'Upeksha', in a Hindu theistic context, can mean indifference to, or neglect of, all deities save one's 'ishta-devata' or cherished divinity. This is considered a mere eccentricity or charming idiosyncrasy. However, it can also be the hallmark of a crackpot.
'Freedom's Battle', published in 1922, explains Mahatma Gandhi's strategy as head of the Indian freedom struggle. It begins by insisting that Hindus have a religious duty to sacrifice their lives so that the Caliph retain control of the Arabian peninsula. This was odd. Gandhi must have noticed that Aden was a British possession while the Trucial States were protectorates to some degree. The Ottomans had been forced to yield in North Yemen in 1911 and had quit the South in 1918. The Arabs had revolted against the 'Young Turks'. They didn't want to restore the Caliphate. Why should Hindus die so as to force a horrible tyrant upon the Arabs of the peninsula? Gandhi said this would keep India safe from Muslim aggression. It is certainly true that your enemy won't bother to kill you if you are sacrificing your life in his cause. But this is because you can't kill those who are already dead.
The problem with Gandhi's argument was that 'Muslim aggression' had already been curbed. People like Brigadier Dyer had kicked ass in Iran and then, after Jallianwallah bagh, routed the Afghans. India faced no danger on its northwestern flank. Indeed, Indians continued to enjoy Pax Britannica while Iran, which had been a battleground, experienced a terrible famine. Thus, Gandhi was understood to be merely extending gestural support to the Indian Khilafat campaign. He didn't really mean what he said. The thing was a ploy- nothing more.
The Viceroy's attitude towards Khilafat was 'Upeksha'- neutrality or indifference- though 'danda', coercion and punishment was used where a danger to public order existed. This proved wise. Revelations by the Secretary of State in March 1922 showed that the Viceroy had been secretly lobbying Westminster on behalf of the Indian Muslims. Gandhi, who had surrendered unilaterally, was shown to have led the Muslims up the garden path. His 'upaya'- or policy expedient- was 'maya'- telling lies.
The following extract from 'Freedom's Battle' is titled 'The fifth upaya'-
Our ancients classified the arts of conquest
diplomacy. Conquest has to do with killing enemy soldiers.
into four well-known Upayas.
expedients
Sama,
persuasion and negotiation
Dana,
bribery
Bheda,
sowing dissension
and Danda.
force or the threat of force.
A fifth Upuya was recognised sometimes by our ancients, which they called Upeshka.
That should be Upeksha ( (उपेक्षा) Which means neutrality or indifference,
It is this Punchamopaya that is placed by Mahatma Gandhi before the people of India in the form of Non-cooperation as an alternative, besides violence, to surrender.
The King and the King alone uses upaya or policy expedients. Those wishing to overthrow the King have to do so by force or the threat of force. But then they inherit the King's problems.
In this case, the Viceroy used 'upeksha'- he remained neutral or indifferent to talk of Hijrat or Khilafat or non-Cooperation but wielded the big stick when there was a threat to public order. Both Khilafat and Congress played into the Viceroy's hands. Their own hysteria consumed and then exhausted them finally rendering them abject and impotent. The Brits went ahead with their own scheme. As the saying was, back then, 'the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.' Only one thing had changed. Hindu-Muslim unity, forged in 1916 by Jinnah and Tilak, had disappeared for ever. Gandhi and Rajaji had pretended that Hindus were eager to fight and die for Khilafat. But none had actually done so though, during the war, at least one Hindu, Amba Prasad Sufi, had died for that cause in Iran. Sadly, Gandhi- it seemed- was no Sufi.
Also, he was as stupid as shit. Vide
Where in any case negotiations have failed and the enemy is neither corruptible nor incapable of being divided, and a resort to violence has failed or would certainly be futile the method of Upeshka remains to be applied to the case.
This is only true of a sovereign. If subjects cultivate indifference then there is no political activity- save of an elite or courtly type. Annie Beasant and the Liberal party advocated precisely this strategy. Gandhi had shouldered them aside so as to raise up the bogeyman of a hundred million Indians acting concertedly to chase out the White man. This was 'Indrajala'- an appeal to magic or mass delusion
Indeed, when the very existence of the power we seek to defeat really depends on our continuous co-operation with it,
Nobody needed the cooperation of seditious barristers. The boycott of the courts and Government colleges had failed. Professors and lawyers are parasitic on the State. True, Sinn Fein had succeeded in setting up a parallel court system. But that didn't really harm British rule. It was a military uprising which forced Westminster to grant Ireland Independence. But this involved Partition and was followed by a bloody Civil War.
Of course, Ireland and India weren't really comparable. India was much bigger and, to be frank, in a much stronger position. But what the Indian masses wanted was economic in nature.
and where our Upeskha its very life, our Upeskha or non-co-operation is the most natural and most effective expedient that we can employ to bend it to our will.
The lawyers who boycotted the courts would lose their practice to those who didn't. Instead of educating your kids at subsidized Government Schools and Colleges, you were welcome to reduce the burden on the tax-payer by sending them to shitty Congress Vidyapeets or Muslim Madrasas.
Gandhi's 'Upeksha' consists in being indifferent to, or actively rejecting, all the benefits of the existing regime so as to sustain the 'indra jala' illusion of a 100 million Indians standing together to drive out the White Man. The problem was that no genuine 'Upeksha' was being resorted to. Gandhi himself used trains and, if sufficiently ill, had recourse to Western medicine. Indeed, he needed the Courts so badly that rather than refuse to recognize their authority, the silly man cooperated with the prosecution by entering a guilty plea and requesting the stiffest penalty the law could impose in light of the horrible consequences of his rash actions.
No Englishman believes that his nation can rule or keep India for a day unless the people of India actively co-operate to maintain that rule.
Disraeli made that point in 1857. The problem was that no Indian- including Gandhi- believed that Indians could rule India in a manner such that Partition was averted or minorities were protected. Gandhi said he was cool with India reverting to the Stone Age. Others were less enthused by the prospect. Still, being an agitator had become a paying vocation. But this meant cooperating with the Brits by meekly pleading guilty and going to jail.
Whether the co-operation be given willingly or through ignorance, cupidity, habit or fear, the withdrawal of that co-operation means impossibility of foreign rule in India.
It wasn't just that non-cooperation was useless, the fact is Gandhi couldn't even keep it up for a day once mob violence broke out. He didn't have the quality of upeksha - mental equanimity- but panicked and surrendered even though he'd told the Viceroy that he wouldn't back down this time around even if some violence occurred.
Some of us may not realise this, but those who govern us have long ago known and are now keenly alive to this truth. The active assistance of the people of this country in the supply of the money, men, and knowledge of the languages, customs and laws of the land, is the main-spring of the continuous life of the foreign administration.
The Indian National Congress was even more foreign. It was created by a British ICS officer. The Brits chose to hand over more and more power to it because they had 'upeksha'- indifference- as to who should rule India, provided their own interests were safeguarded.
Indeed the circumstances of British rule in this country are such that but for a double supply of co-operation on the part of the governed, it must have broken down long ago.
Gandhi's unilateral surrender and willingness to plead guilty and go to jail in 1922 did help the Viceroy who soon felt able to lift the Rowlatt Act. Henceforth, the Brits in India could sleep easily in their beds. Mob violence was of a wholly communal character.
Gandhi admits that his 'battle for freedom' was simply a negotiating tactic- like a Trade Union leader demanding worker ownership of the factory but settling for a 3 percent increment in Dearness Allowance.
The powerful character of the measure,
Non-Cooperation wasn't powerful. It was pathetic. The big worry was that the Prince of Wales might complain to his Daddy that the Indians had been rude. In this case some hapless officials may have been scapegoated and denied a gong.
however, leads some to object to non-co-operation because of that very reason. Striking as it does at the very root of Government in India, they fear that non-co-operation must lead to anarchy, and that the remedy is worse than the disease.
This was Gandhi's own view. He called off his feeble protest because some guys in a small town protesting high meat prices roasted a few policemen alive. The fact that the protestors had enrolled themselves in the Congress party meant that Gandhi himself could face a charge of conspiracy to murder. This meant either the hangman's noose or transportation to the Andamans. By calling off Non-Cooperation once violence had occurred, Gandhi had saved his own neck. Yet in confessing to the much lesser crime of sedition, he explained that he had run a 'mad risk'. But he wasn't mad. He was simply a saintly but incompetent politician.
This is an objection arising out of insufficient allowance for human nature. It is assumed that the British people will allow their connection with India to cease rather than remedy the wrongs for which we seek justice.
No. They would disintermediate the seditious barristers and double down on support for the Princes. The 'forward class' Hindus would be displaced in the administration by Muslims and other minorities.
If this assumption be correct, no doubt it must lead to separation and possibly also anarchy for a time.
But Congress couldn't hold India if the Brits left. The Princes had armies and the Zamindars had goons. De-mobbed soldiers would be recruited by warlords of one type or another. The Brits would make big profits selling munitions to them. Barristers would be irrelevant because the Judicial system would have collapsed.
If the operatives in a factory have grievances, negotiations having failed, a strike would on a similar argument be never admissible.
Unless the strikers insist that the owner fucks off after signing over the property deeds of the factory to them.
Unyielding obstinacy being presumed, it must end in the closing down of the factory and break up of the men. But if in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases it is not the case that strikes end in this manner,
The Capitalists waits till the workers are starving. he then re-employs them but under stricter conditions.
it is more unlikely that, instead of righting the manifest wrongs that India complains about, the British people will value their Indian Dominion so low as to prefer to allow us to non-co-operate up to the point of separation.
Gandhi called off the non-co-operation movement before it could do any harm to British interests. The boycott of British cloth, however, did produce an effect. More importantly, it enriched Gandhi's financiers.
Gandhi had taken over Congress by promising to deliver 'Swaraj' in one year. The thing was certainly possible. India had been admitted to the League of Nations. Negotiations with the Princes and various Religious leaders as well as the existing elected or appointed politicians could have resulted in some more or less cosmetic unilateral declaration of Independence, like that of Egypt, which the Brits- on advise from their military commanders would have had to accept. True, this would leave much to be resolved by a bitter process of internal politicking but India would have been in charge of its own political evolution. Westminster would have been disintermediated- to the great relief of most MPs who didn't know, or want to know, the difference between a dhobi and a darogha.
Much laughter has been indulged in at my expense for having told the Congress audience at Calcutta that if there was sufficient response to my programme of non-co-operation Swaraj would be attained in one year. Some have ignored my condition
one crore Rupees must be collected
and laughed because of the impossibility of getting Swaraj anyhow within one year. Others have spelt the 'if' in capitals and suggested that if 'ifs' were permissible in argument, any absurdity could be proved to be a possibility. My proposition however is based on a mathematical calculation.
Mathematical calculations are only useful if a variety of conditions are met.
And I venture to say that true Swaraj is a practical impossibility without due fulfilment of my conditions.
Though ever country which was truly independent didn't fulfil any of Gandhi's conditions.
Swaraj means a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English.
Which is what the US had achieved. It waged a war of Independence. Ireland was doing so at that time.
If it is to be a partnership, it must be partnership at will.
No. It must be a 'fixed term partnership'. Under the 1890 act, if there was a partnership at will then the Brits could stay as long as they pleased with the support of Princes, minorities or other parties. If Congress withdrew, it would lack de jure rights over anything.
There can be no Swaraj without our feeling and being the equals of Englishmen.
But Englishmen had inferior rights to Indian Serene Highnesses who enjoyed sovereign immunity.
To-day we feel that we are dependent upon them for our internal and external security, for an armed peace between the Hindus and the Mussulmans,
so, Gandhi admits that only Pax Britannica had created the illusion of amity between Muslim and Kaffir. Thus Gandhi was far more of a believer in the two nation theory than Jinnah.
for our education and for the supply of daily wants, nay, even for the settlement of our religious squabbles. The Rajahs are dependent upon the British for their powers and the millionaires for their millions. The British know our helplessness and Sir Thomas Holland
a geologist who headed the Indian industrial commission.
cracks jokes quite legitimately at the expense of non-co-operationists.
Holland understood that India was technologically backward and its entrepreneurs, almost without exception, poorly educated. India's dependence on foreign technology and capital would increase, not fall, if it became independent and was thus tasked with feeding and protecting itself.
To get Swaraj then is to get rid of our helplessness.
Or become more abject yet. Gandhi decided to surrender because being helped though helpless is better than being helpless without any protection.
The problem is no doubt stupendous even as it is for the fabled lion who having been brought up in the company of goats found it impossible to feel that he was a lion.
The Jain proverb says that the lion cub separates from the sheep on seeing a member of its own species. The corollary is that when we see an 'Arhat' (perfected Jain monk) we realize our own true nature is spiritual and seeks 'kevalya'. So we separate from the herd and follow the Jain path to the best of our ability.
As Tolstoy used to put it, mankind often laboured under hypnotism.
Tolstoy was mad. Russians laboured under the knout though, it must be admitted, the Tzar had grown lazy and Siberian exile had become quite comfortable and easy to escape. Stalin, after getting power, was pretty energetic in correcting the errors of the Okhrana.
Under its spell continuously we feel the feeling of helplessness. The British themselves cannot be expected to help us out of it. On the contrary, they din into our ears that we shall be fit to govern ourselves only by slow educative processes.
What's wrong with that? We are helpless to speak a foreign language or practice an alien profession. But an educative process can put us on par with anybody else.
The "Times" suggested that if we boycott the councils we shall lose the opportunity of a training in Swaraj. I have no doubt that there are many who believe what the "Times" says. It even resorts to a falsehood. It audaciously says that Lord Milner's Mission listened to the Egyptians only when they were ready to lift the boycott of the Egyptian Council.
Egypt, nominally an Ottoman possession, had been a 'veiled protectorate'. At the outbreak of the War the Brits elevated it to a Sultanate and made it a protectorate. In 1919 the Egyptian Revolution began after Saad Zaghloul was arrested and exiled. The uprising turned violent and so Milner was forced to recommend a unilateral declaration of Independence. In 1924 Zaghloul became Prime Minister. A similar trajectory was possible for India. The difference was that India had much greater military resources. Politically, however, it was stuck with a maha-crackpot.
For me the only training in Swaraj we need is the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our natural life in perfect freedom even though it may be full of defects.
If you have the ability to do something you don't need training in how to do it.
Good Government is no substitute for self-Government.
Yes it is. Sometimes people may prefer good government to shitty self-government. At other times, they may not have the choice.
The Afghans have a bad Government but it is self-Government. I envy them.
Nobody else did. Hijrat was a failure.
The Japanese learnt the art through a sea of blood.
Not really. Casualties were light considering the martial spirit and bitter rivalries of the Samurai clans.
And if we to-day had the power to drive out the English by superior brute force, we would be counted their superiors, and in spite of our inexperience in debating at the Council table or in holding executive offices, we would be held fit to govern ourselves.
Held by whom? Either a country de facto rules itself or it doesn't. India didn't for a very good reason. The Brits were just better at the job. This was the upshot of the Non-Cooperation and Quit India movements. Sadly, the US pulled the plug on the Empire business. Otherwise power would have passed to the Communists who had no scruples over shedding blood.
For brute force is the only test the west has hitherto recognised.
Whereas the East bowed down to Genghis Khan's superior skills in crochet.
The Germans were defeated not because they were necessarily in the wrong, but because the allied Powers were found to possess greater brute strength.
The Germans thought they would win. They were wrong. The same thing happened in 1939.
In the end therefore India must either learn the art of war which the British will not teach her
Under the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms Indianization of the Army was proceeding apace (though, even previously, some Princes had provided quite good training for their troops). The Dehradun Academy was started in 1922. 'Geddes axe' (i.e. cuts to the Imperial Defence budget) meant that India would have to become self-garrisoning.
or, she must follow her own way of discipline and self-sacrifice through non-co-operation.
Because nothing scares the enemy more than a bunch of disciplined guys lining up to get bayonetted. There is some point in training soldiers not to shit themselves and run away from the battlefield. Only if they are disciplined will they be able to kill the enemy. What is utterly foolish is training soldiers to march meekly to their deaths greatly to the enemy's delight.
It is as amazing as it is humiliating that less than one hundred-thousand white men should be able to rule three hundred and fifteen million Indians.
Very true. Four or five Englishmen should have been enough. But only if every Indian became a Gandhian would this be possible.
They do so somewhat undoubtedly by force, but more by securing our co-operation in a thousand ways and making us more and more helpless and dependent on them as time goes forward.
Congress became dependent on the Mahatma at the same time as it became useless. Spontaneous uprisings can secure major constitutional changes. Disciplined and meticulously planned agitations fail spectacularly because they are easily 'gamed' by the adversary. In Gandhi's case, it was initially a question of giving the fool enough rope to hang himself. However, after Gandhi's ignominious performance at the Second Round Table Conference, Viceroys didn't bother talking to him. They just threw him and chums into jail till they calmed down and promised to be good.
Let us not mistake reformed councils, more lawcourts and even governorships for real freedom or power.
Why not? What else would obtain in a free country under representative government?
They are but subtler methods of emasculation.
The Americans had plenty of courts and Governorships and even a President. That's how come Yankee Doodle don't got no balls. Gandhi also believed that if you have sex you are bound to become impotent. The only way to maintain your virility is never to have sex.
The British cannot rule us by mere force.
Why use force when Gandhi & Co meekly queue up to go to jail?
And so they resort to all means, honourable and dishonourable, in order to retain their hold on India.
Gandhi had very queer ideas about what was honorable. On the other hand, to avoid dishonor to a daughter, Gandhi advocated slitting her throat. As reparation to the potential rapist one should offer oneself to him.
They want India's billions and they want India's man power for their imperialistic greed.
Gandhi wanted India's billions for his crackpot schemes.
If we refuse to supply them with men and money, we achieve our goal, namely, Swaraj, equality, manliness.
Gandhi had been recruiting soldiers for the Brits in 1918. Sadly, he was doing this in his native Gujarat. His fellow Gujjus chased him away.
The cup of our humiliation was filled during the closing scenes in the Viceregal Council. Mr. Shastri could not move his resolution on the Punjab. The Indian victims of Jullianwala received Rs. 1,250, the English victims of mob-frenzy received lakhs. The officials who were guilty of crimes against those whose servants they were, were reprimanded. And the councillors were satisfied. If India were powerful, India would not have stood this addition of insult, to her injury.
The fact is, the British Raj needed at least a few British people to live in India. The alternative was indirect rule through Princes or Warlords for the hinterland. Some littoral cities, however might be run on the extra-territorial model of Shanghai's international settlement.
I do not blame the British. If we were weak in numbers as they are, we too would perhaps have resorted to the same methods as they are now employing.
Plenty of peoples were 'weak in numbers'. But great maritime powers- Portugal, Holland, France, Britain- had big Empires in Africa or South Asia. The methods they used differed. The commonality was that the subject people were lacking in cohesion or relevant military skills.
Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak.
But such weapons may permit the weak to become strong.
The British are weak in numbers we are weak in spite of our numbers.
The Brits were strong in numbers. At its peak, the British Army numbered 4 million well equipped, well trained, soldiers of exceptional patriotism and courage. India, in 1918, had only about a half a million combatant soldiers.
The result is that each is dragging the other down. It is common experience that Englishmen lose in character after residence in India and that Indians lose in courage and manliness by contact with Englishmen.
Which is why Indians were constantly taking it up the bum from every Sahib.
This process of weakening is good neither for us, two nations, nor for the world.
Because incessant buggery is so not what God wants.
But if we Indians take care of ourselves the English and the rest of the world would take care of themselves. Our contributions to the world's progress must therefore consist in setting our own house in order.
Gandhi quickly and irretrievably destroyed Hindu Muslim unity by pretending he could get Hindus to go die for the Caliph.
Training in arms for the present is out of the question.
Though there were plenty of demobbed soldiers who could have passed on their skills.
I go a step further and believe that India has a better mission for the world. It is within her to show that she can achieve her destiny by pure self-sacrifice, i.e., self-purification.
Would this involve smearing yourself with cow dung?
This can be done only by non-co-operation.
So, when Gandhi surrendered, he stopped purifying himself. Hopefully, his jailors hosed him down regularly.
And non-co-operation is possible only when those who commenced to co-operate being the process of withdrawal.
God alone knows what this is supposed to mean.
If we can but free ourselves from the threefold maya of Government-controlled schools, Government law-courts and legislative councils,
We will be in the same boat as the illiterate villager who is not aware that they are living in a country called India ruled by a King-Emperor from across the seas. It is easy to be free of education. Get a lobotomy. You will not have competence to appear in a law-court or sit in a legislative councils.
and truly control our own education regulate our disputes and be indifferent to their legislation, we are ready to govern ourselves and we are only then ready to ask the government servants, whether civil or military, to resign, and the tax-payers to suspend payment of taxes.
This was the crux of the problem. Gandhi & Co- despite being lawyers- were not able to set up a parallel legal system. The schools they set up were shit. As for Congress itself, it became a personality cult. The deliberations of the Legislative Councils, though of poor quality, were still less utterly bonkers.
And is it such an impracticable proposition to expect parents to withdraw their children from schools and colleges
that was the attractive aspect of Gandhi's program. Why pay school fees and buy textbooks for your kids when you can tell them that your patriotic principles forbid any such expenditur?
and establish their own institutions or to ask lawyers to suspend their practice and devote their whole time attention to national service against payment where necessary,
Gandhi would pay up to Rs 100 per mensem. It wasn't enough.
of their maintenance, or to ask candidates for councils not to enter councils and lend their passive or active assistance to the legislative machinery through which all control is exercised.
Motilal Nehru had backed Gandhi and gone to jail. But after Gandhi's surrender he changed his mind and joined the Legislative Assembly. Thankfully, he proved an even bigger idiot than Gandhi.
The movement of non-co-operation is nothing but an attempt to isolate the brute force of the British from all the trappings under which it is hidden and to show that brute force by itself cannot for one single moment hold India.
The outcome was the opposite. It became obvious that Congress couldn't control its own members- who ran amok at Chauri Chaura. The killed 22 Indian policemen. The Brits declared martial law and took their time extorting the local populace before hanging about 20 of the locals.
But I frankly confess that, until the three conditions mentioned by me are fulfilled, there is no Swaraj.
India became a colony before there were courts or colleges or councils. The Brits could remain paramount without any such devices. But, since British courts, councils and colleges were better than Gandhian shite, even if high caste Hindus avoided them everybody else would flock to them and rise and rise.
Still, the fact is Gandhi didn't like Councils or Colleges or Courts so it was in his interest to link them to the notion of Swaraj. Gandhi also didn't like sex and had suggested that giving up sex was obligatory for all 'thinking' Indians. Sadly, his sons and grandchildren were all 'unthinking'. They betrayed the Mahatma by putting pee pee in chee chee place which is what causes babies to be born.
We may not go on taking our college degrees, taking thousands of rupees monthly from clients for cases which can be finished in five minutes and taking the keenest delight in wasting national time on the council floor and still expect to gain national self-respect.
Yet, plenty of Brits and Americans and so forth had national self-respect in spades even though they'd been to college and made a lot of money as lawyers in between getting elected to Parliament. It must be said, some such people joined the Army when War was declared and either died bravely or had risen up the ranks. What they didn't do was give up their jobs and prance around in a diaper in the hope that this would contribute to the glory of the nation.
The last though not the least important part of the Maya still remains to be considered.
Only Gandhi was deluded. The Viceroy showed patience in giving Gandhi enough rope to hang himself.
That is Swadeshi. Had we not abandoned Swadeshi, we need not have been in the present fallen state.
Swadeshi was making Gandhi's financier's richer.
If we would get rid of the economic slavery, we must manufacture our own cloth and at the present moment only by hand-spinning and hand weaving.
Sarabhai was a mill-owner who gave Gandhi lots of money. Later he head some dogs killed contrary to law and custom. Gandhi sprang to his defense saying everybody should kill dogs. True Ahimsa involves chasing woofy-dogs and clubbing them to death.
Say what you like, Gandhi's elite buddies got value-for-money from him. One reason Motilal had supported Non-Cooperation was because when his daughter married a Muslim, Gandhi stepped in and got the couple to part. He even arranged a 'suitable boy' for Vijaylaxmi to marry.
All this means discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, organising ability, confidence and courage. If we show this in one year among the classes that to-day count, and make public opinion, we certainly gain Swaraj within one year.
India got nothing. The die-hard Tories scored.
If I am told that even we who lead have not these qualities in us,
Motilal entered the Assembly and went back to practicing Law. His kids and grandkids got College degrees- unless like Indira or Rajiv they were too stupid to do so.
there certainly will never be Swaraj for India,
not even Gandhi could prevent it
but then we shall have no right to blame the English for what they are doing. Our salvation and its time are solely dependent upon us.
It could have been, but Gandhi & Co fucked up. But, surely, so did a large portion of the educated Hindu population. Gandhi had announced his intentions in plain terms-
In a speech made at Calcutta in December 1920, he said
The very fact, that so many of you cannot understand Hindi which is bound to be the National medium of expression throughout Hindustan in gatherings of Indians belonging to different parts of the land, shows the depth of the degradation to which we have sunk, and points to the supreme necessity of the non-co-operation movement which is intended to lift us out of that condition.
Gandhi, it seems, was not so different from Pakistani Generals who insist Bengalis speak Urdu. A hundred years later, Modi and Amit Shah aren't saying anybody has to learn Hindi. On the contrary, States are welcome to promote their own language at the expense of English.
This Government has been instrumental in degrading this great nation in various ways,
It had promoted the notion that nutters like Gandhi- not the Princes to whom his class owed fealty- should have more weightage in councils of State.
and it is impossible to be free from it without co-operation amongst ourselves which is in turn impossible without a national medium of expression.
Bal, Pal and Lal had no difficulty co-operating.
But I am not here to day to plead for the medium.
The Brits had promoted vernacular languages. The Indians themselves clamored for English.
I am to plead for the acceptance by the country of the programme of non-violent, progressive non-co-operation.
This involved providing an alternative legal system- as Sinn Fein had done in Catholic Ireland- as well as Nationalist Schools and Colleges. Indians failed completely in both enterprises. British Law and British style Education, not to mention a British style Parliament, has prevailed.
Now all the words that I have used here are absolutely necessary and the two adjectives 'progressive' and 'non-violent' are integral part of a whole. With me non-violence is part of my religion, a matter of creed.
Which is why the maha-crackpot tried to recruit soldiers for the Brits.
But with the great number of Mussalmans non-violence is a policy, with thousand, if not millions of Hindus, it is equally a matter of policy.
Gandhi is saying, most Muslims are murderous fanatics. Few Hindus are.
But whether it is a creed or a policy, it is utterly impossible for you to finish the programme for the enfranchisement of the millions of India, without recognising the necessity and the value of non-violence.
Why? The Americans and the French had violently overthrown Kings so as to greatly expand the franchise.
Violence may for a moment avail to secure a certain measure of success but it could not in the long run achieve any appreciable result.
The opposite was the case. Non-violence achieved nothing and more non-violence secured nothing. Violence achieved things and the threat of more violence secured them. What is won by the sword, the sword can safeguard. What is won by non-violence- i.e. bribery or sulking- is not worth having. The proof was Pax Britannica. The Raj had established itself with a little violence and used harsher measures to put down the one serious threat it faced. A little killing, promptly done, can keep vast Provinces peaceful for a generation.
On the other hand all violence would prove destructive to the honour and self-respect of the nation.
Provided it doesn't mind taking it up the arse from any new invader.
The blue books issued by the Government of India show that in as much as we have used violence, military expenditure has gone up, not proportionately but in geometrical progression.
it had gone up but was falling back down. During a War, military expenditure goes up less than proportionately to the threat because of economies of scope and scale.
The bonds of our slavery have been forged all the stronger for our having offered violence.
Perhaps Gandhi meant Jugantar and Ghaddar and other such revolutionaries. They were dealt with by the Police and the Intelligence Service, not the military.
And the whole history of British rule in India is a demonstration of the fact that we have never been able to offer successful violence.
or successful non-violence. On the other hand the policy of cooperation yielded tangible results- which is why Gandhi was against it.
Whilst therefore I say that rather than have the yoke of a Government that has so emasculated us, I would welcome violence.
what about sodomy?
I would urge with all the emphasis that I can command that India will never be able to regain her own by methods of violence.
Empires only fall because of violence. A Commonwealth is a different matter. But that involves Courts, Colleges and Councils.
Lord Ronaldshay who has done me the honour of reading my booklet on Home Rule has warned my countrymen against engaging themselves in a struggle for a Swaraj such as is described in that booklet.
India agreed with Ronaldshay. Gandhi had explicitly said that he wasn't pursuing the program of 'Hind Swaraj' but the very constitutional goals he had previously derided and rejected.
Now though I do not want to withdraw a single word of it, I would say to you on this occasion that I do not ask India to follow out to-day the methods prescribed in my booklet. If they could do that they would have Home Rule not in a year but in a day, and India by realising that ideal wants to acquire an ascendancy over the rest of the world.
If all Indians retreated to autarkic villages and gave up sex, there would be no India.
But it must remain a day dream more or less for the time being.
Gandhi, sadly, wasn't able to get his countrymen to perish as a race.
What I am doing to-day is that I am giving the country a pardonable programme not the abolition of law courts, posts, telegraphs and of railways but for the attainment of Parliamentary Swarja. I am telling you to do that so long as we do not isolate ourselves from this Government, we are co-operating with it through schools, law courts and councils, through service civil and military and payment of taxes and foreign trade.
Did anybody stop paying taxes? No. They would have been sold up if they did. Collecting money to pay lawyers not to appear in court was a foolish idea. The money soon ran out.
The moment this fact is realised and non-co-operation is effected, this Government must totter to pieces.
Many students did fuck up their future by quitting Skool. But the boycott of the courts was a fiasco. On the other hand, import of cloth halved.
If I know that the masses were prepared for the whole programme at once, I would not delay in putting it at once to work.
Gandhi didn't know shit about the masses.
It is not possible at the present moment, to prevent the masses from bursting out into wrath against those who come to execute the law,
But wrath subsides once people get shot
it is not possible, that the military would lay down their arms without the slightest violence. If that were possible to-day, I would propose all the stages of non-co-operation to be worked simultaneously.
But if the boycott was an elite affair it would have no effect UNLESS there was a spontaneous mass uprising such that the elite could claim that their intervention was vital so as to avert anarchy.
But we have not secured that control over the masses,
coz that costs money- lots of money.
we have uselessly frittered away precious years of the nation's life in mastering a language which we need least for winning our liberty;
does Gandhi mean learning Hindi? That truly is a waste of time.
we have frittered away all those years in learning liberty from Milton and Shakespeare,
which is like trying to learn Physics from porn
in deriving inspiration from the pages of Mill,
who kept saying 'Indians are shitty. They can't have Liberty because they have shit for brains'. Well, he didn't use those exact words but did specify that his doctrine did not apply to 'backward... races still in their nonage'. Gandhi's prancing around in a diaper was a case in point.
whilst liberty could be learnt at our doors.
from a dude in a diaper
We have thus succeeded in isolating ourselves from the masses: we have been westernised. We have failed these 35 years to utilise our education in order to permeate the masses.
The barristers fucked over the masses by fleecing them. That was why they had invested in a legal education.
We have sat upon the pedestal and from there delivered harangues to them in a language they do not understand and we see to-day that we are unable to conduct large gatherings in a disciplined manner. And discipline is the essence of success. Here is therefore one reason why I have introduced the word 'progressive' in the non-co-operation Resolution. Without any impertinence I may say that I understand the mass mind better than any one amongst the educated Indians. I contend that the masses are not ready for suspension of payment of taxes.
Gandhi was wrong. The one thing the masses wanted was not to pay rent or tax. Moreover, this was a cause in which non-violence- at least against agents of the State- made sense. If nobody pays taxes then nobody's property can be distrained nor can anybody be sent to jail. The trouble was that lots of Congress men had tenants or were money-lenders. If the peasant stops paying the zamindar, why would he pay the sahukar?
They have not yet learnt sufficient self-control. If I was sure of non-violence on their part I would ask them to suspend payment to-day and not waste a single moment of the nations time. With me the liberty of India has become a passion. Liberty of Islam is as dear to me. I would not therefore delay a moment if I found that the whole of the programme could be enforced at once.
Only the boycott of imported cloth came close to success. But Britain had a diversified economy. Lancashire had other markets. In any case, full Independence would mean the loss of not half, but all, its sales to India.
It grieves me to miss the faces of dear and revered leaders in this assembly. We miss here the trumpet voice of Surendranath Banorji,
who got Bengalis to stop banging on about Religious reform to focus on politics. The maha-crackpot, taking over the INC, put Religion back on the agenda. Everybody must worship the Ahimsa fairy while spinning cotton and abstaining from sex. Surendranath entered the Legislative Council and was knighted in 1921. But this meant he lost the 1923 election and faded out of politics.
who has rendered inestimable service to the country. And though we stand as poles asunder to-day, though we may have sharp differences with him, we must express them with becoming restraint. I do not ask you to give up a single iota of principle. I urge non-violence in language and in deed. If non-violence is essential in our dealings with Government, it is more essential in our dealings with our leaders.
Gandhi had been beaten by beefy Pathans who thought he'd been bribed by Smuts. He wished to discourage this practice.
And it grieves me deeply to hear of recent instances of violence reported to have been used in East Bongal against our own people. I was pained to hear that the ears of a man who had voted at the recent elections had been cut, and night soil had been thrown into the bed of a man who had stood as a candidate.
This was the 1920 General Election- the first of its kind. Gandhi had called for a boycott of the elections but only one percent of seats were uncontested. Gandhi's 'upeksha upaya' was to ignore or be indifferent to what was actually on offer in order to conjure up the 'indra jala' mirage of a hundred million Indians dying for Khilafat in between boycotting courts, councils, colleges and common sense.
On the other hand, Gandhi seems to have accepted that some of 'his own people' had their ears cut or their beds shat upon because they voted or stood for election. Democracy, it seems, was not so utterly alien after all.
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