Who said this? I’ll give you a clue: his name is almost synonymous with non-violent disobediance:
Gandhi was chastising two platoons of Hindu troops who disobeyed orders to fire upon Muslim crowds in Peshawar, 1930. The platoons that did obey perpetrated an act of great violence, killing and wounding hundreds, but this drew little complaint from the Great Soul; on the other hand, breaking ranks with the oppressor to stand with the oppressed earned his forthright censure. And yet, it seems such a victory for non-violent disobedience to the end of indepence: after the mutiny the army and police withdrew from the city, which was effectively ruled by the people for ten days.
For all that it seems at odds with the myth of the Mahatma, this proclamation was hardly out of character. Gandhi’s abhorrence of violence was always highly selective. He never missed the opportunity to condemn a popular uprising, but he recruited Indian soldiers en masse for the British Empire’s WWI campaigns – seeking to earn the independence of India’s merchants, landlords and industrialists with the blood of her workers and peasants. Indeed, Gandhi almost never came out in favour of mass participation in the struggle against British Imperialsim, and very frequently came out against it. His role tended to be less about leading a revolution than holding one back.
>Indeed, Gandhi almost never came out in favour of mass participation in the struggle against British Imperialism, and very frequently came out against it.
You right absolutely right in saying that Gandhi’s attitude towards violence was selective and often contrary to his professed belief in non- violence. It would also not be incorrect to say that it was not the Mahatma who led the successful independence struggle, but the Indian peasant who made the Mahatma. Yet, he was the undisputed leader of the indian anti- imperialist revolution. He led the three great mass mobilizations in 1919, 1930 and 1942, with each his radicalism increasing. Antonio Gramsci has referred to Gandhi’s mobilization techniques as illustrating the mode of ‘passive’ revolution and the wars of ‘movement’ and ‘position’.
In other words, it is important to read Gandhi in a more nuanced manner. (See Bipan Chandra’s India’s Struggle of Independence, 1987 or 1988) if you are interested in the subject.
I’m all for nuance, but that goes for Gandhi’s anti-imperialism too. I mean, Gandhi did oppose British rule, but he professed to have loved much about the British Empire and its ideology, and he fought to preserve many of its structures of control as well.
The three campaigns you cite weren’t initiated by Gandhi. In each case, he took the pressure building for one kind of mobilisation, and channelled it into another, less radical or, at least, involving much less radical action on the part of the masses. I think the pamphlet I linked to in the post is actually a really good guide to this.
Every national liberation movement is frought with contradictions like this, between the working class and peasants on one hand and the national elite on the other, but the balance isn’t always the same. Hezbollah and its allies, for example, clearly form a cross-class (and cross-confessional) alliance, but its strongest roots are among the Shiite poor. Whereas in India, the drive for independence was always “led” by upper class Indians like Gandhi. Why this happened is a more complex subject.
This isn’t “just” about a missed opportunity for socialism in India, by the way. If the masses hadn’t been held back from participating in – and leading – the struggle, I really don’t think we would have seen Partition. It’s hard to imagine the Bombay mutineers, for example, who (much to Gandhi’s horror) seized British ships to hand over to Congress, under Congress and Muslim League flags tied together to symbolise unity, having anything to do with such a thing.
If you know of any good links on Gramsci’s analysis of Gandhi, I would be interested.
Do you have any copies of Bhagat Singh’s articles on anarchism?
I would love to publish them on the Scarlet Letter Archives:
http://www.waste.org/~roadrunner/ScarletLetterArchives/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17984487@N00/sets/
Thanks,
Mitch
I recommend Marxists.org, where they have quite a few of Bhagat Singh’s writings: http://marxists.org/archive/bhagat-singh/index.htm
Don’t get me wrong though, while I’d take the Shaheed over the Mahatma any time, I don’t endorse his whole philosophy. Seeking out martyrdom to inspire others to join the cause… I think he could have done a lot more useful stuff alive.
There is a difference between being ideal and being practical.
I think Gandhi was trying to go about the Non-Violence route by not changing the system but by changing the people.
Take the example of a tire, if you stick a rod through it while its still spinning, you will get a terrible reaction even though the tire will stop. It is much better to slow the tire than to bring it to a halt that way you can avoid major clashes. All which could have led to more violence. A different way to look at it no?
It’s different, yeah. Basically I think that violence vs non-violence is a bit of a false dichotomy. I would try to avoid violence where practical, and Gandhi wasn’t above calling for violence when he thought appropriate. I think non violent disobedience is a very good plan, but excluding the masses from active participation in the struggle is not.
I think this is a clearer way of looking at the difference; that Gandhi tried to avoid mass participation in the struggle, which would have fundamentally challenged the way society operated. Gandhi was basically quite happy with the way India was run, mostly anyway, he just wanted a different group of people (the Indian political and capitalist class rather than the British Empire) in charge of the system. So he preferred to defend the system and exclude from the movement those who challenged it. Whereas for a lot of people, standing up the the British was part of the same logic as standing up to the landlord, the employer and the policeman – something Gandhi didn’t want to see happening at all.
I looked up the cited interview and found this article:
http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/ginterview.htm
The revelant lines are given below.
“Why did you not see that the Garhwali soldiers, who had refused to fir on an unarmed crownd, were included in the truce? How do you reconcile that with your doctrine of nonviolence, since these men were punished for having refused to be party to an act of violence?
A soldier who disobeys an order to fire breaks the oath which he has taken and renders himself guilty of criminal disobedience. I cannot ask officials and soldiers to disobey, for when I am in power I shall in all likelihood make use of those same officials and those same soldiers. If I taught them to disobey I should be afraid and those same soldiers. If I am in powers (sic.) But if they cannot conscientiously carry out the orders which are given to them they can always hand in their resignation.”
They can always hand in their resignations. Why was this line not quoted in the pamphlet?
It is clear that Gandhi is not chastising the Gurwhal soldiers for not firing on the protesters nor is he being asked to. Petrasch wants to know why the soldiers were not considered a part of the movement. Gandhi’s reasoning is that if you are so conscientous as to disobey an order from your superior then why serve at all. They can always hand in their resignations. Unless they get off the fence and face the gunshots, they are not part of the movement, seems to be his logic. In this context, his reply isn’t as repulsive as the author makes it out to be.
Thankyou for finding that illuminating little selection of quotes. I wasn’t aware of that extra line (I am not connected with the authors of the pamphlet, I just read it online and thought it was pretty good).
But does it really make that much difference?
Gandhi was supposed to be about non-violent disobediance, but here he’s calling for violent obedience. Saying “if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place!” only reinforces the idea that he basically supported the system, give or take a few specifics, and opposed direct challenges to the system.
The soldiers were opting out of the forces of oppression at the moment that push came to shove, and Gandhi said that they had forfeited their right to do so long before push came to shove. That’s pretty crap.
Quite the contrary to Dave’s opinion on Abhijit’s insight, leaving the last line out distorts the entire message. The whole article seems dubious due to that omission.
I am no die hard fan of Gandhi, but why this double standard on a blog which has a post on Marx’s “Religion is an opium for the masses” being quoted out of context.
why this double standard on a blog which has a post on Marx’s “Religion is an opium for the masses” being quoted out of context.
Because “religion is the opium of the masses” is usually quoted as a condemnation of religion. In fact, Marx was giving his explanation for religion, and that’s a very different thing. It’s an important point to make, in fact: in the current debate over how the left should relate to Islam, Marx would be on the opposite side to the one in support of which he’s often cited.
Whereas Gandhi’s line about handing in resignations chages what, exactly? That, while he was against mass action and against disobediance – even when that represented a stark choice between non-violence and violence – and he was quite clear that he didn’t want this kind of challenge to British rule because he wanted to rule, after a fashion at least, in their place – he was willing to grant the soldiers the one little freedom conceded in almost all instances of capitalism: the freedom to take the individual decision to leave one’s job and search for another, where one would have another set of orders to obey without question? Well bravo comrade Mohandas! I really don’t see how that line changes this one iota!