Book review: The rise of passive resistance

Non-violent struggle for Indian Freedom, 1905-1919

David Hardiman 

C Hurst & Co 

288 pages 

Rs 3,256

Indian struggle for freedom has attracted the attention of a large number of scholars from India and abroad especially because many native leaders of mass-based anti-colonial struggles had experimented with some “novel and unique” strategies for mass mobilisation. The most important of such distinctive “methodologies” for activating the masses was that of “passive resistance” adopted by M K Gandhi and the study of “non-violent satyagraha”; these are also the focus of David Hardiman’s present book. 

In five chapters, the author has not only narrated the main events and episodes which happened during 1905 and 1919 but also told the story of Gandhi’s evolution from one struggle to the other till the Rowlatt struggle. Gandhi’s ideas and praxis of non-violence, satyagraha and truth were evolving with his experience of passive resistance movements launched by him. In the author’s view, the British rule over India was multi-dimensional, and as such, opposition, too,  could be directed against a range of imperial authorities; this explains the reason behind Gandhi’s approach. In fact, even when Gandhi was in South Africa, passive resistance was launched in Bengal from 1905-1908 against the Partition of Bengal. Pre-Gandhi Bengal witnessed a very powerful Swadeshi movement, a boycott of foreign goods and the emergence of important leaders like B G Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, B C Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh. This led to the split in national movement between Moderates, led by Gokhale, and Extremists, led by Lal, Bal and Pal. 

Chapter 2 begins with the story of Gandhi passive resistance in South Africa against the Regulation Act of 1907. Writing in Hind Swaraj, Gandhi described his method was “based not on the force of arms but on the force of truth or love”. The author appropriately describes the influence of Henry Thoreau, John Ruskin and Leo Tolstoy on Gandhi. An important contribution of the author is to situate Gandhi’s ideas and praxis in the context of other 19th Century passive resistance movements like that of the Hungarians against Austria, the Irish Home Rule, and Finns asking for self-determination within Russia.

In the third chapter, the author describes concrete “peasant struggles in Bijolia, Champaran and Kheda” and Gandhi’s role in them. Gandhi comes on the scene when peasant leaders of Champaran district in Bihar invited him to take up the cause “against white planters”. While Champaran Satyagraha had achieved “temporary success against the planters”, it was in Kheda that Gandhi undertook a “fast” and achieved the goal of eradicating the fear of colonial tax officials among the rural people. The author makes a very pertinent observation that by taking up these rural issues at a time when other leading nationalists were agitating for constitutional reforms through their Home Rule League, Gandhi was trying to shift the focus of the movement in a radically new direction — namely, towards building an India that rooted itself and its identity in self-sufficient and politically assertive village communities. Gandhi linked local rural struggles with the large national goals and also identified local leaders who later on became influential national leaders such as Vallabhbhai Patel. 

Chapter 4 is devoted to the conceptualisation of “non-violence” by Gandhi, who saw it as a form of spiritual truth, and this led many Indians to regard it as a force blessed by god. It has been argued that by doing so, Gandhi made politics as a moral activity — in that the “methods to achieve the end” had to be noble. Non-violence was not for cowards because it was “the most soldierly of a soldier’s virtue” and “Dharma does not teach…to be cowards”. In 1919, Gandhi arrived in Punjab and launched during the Rowlatt Satyagraha, protesting the Rowlatt Act that curbed freedoms. But after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the whole state started burning and there was national anger against the British tyranny. There was anger against Gandhi’s method of passive resistance as well. The author observes that Gandhi “learnt the important lesson that Indian crowds could be very violent” and that non-violence was not intrinsic to the culture of the sub-continent. Learning from his experience of Rowlatt Satyagraha, Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. 

However, overall, the author has not subjected Gandhi’s ideas, especially non-violence, to the clinical analysis and scrutiny. Doing so was essential to rigorously analyse the limitations of non-violence in every protest movement, as evidenced during the Rowlatt Satyagraha. Is non-violence universally valid, especially under Nazis and fascist regimes? Why was Gandhi supporting World War I and asking Indians in South Africa to “cooperate” with the British? If wars can be “just and unjust”, similarly “non-violence and violence” in resistance movements can also be justified under concrete situations. The author, however, restricts to just description of what happened, and that is not enough.