The place of Hind Swaraj (hereafter referred to as HS) in Gandhiji’s life and thought is comparable only to the Bhagvad Gita in the life and thought of Lord Krishna, with the difference that whereas the Gita was delivered by Krishna during the mature period of his life, HS—on the contrary—appeared at quite a formative stage of Gandhiji’s life. This difference however does not deprive HS of its richness and ripeness. This explains why Gandhiji never thought of fundamentally altering any of his views on HS during the remainder of his considerably long life.
Another important difference that emerges from the similarity of the dialogical character of the two texts is that whereas Arjuna, the addressee of the Gita is a humble disciple of Krishna in whom he has full faith, the reader/the addressee of HS is a skeptic who goes on arguing with the editor—Gandhiji himself—as his opponent; assuming that both of them are, as it were, on the same footing. It is obvious, therefore, that whereas Arjuna in the Gita approaches Krishna with humility, the reader in HS, on the contrary, exhibits a questioning spirit. This spirit is not the outcome of an innocent curiosity. Arjuna admits explicitly that his mind is confused and he is unable to discriminate between dharma and adharma. The reader of HS would not admit to any such confusion. He would come forth with conviction.
Importantly and interestingly enough, both Arjuna and the reader are placed in a similar situation. Both want to regain their Raj, which they have lost to the Kauravas and the British respectively.
The most glaring difference between Krishna and Gandhi is that the former wants Arjuna to opt for violence and the later tries to convince the reader of HS of the futility of violence. This difference does not matter much to Gandhiji who would soon come out with the novel interpretation of the Gita itself which claims that the Mahabharata war was not a real historical war but a metaphorical presentation of internal conflicts taking place in human mind between good and evil forces.
For Gandhiji the context of the Gita is metaphorical. However, no one can make such a claim with reference to HS. In spite of its palpable transcendence of space and time, its trans-contextuality, HS is rooted firmly in its time. To ascertain its contextuality in no way denies or even undermines the universal character of this wonderful text. On the contrary, the knowledge of its context, that led Gandhiji to produce this text, will enrich our understanding of it.
HS was written in Gujarati by Gandhiji in the ship S. S. Kildonan Castle while he was traveling back to South Africa from England in the month of November 1909. It was published in the December 11 & 18, 1909 issues of Indian Opinion 1909. Gandhiji wrote the text with both right as well as left hands. The very fact that instead of having some rest after his right hand was tired, Gandhiji continued his writing with the left, throws ample light on the internal pressure Gandhi was experiencing while writing it and the necessity he felt of bringing it out immediately.
Although HS was Gandhiji’s immediate response to what he experienced in his stay in England during 1909, its situational, intellectual and ideological roots are deeper. Those were the days of assassinations of British officers with the intention to set India free from the yoke of British rule and achieve what was called ‘swaraj’ or home rule. The violence was not only in India but in England as well. Believing firmly impurity of means, Gandhiji thought it necessary to protest and condemn such violence. But more importantly perhaps, he perceived such violent activities as an outcome of the impact of modern, western civilization itself. Further, he also suspected the validity of the prevalent notion of Swaraj itself. All these things were addressed in HS.
HS was, therefore, not an emotional outburst. It is a thoughtful articulation of his own views cultivated over almost two decades, and a critique of modernity in their light.
Although most of the violent activities of the revolutionary nationalists at that time took place in India, the persons who used to argue for and justify them and whom Gandhiji came to confront, were mostly related to India House, a kind of residential and meeting place for Indian students in London managed by Shamaji Krishna Varma. Varma was himself a revolutionary and apart from supporting and helping students, he also used to kindle a revolutionary spirit in them. The most important member of the India Home group was undoubtedly Vinayak Damodar Savarkar who came to England to obtain a degree in Law. However, the degree was only a pretext as Savarkar had ambitious plans which would surpass even Mr. Varma’s expectations. Confident about his objectives and methods, young Savarkar had already developed himself into a conscious and cold blooded revolutionary. He had resolved either to win freedom with revolutionary violence or to die striving for the same, and had also organized a group of young people his age into Abhinav Bharat. As a child, Savarkar took great interest in worshiping the family Goddess Ashtabhuja Bhavani who was thirsty for ritual sacrifices of animals. Savarkar owed his inspiration of revolutionary violence to this Goddess. As he grew up, Savarkar became agnostic and gave up his belief in God. However, the Goddess Bhavani metamorphosed into the Mother Goddess India who was to be worshiped with the blood of the enemy. The Nation was thus personified into the Mother and then deified into the Goddess. This process can be understood with similar example from Bengal, where an abstract nationalism assumed the powerful form of active and aggressive, violent nationalism when Bankim Chandra’s poem ‘Vande Mataram’ gave it a kind of theological-religious-mystical turn.
Having completed such an articulation of thought and organized a group of revolutionary colleagues at an early age in Bhagur and Nasik, Savarkar left for Pune and enrolled himself in Fergusson College. In Pune, he came into contact with Lokmanya Tilak and Shivaram Mahadev Paranjape who proved to be sources of inspiration for him. For his political ideology, Savarkar was influenced by Tilak and in rhetoric he was much indebted to Paranjape.
Savarkar learned a lot from the lives of historical figures such as Shri Krishna, Shivaji and Ramdas which he used to justify political ideologies and action. Tilak had already started Shivaji festival. The last decade of 19th century also witnessed the assassination of the British officer Rand at the hands of Chaphekar brothers in Pune. This incident gave rise to hot discussions regarding the justifiability of political violence. A fine distinction came to be made between an ordinary act of murder inviting penal action and a morally justifiable assassination (vadha) of such mythical-historical tyrants as Kamsa and Afzal Khan who were then compared to Rand. Savarkar took a keen interest in this discourse in which quoting from the Gita became a regular practice.
The discourse was further widened when Savarkar became acquainted with the life of Italian patriot and revolutionary Joseph Mazzini. Savarkar was so influenced by Mazzini that the latter became almost the role model for him. He even imitated the costumes of Mazzini. He baptized his organization as ‘Abhinav Bharat’ an Indian incarnation, as it were, of Mazzini’s ‘Young Italy.’ In Nasik and Pune, Savarkar had already read L.G. Ghanekar’s Marathi and Bolton King’s English biography of Mazzini. After his arrival in England in July 1906, he hastened to acquireall available English sources of Mazzini’s life and thoughts. As a result, he succeeded in completing his own Marathi work on Mazzini as early as 27th Sept 1906.
During this period, Gandhiji was engaged with his anti-racist movement in South Africa. He reached London on 20th Oct 1906 with a deputation to see Mr. John Morley who was the State Secretary for India.
Because of his good relationship with Varma, Gandhiji was accommodated at India House. As he had been exerting himself for the cause of Indian nationals in South Africa, the Indian students in India House naturally gathered around him to help and cooperate. They contributed by writing addresses on Gandhiji's letters and posting them. Savarkar was one amongst them. Gandhiji himself recalled this in his letter to Shankararao Deo. This was the first encounter between the two leaders. Apart from their cordial relationship at that time, the paths they had chosen were not only different but diametrically opposed to each other. Savarkar, under the impact of Mazzini’s ideas, was planning revolutionary activities and Gandhiji was attempting an actual application of Leo Tolstoy’s thoughts regarding non violence. Savarkar has also referred to these days with Gandhiji And he did not forget to mention the debates and controversies that took place between them as a result of which the number of the supporters of Gandhiji diminished. However, it seems to me that Savarkar transposes the events of their second encounter in 1909 onto 1906. Without challenging the personality and convincing rhetoric of Savarkar, it can be said that in 1906 Gandhiji had already established himself as a leader and must have been treated by the students with respect. Savarkar was a comparative newcomer, and was yet to become influential. But by 1909, he had emerged as a powerful leader of the revolutionary group of the students in India House and was definitely in a position to challenge Gandhiji.
Although Savarkar owed a lot to Mazzini, he cannot be said to have followed the latter in every respect. Being a staunch Roman Catholic, Mazzini was a severe critic of the Utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham. Savarkar, on the other hand, can hardly be said to be religious. His notion of Hinduism was all political. Further, he was a follower of Mill and Bentham so far as Utilitarian ethics were concerned. For him too, happiness was the aim of life and therefore the criterion of morality of action.
Mazzini did not show any interest in Darwin’s theory of evolution. This theory was applied to social life by Herbert Spencer. Savarkar followed Spencer in this respect and in addition, he accepted Spencer’s agnosticism. Spencer’s Social Darwinism was used by Savarkar in order to justify violence in freedom struggle.
Gandhiji’s impressions of India House can be gathered from another source. As he learned that his friend Dr. P. J. Mehta was leaning towards S. K. Varma’s ideology, Gandhiji wrote to him “I understand that you have been copying Mr. S. K. Varma’s teaching. I had long discussion with him and the result is that I recoil with horror from it. I have watched the practical working of his teaching at India House and my humble opinion is that the atmosphere around that house is simply reeking with poison.”
With all his fear and dislike of the atmosphere in India House, Gandhiji did not see any need to react publicly. After completing his work on deputation he returned to South Africa to resume his work there.
Savarkar remained in England only to continue his revolutionary activities such as establishing contacts with people who might help his revolutionary cause. He wrote letters to the King of Nepal appealing him to lead the struggle against British rule and assume the crown of the Empire of India after the British were defeated. He even wrote to a number of Indian officers in Army urging them to revolt against British power. He also wanted to arouse the spirit of discontent and resistance in the common people of India. It was in order to serve this purpose that he engaged himself in writing a book on Indian mutiny of 1857 which would change the very perception of it and present it as the first war of independence.
A reference also needs to be made to some parallel activities of political violence taking place in other parts of the world during this time. The philosophy of Karl Marx had rooted itself in the soil of Tsarist Russia. Marxist revolutionaries were planning to overthrow Tsarist rule. Some of them had made Paris the centre of their activities. One of Savarkar’s colleagues, P. M. Bapat, who came in contact with some Russian revolutionaries, learnt how to make bombs from them and communicated this information to Bengali revolutionaries.
Such actions of violence on the part of communist revolutionaries were bound to attract the attention of Europe in general and of France in particular. This attention led to in animated theoretical discussions. The famous Syndicalist thinker, George Sorel, was a leading theorist of violence. Sorel treated violence as a moral value and emphasized a necessary connection between socialism and violence. His Reflections on Violence was quite popular. Being sensitive as he was, Bapat could not help giving serious thought to the issues of violence and nonviolence. Later, he came up with his own theory of nonviolence, which made it possible for him to work with Gandhiji.
It was during this time that Tolstoy was opposing both individual and institutional violence. Tolstoy was a staunch pacifist and a thorough opponent of war. More importantly, being a serious religious thinker, Tolstoy could see how the Christian countries in Europe had distorted the teachings of Jesus. According to Tolstoy, Christianity has no place for violence. Rejecting all Churches as authentic interpreting institutions of the Bible, Tolstoy preferred to interpret it directly for himself and put forth his own version of a nonviolent Christian religion according to which ‘though shall not kill’ is its essence. This was in stark contrast with Mazzini who was a Roman Catholic. Tolstoy’s two works, The Kingdom of God is Within You and Gospel in Brief, exerted tremendous influence on Gandhi. For Tolstoy, the Kingdom of God is nothing other than a society free from violence. He could see that even the institution of the State itself cannot function without violence. Hence, he became a proponent of anarchism. He opposed any kind of nationalism and patriotism as they were bound to resort to violence. The Law of Love and the Law of Violence is a systematic and constructive exposition of his views.
However, an important difference between Tolstoy’s presentation and the presentation of Gandhi needs to be spelt out. Tolstoy was a proponent of ‘nonresistance to evil by violence’ whereas Gandhi emphasized resistance by nonviolence. This difference implies that whereas Tolstoy’s view may culminate in inaction, Gandhi’s views necessarily lead to action. It is out of such an insistence on action that Gandhi started his movement for justice in South Africa. After his return to South Africa, he had to restart the movement as a result of which he was sentenced for seven months on Oct 15, 1908. Gandhiji’s movement in South Africa was not the only movement against the British Empire. Mention has already been made of the activities in India House led by Savarkar. Here in India, Bengal was witnessing bombs and bullets. In Maharashtra, Lokmanya Tilak was publishing editorials in his newspapers and arousing feelings of unrest against the government. The government was quick to see relation between his writings and violence in Bengal. In 1908, he was tried and sentenced for six years, and sent to Mandalay in Burma. It is interesting to note that the Indians living in London organized a meeting on Oct 16, 1908 to protest the decision of the court in which Savarkar seconded the resolution of supporting Gandhi’s movement in South Africa proposed by Bipin Chandra Pal. It was in the same week that Narendra Goswami, one of the accused in the Maniktola conspiracy case, was shot dead in prison for his treachery. The most horrifying and sensational event, however, took place on July 1st, 1909 when Sir Curzon Wyllie, a high ranking British administrator, was shot and killed by Madanlal Dhingra of India House. Scholars agree that none other than Savarkar himself was pulling the strings from behind. It was he who instigated Dhingra to undertake such extreme action.
On July 1st, Gandhi was on his way to England again with a deputation to deal with the injustice in Africa. He reached London on July 10th and gathered some information regarding the tragic event. In a letter to his colleague Pollack he wrote “the terrible tragedy about Sir Curzon Wyllie and Dr. Lalkaka complicates the situation here”(since Wyllie had been invited by National Indian Association and as such, was an honorable guest). On July 16th, Gandhi wrote in Indian Opinion, “Mr. Dhingra’s defense is inadmissible. In my view, he has acted like a coward. All the same, one can only pity the man. It is those who incited him to this that deserve to be punished. In my view, Mr. Dhingra himself is innocent. The murder was committed in a state of intoxication. It is not merely wine or bhang that makes one drunk; a mad idea also can do so. That was the case with Mr. Dhingra.” Again, on July 23rd, he wrote “Mr. Dhingra’s statement, according to me, argues mere childishness or mental derangement. Those who incited him to this act will be called to account in God’s court and are also guilty in the eyes of the world. Dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. He gave his body in a wrong way, its result can only be mischievous.”
Like Gandhi, many people were aware of Savarakar’s hand in the plot. However, as there was no enough evidence to prove this, British Government was helpless. India House was under watch by the police who could have, by this time, gathered enough evidence against Savarkar to suspect him but not enough to implicate him. Otherwise cautious and careful, Savarkar was a bit overconfident. Further, being upset with the sentence of life imprisonment in the Andamans awarded to his brother, Babarao for the charge of seditious activities, he was anxious to avenge this act, either himself or through some one else.
Gandhiji was watching all these events taking place in England and India. He had till then, not only developed his views regarding the issue of violence and nonviolence but also formed a worldview of his own. There was some solace in the fact that he was not alone. Count Leo Tolstoy also held similar views. Although he was very well acquainted with the writings of Tolstoy and had drawn inspiration from them, Gandhiji had not yet contacted him personally. It was on Oct 1st, 1909 that Gandhiji wrote a letter to Tolstoy, the day before he was to enter his fortieth year.
Like Gandhiji, Tolstoy was pained to see the violence committed by Indians in the name of patriotism and home rule. He expressed his views through the letter he wrote to Tarak Nath Das, the publisher of the journal Free Hindustan from Vancouver. Mr. Das declined to publish it. Gandhiji happened to get a copy of it by chance. He not only appreciated it but thought of publishing it in Indian Opinion if Tolstoy permitted. Apart from communicating Tolstoy’s ideas to his readers, Gandhiji was also interested in communicating to Tolstoy his own efforts in South Africa of putting into practice Tolstoy’s ideas.
Tolstoy gladly permitted Gandhiji to go ahead. He replied on Oct 7th. He also prayed in the same letter that “God help our dear brothers and co-workers in Transvaal.” Tolstoy’s Letter to a Hindu was accordingly published in Indian Opinion of Dec 25th. Gandhiji wrote his preface to the letter on Nov 18th in which he summarized Tolstoy’s views as “Tolstoy gives a simple answer to those Indians who appear impatient to drive the whites out of India. We are (according to him) our own slaves, not of the British. This should be engraved in our minds. The white cannot remain if we do not want them.” Gandhiji worriedly added “it is for us to pause and consider whether in our impatience of English rule, we do not want to replace one evil by another and worse.”
In fact, Tolstoy had written the letter and sent it to Mr. Das long before Wyllie’s assassination. Gandhiji published it after this sad event and hence had to take cognizance of it. He wrote, “One of the accepted and ‘time honored’ methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie was an illustration in its worst and (most) detestable form of that method.”
Gandhi had been already feeling an internal compulsion to react to such violent actions on the part of the nationalist revolutionaries. In a letter to W. J. Wybergh written on May 10, 1910, Gandhiji wrote, “...having had the position of the pacifist practically forced upon me by circumstance, I felt bound to write for whom Indian Opinion caters.” In the preface to the original Gujarati edition of HS, Gandhiji brought out the process as “I have written because I could not restrain myself.” However the credit must also be given to Tolstoy’s recent Letter to a Hindu which must have encouraged Gandhiji to come forward with the similar views. He had acknowledged his indebtedness in the preface to Indian Home Rule as “while the views expressed in Hind Swaraj are held by me, I have but endeavored humbly to follow Tolstoy, Thoreau, Emerson and other writers, besides the masters of Indian philosophy. Tolstoy has been one of my teachers for number of years.”
The need and compulsion to write HS become more obvious if one also takes into consideration the place where it was written. He wrote HS in Gujarati on his return journey from England on the Kildonan Castle during Nov 13-22, 1909. This definitely indicates that he wanted to publish HS at his earliest. Accordingly it was published in two installments in Indian Opinion, the first twelve chapters on Dec 11, 1909 and the remaining on Dec 18, 1909.
It came out in the book form in January 1910. Gandhiji hastened to publish the English rendering of it entitled Indian Home Rule early in March 1910, as the Gujarati edition was proscribed in India by the Government of Bombay.
Let it be pointed out again that any such haste on the part of Gandhi to write or to publish HS in no way suggests that he was hasty or overenthusiastic in forming opinions or drawing conclusions. As he himself revealed in the Preface to the Gujarati edition – “I have read much, I have pondered much, during the stay for four months in London, of the Transvaal deputation. I discussed things with as many of my countrymen as I could. I met, too, as many Englishmen as it was possible for me to meet.” It is only after such a painstaking preparation that he considered it his duty to place before the readers of Indian Opinion the conclusions which appeared him to be final.
Gandhiji was so convinced and certain of the finality of the views in HS that even decades after the publication of the text followed by doubts and criticism from various quarters, he stood by every word in it except one, i.e., ‘prostitute’ used with reference to the British Parliament and that too, at the behest of an English friend.
As quoted from the Preface to the Gujarati text, Gandhiji referred to his discussions with his own countrymen during his four month stay in London. Although most of the active countrymen were certainly connected with the India House, it is no one other than Savarkar who can be described as epitomizing the very spirit of India House. As suggested earlier, the Savarkar of 1909 was different from the Savarkar of 1906 in the sense that in 1909 he had become the leader of the group, and even assumed the place of S. K. Varma, informally, though. He was no more a volunteer engaged in such trifling works as pasting stamps on the letters and posting them. He had turned himself into the leader enjoying respect and obedience from his colleagues who were now tantamount to followers. It was Savarkar who was mainly responsible for the plots and conspiracies cooked up in India House. But apart from his skill in such articulating and executing revolutionary plans, he was also gifted with the capacity to reason and argue theoretically and convert others to his views regarding violence as the justifiable means to home rule. HS, one can logically conclude, was mainly written to counter the views of the revolutionary group in India House in general and those of Savarkar in particular. The reader or addressee in HS could be no one else than Savarkar himself.
There was a face-to-face public encounter between Savarkar and Gandhi during the latter’s stay in London. The date was Oct 24, 1909. For the Hindus in India House, it was the day of the Dussera festival and they decided on a public celebration. Accordingly, the non Hindus in London were also invited. The problem was who would preside over the gathering. Since India House and the students staying there were being condemned and looked down on account of their connection with Wyllie’s assassination, it became difficult to get an honorable gentleman of status and influence as the president. Such persons were obviously reluctant to associate themselves with the organizers. Finally, a request was made to Gandhiji, who did not disappoint them.
Both Gandhiji and Savarkar have reported this event in Indian Opinion and Vihari respectively. Gandhiji says that a feast was arranged and the students of the medical and law faculties volunteered themselves for cooking and serving the food. Gandhiji also adds that “one of them was a very active fellow. He had struggled against odds to become a barrister.”
This is an explicit reference to Savarkar whose degree was withheld, owing to his public justification of Wyllie’s assassination by Dhingra. In his speech, Savarkar did not fail to mention that Dussera is preceded by Navaratri which is the festival of Shakti. Gandhiji emphasized the fasting and purifying ritual in Navaratri. Needless to say, Savarkar must have in his mind the sacrificial worship of the Goddess Durga when he referred to Navaratri. The war between Rama and Ravana was also mentioned. Here too, Gandhiji referred to the vanavas and Rama’s suffering for 14 years. He also said that despite his difference of opinions with Savarkar, he was proud of the opportunity to be seated near him.
The meeting went smoothly. Both Gandhiji and Savarkar appreciated and praised the work being done by each other. Since there was already an understanding that neither party would touch the issue of Wyllie and Dhingra, none in fact did, and decorum was maintained. One would not even have smelt an iota of controversy between them. But each of them was aware of the fundamental and serious differences existing between them. This confrontation only foreshadowed the future conflict between them which ultimately culminated in the assassination of Gandhiji at the hands of the followers of Savarkar who perhaps thought of themselves as more Savarkarite than Savarkar himself.
The controversy between Gandhiji and Savarkar is not restricted only to the issue of violence and nonviolence. Other issues dealt with by Gandhiji in HS, such as the relation between the end and means, Italy and Mazzini as the model for the freedom struggle, relation between Hindus and Muslims, are also issues on which both of them had serious disagreement. And most importantly, perhaps, they fundamentally differed on the evaluation of the modern civilization which was taken to be one with the western civilization. It is well known that Savarkar was a staunch supporter of western modernity of which science is the soul. Gandhiji, on the other hand, was very critical of it. HS presents a critique of modern, western civilization.
Gandhiji and Savarkar, to summarize, had fundamentally different world views and paradigms of life which were bound to conflict with each other. It was only the glimpse of such a conflict that was responsible for the birth of HS. The Gandhi-Savarkar controversy, thus, forms the necessary contextual background for the birth of HS.
TOP
|
