■論 文■

Study of the Indian National Movement

Some Problems and Issues*

Bipan Chandra

This paper deals with some of the problems and issues in the study of
the Indian national movement. In the main, it will discuss briefly the
different historiographic schools regarding the movement, then the values,
ideals and ideological make up of the movement, and lastly its distinct but
untheorized strategy.

The conservative administrative view was embodied in the official pro-

nouncements of the Viceroys Lord Dufferin, Curzon and Minto and the

Secretary of State George Hamilton.1) V. Chirol, the Rowlatt (Sedi-

tion) Committee Report, Verney Lovert and the Montague-Chelmsford

Report first put it forward in a cogent manner.2) It was theorized, for the

first time, by Bruce T. McCully, an American scholar, in 1940; its liberal

version was adopted by Reginald Coupland and Percival Spear, while its

conservative version was first argued after 1947 by B. B. Misra.3) It was

refurbished and further developed by J. A. Gallagher and Anil Seal and

their students and followers after 1966 and has got known as the Cam-

bridge School.4) The three versions of this school are based on, and are

defined by, one common assumption•\the denial of the existence of co-

lonialism as a distinct economic, political and cultural structure in India.

They also do not accept that India's economic, political, social and cultural

development required the overthrow of colonialism. In other words,

their analysis of colonialism and the national movement is based on the

denial of the basic contradiction between the interests of the Indian people

and the interests of British colonialism and therefore of the causative role

* Presented at the inaugural session of the JASAS in October 1988 .

22
that this contradiction played in the rise and growth of the national move-
ment. Consequently, they implicitly or explicitly deny the anti-imperi-
alist or national liberation character of the Indian national movement
led by the Indian National Congress.5) The denial of the central con-
tradiction and the anti-imperialist character of the national movement is
a fatal flow in the entire approach and writing of these scholars, though
their meticulous research does help others to use it within a different
framework.
The writers of this school also tend to deny that India had entered or
could enter the process of becoming a nation.6) What was called India
in fact consisted of diverse religions, castes, regions, communities and
interests. Consequently, the emergence of Indian politics around the
concept of an Indian nation or an Indian people or India-wide social class-
es is also not recognized by them.7)
If the national movement did not express the interests of the Indian
people vis-a-vis imperialism, then whose interests did it represent? The
writers of the colonial school have asserted since the late nineteenth cen-
tury that this movement was in reality a product of the needs and interests
of the elite groups who used it to serve either their own narrow interests or
the interests of their own castes and communities. Thus, the elite groups,
and their needs and interests, provided the origin as well as the driving
force of the idea, ideology and movements of nationalism in India. Na-
tionalism was, then, a mere ideology which the elite groups used to legiti-
mize their own narrow interests and to mobilize the masses for their achie-
vement.
Gallagher, Seal and their students have added another dimension to
this approach. While Dufferin, Curzon, McCully and B. B. Misra held
that the frustrated middle classes or educated elite used nationalism to
fight the British to serve their own interests, Gallagher, Seal and their
students further developed a parallel view, found in Chirol and Rowlatt
Committee, that the national movement represented the struggle of one
Indian elite group against another for British favours. As Seal put it:
" It is misleading to view these native mobilizations as directed chiefly

against foreign overlordship. Much attention has been paid to the ap-

parent conflicts between imperialism and nationalism; it would be at least

equally profitable to study their real partnership."8) In fact, the main
contribution of the British to the growth of the national movement was

23
through the creation of new arenas and institutions for the mutual rivalries

of the Indian elite.

The Cambridge School also extended the basis on which the elite groups

were formed and their leaders emerged. Using the approaches of the

British historian Lewis Namier and the functionalist political scientists,

they argued that these groups were formed on the basis of patron-client

relationships. As British power was extended, local potentates (or elite)

started organizing politics by clients and patrons whose interests they

served and who in turn served their interests. Indian politics were in-

creasingly formed through this patron-client linkages. Bigger leaders

arose to link together the politics of the localities (i.e. of the local poten-

tates). At the top arose the all-India brokers of power.9)

Thus, according to the historians of this school, the national movement

was really an instrument of, and a cover for, the struggle between various

sections of the elite. They, thus, deny the legitimacy of the movement

as a movement of the Indian people for the overthrow of imperialism and

the establishment of an independent nation-state. Consequently, cate-

gories of nation, nationality, class, social base, popular mobilization, and

ideology, which are generally used by historians to analyze anti-colonial

movements and revolutionary processes in Europe, Asia, Africa and

Latin America, are usually missing from their treatment of the national

movement. Moreover, they not only deny colonial exploitation and under-

development but also any anti-imperialism to those who fought against

British colonial domination. As S. Gopal has put it: " Namier was

accused of taking the mind out of politics; this School has gone further and

taken not only the mind but decency, character, integrity and selfless com-

mitment out of the Indian national movement."10) This school, more-

over, denies any active political role to the mass of common people who

are treated as mere cannon-fodder for the elite.11)

A few historians, headed by Ranajit Guha, have in the last few years

initiated a new trend, described by its proponents as subaltern. They

dismiss all previous historical writing, including that based on a Marxist

perspective, as elite historiography.12) Their claim is that they are ini-

tiating a new people's or subaltern approach. They do not accept that in

the colonial period the chief contradiction was between colonialism and

the Indian people. Instead, it lay between the elite •\both Indian and

British•\on one side and the dominated, subaltern groups on the other

24
side. They argue that the Indian people were never united in a common
anti-imperialist struggle; that there was no such entity as the Indian na-
tional movement. In fact, no such movement could have ever come into
being because of the basic divide between the elite and the subalterns.
Instead, there existed two distinct and separate movements: the real anti-
imperialist movement of the subalterns and the bogus national movement
of the elite. The elite movement, led by the National Congress, was
nothing but a cloak for the struggle for power among and by the elite.
The subaltern school's characterization of the actual, historical national
movement bears a disturbing resemblance to the colonial school's charac-
terization. Its approach is also characterized by a generally ahistorical
glorification and treatment of all forms of popular militancy and con-
sciousness and an equally ahistorical contempt for all forms of initiative
and activity by the intelligentsia, organized party leaderships and other
'elites ' .13) The category of the elite as opposed to class and classes is
also, I believe, misleading and inapposite to the historical situation, es-
pecially when not a specific category of elite such as economic elite, political
elite, social elite, religious or ritual elite, bureaucratic elite, caste elite, etc.,
but the blanket category of ' elite ' is used. In any case, this new school
which has promised to write a history based on the people's own con.-
sciousness, is yet to tap new sources that may reflect better popular percep-
tions; it continues to use the old sources, especially official sources. Nor
have its practitioners yet produced a rounded or full-scale history of the
anti-imperialist struggle of the Indian people; and their work of a more
general non-monographic nature has been no different from the so-called
elite history with some bows being made here and there to the subaltern
classes.
Another major historiographic approach is that of nationalist historians
from R. G. Pradhan, Pattabhi Sitaramayya and Andrews and Mukerji to
Tara Chand, Bisheshwar Prasad, B. R. Nanda and Amles Tripathi.1-4)
The nationalist historians, especially the recent ones, incorporate an eco-
nomic critique of colonialism, but on the whole they tend to ascribe the
rise of nationalism and national movement to t he spread and realization
of the idea or spirit of nationalism or liberty. The increasing militancy
of the national movement in its later phases is then explained by better
ideas and a greater spirit of freedom. They do, however, take full note
of the process of India becoming a nation. They also see the national
25
 movement after 1918 as a popular movement—a movement of the people.
Their other weakness was that they tend to ignore or underplay the in-
ner contradictions of Indian society, class and caste differentiation and
class consciousness. They tend to ignore that while the national move-
ment represented the interests of the Indian people as a whole, that is, of
all classes, vis-a-vis colonialism, it only did so from particular ideological
and class perspectives, and that, consequently, there was a constant strug-
gle between different social, ideological perspectives for hegemony over
the movement. The nationalist historians have , therefore, neglected the
study of the impact of class consciousness and class behaviour on the
ideological features of the national movement. They also usually take up
the position adopted by the rightwing of the national movement and equate
the rightwing with the national movement as a whole . They have also
not tried to grapple with the impact on the movement of the religious , caste
and cultural dimensions of Indian society. Their treatment of the stra-
tegic and ideological dimensions of the movement is also inadequate .")
The foundations of the Marxist school were laid by R. Palme Dutt and
A. R. Desai; but several others have developed it over the years , the most
recent work being that of E.M.S. Namboodiripad .16) The Marxist writ-
ers have a clear understanding of the developing central or primary con-
tradiction between colonialism and the Indian people as a whole as well as
of the process of the Indian nation-in-the-making .
They see the national
movement in its various phases as a response to the basic contradiction
between the interests of the Indian people and the interests of British co-
lonialism, which represented the subordination of Indian economy and
society to the interests of the foreign, metropolitan society and economy
and the foreign-based ruling classes. Consequently , the Indian national
movement developed basically as an anti-imperialist movement . The
Marxists have noted that the nature of the primary contradiction in India
and other colonial countries was very different from the primary contradic-
tion which was responsible for the rise of nationalism in Europe . In
Europe, nationalism was the expression of the contradiction of the rising
bourgeoisie and the bourgeois mode of production with the feudal classes
and the feudal mode of production . In the colonial countries, the entire
people had a contradiction with colonialism; colonialism oppressed the
entire people and promoted the development of the entire society . This
means that while in Europe nationalism and bourgeois democratic revolu-

26
tion simultaneously represented internal class struggle between the bour-

geoisie and feudalism, promoted peasantry's contradiction with the feudal

classes, in colonial countries, the contradiction of the entire people vis-a-

vis colonalism would override all other contradictions; that is, the con-

tradiction with imperialism had to be assigned a primary role and the

internal class contradictions secondary roles.

However, in practice, many of the Marxist writers•\and Palme Dutt in

particular-are not able to fully integrate their treatment of the primary

anti-imperialist contradiction and the secondary inner contradictions,

and, in their historical practice, though not in theory, do what the Com-

munist Party did, that is, they tend to counterpose the anti-imperialist

struggle to the class struggle. They also tend to see the national move-

ment as a fully structured bourgeois movement, and sometimes even as a

bourgeoisie's movement, though they hold that it was still to be sup-

ported by the left. Consequently, they often miss the open-ended and

multi-class character of the movement. They see the bourgeoisie as

playing the dominant role in the movement•\they tend to equate or con-

flate the leadership of the national movement with the bourgeoisie. They

also tend to interpret the class character of the movement in terms of its

forms of struggle, for example, in its non-violent character, its participa-

tion in the colonial constitutional structure, and its willingness to enter

into negotiations with the authorities, and in the fact that it made strategic

retreats and compromises. The Marxists have also not investigated the

strategy, programme, ideology and the extent and forms of mass mobiliza-

tion of the national movement.

The approach of some of us at Jawaharlal Nehru University, while

remaining within the broad Marxist framework, tries to locate the issues

discussed above in a framework which differs in many respects from the

existing Marxist approaches, including the classic Marxist approach of R.

Palme Dutt and A. R. Desai.17) In our view the leadership of the Indian

national movement from the beginning grasped the basic or primary con-

tradiction of colonical India. Taking the social experience of the Indian

people as colonized subjects, evolving a scientific critique of colonialism,'8)

and recognizing the common interests of the Indian people vis-a-vis colo-

nialism, they gradually evolved a clear-cut anti-colonial ideology on which

they based the movement. This anti-colonial ideology and critique of

colonialism were disseminated among the intelligentsia and the midde

27
classes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and among
the mass of people during the mass phase of the movement after 1918.

II

The values, ideals and ideology around which the people were mobilized
during the national movement are important subjects of study in them-
selves. But they acquire greater significance because the political and
ideological features which have had a decisive impact on post-indepen-
dence development of India have deep roots in the struggle for indepen-
dence. Broadly speaking, the vision of the national movement was that
of bourgeois or capitalist, independent economic development and a sec-
ular, republican, democratic, civil libertarian political order, both the
economic and political order to be based on principles of social equality.
All but one elements of this vision were to remain unquestioned till 1947
(or this day); all questioning and controversy were confined to the capita-
list character of the future economy.
The national movement was fully committed to parliamentary demo-
cracy and civil liberties. It popularized democratic ideas and institutions
and provided the soil and climate in which these two could dig deep roots.
The Indian National Congress was organized on a democratic basis and
in the form of a parliament. It not only permitted but encouraged free
expression of opinion within the party and the movement. Some of the
most important decisions in its history were taken after heated debates and
on the basis of open voting. From the beginning the nationalists fought
every inch of the way against attacks by the colonial authorities on the
freedom of the press, speech and association and other civil liberties.
One of the brightest spots in the record of the Congress Ministries during
1937-39 was the visible, massive extension of civil liberties. It was the
national movement and not colonialism which rooted democracy and
civil liberty in India.
The national movement was fully committed to the economic develop-
ment of India on the basis of modern industry and agriculture. This
objective, moreover, included independence from foreign capital, the
creation of an independent capital goods sector and the foundation of in-
dependent science and technology. A crucial role was assigned to the
public sector and, in the late 1930s, the objective of economic planning
was widely accepted.
28
 From its initial stages, the national movement adopted a pro-poor orien-
tation which was further strengthened with the advent of Gandhi and the
rise of the left. The left struggled to make the movement adopt a socia-
list outlook and the socialist vision of free India. The movement also
increasingly moved towards a programme of radical agrarian reform.
However, socialism did not, at any stage, become the official goal of the
Indian National Congress. Despite intense political and ideological strug-
gle by the left during the 1930s and 1940s, the dominant vision within the
Congress remained within the broad parameters of a capitalist concep-
tion of economy.
Secularism was from the beginning made a basic constituent of the
nationalist ideology and strong emphasis laid on Hindu-Muslim unity.
The leadership of the movement fought hard, especially after 1918, to in-
culcate secular values among the people, though it failed in the end to
overcome Muslim communalism. But despite the partition of India in
1947, and the accompanying massacres, the nationalist leadership did
succeed in laying the foundations of a secular state after independence.
The world-outlook of the movement was also an important aspect of
its dynamics. Over the years, it evolved a policy of opposition to imper-
ialism on a world scale, and of expressing and establishing solidarity with
the anti-imperialist movements in other parts of the world. It took a
clear-cut anti-fascist stand in the 1930s and gave active support to the
anti-fascist struggles of Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and the Jewish
people, and the national liberation struggles of the Arabs against British
imperalism and the Chinese against Japanese imperalism. In the 1920s,
the National Congress asked the Indian soldiers not to join British im-
perialism in suppressing the Chinese Revolution; and, in the 1930s, it
repeatedly asked Indians to boycott Japanese goods.
The Indian national movement was a popular all-people's multi-class
struggle as is any popular anti-colonial struggle. However, the Indian
people, though unified against colonialism, were at the same time divided
into social classes. Therefore a people's movement could not function
in an ideological limbo or vacuum. It had to have an ideological charac-
ter, which would determine its class consequences. We do not believe
that the Indian national movement was a bourgeois movement or that
the bourgeoisie led it; nor that the bourgeoisie exercised exclusive hege-
mony over it. Our formulation is that it was a ' national-popular peo-
29
 ple's movement under bourgeois ideological hegemony. It was something
like the British Labour Party which has been a working class and not a

bourgeois party and which has not been led by the bourgeoisie; nor has

the bourgeoisie had exclusive hegemony over it. But it has been

under bourgeois reformist ideological hegemony, with socialist forces

constantly contending to hegemonise it under a broad socialist ideology .

Because of this character of the movement, the Indian national movement

was from 1929 onwards open to ideological contention and hegemony

by the socialist forces. This contention did occur during the 1930s and

1940s; and the outcome was not predetermined or preclosed at any stage .
However, as pointed out earlier, upto the end the dominant vision of the

movement remained of capitalist development. This was

, in our view,
the basic weakness of the movement.

An important question awaiting detailed research pertains to the ques-

tion of popular mobilization: What was the social base of the movement

or who were mobilized? On what issues were they mobilized? How were

they mobilized and to what extent? With or around what popular ideology

and politics were they mobilized? A major effort has to be made to get

at popular consciousness and at popular conception of what the parti-

cipants in the struggle were doing and why? What was the nature of

nationalist ideology at the grass roots level; and what was the perception

of the movement as seen from below? The important question is how

we are to get at popular consciousness. We do not think this can be done

by relying on government records or secret police reports. We are trying

to do so by relying on the popular press, pamphlets and popular songs and

by studying popular response to popular propaganda , mass movements,

elections, peasant movements, trade union movements and social reform

movements•\and above all on interviewing participants and leaders at

the village, taluka and town levels.

We believe that the judgement regarding mobilization will also depend

on our conception of political mobilization. Mobilization in a open mass

movement is different from mobilization in a violent revolution as in France

or Russia or China. Another way of putting it is that forms of political

work•\including mobilization•\in a war of position (Gramsci) are very

different than in a war of manouevre. If the basic purpose is to destroy

the hegemony of the colonial rule and colonial state then forms of political

work have to be multisided, encompassing all walks of life . We find that

30
people participated in the movement in varied ways: from jail-going

satyagraha and picketing to participation in public meetings and demon-

strations, from going on hartals and strikes to cheering jathas (groups)

of Congress volunteers from the sidelines, from voting for nationalist

candidates in municipal, district, provincial and central elections to parti-

cipating in constructive programmes, from becoming a 25 paise member

of the Congress to wearing khadi and a Gandhi cap, from contributing

funds to the Congress to feeding and giving shelter to Congress agitators,

from distributing and reading nationalist magazines and the illegal patrikas

(or bulletins) to staging and attending nationalist dramas and nationalist

poetry festivals, and from writing and reading nationalist novels, poems

and stories to walking and singing in prabhat pheries (groups of people mak-

ing rounds of a village or a town or a part of a town). The movement and

the process of mass mobilization involved immense innovation and initia-

tive from below by the people and the local cadres or political workers .

Our research also tends to show that after 1920•\but especially in 1930

movement•\women participated in the movement on a large scale. Per-

haps, no other popular movement of modern times has witnessed such

large scale participation by women.

The Indian national movement is an interesting example of an extremely

wide movement with a common aim in which diverse political and ideo-

logical currents existed and worked together even while contending with

each other for overall ideological, political and organizational hegemony

over the movement. Socialists, Communists, liberals, Gandhians, and

rightists were all part of it. Socialists and communists worked inside

the Congress and at the same time had full freedom to do independent

political work under their own banners and in trade unions and peasant

associations. They also acquired organizational influence inside the

Congress organization. After 1936, they controlled nearly one-third of

the delegates to the All-India Congress Committee. Only two conditions

were mandatory for members of the Congress: (i) Non-violence to be

followed in practice; (ii) no group could start a movement in the name of

the Congress without the permission of the Congress. Interestingly,

while intense debate on all basic ideological, strategic and tactical issues

was allowed, the diversity and resulting tension did not weaken the cohe-

sion and striking power of the movement. On the contrary, the diversity

and atmosphere of freedom and debate within its ranks became a major

31
source of its strength. From this point of view, the National Congress
should be seen not as a party but as a movement, for all political trends,
except communal currents, were incorporated in it. It is interesting that
the Congress split on Moderate-Extremist lines only once—in 1907.
This error was corrected when the two united in 1916. After that despite
wide differences and debates on ideological, strategic, and tactical issues
the Congress never split, both the Right and the Left showed tremendous
capacity to accept majority decisions. It did not split even on the ques-
tion of Partition.
There were many other strands than the Congress in the freedom strug-
gle. The Indian National Congress was the main stream but not the only
stream. There were the peasant, trade union and tribal movements,
the Revolutionary Terrorists, the Ghadr and Home Rule movements, the
Akali and Temple Reform movements, the state people's movements,
the politics of the capitalist class, the INA and the RIN Revolt. But
they are not to be treated as ' parallel ' streams as some have done.
Though many of them remained outside the organizational framework,
there was no Chinese wall separating them from the Congress. The
contemporaries did not see them as rivals but as tributaries to the main-
stream even when not part of it. In fact, nearly all these movements and
the Congress established a complex relationship with each other. And
at no stage did these non-Congress movements become an alternative to
the Congress; nor were they ever quantitatively and qualitatively in the
same class. It was the Congress-led movements in which millions upon
millions of both sexes and all classes, castes, regions and religions, to a
greater or lesser extent participated. It was the movement led by the
Congress, which, with all its positive and negative features, was the actual
anti-imperialist movement of the Indian people incorporating their histo-
rical energies and genius, as is the case with any genuine mass movement.
The study of the National Congress before 1947 has therefore to be at
the heart or centre of the study of the Indian anti-imperialist struggle,
though it need not occupy the sole position.
The national movement, because it made massive efforts to transform
the existing consciousness, created space for, as well as got integrated
with, other modern liberationist movements—movements of women,
youth, peasants, workers, Harijans and other lower castes and cultural
development on the basis of one's own language. Nearly all major periods
32
of trade union and peasant struggle have occurred after a phase of militant
nationalist struggle. Our research shows that peasant movement was not
able to grow in areas where the national movement was weak. For ex-
ample, West Punjab (today's Pakistan), South-East Punjab (today's Har-
yana). On the other hand, it was strong where previously the national
movement had spurted forward : for example, Andhra, Malabar, Bihar,
U. P., Gujarat, Central Punjab. In Mappila part of Malabar, there was
no national movement after the communalization of the Mappila Uprising.
And there has not been a peasant movement either till this day. In East
Bengal a peasant movement developed in the 1920s and early 1930s but,
in the absence of the national movement, fell prey to communalism and
Muslim League reaction. A new phase with Tebhaga began in North-
Bengal after World War II under the impetus of resurgent nationalism.

III

The Indian national movement had, we believe, an untheorized strategy,

though its instrumental elements were found in the writings of Gandhiji
and quite thoroughly grasped and internalized by lower level intellectual-
cadre. It is the only movement where the broadly Gramscian theoretical
perspective of a war of position was successfully practised; where state
power was not seized in a single historical movement of revolution, but
through prolonged popular struggle on moral, political and ideological
levels; where reserves of counter-hegemony were built up over the years
through progressive stages; where the phases of struggle alternated with
' passive ' phases . Various phases and forms of struggle were integrated
within this strategy. This strategy was formed by the waging of hege-
monic struggle for the minds and hearts of the Indian people. The pur-
pose was to destroy the two basic constituents of colonial hegemony or
the belief system through which the British secured the acquiescence of
the Indian people in their rule; that British rule was benevolent or for the
good of the common Indians and that it was invincible or incapable of
being challenged or overthrown. Simultaneously, the objective was to
undermine the hold of the colonial state on its state apparatuses.
In the case of a popular anti-imperialist movement, the leadership excer-
cises hegemony by taking the anti-colonial interests of the entire colonized
people and by unifying them by, to use Mao's phrase, adjusting the internal
class struggle by adjusting the conflicting class interests of the different
33
classes, strata and groups.
The nationalist strategy was based on the alternation between two types
of phases. There were phases of massive mass struggle which broke
existing laws and phases of intense political-ideological work within the
legal framework which in turn provided scope for such work. This aspect
of the strategy was based on the assumption that mass movements by their
very nature could not last for long, for it was not possible for the vast mass
of people to engage continuously in a long drawn-out extra legal struggle
that involved considerable sacrifice. The basic purpose of both phases
was to undermine colonial hegemony over the people and to build up the
people's capacity to struggle. That is why none of the Gandhi-led move-
ments achieved success in terms of their stated goals, but after each mass
movement, the nationalist movement emerged stronger. The British
officials could never grasp this. Similarly, the non-mass-movement

phases were periods of intense political work in which forces were gathered
for another mass struggle. I have described this strategy as Struggle-
Truce-Struggle or S-T-S'. The entire political process of S-T-S' was
an upward spiralling one. This strategy also assumed advance through
stages but the stages were stages of struggle and not of freedom.
The third aspect of nationalist strategy related to constitutional work
and constitutional reforms which formed a basic element of the equally
complex colonial strategy. The study of the interplay between the co-
lonial and Congress strategies can serve as a fine example of how a hege-
monic struggle is fought, only we do not have the space to do so here.
Since the state was the terrain of struggle between the national movement
and the colonial authorities, constitutional structures were simultaneously
instruments and aspects of the colonial strategy of domination and the
fruits of the anti-colonial struggle, the ground that colonialism was forced
to yield under nationalist pressure. They were a measure of the conti-
nually changing balance of forces. They represented, simultaneously,
instruments of cooption by colonalism and widening of the democratic
space in which the national movement could operate. Basically, the
nationalist answer was to work the reforms, not in the way the colonial
authorities wanted, but by evolving and following an alternative method
that would upset imperialist calculations and advance the nationalist cause.
Work in the councils also filled in the political void when the national
movement was recouping its strength. Nor did those who worked in the

34
councils fall prey to cooption. Congress strategy in this respect was not

directed at the grass level reform of colonial institutions and structures;

it was aimed at the replacement of the colonial state. Legislatures were

not seen as arenas for the transformation of the colonial state; they were

seen as arenas of struggle against the colonial state.

Constructive work played an important role in nationalist struggle

, es-

pecially during the constitutional phases. It was primarily organized

around the promotion of khadi, the spinning and village industries, na-

tional education and Hindu-Muslim unity, the struggle against untoucha-

bility and for the scoial upliftment of Harijans or untouchables and the

tribal people and the boycott of foreign cloth and liquor . Constructive

work was crystallized by hundreds of Ashrams which came up all over the

country, almost entirely in the villages.

Constructive work was basic to a war of position. It played a crucial

role during the non-mass movement phase in filling the political space

left vacant by the withdrawal of civil disobedience. It partially solved

a basic problem that a mass movement faces•\the sustenance of a sense

of activism in the non-mass movement phases of the struggle. Construc-

tive work had also the advantage of involving a large number of people.

Parliamentary and intellectual work could be done by relatively few.

Constructive work could involve millions. Moreover not all could go to

jail. But constructive work was within the reach of all.

The hard core of constructive workers also provided a large cadre for

the civil disobedience movement. They were Gandhiji's steel frame or

standing army.

What role did non-violence play in this strategy. Was it a mere dogma

of Gandhiji or was it dictated by the interests of the propertied classes?

We do not agree. For Gandhiji, of course, non-violence was a matter of

principle. But for most of his contemporaries in the Congress—C. R.

Das, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Sardar Patel,

Acharya Narendra Dev, and so on—it was a matter of policy. As a policy

and as a form of political action, it was basic to a strategy based on the

conception of a hegemonic movement and on wide mass mobilization.

It was because of this hegemonic and mass character of the national move-

ment that non-violence became one of its basic elements. At the same

time the point of differentia specifica was not its non-violent forms of

struggle, but its hegemonic and mass character.

35
 The adoption of non-violent forms of struggle enabled the participation
of the mass of the people who could not have participated in a similar
manner in a movement that adopted violent forms. This was particularly
true of women's participation. Women would have found it difficult to
join an armed struggle in large numbers. But when it came to under-
going suffering, facing lathi-charges, picketing for hours on end in the
summer or the winter, women were probably stronger than men. Non-
violence as a form of struggle was also linked to the semi-hegemonic, semi-
authoritarian character of the colonial state and the democratic character
of the polity in Britain.
Non-violence meant above all fighting on the terrain of moral force, a
basic feature of war of position or hegemonic struggle. Non-violent mass
movements placed the colonial authorities in the wrong and exposed the
underpinning of colonial state power in brute power, when the authorities
used armed force against peaceful satyagrahis and picketeers. In fact, a
non-violent mass movement put the rulers on the horns of a dilemma.
If they hesitated to suppress it because it was peaceful, they lost an im-
portant part of their hegemony, because the civil resisters did break exist-
ing colonial laws. Not to take action against them amounted to abdica-
tion of administrative authority and a confession of the lack of strength
to rule. If they suppressed the movement by use of force, the colonial
authorities still lost, for it was morally difficult to justify the suppression
of a peaceful movement and non-violent law-breaking through the use of
force. They were in a no-win situation. In practice, the colonial autho-
rities constantly vacillated between the two choices, usually plumping in
the end in favour of suppression. By taking recourse to suppression of
a non-violent movement, they had to suffer constant erosion of hegemony.
Consequently, the hegemony of colonial rule or its moral basis was de-
stroyed bit by bit.
The adoption of non-violence by the national movement was also linked
to the fact that a disarmed people had hardly any other recourse. On
the one hand, the colonial state had, through an elaborate system, com-
pletely disarmed the Indian people since 1858, and made it difficult for
them to obtain arms or to train in their use; on the other hand, the co-
lonial state was a strong and not an inert state. It had developed a strong
police system as also a large and efficient secret police. The leaders of the
national movement from Dadabhai Naoroji and Tilak to Gandhi and Nehru
36
understood clearly that Indians did not possess the material resources

necessary to wage an armed struggle against the strong colonial state. In

non-violent mass struggle, on the other hand, it was moral strength and

the force of massive and mobilized public opinion that counted. And

here the disarmed people were not at a disadvantage. In other words,

in a war of position, the non-violence of a mass movement was a way of

becoming equal in political resources to the armed colonial state.

Two further remarks maybe made in this context. Can a mass move-

ment assume a violent form or is it that by its very nature, because millions

participate in it, it has to be non-violent? In other words when a political

structure allows mass mobilization and a mass movement, the movement

has to take a non-violent form. It is only when the structure does not

permit this•\and is simultaneously weak•\that a cadre-based violent or

armed struggle takes place and perhaps becomes inevitable. It is in-

teresting that in the last 100 years, wherever the state is democratic or

semi-democratic, as in Western Europe and North America and Japan after

1950 not a single armed struggle has taken place.

Second, in India's case, non-violent struggle was as revolutionary in

character as an armed struggle in other situations. It was a part of a

revolutionary strategy of hegemonic struggle—of a war of position•\for

changes in the structure of state and society.

The nationalist strategy•\as a war of position•\was also linked to the

semi-hegemonic or the legal authoritarian character of the colonial state

which functioned through the rule of law, a rule bound bureaucracy and a

relatively independent judiciary while simultaneously enacting and en-

forcing extremely repressive laws, and which extended a certain amount

of civil liberties in normal times, enabling politicization of the people and

organization of national movement, though it curtailed these civil liberties

in periods of mass struggle.

Once the basic character and objectives of the nationalist strategy are

grasped, the successes and failures of the different phases of the movement

have to be evaluated in a fresh manner. The criterion of success and

failure here is the extent to which the colonial hegemony over the Indian

people was undermined and the people were politicized and prepared for

struggle. Judged in this light, we would see that these objectives were

progressively achieved through successive waves of mass movements al-

ternating with phases of truce. Even when mass movements were sup-

37
pressed (1932, 1940-41, 1942) or withdrawn (1922) or ended in com-

promise (1930-31) and were apparently defeated in their stated objectives

of winning freedom or major policy concessions, in terms of hegemony,

these movements were great successes, and marked leaps in mass political

consciousness. That this was not clear to many contemporaries is clear

from the twin comments of Willingdon, the Viceroy, who declared in

early 1933 having successfully suppressed the second phase of the civil

disobedience movement: "The Congress is in definitely less favourable

position than in 1930 and has lost its hold on the public ".20) And then

he bewailed in 1934 when the elections to the Central Legislative As-

sembly produced a triumph for the Congress: " Singularly unfor-

tunate. A great triumph for little Gandhi."21) He could not make the

connection between the apparent suppression and defeat of the 1932-34

movement and its real success in terms of the spread of hegemony. He

was utterly unaware the ' great triumph of little Gandhi ' was related to

the strategy of struggle. This is what hegemonic struggle is all about.

Seen from this point of view, the peaceful and negotiated nature of the

transfer of power in 1947 was no accident, nor was it the result of a com-

promise by a tired leadership, but was the result of the character and

strategy of the Indian national movement. It was the culmination of a

war of position where the British recognized during World War II and

after that the Indian people were no longer willing to be ruled and the

Indian part of the colonial apparatus•\and perhaps sections of the British

part too•\could no longer be trusted to enforce a rule which people no

longer wanted or were willing to tolerate. The British recognized that

they had lost the battle of hegemony or war of position. They decided to

retreat rather than make a futile attempt to rule such a vast country by the

use of a sword that was already breaking in their hands.

What is the significance of the Indian national movement in a world

perspective? It does not lie, we believe, in its ideology or in Gandhian

philosophy or even in non-violence. Its great significance for the rest of

the world lies, we believe, in its strategic practice. It is of great relevance

to those wanting to transform the existing political and social structure in

societies that broadly function within the confines of the rule of law, and

are characterized by a democratic and civil libertarian polity. It may

have some relevance to other societies too.

India's is the only actual historical example of a semi-democratic or

38
democratic type of state structure being replaced or transformed, of the
broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of position being
successfully practised. The study of its experience can yield many in-
sights into the processes of historical change and state transformation,
both in the past and the present, to the historian, social scientist and
political activist.

Notes
1) B. L. Grover, British Policy Towards Indian Nationalism 1885-1909, Delhi,
1967; S. Gopal, British Policy in India 1858-1905, London, 1965.
2) V. Chirol, Indian Unrest, London, 1910; Verney Lovett, A History of the
Indian National Movement, London, 1920.
3) Bruce T. McCully, English Education and the Originsof Indian Nationalism,
New York, 1940; Reginald Coupland, The Indian Problem 1833-1942, Lon-
don, 1942, 1943; Percival Spear, India, A Modern History, Ann Arbor, 1961;
B. B. Misra, The Indian Middle Classes, London, 1961.
4) Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collabora-
tion in the Later 19th Century, Cambridge, 1968; J. Gallagher, G. Johnson and
A. Seal (eds.), Locality, Province and Nation, Cambridge, 1973; C. J. Baker,
G. Johnson, A. Seal (eds.), " Power, Profit and Politics: Essays on Im-
perialism, Nationalism and Change in 20th Century India ", Modern Asian
Studies, Cambridge, 1981. Also books by W. A. Washbrook, C. A. Bayley,
C. J. Baker, and Judith Brown.
5) A. Seal describes the Indian national movement as a battle (" a mimic war-
fare "), "A Dassehra dual between two hollow statues, locked in motiveless
and simulated combat ". Op. cit., p. 351.
6) Ibid., p. 342.
7) Ibid.
8) Ibid.
9) J. Gallagher, G. Johnson and A. Seal; and C. J. Baker, G. Johnson, A. Seal,
cited above in f.n. 4.
10) S. Gopal, "Book Review ", The Indian Economic and Social History Review,
New Delhi, Vol. XIV, No. 3, July-September, 1977.
11) For a critique of the Cambridge School, see ibid.; Jayant Prasad, " Neo-Liberal
History or an Imperialist Apologia ", Social Scientist, New Delhi, Vol. I, No.
12, July 1973; Mridula Mukherjee, " Book Review ", Studies in History, New
Delhi, Vol. I, January-June, 1979; Tapan Raychaudhuri," Indian Nation-
alism as Animal Politics ", The Historical Journal, Cambridge, Vol. 22, No. 3,
1979.

39
 12) Ranajit Guha, Subaltern Studies, I-VI, 1982-; Partha Chatterjee, Bengal

1920-1947, Volume one: The Land Question, Calcutta, 1984, and Nationalist

Thought and the Colonial World, Delhi, 1986.

13) For a critique of this aspect, see Mridula Mukherjee, "Peasant Resistance

and Peasant Consciousness in Colonial India ", Economicand Political Weekly,

Bombay, 8 and 15 October 1988. Also see Dipankar Gupta, " On Altering

the Ego in Peasant History: Paradoxes of the Ethnic Option ", Peasant

Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 1, 1985.

14) R. G. Pradhan, India's Struggle for Swaraj, Madras, 1929; B. Pattabhi Sitara-

mayya, The History of the Indian National Congress, Madras, 1935; C. F. An-

drews and Girija Mukerji, The Rise and Growth of the Congress in India, Lon-

don, 1938; Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, 4 Volumes,

Delhi, 1961-; Bisheshwar Prasad, Changing Modes of Indian National Move-

ment, New Delhi, 1966; B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, London, 1958, and

Gokhale, the Indian Moderates and the British Raj, Delhi, 1977; Amles Tri-

pathi, The Extremist Challenge, New Delhi, 1967.

15) For a detailed critique, see Bipan Chandra, " Nationalist Historians' Inter-

pretations of the Indian National Movement ", in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

and Romila Thapar (eds.), Situating Indian History, Delhi, 1986.

16) R. Palme Dutt, India Today, Bombay, 1949; A. R. Desai, Social Background

of Indian Nationalism, Bombay, 1959; E.M.S. Namboodiripad, History of

Indian National Movement, Trivandrum, 1986; Bipan Chandra, The Rise and

Growth of Economic Nationalism in India, New Delhi, 1966; and Nationalism

and Colonialism in Modern India, New Delhi, 1979; Sumit Sarkar, Modern

India, 1885-1947, Delhi, 1983, and The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-

1908, New Delhi, 1973; M. B. Raos (ed.), The Mahatma, Marxist Evalua-

tion, New Delhi, 1969 ; Mohit Sen, The Indian Revolution, Review and Per-

spectives, New Delhi, 1970.

17) Bipan Chandra: Indian National Movement•\Long-term Dynamics, New Delhi,

1988; editor, The Indian Left, New Delhi, 1983; and others, India's Struggle

for Independence, New Delhi, 1988.

18) See Bipan Chandra, The Rise and Growth of Economic Nationalism in India.

19) For a detailed discussion of the strategy of the Indian national movement, see

Bipan Chandra, Indian National Movement•\Long-term Dynamics.

20) Quoted in B. R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi, p. 339.

21) Quoted in D. A. Low, " Civil Martial Law ", in D. A. Low (ed.), Congress

and the Raj, London, 1977.

(J. Nehru University)

40