associates. Even today, in our village, you can see the copper
plate installed on a granite pillar after the hanging of Kattabomman in 1799. It carries the proclamation
issued by Major Bannerman to all the poligars [administrative and military chiefs] notifying the
commands of the East India Company government,” he said.
The TNUEF launched a temple entry programme on October 5, 2007. The police and the revenue
authorities prevented the activists from entering the temple, said K. Samuel Raj, district convener of
the front, adding that Dalits did not want to take over the management of the temple but only wanted to
assert their right to worship.
In several villages, caste Hindus construct temples on government poromboke (unassessed) land with
the help of Dalits and on completion of the work, they raised the ownership issue, he said, adding that
the TNUEF’s temple entry campaign had been successful at three places: Chinnakamanpatti in Sattur
taluk, Vellayapuram in Aruppukottai taluk and Pazhaya Sennalkulam in Srivilliputtur taluk. In
Vellayapuram, caste Hindus had been boycotting the Narasimha Perumal temple after Dalits entered
the shrine, he said.
18
Although Dalits had been engaged in cleaning up the temple tanks and adjacent areas, they were not
allowed to use the water for bathing in many villages, including Kalloorani and Malaipatti, he alleged.
The situation was no better for Dalits who converted to Christianity at Anumanthanpatti village in
Theni district. A young private schoolteacher said the converts were discriminated against. Dalit
Christians were not admitted to societies run by other Christians who belonged to the Church of the
Holy Spirit; the church car would not go anywhere near the Dalit colony; and Dalit Christians had a
separate cemetery and an exclusive hearse, he said.
Justifying the treatment meted out to Dalits, a retired headmaster of a local school in Anumanthanpatti
said, “As Dalits belong to the labour class, they are not pious enough to deserve equal treatment.”
Enquiries revealed that Dalits were not allowed to enter temples under the control of caste Hindus at
Vannikonendal and Pillayarkulam in Tirunelveli district; Nakkalamuthanpatti in Thoothukudi district;
and Melakuyilkudi, Soolapuram and Ullapatti in Madurai district.
T. Dharmaraj, director of the Dr B.R. Ambedkar Studies Centre at St. Xavier’s College in Tirunelveli,
said Dalit assertion had entered a new phase with issues being fought on political and ideological
planes, eschewing murders and other forms of violence. The recent protests over the denial of entry
into places of worship were a manifestation of the growing awareness among the younger generation of
Dalits who have started discovering their cultural roots and reconstructing Dalit history.
The role played by the Folklore Department of the college in creating awareness through the “Dalit
Kalai Vizha” (Dalit art festival) was significant just as the “Kalai Iravu” programmes of the CPI(M)
had made an impact, he said.
Official records indicated that of the 1,545 cases registered in the State in 2008 under the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, only 58 cases resulted in conviction.
Executive Director of Evidence A. Vincent Raj alias Kathir said the government should come forward
to take stern action against those who adopted discriminatory practices against Dalits. He demanded a
White Paper from the State government on the discrimination shown to Dalits at places of worship.
Topic 8. Gandhi and Women
1.Gandhi’s views on women:
Gobbet 1
M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or the Story of my Experiments with Truth, Navajivan, Ahmedabad 1969, p.
18.
…the wife is not the husband’s bondslave, but his companion and his helpmate, and an equal partner
in al his joys and sorrows – as free as the husband to choose her own path.
Gobbet 2
M.K. Gandhi, in Young India, 2 February 1928.
You will guard your wife’s honour and be not her master, but her true friend. You will hold her
body and her soul as sacred as I trust she will hold your body and your soul. To that end you will
have to live a life of prayerful toil, and simplicity and self-restraint. Let not either of you regard
another as the object of his or her lust.
Gobbet 3
M.K. Gandhi, in Young India, 15 September 1921.
Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so
brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity to me, the female sex, not the weaker sex. It is the
19
nobler of the two, for it is even today the embodiment of sacrifice, silent suffering, humility, faith
and knowledge.
Gobbet 4
M.K. Gandhi, in Young India, 10 April 1930.
To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute
strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then
woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more selfsacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater moral courage? Without her
man could not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women… Who can
make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?
Gobbet 5
M.K. Gandhi, ‘Speech at Second Gujarat Educational Conference, Bharuch’, 20 October 1917, CWMG, Vol. 16,
p.93.
As Nature has made men and women different, it is necessary to maintain a difference between the
education of the two. True, they are equals in life, but their functions differ. It is woman’s right to rule
the home. Man is master outside it. Man is the earner, woman saves and spends. Woman looks after
the feeding of the child. She shapes its future. She is responsible for building its character. She is her
children’s educator, and hence, mother to the Nation…
If this is the scheme of Nature, and it is just as it should be, woman should not have to earn her
living. A state of affairs in which women have to work as telegraph clerks, typists or compositors
can be, I think, no good, such a people must be bankrupt and living on their capital.
2. Feminists and Gandhi
Gobbet 1
M.K. Gandhi, ‘Interview to Margaret Sanger,’ 3-4 December 1935, CWMG, VOL. 68, pp.190-94.
Gandhi: I could not recommend the remedy of birth-control to a woman who wanted my approval. I
should simply say to her: My remedy is of no use to you. You must go to others for advice…
I have felt that during the years still left to me if I can drive home to women’s minds the truth
that they are free, we will have no birth-control problem in India. If they will only learn to say ‘no’ to
their husbands when they approach them carnally! I do not suppose all husbands are brutes and if
women only know how to resist them, all will be well. I have been able to teach women who have
come in contact with me how to resist their husbands. The real problem is
that many do not want to resist them...
When both want to satisfy animal passion without having to suffer the consequences of
their act it is not love, it is lust. But if love is pure, it will transcend animal passion and will regulate
itself. We have not had enough education of the passions. When a husband says, ‘Let us not have
children, but let us have relations,’ what is that but animal passion? If they do not want to have more
children they should simply refuse to unite. Love becomes lust the moment you make it a means for
the satisfaction of animal needs. It is just the same with food. If food is taken only for pleasure it is
lust. You do not take chocolates for the sake of satisfying your hunger. You take them for pleasure
and then ask the doctor for an antidote. Perhaps you tell the doctor that whisky befogs your brain and
he gives you an antidote.
Margaret Sanger: …sex expression is a spiritual need and I claim that the quality of this expression is more
important than the result, for the quality of the relationship is there regardless of results. We all know that the
great majority of children are born as an accident, without the parents having any desire for conception. Seldom
are two people drawn together in the sex act by their desire to have children… Do you think it possible for two
people who are in love, who are happy together, to regulate their sex act only once in two years, so that
relationship would only take place when they wanted a child? Do you think is possible?
Gandhi: I had the honour of doing that very thing and I am not the only one….I know, from my
own experience that as long as I looked upon my wife carnally, we had no real understanding. Our
love did not reach a high plane. There was affection between us always, but we came closer and
closer the more we or rather I became restrained. There never was want of restraint on the part of my
wife. Very often she would show restraint, but she rarely resisted me although she showed
20
disinclination very often. All the time I wanted carnal pleasure I could not serve her. The moment I
bade good-bye to a life of carnal pleasure our whole relationship became spiritual. Lust died and
love reigned instead. . . .
Gobbet 2
Tanika Sarkar, ‘Politics of Women in Bengal: The Conditions and Meaning of Participation,’ The Indian
Economic and Social History Review (Delhi) 21:1 (1984), p.101.
…whether in Gandhian movements or in more militant alternatives to it, nationalists rarely sought a
permanent reversal of the customary role of women in and outside political action. Politicisation was
internalised as a special form of sacrifice in an essentially religious process. The language, imagery and
idiom of the entire nationalist protest remained steeped in tradition and religion as self-conscious
alternatives to alien Western norms. And herein lay the paradox: such strong traditionalist moorings
alone permitted the sudden political involvement of thousands of women. But that in its turn inhibited
the extension of radicalism to other spheres of life.
Topic 9. Indian Nationalism in the 1930s and 1940s
Gobbet 1
General Sir Philip Chetwode. Commander-in-Chief, India, to Lord Irwin, 6 May 1930, British Library:
Oriental and India Office Collection. Manuscript EUR C152, Vol. 19.
In spite of the declarations of one British Government after another, in spite of accelerating
the Simon Report, and in spite of all Your Excellency has done and said for them, hardly a
handful of Indians, who should be the leaders of thought in India, have played the game or
have shown themselves in any way fitted to lead the thoughts of the millions of illiterate
people in the country - only a few Muhammadans have in any way responded to our advances,
because they are in the minority.
Pray excuse me, Lord Irwin, for saying so bluntly what I think but it is not the time to say
nothing or, worse still, what one does not believe, and none of us who know India can ever
believe that you can graft a Western political system on to the oriental continent of India,
unless some foreign power controls the man at the business end of the gun. And we further
know that the so-called martial races will not serve under a Government of middle-class
lawyer politicians and will await with confidence the appearance of a leader who will offer
them the loot of India to put him on the throne at Delhi and believe me it would not long be
delayed.
Gobbet 2
Gobbet from Sumanta Banerjee, In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in
India, Subarnarekha, Calcutta 1980, pp.228-9. The CPI (ML) was the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist), which was formed in the 1960s, following a Maoist line.
There were of course contradictions within the Congress leadership, which came into the
open in an aggravated form during the Second World War. But according to the CPI (ML)
such contradictions were reflections of the conflict among world imperialist powers.
Referring to Gandhi's dispute with Subhash Bose, the CPI (ML) theoretician Saroj Dutta said:
'Gandhi was the leader and representative of the bourgeois group which was the agent of the
British imperialists and Subash was the chieftain of the rising agents of German-Japan-Italian
imperialist axis'. About the conflict between Gandhi and Nehru, Saroj Dutta's interpretation
was that during the first phase of the Second World War when Hitler was advancing, Gandhi
felt that Britain would be defeated, and overnight turned into an anti-British rebel giving the
call 'Quit India' in 1942. Nehru on the other hand, realising that the combined strength of
Britain, USA and the Soviet Union would finally defeat the axis, held that it would be unwise
to go against the British, and took an anti-fascist position. '…everyone agreed that it was
necessary to "stay with him who would win;" the difference was regarding the question who
would win…' - in these words, Saroj Dutta summed up the dispute. Saroj Dutta was equally
21
blunt in his assessment of Subash Bose and his army, which he described as 'an army of
defeated and captured mercenary troops of one imperialist power, which was given the
bombastic title "Azad Hind Fauz"…' Taking advantage of the Indian people's longing for an
army of their own to drive out the British, the bourgeois leaders created out of this stuff the
image of 'Netaji', which in the absence of alternative Communist preparations for armed
struggle, helped to nourish the illusion about and respect for Subash among the masses.
Gobbet 3
Lord Wavell, Viceroy of India, to Winston Churchill, 24 October 1944, in Penderel Moon (ed.),
Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 94-9.
Our prestige and prospects in Burma, Malaya, China and the Far East generally are entirely
subject to what happens in India. If we can secure India as a friendly partner in the British
Commonwealth our predominant influence in these countries will, I think, be assured; with a
lost and hostile India, we are likely to be reduced in the East to the position of commercial
bag-men. ... The following seem to me to be the essential factors of the problem:
(i) When we started, 20 or 30 years ago, on the political reform of India, we laid down a
course from which we cannot now withdraw. It may have been a mistaken course, and it
would probably have been better to have prescribed economic development first; but I am
afraid it is too late to reverse the policy now. And the general policy, of giving India selfgovernment at an early date, was confirmed not long ago in the Cripps’ offer.
(ii) Nor do I think that in any case we can hold India down by force. Indians are a docile
people, and a comparatively small amount of force ruthlessly used might be sufficient; but it
seems to me clear that the British people will not consent to be associated with a policy of
repression; nor will world opinion approve it, nor will British soldiers want to stay here min
large numbers after the war to hold the country down. There must be acquiescence in the
British connection if we are to continue to keep India within the Commonwealth.
(iii) India will never, within any time that we can foresee, be an efficient country, organised
and governed on western lines. In her development to self-government we have got to be
prepared to accept a degree of inefficiency comparable to that in China, Iraq, or Egypt. We
must do our best to maintain the standards of efficiency we have tried to inculcate but we
cannot continue to resist reform because it will make the administration less efficient.
(iv) The present Government of India cannot continue indefinitely or even for long. Though
ultimate responsibility still rests with His Majesty’s Government, His Majesty s Government
has no longer the power to take effective action. We shall drift increasingly into situations financial economic, or political - for which India herself will be responsible but for which His
Majesty’s Government will get the discredit. We are already in the position that Indian
Members of Council have a controlling voice and are increasingly aware of their power. The
British Civil Services on which the good government of the country has up till now depended
might almost be described as moribund, senior members are tired and disheartned, and it will
be extremely difficult after the war to secure good recruits…
We cannot move without taking serious risks: but the most serious risk of all is that India
after the war will become a running sore which will sap the strength of the British Empire. I
think it is still possible to keep India within the Commonwealth, though I do not think it will
be easy to do so. If we fail to make any effort now we may hold India down uneasily for
some years, but in the end she will pass into chaos and probably into other hands.
Topic 10. The Hindu-Muslim Divide
Gobbet 1
Sir Saiyyid Ahmad Khan, speech at Lucknow, 28 December 1887, in [15], pp. 43-7.J.R. McLane (ed.),
The Political Awakening in India, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970, pp.43-7.
Now, let us suppose the Viceroy s Council made in this manner And let us suppose first of all
that we have universal suffrage, as in America and that everybody, chamars [untouchables]
and all, have votes. And first suppose that all Mahomedan electors vote for a Mahomedan
22
member and all Hindu electors for a Hindu member, and now count how many votes the
Mahomedan member has and how many the Hindu. It is certain the Hindu will have four
times as many because their population is four times as numerous. Therefore we can prove by
mathematics that there will be four votes for the Hindu [against] every one vote for the
Mahomedan. And now how can the Mahomedan guard his interests? It would be like a game
of dice, in which one man had four dice and the other only one. In the second place, suppose
that the electorate be limited. Some method of qualification must be made; for example, that
people with a certain income shall be electors. Now, I ask you, 0 Mahomedans! Weep at your
condition! Have you such wealth as can comete with the Hindus? Most certainly not.
Suppose, for example, that an income of Rs. 5,000 a year be fixed on, how many
Mahomedans will there be? Which party will have the larger number of votes? I put aside the
case that by a rare stroke of luck a blessing comes through the roof and some Mahomedan is
elected. In the normal case no single Mahomedan will secure a seat in the Viceroy’s CounciL
The whole Council will consist of Babu so-and-so Mitter Bab; so-and-so Ghose, and Babu soand-so Chuckerbutty ... [laughter].
Gobbet 2
Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Secretary, MAO College, Aligarh, to W.A.J. Archbold, College Principal, [received]
24 August 1906, in Gilbert Martin (ed.), Servant of India; a Study of Imperial Rule from 1905 to 1910
as Told through the Correspondence and Diaries of Sir James Dunlop Smith, Longmans 1966, pp.54-5.
I find that Mohammadan feeling is very much changed and I am constantly getting letters
using emphatic language saying that the Hindus have succeeded owing to their agitation, and
the Mahommadans have suffered for their silence. The Mohammadans have generally begun
to think of organizing a political association and forming themselves into political agitators.
Although it is impossible for the Mohammadans, on account of their lack of ability and union
and want of funds, to attain any success like the Hindus, and they are likely to lose rather than
gain by such a course, it is yet impossible for anybody to stop them. The Mohammedans of
Eastern Bengal have received a severe shock. I have got a letter from Syed Nawab Ali
Chowdry of Dacca which gives utterance to the extremely sorrowful feeling prevailing there.
He says: ‘Up to now the Mohammedans of Bengal have been careless. They have now begun
to feel the consequences of their carelessness. If only the Mohammedans of Bengal, instead of
following the Government, had agitated like the Hindus and had enlisted the sympathies of the
Mohammedans of the whole of India, and raised their voice up to the Parliament, they would
never see these unfortunate consequences.’
Gobbet 3
Gobbet from Lanza del Vasto, Return to the Source, translated from La Pèlerinage aux Sources
(French, 1943) by Jean Sidgwick, Rider, London 1971, pp.128-9. Lanza Del Vasto, a Sicilian, was a
follower of Gandhi who stayed for three months in 1937 in his ashram.
The Indian Moslems are distinguished from the Hindus by a certain savage roughness. They
are in a sorry situation of the domesticated wild beast. Not one of the great spiritual
movements that have occurred in India during the last century has originated with them. They
have no great man today who can be put on the same plane as the Hindu thinkers. It is they,
along with the Gurkhas of Nepal, who provide the British Army with the best soldiers in
India. they are a minority of some seventy-five million. If some day the British leave, the
Hindus have every reason to fear that this warlike minority, remembering Tamberlane, will
attempt to undertake the conquest of the whole country. This is a threat which suffices to
make them look upon the King of England as a heaven-sent protector.
Although the Moslems bear the British a grudge for having snatched their empire from them,
they are only too willing to strike a blow for them when they have occasion to bully the
Hindus. and the British find it easy to envenom this dissension, which strengthens their own
power.
Following Akbar, enlightened leaders, poets and mystics have time and time again attempted
to reconcile the two Indias. they have met with nothing but deafness and mistrust on both
sides.
23
Gandhi alone has succeeded in moving the people and bringing them into contact. There is no
lack of Moslems among his followers. Once, he successfully urged the Hindus to make
common cause with their hereditary enemies in the matter of the Caliphate, which concerned
only the latter. He has never lost an opportunity of deserving their friendship.
But this brotherhood is of difficult and slow birth.
It is a far cry from the paradise of Mahomet, opened by the point of the sword, to the
terrestrial and celestial glory of non-violence.
The religious fervour of Gandhi beats against the wall of the mosque without rousing much
echo.
Gobbet 4
Gobbet from the newspaper The Hindu, 30 January 2003
Gandhi to blame for Partition, says RSS
Amritsar Jan. 29. The RSS today blamed Mahatma Gandhi for the country's division, attacked the
media for its “anti-Hindu'” bias and asserted that all Sikhs were Hindus.
At a function organised here to honour its volunteers who “saved” Hindus from Muslims,
the RSS chief, K.S. Sudershan, urged Hindus to organise themselves and said the “unnatural
partition” of the country must end.
“While Gandhi succeeded in creating and leading a people’s movement, he committed two
mistakes: supporting the ‘Khilafat’ movement and making Jawaharlal Nehru the first Prime
Minister. The end result was that two enemies, Pakistan and Bangladesh, were created forever,”
he said. “Everyone makes mistakes but when a big leader makes a mistake, they lead to serious
consequences.”
“While Nehru described Partition as a fantastic nonsense, Gandhi said it would be allowed
only over his dead body,” Sudershan said in his hour-long address. He, however, termed Gandhi's
assailant, Nathuram Godse, as a “farphira” (insane person).
Topic 11. Gandhi beyond India
Gobbet 1
Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade) (ed.), Bapu’s Letters to Mira (1924-48), Navajivan Publishing House,
Ahmedabad, 1949 (quoted in Catherine Clement, Gandhi: Father of a Nation, Thames and Hudson,
London 1996, p.153). Madeleine Slade (1892-1982) was brought up in England, the daughter of a
British admiral. In 1925, after hearing about Gandhi from Romaine Rolland, she travelled to India to
meet him for the first time. She describes her arrival at Gandhi’s ashram in Ahmedabad.
We passed through a small gate, then up two steps to a verandah and through a door into
a room. As I entered I became conscious of a small spare figure rising up from a white gaddi
and stepping towards me. I knew it was Bapu, but, so completely overcome was I with
reverence and joy, that I could see and feel nothing but a heavenly light. I fell on my knees at
Bapu’s feet. He lifted me up and taking me in his arms said, ‘You shall be my daughter.’
And so it has been from that day.
I had reached my destination; the destination from which I was to begin. The old life was
finished as if it belonged to a past birth, and I began life anew. ...Bapu’s love has at last led
me out upon the upper pastures, where God’s peace fills the sweet mountain air.
Gobbet 2
Muriel Lester to Sir Samuel Hoare (Secretary of State for India), 3 May 1933, India Office Library,
London, L/PO/6/59 (i).
24
All over the world it is known that Mr. Gandhi stands for the poor, works for the poor, half
starves himself for the poor. He has become to poor people in far distant lands a sort of
symbol.
Gobbet 3
‘Mr Churchill on India’, Daily Telegraph, 24 February 1931.
It was alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now
posing as a fakir of a type well-known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a defiant campaign of civil
disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor. Such a
spectacle can only increase the unrest in India and the danger to which white people there are
exposed.
Gobbet 4
‘Welcome to Gandhi To-day’, Daily Worker, 12 September 1931.
He kept up his Holy Man pose with marked care; a prayerful attitude on deck for the benefit
of the movie camera men, then a withdrawal to his cabin and a hasty pretence of spinning for
the benefit of the interviewees.