Englers' Waging Non-Violence' and the wages of stupidity

Mark and Paul Engler write in 'Waging Non-Violence'

Understanding the Salt March and its lessons for today requires stepping back to look at some of the fundamental questions of how social movements effect change. With proper context, one can say that Gandhi’s actions were brilliant examples of the use of symbolic demands and symbolic victory.

Surely the opposite is the case? The Salt tax still exists in India. The demand may have been symbolic, but the outcome was defeat.

Why did the Salt March take place? There are three reasons

1) The Swaraj party, headed by Motilal Nehru and C.R Das had opposed a rise in the salt tax in 1924. This embarrassed the new Labor Government without gaining anything for India. Still, Gandhi felt that by taking up this cause he was outflanking the Swarajists.

2) The peasants of Bardoli had succeeded in getting their land tax cut under Gandhian leadership in 1928. This meant peasants all over India became enthused by the Independence movement. Unfortunately, Congress couldn't back the peasants because there were plenty of landlords within its fold.

3) In January 1930, the younger element in Congress prevailed. Complete Independence was the demand and withholding tax the means to achieve it. The problem, as in 1924, was what new tax could replace it? The easy answer would be an excise duty on alcohol but Gandhi wanted total prohibition. Still, the fact remains, if you get rid of a regressive tax you have to replace it with something more progressive to balance the books.

Gandhi knew that many Congressmen owned land. That land would be auctioned if they didn't pay the land tax.  Sooner or later, those who lost the family land would be blamed and would suffer remorse. This might cause a revolt against the whole Gandhian ideology. Thus Gandhi chose the Salt Tax as his target. Nobody would lose their property and only about 8 percent of Government Revenue would be affected. Still, during a Depression, when revenues are collapsing 8 percent is still 8 percent. 

The outcome of Gandhi's shenanigans was farcical. The tax remained. Once Labour was out of office, the Brits held a Round Table Conference which highlighted India's internal divisions. Thus the Brits would dictate the pace and scope of reforms.  The Indian National Congress lost is position as Britain's primary interlocutor. It was seen as a Hindu party advancing the agenda of orthodox businessmen. Indeed, the Salt March had been financed by Dalmia- a controversial millionaire later jailed for fraud. Congress would get to dominate Hindu majority states but the Liberals would do a corrupt deal with the Brits- e.g. Modi-Lees agreement which ended the textile boycott which had hurt Lancashire- so the 'banias' made money at the expense of the peasants and workers.

Symbols do matter if they correspond to actual Power. The Crown is a symbol. But the Crown can lock up a criminal or bomb an enemy into submission. Victories may be Pyrrhic or even wholly bogus. But winning does matter.

But what is involved in these concepts?

Stupid lies are involved in these concepts.

All protest actions, campaigns and demands have both instrumental and symbolic dimensions.

But the Salt March had neither. It was a piece of theater designed to show something which was no secret- i.e. the INC was the tool of crooked banias like Dalmia.

The salt satyagraha — or campaign of nonviolent resistance that began with Gandhi’s march — is a defining example of using escalating, militant and unarmed confrontation to rally public support and effect change.

It is a defining example of failure. People participated in the Salt satyagraha because they thought it was the first step to the removal of land taxation. When they realized they had been cheated they moved away from Gandhi's Congress and sought to build up a Socialist movement.

It is also a case in which the use of symbolic demands, at least initially, provoked ridicule and consternation.

Indeed. But the thing could have snowballed which is why some British officials were sweating bullets. That it did not do so was put down to Viceroy Irwin's persuasive skills. Nevertheless, the fact is, Gandhi failed to capitalize on the second Labour Government's brief period in office.  Indeed, Leftist denunciation of Gandhian humbuggery caused MacDonald to grant the 'Communal Award'- i.e. put the Caste Hindus at loggerheads with the rest of the populace. Soon enough, Labour, unable to deal with the economic crisis, lost office. Thus the future would be determined by the die-hard Tories. The new Viceroy, Willingdon, simply jailed Gandhi and banned the INC.  Muslim League politicians were the biggest gainers from Gandhi's failure. This meant that Congress leaders learned to speak with a double voice. On the one hand, they were obedient disciples of Ahimsa. On the other, they would organize anti-Muslim violence and blatantly discriminate against them in every field of public life.

It is also a case in which the use of symbolic demands, at least initially, provoked ridicule and consternation.
When charged with selecting a target for civil disobedience, Gandhi’s choice was preposterous. At least that was a common response to his fixation on the salt law as the key point upon which to base the Indian National Congress’ challenge to British rule. Mocking the emphasis on salt, The Statesman noted, “It is difficult not to laugh, and we imagine that will be the mood of most thinking Indians.”

This was precisely the problem. Had Gandhi fought and lost on an issue of genuine importance, he would have been respected. But because he fought and lost on a bogus issue, people thought he was a crank in the pay of Hindu vested interests. Congress was not a National party. It was not even a Hindu party. It was the party of wealthy banias with bizarre religious beliefs and deeply repugnant prejudices. Recall, Gandhi's only victory was over, the Dalit, Ambedkar who made it crystal clear that he had been bullied into submission. If Gandhi had fasted to death on the Dalit issue, Dalits would have been massacred in villages across the length and breadth of India. Unlike Gandhi, Dr. Ambedkar remains a political icon in India.

In 1930, the instrumentally focused organizers within the Indian National Congress were focused on constitutional questions — whether India would gain greater autonomy by winning “dominion status” and what steps toward such an arrangement the British might concede.

The INC declared 'purna swaraj'- complete Independence- in January though, of course, no such thing obtained.

The salt laws were a minor concern at best, hardly high on their list of demands. Biographer Geoffrey Ashe argues that, in this context, Gandhi’s choice of salt as a basis for a campaign was “the weirdest and most brilliant political challenge of modern times.”

To be fair, the thing could have snowballed. But the administration was ready. It jailed 60,000 people. Still a substantial cost had been imposed on the Government. Gandhi should either have stayed in jail or refused to accept anything less than a complete revision of the land and other taxes on being released. In his defence, the kindest thing we can say was that nature had not endowed him with a talent for negotiation. He believed that giving the other side more than they demand was a good idea. This may be true in private life. It is not true in the Law or in Politics. You are supposed to get the best deal you can for your people, not make friends with your opponent by selling them out.

It was brilliant because defiance of the salt law was loaded with symbolic significance. “Next to air and water,” Gandhi argued, “salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life.”

Sadly, money is the greatest necessity of life. The people wanted to pay less in land revenue. Indeed, most wanted to get rid of landlords and usurers. Salt was supposed to be the first brick in the wall. But it was left in place.

It was a simple commodity that everyone was compelled to buy, and which the government taxed. Since the time of the Mughal Empire, the state’s control over salt was a hated reality.

Yet, India still has a Salt Tax. The reality is it didn't matter very much.

The fact that Indians were not permitted to freely collect salt from natural deposits or to pan for salt from the sea was a clear illustration of how a foreign power was unjustly profiting from the subcontinent’s people and its resources.

Indeed. But the right time to campaign on the issue was in 1923 when it was doubled.

Since the tax affected everyone, the grievance was universally felt.

It was a regressive tax. That's why it was left in place by the barristocrats paid by the banias.

The fact that it most heavily burdened the poor added to its outrage. The price of salt charged by the government, Ashe writes, “had a built-in levy — not large, but enough to cost a laborer with a family up to two weeks wages a year.” It was a textbook moral injury. And people responded swiftly to Gandhi’s charge against it.

Yet the whole thing collapsed. Why? Because it was supposed to be the first brick in the wall. The land tax was worse. If you couldn't pay it your land was auctioned off.

Indeed, those who had ridiculed the campaign soon had reason to stop laughing. In each village through which the satyagrahis marched, they attracted massive crowds — with as many of 30,000 people gathering to see the pilgrims pray and to hear Gandhi speak of the need for self-rule. As historian Judith Brown writes, Gandhi “grasped intuitively that civil resistance was in many ways an exercise in political theater, where the audience was as important as the actors.” In the procession’s wake, hundreds of Indians who served in local administrative posts for the imperial government resigned their positions.

Why? They believed Congress was going to deliver Complete Independence as they had promised in January of 1930. The time was ripe. It was now or never. Sadly, thanks to Gandhi, it was never. Independence did come, but it was a gift from Hitler & Tojo.

After the march reached the sea and disobedience began, the campaign achieved an impressive scale. Throughout the country, huge numbers of dissidents began panning for salt and mining natural deposits. Buying illegal packets of the mineral, even if they were of poor quality, became a badge of honor for millions. The Indian National Congress set up its own salt depot, and groups of organized activists led nonviolent raids on the government salt works, blocking roads and entrances with their bodies in an attempt to shut down production. News reports of the beatings and hospitalizations that resulted were broadcast throughout the world.
Soon, the defiance expanded to incorporate local grievances and to take on additional acts of noncooperation. Millions joined the boycott of British cloth and liquor, a growing number of village officials resigned their posts, and, in some provinces, farmers refused to pay land taxes. In increasingly varied forms, mass non-compliance took hold throughout a vast territory. And, in spite of energetic attempts at repression by British authorities, it continued month after month.
Finding issues that could “attract wide support and maintain the cohesion of the movement,” Brown notes, was “no simple task in a country where there were such regional, religious and socio-economic differences.” And yet salt fit the bill precisely. Motilal Nehru, father of the future prime minister, remarked admiringly, “The only wonder is that no one else ever thought of it.”

So, there were snowballing protests across the country. Britain itself was reeling from the effects of Great Depression. The wonder is how the thing collapsed so completely. But there is an easy answer to this question. The Muslims distrusted Gandhi because he had betrayed them on Khilafat. The Socialists and some younger Dalits were equally suspicious of the bania bankrolled INC. Yet, if Gandhi had stuck to his guns, these suspicions would have been dispelled. But, as in 1922, he folded on an unbeatable hand.

If the choice of salt as a demand had been controversial, the manner in which Gandhi concluded the campaign would be equally so. Judged by instrumental standards, the resolution to the salt satyagraha fell short. By early 1931, the campaign had reverberated throughout the country, yet it was also losing momentum. Repression had taken a toll, much of Congress’ leadership had been arrested, and tax resisters whose property had been seized by the government were facing significant financial hardship.

Suppose Gandhi's Ashrams and his various schemes had been self-supporting. Then he wouldn't have had to fold. He could have waited it out.

Moderate politicians and members of the business community who supported the Indian National Congress appealed to Gandhi for a resolution. Even many militants with the organization concurred that talks were appropriate.

This is true. But by not sticking to its guns, the INC showed itself to be a creature of straw. This meant that the next Viceroy would ban it and jail its members if it tried to wag its tail.

Accordingly, Gandhi entered into negotiations with Lord Irwin in February 1931, and on March 5 the two announced a pact.

It is no coincidence that the Kanpur communal riots broke out at the end of March. The first casualty of Gandhian betrayals was Hindu-Muslim relations.

On paper, many historians have argued, it was an anti-climax. The key terms of the agreement hardly seemed favorable to the Indian National Congress: In exchange for suspending civil disobedience, protesters being held in jail would be released, their cases would be dropped, and, with some exceptions, the government would lift the repressive security ordinances it had imposed during the satyagraha. Authorities would return fines collected by the government for tax resistance, as well as seized property that had not yet been sold to third parties. And activists would be permitted to continue a peaceful boycott of British cloth.

 What was the result of this climb-down? The next Viceroy felt he needn't bother with Gandhi or the INC. He could just ban the party and jail the whole bunch of them. There is no point doing 'Non Violent conflict' if the other side knows in advance that you will capitulate. Why bother with negotiation?

However, the pact deferred discussion of questions about independence to future talks, with the British making no commitments to loosen their grip on power. (Gandhi would attend a Roundtable conference in London later in 1931 to continue negotiations, but this meeting made little headway.) The government refused to conduct an inquiry into police action during the protest campaign, which had been a firm demand of Indian National Congress activists. Finally, and perhaps most shockingly, the Salt Act itself would remain law, with the concession that the poor in coastal areas would be allowed to produce salt in limited quantities for their own use.

Knowing all this, how can the authors think the Dandi Salt March was a success? No doubt stupid lies about it are told but stupid lies are told about all sorts of things.

Some of the politicians closest to Gandhi felt extremely dismayed by the terms of the agreement, and a variety of historians have joined in their assessment that the campaign failed to reach its goals. In retrospect, it is certainly legitimate to argue about whether Gandhi gave away too much in negotiations. At the same time, to judge the settlement merely in instrumental terms is to miss its wider impact.

What was the 'wider impact'? The INC lost its claim to be a truly National party. The myth that it might do something to help the poor was shattered. INC members stopped believing India could attain 'Purna Swaraj'. Nehru, speaking in the mid Forties- thought it might come in the 1970's. He did not expect to see it in his lifetime. One consequence of this loss of hope was that Congressmen looked to politics as a way to line their own pockets. Thus, when provincial autonomy came, corruption and communalism set in. True, this already existed in some Municipalities. But after 1937 it was the rule, not the exception.

If not by short-term, incremental gains, how does a campaign that employs symbolic demands or tactics measure its success?

By telling stupid lies.

For momentum-driven mass mobilizations, there are two essential metrics by which to judge progress. Since the long-term goal of the movement is to shift public opinion on an issue,

but 'public opinion' had already embraced 'Purna Swaraj'. What nobody expected was that Gandhi and the INC would turn out to be utterly useless.

the first measure is whether a given campaign has won more popular support for a movement’s cause.

This did not happen. There was less support for Nationalism. The Brits took advantage of this to deliver provincial autonomy with British officials having the deciding say because of horizontal and vertical divisions across the breadth of the country.

The second measure is whether a campaign builds the capacity of the movement to escalate further.

The INC's capacity declined. It only recovered its position in Hindu India when the Japs were at the gate. But it lost this again as the Japanese were pushed back. In the end, Nehru begged the Viceroy to stay on as Governor General. The Brits got out on advantageous terms. Innocent minorities in many parts of the country were either killed or rendered penniless refugees.

If a drive allows activists to fight another day from a position of greater strength — with more members, superior resources, enhanced legitimacy and an expanded tactical arsenal — organizers can make a convincing case that they have succeeded, regardless of whether the campaign has made significant progress in closed-door bargaining sessions.

The opposite happened. Viceroy Irwin had been forced to negotiate with Gandhi. His successor did not need to bother.

Throughout his career as a negotiator, Gandhi stressed the importance of being willing to compromise on non-essentials.

But he ended up compromising on essentials.

As Joan Bondurant observes in her perceptive study of the principles of satyagraha, one of his political tenets was the “reduction of demands to a minimum consistent with the truth.”

Thus he opposed the Pass Law in South Africa. Then he decided it was a very good thing to have a Pass and got out of jail to spread this new gospel. Naturally, some Indians beat the shit out of him.

The pact with Irwin, Gandhi believed, gave him such a minimum, allowing the movement to end the campaign in dignified fashion and to prepare for future struggle.

There was no future struggle. Why? Because Viceroys understood that the INC were men of straw. Even with the Japs at the gate, they didn't bother talking to Gandhi. He was simply a nuisance. He went of hunger strike and they said they'd be delighted if he died. So he started eating again. The thing was pathetic.

For Gandhi, the viceroy’s agreement to allow for exceptions to the salt law, even if they were limited, represented a critical triumph of principle.

This may well be true. He was a deeply silly man.

Moreover, he had forced the British to negotiate as equals — a vital precedent that would be extended into subsequent talks over independence.

This is the crux of the matter. In 1920, Britain was militarily overstretched. It had to concede to Irish and Egyptian demands for independence. India should have got something similar then. But Gandhi showed the white feather. Again, in 1930, Britain was vulnerable because of the Great Depression. Again Gandhi showed the white feather. After that nobody bothered to talk with him till Britain had been economically ruined by the War and America was calling the shots. But it was Jinnah who emerged as the decisive negotiator. Gandhi had become such a nuisance, his own people failed to protect him from assassination. It was an American who caught Nathuram Godse.

In their own fashion, many of Gandhi’s adversaries agreed on the significance of these concessions, seeing the pact as a misstep of lasting consequence for imperial powers. As Ashe writes, the British officialdom in Delhi “ever afterwards… groaned over Irwin’s move as the fatal blunder from which the Raj never recovered.”

This is foolish. Willingdon succeeded Irwin and took a tough line with the INC. The Raj got a second lease of life. People like Nehru no longer believed they would see Purna Swaraj in their life-time. In 1929, Irwin had spoken of Dominion status for India. This certainly upset the diehard Imperialists. But Irwin was right. India could not be held for much longer unless Gandhi was genuinely a cretin or genuinely wanted the British to stay. The charitable view is that he was genuinely stupid.

In a now-infamous speech, Winston Churchill, a leading defender of the British Empire, proclaimed that it was “alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi… striding half-naked up the steps of the Vice-regal palace… to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.” The move, he claimed, had allowed Gandhi — a man he saw as a “fanatic” and a “fakir” — to step out of prison and “[emerge] on the scene a triumphant victor.”

Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, destroyed the British Empire by taking a shilling off Income Tax rather than spending that money on the Navy.

While insiders had conflicted views about the campaign’s outcome, the broad public was far less equivocal. Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the radicals in the Indian National Congress who was skeptical of Gandhi’s pact, had to revise his view when he saw the reaction in the countryside. As Ashe recounts, when Bose traveled with Gandhi from Bombay to Delhi, he “saw ovations such as he had never witnessed before.” Bose recognized the vindication. “The Mahatma had judged correctly,” Ashe continues. “By all the rules of politics he had been checked. But in the people’s eyes, the plain fact that the Englishman had been brought to negotiate instead of giving orders outweighed any number of details.”

Bose was young. He would soon come to see that Gandhi's money power- arising from the financial support of banias and Marwari traders- would keep Bose and his brother out of office. By contrast, Police Commissioner Tegart, who crushed the Jugantar revolutionaries and had a vendetta against the Bose brothers, got a Directorship with Birla's British holding company!

In his influential 1950 biography of Gandhi, still widely read today, Louis Fischer provides a most dramatic appraisal of the Salt March’s legacy: “India was now free,” he writes. “Technically, legally, nothing had changed. India was still a British colony.” And yet, after the salt satyagraha, “it was inevitable that Britain should some day refuse to rule India and that India should some day refuse to be ruled.”

But Warren Hastings, in 1818, said the day was not distant when Britain would give up the Empire it had unintentionally gained in India. Thanks to holier than thou cretins like Raja Ram Mohan Roy the British remained for another century. Gandhi may have extended their rule by twenty or twenty five years. He did nothing to end it.

Subsequent historians have sought to provide more nuanced accounts of Gandhi’s contribution to Indian independence, distancing themselves from a first generation of hagiographic biographies that uncritically held up Gandhi as the “father of a nation.” Writing in 2009, Judith Brown cites a variety of social and economic pressures that contributed to Britain’s departure from India, particularly the geopolitical shifts that accompanied the Second World War. Nevertheless, she acknowledges that drives such as the Salt March were critical, playing central roles in building the Indian National Congress’ organization and popular legitimacy. Although mass displays of protest alone did not expel the imperialists, they profoundly altered the political landscape. Civil resistance, Brown writes, “was a crucial part of the environment in which the British had to make decisions about when and how to leave India.”

Indeed. The trouble was 'Civil Resistance' showed Indians to be as stupid as shit. This caused a backlash in India such that the propertied were forced to support the Brits in the hope that less stupid shitheads might one day rise to the fore.

As Martin Luther King Jr. would in Birmingham some three decades later, Gandhi accepted a settlement that had limited instrumental value but that allowed the movement to claim a symbolic win and to emerge in a position of strength.

Dr. King represented a small minority. Gandhi represented the vast majority. It is foolish to compare them.

Gandhi’s victory in 1931 was not a final one,

There was no victory. Gandhi's failure meant that the British alone would decide India's future. The INC had failed to establish itself as a National Movement.

nor was King’s in 1963. Social movements today continue to fight struggles against racism, discrimination, economic exploitation and imperial aggression. But, if they choose, they can do so aided by the powerful example of forebears who converted moral victory into lasting change.

Gandhi's defeat was total. Let us look at his core program for India
1) An indigenous Justice system of the sort created by the Sinn Fein. This failed immediately
2) An indigenous Educational system. This was a farcical failure.
3) The replacement of the British Administrative and Military system by community based grass-roots decision making. Nobody even bothered to try the experiment.
4) A different economic system which did without Technological Industrialization. This was a source of rent extraction and explains why India fell so far behind other poor countries like South Korea.
5) Hindu-Muslim unity. Independence saw the biggest ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Indian history. Gandhi admitted that it was Congress workers who organized this in Bihar. But he didn't ask for their prosecution or, at least, their suspension from the Party.
6) Championing 'Hindustani' as the lingua franca. Again an abject failure. People born in the Nineteen Twenties or Thirties were obliged to be fluent in at least one Indian language. After Independence, for the first time in history, you had Indians who went to School and College in India and entered the Diplomatic Service who had no knowledge of any Indian language. It was only about 40 years ago that a qualifying exam in Hindi was introduced for the Civil Service exam. I know many people in their Sixties with Brahman or Kayastha names who can't read a single Indian language. They would shout at their servants in 'pawnee lao' Laat Sahib fashion. Rajiv Gandhi, famously, could not read Devanagari or any other Indian script. Thankfully, his son and daughter- like his wife- can read Hindi though Rahul has a 'cheat sheet' in Roman script. It is said that Sonia once corrected Sanjay's Hindi. This is believable. But it is shameful. Yet such was the Mahatma's legacy. If only he had done a degree in India before going to London, he would have had a grounding in at least one Classical language. Thus, he wouldn't have misunderstood Indian scripture. He would have been less crazy because he'd have appreciated that a lot of Indians were smarter than himself. That was the humility he lacked.

Is there any harm in Westerners thinking Gandhi achieved something through non-violence and 'symbolic' struggles? After all, they are concerned with weak minorities not a huge majority which could slaughter every White person in the country with their bare hands.

The answer is, yes, great harm is done by telling stupid lies. You encourage magical thinking. You raise up 'wedge issues' of a purely symbolic type. This means you get more and more 'circular firing squads'. To be considered 'woke' you have to spend every waking moment condemning all and sundry for some trifling lapse in political correctness. People come to loathe the sight of you. They think you are a bully and a cretin. They quietly vote for Trump because he will sneer at you in his tweets.

Obama could have indulged in Cornel West type demagoguery. Why didn't he? It is because he had won cases as a lawyer. He know that careful, alethic, 'pattern or practice' investigation was the way to go. Talking worthless nonsense helps nobody. You are not 'waging non-violence' but engaging in soul-crushing labor for the wages of stupidity.