In February 1921, Mahatma Gandhi had visited Gorakhpur, briefly stopping at Chauri Chaura station, and received a rapturous welcome. Over the next few months there appeared to be a veritable cult of this semi-divine figure who was credited with all sorts of miracles. The British owned Pioneer newspaper spoke disapprovingly of this 'canonization'. However, it initially strengthened the hand of the Congress/Khilafat combine. 'Authority' could no longer claim that these elite barristers did not speak for the Indian masses. The reverse side of the coin only became apparent a year later with the Chauri Chaura riots where policemen were killed by a rampaging mob. This led Gandhi, who had visited the area two weeks previously, to call off the Non Cooperation Movement and go meekly to jail. One reason for this is that the police had raided the Congress/Khilafat office in Gorakhpur and thus got their hands on the 'pledge forms'. It was from this that the drew up a list of likely rioters whom they planned to prosecute to the hilt. Had there been no signed pledge forms, Congress could have pleaded ignorance and attributed the violence to hooligans or those with a personal grudge against the Police sub-inspector most concerned in the events. However, because Gandhi had visited the area and some of those arrested would be bound to implicate him, rightly or wrongly, he had no alternative but to surrender unilaterally and go to jail on the lesser charge of sedition rather than be sent to the Andamans for waging war on the King Emperor.
Nishant Batsha, an American novelist, gives a Lacanian interpretation of these events in an essay he wrote as an undergraduate-
A Hegelian account of Gandhi's importance would view his ability to halt an entire national movement as proof of his status as a World-Historical individual.
No. It would prove he wasn't a World-Historical individual. India did not get what Ireland and Egypt and Afghanistan at around this time. Gandhi, clearly, didn't want India to become independent because he thought Indians were not ready for independence. This meant that the Labour party, which came to power in 1924, had to change its policy towards India.
However, I use an analytic framework based upon the Lacanian notion of the imaginary and symbolic orders in order to reinterpret Gandhi's position within the nationalistic framework as a construct of the peasant imaginary.
The problem here is that the leaders of the satyagraha procession in Chauri Chaura had paid their dues and become members of the Indian National Congress. However, the Left contends that the rioters were mainly lower caste and their real grievance was with the local Zamindar family (of the Majithia family. The elder son being the father of Amrita Shergil) who were backed by senior police officers in the area, some of whom were Sikh and who had business interests there. In other words, there was a complex local dynamic to the events. Had some 'construct of the peasant imaginary' been at work, there should have been a thousand Chauri Chauras. The fact is there was only one Sikh zamindari in the area. This had been awarded by the British in return for loyalty in 1857.
This is not to say that Gandhi was not a central figure in the Indian nationalist movement. Rather, his centrality was not a function of his own status as an elite nationalist
if he hadn't been a great fund-raiser supported by Indian industrialists, nobody in Gorakhpur would have known his name.
— it was a direct result of a mass imaginary of Gandhi that rested within peasant populations.
If this were the case, peasants in other parts of the Doab would have been acting in a similar fashion. Also, the peasants would have refused to believe the divine Mahatma had withdrawn the agitation. They would have said 'Mahatama is in occultation. British, use Black Magic, to put a 'Maya' Mahatma (i.e. a magical double) in prison. Once we have killed the evil doers, Mahatma will return to us.
In January 1921, during this campaign for mass enlistment, a local unit of the movement was established in Chotki Dumri, which was one mile west of Chauri Chaura. An official was dispatched to Chauri Chaura, who elected a few satyagrahi-officers and distributed pledge forms.
This is why Gandhi and Co. could be tried for 'waging war against the King Emperor' and sent off to the Andamans. By comparison, being jailed for sedition was a piece of cake.
Interestingly, local volunteers, in addition to pledging to uphold the values within the pledge, also agreed to the extension of abstaining from meat and liquor. A few days before February 4th , volunteers demonstrated for a fair price of meat,
This bit tends to be left out by Nationalist historians. Still, it was nice of the rioters not to eat the policemen they had roasted nicely.
Ranajit Guha noted at the dawn of the Subaltern Studies movement, ―the historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism
Because only elite is literate. Non-elite is illiterate and likes roasting, if not eating, policemen. Still, Guha is wrong. The elites in India at that time were guys like the uncle of Amrita Shergil who was also a successful industrialist and was knighted by the British. The 'barristocrats'- i.e. guys like Nehru, Gandhi, Patel- weren't elite. They were upper middle class. Nationalist history is written from their perspective. It is a different matter that the Nehru's established an Imperial dynasty.
– colonialist elitism and bourgeois nationalist elitism.
There was a circulation of elites. Currently, we have Backward Caste, Dalit and Adivasi Dynasties which have their own sycophantic historians. Sadly, the Subaltern Studies group were 'for export only'. They played no role in the shift in power to the OBCs or Scheduled Castes and Tribes which occurred from the late Sixties onward.
The ability to see Gandhi as nationalist figure who paternally led and controlled an entire nationalist movement and additionally view him as imminent in each individual during an action that was physically separated from him, is a primarily elitist position which needs to be questioned.
No. It was the position of khadi clad 'netas' who had started off as moffusil vakils. True, some of their kids may have gone to English medium schools and thus were able to join the urban upper middle class.
Additionally, it has been noted that political mobilization within subaltern groups has often been dismissed as a purely spontaneous act; when in actuality, subalterns often had far too much at stake in the institutions of power that situated their daily lives and would not engage in an act of insurgency except in a deliberate and premeditated manner.
This is misleading. Poor people may be paid to act as policemen, jailors, executioners etc. If other poor people run riot, they may gain nothing in the medium term whereas some of them may be hanged or incarcerated. The Cost is high relative to the Benefit. This does not mean they have a stake in existing power structures. It merely means there is little they can grab which won't be grabbed from them almost immediately. On the other hand, mass movements among share-croppers can be very effective but only if the peasant gains enough to feed his family. If this isn't the case, the thing is not worth it.
Hence I adopt the subaltern perspective by questioning the elite status of Gandhi
he wasn't elite. Aristocrats were elite. Still, his financiers had become rich and through Gandhi they were able to get political influence and social prestige. Moreover, some would become very much richer thanks to their backing of the INC.
in an attempt to transcend the notion of high-level elite politics.
Yet, Princes and Viceroys continued to decide important questions. True, elections were held, but under 'Dyarchy', middle class politicians didn't have much power- which is why Gandhi regained salience because he had opposed entry into the Assemblies.
I wish to ponder how the idea of Gandhi functioned within a peasant imaginary
the answer has to do with Ram Rajya. Did Lord Ram levy taxes? I suppose so but the peasant preferred to believe otherwise. Also, the dude got rid of his wife- who was from Mithila. You know what the women from there are like.
and how said population simply did not act in a paroxysm of violence.
The Moplahs had acted 'in a paroxysm of violence'. The lesson here was that Muslims be kray kray. As Gandhi would say in 1939, the Brits must not slyly fuck off before handing over the Army to the INC. Otherwise Muslims and Punjabis (irrespective of creed) would grab everything. Hopefully, the high caste Hindus would be able to protect their anal cherries by muttering 'Ahimsa! Ahimsa!'. But they wouldn't have a pot to piss in.
However, one may simply be wondering, why take contention with Hegel?
Why indeed? He wasn't a historian. Also, he was as stupid as shit.
My response to this criticism is that, in many historical narratives that are encountered on a day-to-day basis, Hegel looms invisibly in the background. By ―day-to-day,‖ I am referring here to the ubiquity of historical narratives wherein the crux of history occurs on the shoulders of the world-historical. In these accounts, one is sincerely left believing that history can only occur when ―great men take action.
Collective action problems are linked to coordination problems. 'Great men' are focal solutions to such problems. Why is Mohammad Yunus heading the interim Government in Bangladesh? The answer is he is a very eminent man. Also, he is as old as fuck and thus can be a smokescreen behind which a massive reallocation of rents occurs.
By extension, these individuals are the driving force behind history and remain its true agents.
An agent is merely the tool of his 'Principal'. Napoleon was important because he secured the title in land which had been wrenched from the Aristocracy.
However, as subaltern histories have shown, agency and subjectivity are not limited to a small stratum of community.
In other words, the 'great unwashed' have brains of their own and a separate economic and social agenda- e.g. taking land from Aristocrats and refusing to let the cunt exercise droit du seigneur.
While they may be important, it must be realized that agency is not a nodal apparatus, but extends in all directions.
This is why if I want a glass of water, I don't have to get up and go fetch it. My agency will extend to the tap and the glass which will fill itself and then come wafting towards me.
At this juncture, however, it may be fruitful to expound upon the meaning of Chauri Chaura from an Hegelian standpoint.
It showed India wasn't ready for independence. Its politicians didn't know how to solve the problem of land ownership and taxation. Also, they were stupid and useless. Gandhi had said 'I will deliver Independence in 18 months'. Then he said 'India is not ready. Still, I had a moral obligation to do crazy shit because I'm really really stupid. Please lock me up.'
When analyzing Gandhi as a historical figure in this vein, one must see how he fits into the model of the WorldHistorical Individual.
The answer is simple. He was saying to the Brits- don't fuck off without handing over the Army to us otherwise Muslims and Punjabis (and maybe the Gurkhas) will grab everything.' He only changed his tune when it appeared that the Japanese Emperor would replace the House of Windsor.
Hegel states in The philosophy of history that there exists a ―universal concept [that] is a moving force of the productive Idea, an element of truth that is forever striving towards itself.
Sadly, that 'truth' turned out to be that Germans are shit at politics. They should stick to making nice cars while letting their Army train with broomstick handles painted black. American troops were welcome to protect the country.
The World-Historical Individual takes this universal conception and embodies it:
Hegel embodied the stupidity and mischievousness of the German pedant.
―the historical men, are those whose aims embody a universal concept of this kind.
Hitler certainly embodied evil of an utterly crazy kind. Gandhi was merely stupid and useless.
Furthermore, these individuals eventually harmonize the ideal of World Spirit – which seeks to attain the consciousness of its own freedom
which anybody not in jail already has. It isn't true that you are 'un-free' because Mummy is making you do the washing-up. You are 45 years old. You could get married and move out.
– with the particularities of situations on the ground. That is to say, the passion of the World-Historical Individual within its contextualized moment ―is thus inseparable from the actualization of the universal principle; for the universal is the outcome of the particular and determinate, and from its negation.
You could say the same about hurrying to the toilet and taking a shit because you are turtling.
Now, individuals ―on the ground‖ find an intense affinity for the individual because of the omnipresence of the universal world spirit as previously mentioned: ―this is why the others follow these soulleaders; for they feel the irresistible force of their own spirit coming out in the heroes.
Sadly, for Germans, that 'force' turned out to be highly resistible. Gandhi's acolytes were smarter. They preferred to sulk in jail from time to time rather than 'fight' for freedom. This is because they understood that an independent India would neither be able to feed or defend itself. Also, there would be partition because Muslims hate kaffirs.
would a Hegelian analysis apply to Chauri Chaura?
Yes. India wasn't ready for independence. Chauri Chaura showed that. Gandhi called off the movement and went meekly to jail. Even in 1947, India wasn't ready. But Britain was in a hurry to get out. Still, Mountbatten remained one of Nehru's closest advisers till the latter died. Indeed, India had a British admiral till 1958. It could neither feed nor defend itself nor keep minorities safe. That's it. That's the whole story.
The answer to this question is a resounding ‗no‘. The difficulty with a Hegelian analysis is that it fails to capture how Gandhi functioned within the imaginary of the peasantry, wherein a large part of his following was found.
No. The peasants understood that Gandhi didn't want them to roast policemen even if they refrained from eating them.
This analytical framework would posit that there existed a consistent Gandhian image which resonated within the minds of all individuals.
Actually, such an image did exist. Gandhi wants you to do stupid shit- e.g. burn cloth and give up eating nice food or having sex or killing policemen or grabbing land from absentee landlords.
The actualization of universal principle is predicated upon a notion of attaining freedom wherein agency is a nexus between the WorldHistorical Individual and the World Spirit;
No. The universal principle being 'actualized' at that time was Racism. The Christian White is the natural ruler of the Black or Muslim. Even in the Soviet Union, the White ex-Christian Marxist was the natural ruler of the backward 'Asiatic'.
the peasantry would merely be a localization of the ideals that occur within these two groups.
Not if they were White- e.g. the Irish peasants who got Independence at that time.
If this were true, then one would posit that each manifestation of non-cooperation within a rural setting would never exist as a Chauri Chaura;
Most villages had no violence. The fact is, even back then, Gujaratis took a dim view of Biharis. At a later point, its main industry would be kidnapping. It is still one of the poorest and most backward parts of India. Sadly Modi is now dependent on Nitish and so his administration won't last very long as the veteran turncoat once again turns his coat.
each individual would harmonize personal passion with the universal principle in such a way that would always find itself in line with the doctrine on the Pledge Form.
Gujaratis were not roasting and eating policemen. Biharis- well, Biharis will be Biharis you know. Nothing can be done about it.
Though this has been explored in depth, it must be repeated: peasant nationalism was not simply a derivative discourse of elitist nationalism; though the two were intimately connected with each other, peasant nationalism utilized its own lexical functionaries.
Nehru, in his autobiography, points out that the peasants in the Hindu belt had Hindu leaders who urged them to grab land from Muslim land-owners. In Muslim majority areas, the reverse was the case. Moplah Muslim tenants had slaughtered their Hindu landlords and declared a 'jihad'. The barristocrats would be disintermediated in the country-side. That was okay because what they really wanted to do was to move into the big bungalows and Gubernatorial mansions of the Brits. When a Bihari moved into the Viceregal palace, his women-folk had the place cleaned with cow-dung. Lee Kuan Yew records his dismay at having to eat with his fingers at Nehru's dinner table. He writes of the dilapidated state of Rashtrapati Bhavan when he first visited in the Sixties.
It was sad to see the gradual rundown of the country, visible even in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The crockery and cutlery were dreadful- at dinner one knife literally snapped in my hand and nearly bounced into my face. Air conditioners, which India had been manufacturing for many years, rumbled noisily and ineffectively. The servants, liveried in dingy white and red uniforms, removed hospitality liquor from the side tables in our rooms. Delhi was “dry” most days of the week. On one occasion, returning to the Rashtrapati Bhavan after a reception given by our high commissioner, my two Indian ADCs in resplendent uniforms entered the elevator with me with their hands behind their backs. As I got out, I noticed they were holding some bottles. I asked my secretary who explained that they were bottles of Scotch. It was the practice at our high commission’s diplomatic receptions to give bottles of Johnnie Walker Scotch whisky to deserving guests, and each ADC received two. They were not obtainable in India because they could not be imported. There was a hypocritical pretense at public egalitarianism, with political leaders wearing homespun clothes to identify themselves with their poor, while they quietly amassed wealth. This undermined the morale of the elite officers, civil and military.
Yew correctly notes that the Congress-wallahs were not 'elite'. Even the Nehrus ate with their hands. There were plenty of actual Princes- i.e. people of the elite- in the Civil and Military administration. The Singapore Embassy identified such 'deserving' people and quietly supplied them with drinkable Whiskey.
Ranajit Guha left India before power passed from the upper caste middle class to people like Lalu Prasad Yadav. The former weren't elite but weren't as entirely rustic and retarded as the latter.
Nishant, having pretended guys who clean their houses with cow-dung are 'elite', proceeds to give an account of his framework of analysis
Two structures within Lacanian psychoanalysis are central to this analysis: the imaginary
in this case, the fantasy that in an independent India, there would be no taxes because public goods- e.g. Defence, Law and Order- would magically appear by themselves
and symbolic order.
i.e. people talking bollocks.
I suppose a psychiatrist treating a nutter may want to distinguish between his delusions and the schizophrenic word-salad with which he expresses those delusions. Thus a guy who thinks the cat is spying on him might say 'Snowy the dog is sodomizing Tintin because I failed Calculus'. Here Lacanian analysis can clarify that what is meant is that the mirroring of the catachresis of the mise en abyme of the constipation of the irreducible is the irreducible of the effigy of the scotomization of the mise en abyme of its own catachresis. Either that or the other way around.
Within the imaginary order, one must consider the relevancy of the development of the subjectivity of language and ideal-ego formation during the mirror stage.
If you are dealing with an itty baby- maybe. The fact is all sorts of silly thoughts go through your head when you are cuddling a little bundle of joy.
When describing the subjectivity of language, Lacan utilizes the notion of the imperative (the call). When describing how this grammatical mood functions in terms of the imaginary, Lacan notes that ―at the level of the statement, from its style to its very intonation, everything we learn bears on the nature of the subject.
If this is learning, what is stupidity?
Lacan further explicates that the imperative is a ―question of the tone in which the imperative is uttered.
Thus when a girl tells you to 'fuck off', her angry tone suggests that what she really wants to do is to suck you off. That is why she kneed you in the groin. Why is it so many girls want to suck me off? Also, why don't they just do it instead of sending me to the hospital with a ruptured testicle?
The same text can have completely different imports depending on the tone,
What an amazing discovery!
however, one must also consider ―what is at issue, and its reference to the totality of the situation. Thus, one can reduce the call to two planar categories: the tonality and the subjectivity of the statement.
Which is why you can believe that being told to fuck off and being kneed in the groin actually means the girl in question wants to suck you off.
However, what one can garner from this information is that language processing is an entirely subjective experience.
Only if you really can't take a fucking hint- not to mention a knee in the groin.
To borrow from Ferdinand de Saussure, the imaginary is the realm of the signified.
It isn't. There is no signifier which captures stuff we imagine- till some great poet or novelist, like JK Rowling comes along. Consider the notion that a thing might be part of the soul of some wholly distinct being. Prior to Harry Potter, this vague intuition of ours had no 'signifier'. It now does- viz. horcrux. This doesn't mean there weren't already stories which featured things of that sort. Come to think of it, I remember reading that, in Byzantium, this belief was quite common. There probably was some Greek name for the thing.
What this implies is that language gains meaning and signification through an interpretive process that is within the contexts of the imaginary order.
Only because everything is. We may equally say that farts gain meaning- e.g. you need to shit- and signification only because you can imagine what will happen if you don't take a dump in the toilet. To be clear, you can imagine shitting your pants and thus hurry to the toilet before this can happen. No doubt, babies don't bother probably because of something to do with 'the mirror stage'.
A second structure within the imaginary that one must be aware of
when discussing Bihari peasants
is the development of the ideal-ego during the mirror stage.
Biharis are not having mirrors. That is why they are so rustic and retarded.
The Lacanian mirror stage is referential to the formative moment within the development of the ego when a child begins to recognize him or herself in the mirror. The representation of the self in the mirror becomes the ideal-ego, a term that represents the idealized notion of a self that one can construe from the reflection in the mirror;
Lalu should have looked in a mirror. Maybe this would have scared him straight.
this self is idealized not only because it exists in the imaginary (rather than the symbolic),
Baby already exists in the symbolic because it answers to endearments directed at it. Indeed, it says cute things like Ma Ma & Baa Boo for which it is rewarded with plenty of kisses.
but because is bounded nature within the mirror allows for complete vision of the self; this is opposed to the chaotic reality seen around the viewer on the level of the symbolic;
People keep shouting rude things at Nishant. He looks in the mirror for reassurance that he isn't a stupid cunt.
Lacan states that the ―ideal-ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the true ego.
Unless you are Bihari.
The ego-ideal, in turn, is the realization that occurs when one has the opportunity to view himself from the point of view of the ideal-ego
Bihari ideal-ego is as a kidnapper or corrupt politician or both.
– at this juncture the viewer is disgusted by the fact that his actual self is far from the perfection he imagined via the ideal-ego.
Unless he is Bihari and has made a lot of money out of crime or politics or both crime and politics.
Finally, while the symbolic order is a nuanced and far-reaching construct within Lacanian psychoanalysis, this paper will only consider the nature of signified notions of language.
In other words, the sort of stuff ordinary folk mean by the signifier 'language'.
In short, within the symbolic order, language is only the signifier – interpretive actions are made on the basis of individuals via the imaginary apparatus. Thus, the symbolic is what binds ―subjects together in one action.
In other words, different people do different things though they all may use the same word for what they are doing. Thus, for example, this cretin might have said 'I'm a research scholar at Columbia' and people might have thought he was a smart dude studying something alethic. He wasn't. He was reading and writing stupid shit.
The human action par excellence is originally founded on the existence of the world of the symbol, namely on laws and contracts.
There are plenty of unwritten laws and contracts. The 'signifiers' may only come into existence at a much later date when a Court 'reads them in'.
One needs to note the lack of subjectivity in this order: the symbolic simply acts as a presentation of the binding force of language between individuals
there is no such 'binding force'. A husband may think 'fidelity' means fucking anything in a skirt. His wife may disagree.
– the actuality behind this force always rests in the imaginary.
It may not. Unimaginative people may decisively change the course of history. There was an East German apparatchik whose job was to go on TV and issue public statements. He often said his job was easy. His bosses told him what to say and he just went on TV and said it. Sadly, he had popped out for a smoke just when his bosses were saying 'tell everybody we will close the gates at the Berlin wall. We will shoot anyone who tries to flee.' This cretin, who had zero imagination, went on TV and said 'the gates remain open'. Soldiers who watched this thought the policy had changed. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands thronged to the gates so as to get out while the going was good. The regime promptly collapsed.
But how do these structures translate into political analysis?
They don't because there are no such 'structures'.
One must consider national politics as operating within the symbolic.
Nope. Politics features a lot of 'unspoken' deals or arrangements. There is nothing in the 'symbolic order'- i.e. there is no document in the archives- to show exactly what happened and why it happened. In the case of Günter Schabowski, the guy whose stupidity and lack of imagination brought down the East German regime, we have his own account of how the live-TV debacle had come about. Had he kept mum, we would still be guessing.
The nationalist figure is a synchronic symbol of the the national movement
Nope. The guy could be dead or held incommunicado in exile. Equally, it may be that the dude did not approve of what was being done in his name. There are questions about whether Kenyatta really supported the Mau Mau.
within any political situation. In the relationship between nationalist and individual, the individual's imaginary holds the nationalist figure as the ideal-ego –
very true. Many Spanish men wanted to have a vagina just like La Pasionaria.
a manifestation of the self's political desires on the political/national stage.
We may have the political desire not to pay any fucking taxes but then back down when we realize this will mean internal insurrection and external invasion because there is no money to pay the police or the Army.
This is extrapolated from the idea that, the nationalist represents a stable, coherent, unified, and whole vision of the political self that the individual cannot attain in his everyday existence.
This was the problem with Gandhi. He said everybody should give up sex. But even his own sons refused to do so.
In short, due to limitations of subjectivity the peasant cannot simultaneously be a peasant and Gandhi.
No. He could stop doing anything useful and fuck off to Jail and then some fucking Ashram.
Instead, the self is displaced into Gandhi. Therefore, political action is an interplay between the realization of the self as the ego-ideal – the fact that one's political self is not a coherent plan as created within a nationalist framework (the fact that one is a peasant and not an elite political figure) – and the ideal-ego of the nationalist.
Nonsense! The peasant could go to jail and then rise in the Congress party while running a khaddar shop or something of that sort.
This tension between the ideal-ego and the ego-ideal is drawn from the idea that the imaginary is where signified notions of language are present.
But un-signified notions- e.g. who the fuck will defend the country if Gandhian nutters come to power- may be more important.
However, the ―language, here is not limited to a linguistic system of signs or speech, but rather encapsulates the notion of a language within politics itself.
It is called political language.
Now, the tension between egos is resolved when the individual utilizes one's own subjective interpretation to re-seek national politics in the self, and the subjectivity of political discourse is taken up in the imaginary to become an individuated and subjective notion of interpretation.
Till people understand that the thing is bollocks. Can you make a living out of this shite? Some could and did. Others gave up this foolish play-acting.
It must be noted that these notions of tension between the symbolic-nationalist and the individual are completely contextualized.
No. Nutters who talk this type of bollocks are wholly ignorant of actual contexts.
One cannot enter into the subject's internal discursive apparatus to determine how linguistic or symbolic gestures, such as clothing, tonality, or language functioned within a personalized imaginary.
Sure one can. Get talking to the dude wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh and holding a 'Fuck Netanyahu' placard, and he will explain everything to you. True, he may start backing away from you if you tell him that Nostradamus had predicted all this centuries ago. The true story- as explained by Divine Mother, Janet O'Flaherty, is that Joe Biden- whose number is of the Beast- incessantly sodomizes Netan-Yahoos and this has irked the homophobic Hamas organization.
However, it is from this vantage point, agency begins its shift down from the top and back into the masses.
So the vantage point of Lacan and dudes who got PhDs from Columbia is what helped Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar to rise. Good to know.
Now, how can one reapproach Chauri Chaura through the use of a Lacanian psychoanalytic structure?
In the same way that you can reproach Neanderthals for not making cat like noises in a sufficiently avant garde manner. No wonder they went extinct!
When using this analytic approach, it becomes clear why the peasants yelled ―victory to Mahatma Gandhi‖ as they burnt down the police station, even after they had signed the Pledge Form.
They had been shouting that slogan before and after that event. Why? That was the slogan of the Congress party. If, as Gandhi promised, he delivered Independence by the end of the year, then all the guys who had paid their dues and joined the INC would get land and positions of power under the new rulers. The minions of the Majithia zamindar, who had gained by supporting the Brits in 1857, would be told to fuck the fuck off back to Punjab.
Sadly, Gandhi surrendered unilaterally. Many of the rioters were incarcerated. Some were hanged. No doubt, families who lost land or breadwinners were full of 'reproach' regarding this outcome.
As previously stated, the symbolic order within political discourse is the nationalist figure; thus in this situation, the symbolic is Gandhi.
& the Ali brothers. There was a Congress/Khilafat combine. Gandhi put an end to Hindu/Muslim unity by surrendering unilaterally.
If Gandhi acted within the purview of the symbolic order,
as opposed to the smelly order of flatulence
then the signifier within nationalist politics was Gandhi
this 'signifier' signifies 'Gandhi' as signified. OMG! What an amazing discovery! You are totes blowing my mind, Nishant dude!
as a nationalist figure in that he represented a readily available differentiation of ideals. This may have come from the fact that he not only was a figure who was not British,
Another amazing discovery! What's next? The discovery that he wasn't a French can can dancer?
but also from the fact that he literally did not fashion himself as an elite – he was known to don the dhoti.
Back then, Hindus donned dhoti when they returned from Court, even if they were Judges. Princes, too, wore dhoti when relaxing in the bosom of their families. Even the British Viceroy had adopted the Islamic pyjama and given up the European night-shirt.
As previously stated, the signifier is based upon a use of language that is binds individuals within a given structural unit.
Language has been a very divisive issue in India.
Perhaps it was also Gandhi's literal use of language – his stress upon Gujarati, Hindi, and Urdu – that acted as a signifier to present him as readily available to the peasantry.
British officials were obliged to pass exams in the vernacular language in addition to Hindustani and at least one classical language. Gandhi was unusual in that he had not learned Sanskrit properly- because he was too lazy and stupid. Also, as a British barrister with right of audience, he didn't know Hindu or Islamic law.
Nationalist politics tended to be elitist in terms of language choice:
Nonsense! Bengali nationalists spoke and wrote in Bengali. Tamil nationalists- like Rajaji- wrote and spoke in Tamil. Radhakrishnan, who wanted Madras for a separate 'Andhra' Pradesh, championed Telugu. In the Doab- khadi boli (which literally means 'upright speech') was replacing the more fluid and feminine Braj Bhasha. There was a Persianized version and a Sanskritized version. But what was actually spoken by political leaders was Hindustani.
it was conducted in English, or in distinct versions of Hindi or Urdu; that is to say that the Hindi or Urdu used by nationalist figures tended to be overly Sanksritized or Persianized
only if they were Pundits or Ulema
in order to accomplish a certain resonance within a specific population within India (an example of this would be Dayanand Saraswati's Satyarth prakash).
He was the founder of a Hindu sect. It is obvious that religious leaders will use a diction which borrows more from Sacred Scripture.
Thus, Gandhi's choice of language (the language of speech or presentation)
he spoke a lower class, urban, type of Hindustani
– as language is all that binds the signifier within the symbolic – presents him as a readily available nationalist figure to enter the peasant imaginary.
but he exited that 'imaginary' soon enough. As Nehru noted, the Hindu peasant wanted to take land from the Muslim landowner and to get rid of Muslim dominance in the administration.
However, Gandhi within the symbolic goes beyond a notion of language.
Because everything goes beyond it- even grammar.
If one is to consider Gandhi a manifestation of national politics which was readily available to the peasantry,
which hadn't needed a fucking Gujju in 1857
then he already begins to lose status as a World-Historical Figure wherein all agency within a nationalist movement is predicated upon him.
I suppose you could say Gandhi did represent the World-Historical shittiness of the darky at a time when 'Scientific Racism' ruled the roost. That's why American Whites were anxious that African Americans adopt a Gandhian course. After all, that nutter began his career in South Africa which then went more and more in the direction of Apartheid.
It is likely that a peasant population would look to Gandhi as a signifier of nationalism that could be manipulated to accomplish their own goals.
Nope. In his native Gujarat, Gandhi was chased away when he tried to get peasants to join the Indian Army and go get killed in Flanders or Mesopotamia.
Only four years prior to the non-cooperation movement were the Kheda and Champaran satyagraha campaigns.
Both of which did deliver for more prosperous peasants or- in the case of Champaran- wealthy money-lenders like the dude who invited Gandhi there. It was Rajendra Prasad who did best out of that bit of business just as it was Sardar Patel who benefitted from Kheda &c.
Within these campaigns, certain figures within the peasant and working-class communities approached Gandhi to act as a figurehead in order to accomplish their goals to battle what they deemed as the oppressive structures of land tenure or working conditions.
This also happened in many other 'struggles'- e.g. Chirala Pirala. Even British bastards were setting up elected Municipal Corporations and threatening to tax the people so as to pay for sewers and schools. But Indians want to shit all over the place and, though they don't mind getting a diploma, don't want to study anything. The good folk of Chirala appealed to Gandhi who counselled 'desh tyaag'- i.e. abandoning your house and going to live in the jungle. Sadly, this involved dying of malaria or typhoid. The Chirala Pirala agitation soon collapsed just as had the Salt agitation and various other such foolish enterprises.
At the time (and also today), a popular communicative device was rumor: it was often used to spread information about Gandhi through India. As previously mentioned, the idea of Gandhi as a Mahatma was spread through the use of rumor – it can only be inferred from this that the idea of Gandhi as nationalist figurehead for the peasantry was also spread through the use of rumor. Combining both Gandhi's use of language as well as the rumor lends credence to the idea that Gandhi was not necessarily a figure that could be considered to be bounded within him.
This can be said of any politician. The rumour is that Trump will send all Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Homosexuals, Democrats, and ladies of child bearing age to death camps. Vote for Kamala! Rumour has it she is actually a Communist who will enable America to rise in the manner that Chairman Xi has enabled China to rise.
The pledge form, ahimsa, and satyagraha are merely extensions of the symbolic form of Gandhi;
No. They were material things. The 'symbolic form' was not material.
while these symbols come from Gandhi, they dually represent and signify a manipulated nationalism within the peasantry.
which was like the manipulated nationalism within the British Cabinet.
Although Gandhi is the signifier, he is also the ideal-ego.
for dudes who gave up fucking- maybe.
Individuals displace political idealism into nationalist figures because the nationalist is a bounded, coherent individual;
Nope. That figure may be wholly mythical- e.g. Sebastianism in Portugal or my own belief that Robin Hood will rise up from the dead to strike down Sir Keir Starmer.
that is to say, the nationalist is what one would imagine the self to be if one were to only focus upon his or her political desires.
Few wanted to be like Gandhi. Still, if he had delivered what he promised then- as he had demanded- members of the INC would control the new administration and thus reward themselves with the spoils of office.
However, due to the demands of everyday life, the political self is often unstable or incomplete.
Not in this case. The executioner's demand that you stand quietly while he puts a noose around your neck is what made the 'political self' unstable and incomplete.
Of course, it was possible that Gandhi would stand firm- indeed, he had previously told the Viceroy that he would not call off the agitation even if there was violence- then, though some locals might be killed and Gandhi himself may have been transported, still, sooner or later, Congress would come to power and the families of those involved in the riot would have been richly rewarded. Indeed, in one or two cases, rioters did gain substantially some twenty five years later.
Why did Gandhi call off Non-Cooperation? The answer is simple. Peasants wanted land. This was also the message of the Bolshevik revolution. But, if the peasants took the land, they would have no need for lawyers. Also, they might kill money-lenders or, at the very least, repudiate their debts. Thus Congress, in its moment of triumph, would be disintermediated and would disappear. What would replace it? The answer is that the Princes and Zamindars would bide their time before, hiring European mercenaries and purchasing left over arms and munitions from the Great War, re-establish the War Lordism that had preceded British rule. Sadly, there was no Prussia or Savoy whose monarch might unite India and restore order. Congress would have to sulk in jail, leaving the Brits to unilaterally decide the scale and pace of reform.
However, what makes my analysis any less elitist than a Hegelian interpretation?
Nishant offers no analysis. He merely states that a 'symbolic-imaginary apparatus began to crumble'. He does not say that what crumbled was a stupid fantasy that the Zamindar and the Moneylender would disappear without Anarchy supervening. Still, the fact is, if the Brits were planning to fuck off, then, in the ensuing anarchy, smart peeps might be able to grab something for themselves. The problem was that those with money and muscle-men might then gobble up these 'small fish'.
Nishant does not seem to understand that if a thing is dismantled, that means it failed. Dismantlement does not explain failure. It failure. He writes '... through this dismantlement wherein non-cooperation failed: one cannot place importance on either Gandhi or the peasantry, as it was both working simultaneously within the purview of the political imaginary-symbolic nexus that brought the event to a close.' One may as well say of a group of guys who jump of a cliff in the belief that God will grant them the power of levitation that 'through the dismantlement of the apparatus of levitation, those who jumped off the cliff failed to fly. One cannot place the importance on either the leader of those nutters nor on those nutters themselves because both were simultaneously working within the purview of the rubric of the catachresis of the mise en aybme of the scotomization of socio-political imaginary-symbolic which perpetually shoves its head up its own rectum.'
A possible critique of this paper would perhaps address the idea that this seemingly structuralist application of Lacanian psychoanalysis cannot apply to an undeniably dynamic subaltern community.
Whereas it can to Nishant himself who dismantled his own brain apparatus by studying stupid shit at Collidge. Vivek Ramaswamy didn't do so and thus now is genuinely elite.
To answer this criticism, I return back to Lacan, who wisely stated that ―one of the things we must guard most against is to understand too much, to understand more than what is in the discourse of the subject.
Whereas there is no need to guard against talking bollocks.
I cannot stress the importance of the contextuality of my argument.
Because it isn't important. I suppose the nutter means 'I cannot sufficiently stress...' This is a good example of a Freudian slip.
Perhaps the usage of the symbolic and imaginary may stretch beyond Chauri Chaura,
it obviously did because Gandhi cited it as the reason he called off the Non Cooperation Movement because, he now realized, India was not ready for Independence.
but we must not assume that this is so. I must remain staunch in the idea that this analysis does not extend beyond the limits of these moments in the historical record.
But 'this analysis' did not extend to the actual fucking historical record. That would involve reading a lot of documents in various archives and getting access to unpublished diaries and other records kept by concerned people at that time.
This analysis simply returns to the Chauri Chaura and uses the fragments of discourse that remains from those peasants to rightfully recast them from rabble-rousers to political actors and insurgents.
Though all they did was to rabble-rouse and then either run away or end up in jail or with the hangman's noose around their neck.
What I find sad about this essay is that if some kind soul had pointed out to Nishant that it was puerile, paranoid, nonsense, he might have switched to Law School or Business School or just quit the Academy to start up a business. Instead, he wasted his time doing a PhD in garbage.
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