When M.N. Roy asked Gandhi to send a message for his
weekly magazine Independent India, Gandhi responded with the advice:
“Render mute service.” Was this a signal to Roy not to write anything
critical of Gandhi or Gandhism?
In the analysis of India’s freedom struggle, and the
role of Mahatma Gandhi in that political journey, how do political
strategists and thinkers—past and present—judge the Mahatma as an
exemplar of democracy? M.N. Roy stands tall among the ideologues and
activists of the struggle as one who engaged with the questions that
Gandhi’s political actions in pursuit of his vision of independence
evoked. Roy’s own views continue to generate debate.
Some political scientists find fault with M.N. Roy’s
recorded insights and opinions on the times and the leader. Others have
defended his objectivity in suggesting that even a ‘Mahatma’ could make
mistakes—and did make mistakes. Some have questioned Roy’s own role
during those heady years. One contention is that both the views and the
record of this patriot call for clearer understanding. For this, it is
useful to revisit what M.N. Roy said, and what has been said about him.
Gandhi faced two defeats at the All India Congress
Committee in a short span of time. At the AICC’s Ahmedabad session, he
lost to the Swarajists on the issue of Council entry. The second defeat
came when a much younger man, Subhash Chandra Bose, defeated Gandhi’s
nominee for the Congress presidentship. Roy wrote of the Council issue
incident in an article— ‘Mr Gandhi’s swan song’—dealing with how Pandit
Motilal Nehru and Deshbandhu C. R. Das succeeded in setting aside
Gandhi’s call for compulsory spinning and boycott of law courts,
legislative councils, government schools, titles and mill-made cloth.
When the Swarajists opposed Gandhi’s proposals at the
Ahmedabad session, it was the first time that Gandhi’s word had been
questioned on an issue of national importance. It was in his province
and seat of authority that the gauntlet was thrown at Gandhi himself,
as he had declared that if his programme was rejected he would retire
from politics and devote himself to social reform. He said he would
submit a resolution calling for all AICC members to spin for
half-an-hour a day, and to observe the five-fold boycott—or to resign
from AICC membership. This resolution, if carried, would have
automatically excluded the Swarajists from power, and restored the
leadership of the orthodox non-cooperators. The AICC continued its
deliberations for three days. Gandhi submitted his famous self-denying
ordinance despite the heat of opposition by the Swarajists and even
some of his own followers, who had sought to reach a compromise with
the Swarajists beforehand.
It was a dramatic moment: Mahatma Gandhi, the idol of
the Indian people, defied by the opposition within Congress ranks. It
fell to Pandit Motial Nehru to state the case for the Swarajists. “We
decline to make a fetish of the spinning wheel or to subscribe to the
doctrine that only through that wheel can we obtain ‘swaraj,’ ” he
said. “Discipline is desirable, but it is not discipline for the
majority to expel the minority. We are unable to forget our manhood and
our self-respect and to say that we are willing to submit to Gandhi’s
orders. The Congress is as much ourselves’ as our opponents’, and we
will return with greater majority to sweep away those who stand for
this resolution.” With these words, Pandit Motilal and Deshbandhu left
the hall, taking with them 55 Swarajists. When the resolution was put
to the vote with 110 remaining, it was carried, against 37, and with
six abstentions.
This apparent victory of Gandhians was merely
make-believe; had the Swarajists remained in the hall, the resolution
would have been defeated by about 20 votes. However, Gandhi recognised
his defeat, and held hurried consultations with his followers, and
afterwards agreed to drop his resolution on compulsory spinning and the
boycott, making it only advisory in nature. With this, and other
concessions, the Swarajists were persuaded to rejoin the Congress. Thus
the defeat of orthodox Gandhism was complete and final. The Swarajists
had won the day, and Gandhi as the leader of the Indian National
Congress had sung his swan song.
For the Congress presidential election, Gandhi’s
nominee was Dr Pattabhi Sitaramayya. He was to lose to Subhash Chandra
Bose. Gandhi and his disciples brought a charge of indiscipline against
Bose. One fails to understand what act of indiscipline Bose had
committed, except that he contested the poll against Gandhi’s
candidate. Immediately after the election, Gandhi’s tormented soul did
make him acknowledge “Pattabhi’s defeat is my defeat.” Afterwards,
Gandhi saw to it that Bose did not function effectively as the Congress
President, and Bose was forced to resign. Gandhi himself drafted the
resolution banning Bose from holding any executive office in the
Congress for three years. He, however, claimed that he loved Subhash as
a son, but his love which was as soft as a rose could also be harder
than flint. But for the immoral political practice Gandhi and his
followers adopted in throwing out Bose from the Congress, things might
have been different, in that Gandhi might not have remained the
absolute leader for a long time.
IN his paper on ‘Marxian Theory and Indian Politics’,
Professor Sudipto Kaviraj writes that Roy’s prediction of a premature
obituary of Gandhi’s leadership of the Indian National Congress went
wrong. I have always felt it is dangerous to contradict political
scientists when they make such statements, without oneself investing in
research. This is particularly so when the view relates to Gandhi and
Roy, and appears to start with the assumption that Gandhi could never
make any mistake, and that Roy could never be correct in his criticism
of Gandhi and Gandhism. It is very difficult to dismiss Roy on rational
grounds. It would only be possible to do so through an unscientific
approach, and through practices which have sought to wipe out M.N.
Roy’s name from history.
Prof Kaviraj holds that Roy’s article on the swan song
was actually written by his wife, Evelyn Roy. This is not true. The
article is contained in the Documents of the History of the Communist
Party of India (Adhikari Volume No. 2), and it is clearly stated that
it was written by Roy himself.
While querying M.N. Roy’s comments on the Ahmedabad
incidents, Prof Kaviraj does not refer to other political events where
Roy’s predictions were correct. When Roy addressed the Radical
Democratic Party in December 1972, hardly any Indian thought Hitler’s
Axis powers would be defeated, and that the British would be left with
no option but to leave the colonies after the war. “The right to
self-determination has been promised to India, with the greater
assertion of British democracy on the situation. There is no reason to
believe that the right will be withheld by any external agency or
political formation after the post-war period.” Roy exhorted his
colleagues to prepare for the economic and political reconstruction of
independent India. He brought out two documents: ‘People’s plan for
reconstruction of independent India’, and ‘A draft Constitution for
free India’. Then he predicted that in spite of the pact between Hitler
and Soviet Russia, the latter would be drawn into the war. Most
historians across the world now accept that but for Stalin joining the
Allies, Hitler might not have been defeated.
Roy’s most important prediction was that the
parliamentary form of democracy would breed corruption. His lecture to
the University Institute in Calcutta on February 5, 1950 warned of
this. “The future of Indian democracy is not very bright, and that is
not due to the evil intentions on the part of politicians, but rather
the system of party politics. Perhaps in another 10 years, demagogy
will vitiate political practice. The scramble for power will continue,
breeding corruption and inefficiency. People engaged in politics cannot
take a long view. Laying foundations is a long process for them; they
want a short-cut. The short-cut to power is always to make greater
promises than others, to promise things without the competence or even
the intention to implement them.” This is perhaps the reason why there
was not even a polite reference to Gandhi’s political ideas of
decentralisation and village republics in the Constituent Assembly,
when the Constitution was first being framed. This was in spite of the
fact that there were a large number of Gandhian members in the
Constituent Assembly. Referring to this, Roy said the future of
democracy in our country would depend on people who were either outside
politics, or who had the courage and vision to step out of the indecent
scramble for power.
In another lecture on January 30, 1947, also at
Calcutta, Roy had said: “When political power is concentrated in the
hands of a small community, you may have a façade of parliamentary
democracy, but for all political purposes it will be a dictatorship,
even if it may be paternal and benevolent.”
To make democracy effective power must always remain
invested in the people—not periodically, but from day to day. Atomised
individuals are powerless for all practical purposes. Roy advanced the
idea of a new social order based on direct participation of the people
through people’s committees and gram sabhas. Its culture would be based
on universal dissemination of knowledge and have minimum control and
maximum scope for scientific and creative activities. Being founded on
reason and science, the new society will necessarily be planned. But it
will be planning with the freedom of the individual as its crux. The
new society will be democratic, political, economic, as well as
cultural. These ideas remind one of Gandhi’s ideas.
It is therefore important for political scientists to
do a little research to find out why even Gandhians did not make any
reference to them, and why our leaders to whom power was handed over by
the British decided to go on the beaten track of a parliamentary form
of government. Why was it that Gandhi was totally ignored by his
followers?
PROFESSOR BHIKU PARIKH has written three books on
Gandhi. The most important of these is on colonialisation and reform,
analysing Gandhi’s political discourse. In the context of Gandhi, this
should include important political events which shaped the destiny of
the country. Prof Parikh does not take these into account and analyse
them. He does not refer to the Subhash Chandra Bose incident, or to
Gandhi’s ban resolution against Bose. What would have been the position
of the Congress if Bose had been allowed to form the Working Committee
and function as the President? Prof Parikh does not refer to the
Swarajists’ defiance at the Ahmedabad AICC session. He does not analyse
a number of other incidents of national importance.
Among these is the Cripps offer during World War II.
This was acceptable to people like Aurobindo Ghosh and M.N Roy. Why did
the Congress and its supermen reject it? Perhaps Prof Parikh’s analysis
would lead one to conclude that if the Cripps offer had been accepted,
India would not have been partitioned, and the post-partition holocaust
view would have been avoided. What of negotiations with Mohammad Ali
Jinnah? What was it in Jinnah’s demands that the Congress found
difficult to accept? How would independent India have suffered if these
had been accepted? If they had been accepted, India would not have been
partitioned. I refer to these in the hope that Prof Parikh may deal
with them in a future edition of his popular book.
In one of his books, Prof Parikh expresses surprise
that although Gandhi succeeded in bringing critics like Subhash Bose
and M.N. Roy to his side, he failed to win over Dr B. R. Ambedkar. In
fact, he himself gives the reasons when calling Gandhi a hypocrite in
the context of analysing his movement for eradication of untouchability
and separate electorate. How does Prof Parikh expect a man of
Ambedkar’s stature to follow and support a hypocrite? Insofar as
Subhash Bose and Roy are concerned, Bose never became a supporter of
Gandhi.
Roy wrote an editorial in his weekly by way of paying
homage to Gandhi. In this he said that communal harmony is not possible
in the mediaeval atmosphere of religious orthodoxy and fanaticism. With
the view that nationalism is totalitarian and precludes the idea of
individual liberty, he felt it was idle to pledge loyalty to the
Mahatma’s message unless it meant realisation of its contradictions,
and positioning of the moral and humanistic core of its teachings above
the cult of nationalism and power politics. Otherwise, the Mahatma wore
the crown of martyrdom in vain. Prof Parikh does not analyse this
aspect of Gandhi’s assassination. Nor does he refer to the incident
where Gandhi asked Roy not to write anything critical of him or of
Gandhism. Possibly an analysis would indicate that Gandhi was actually
intolerant of criticism.
Prof Parikh does not analyse why Gandhi found it
difficult to democratise the Congress, or why he was opposed to younger
men coming up in the Congress hierarchy. Also missing is an examination
of how Gandhi responded to the political jockeying for power which
followed the 1937 Provincial Assembly elections. There is no evidence
that Gandhi denounced such practices in emerging in national life.
In one incident, the Opposition gave notice of a
no-confidence resolution against the Congress Government. What did the
Congress leaders do? With a view to rescuing the Congress from certain
defeat, they made the Speaker adjourn the Assembly. Dr Rajendra Prasad
was deeply disturbed and wrote to the Chairman of the Congress
Parliamentary Party, Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, saying that the
Congress party should not adopt such immoral means to capture power.
Patel replied that these things happened in the parliamentary form of
government. This must have been front-page news in the national Press.
It is inconceivable that Gandhi did not know about it. But we have no
evidence that he intervened in the matter. Could it be that he would
not go against the ‘Sardar?’ I mention this only to refer to the very
difficult task arising from Gandhi’s insistence on morality in politics.
IN the context of Roy’s prophesy, Philip Spratt, a
British Communist leader sent to India by Communist International to
help the communist movement, became Roy’s colleague and friend. In his
foreword to Roy’s book New Orientation, published in 1946, he commented
that he knew of no one who had been “a more consistently correct
prophet than M.N. Roy”. He wrote:
On hardly any major issue have his analyses and predictions been
disproved by events ….
He has always written as a political strategist,
concerned to know what is happening so that he can act appropriately.
It is functional writing, consistent and responsible. That it should
prove to be so unvaryingly right must be almost unique, and is
certainly noteworthy. It is strange therefore that in a country so
given to hero-worship, Roy should not have become a popular idol.
Spratt went on to say:
Not that his merits as a political thinker are entirely
unrecognised. They are admitted even by those who disliked him—people
who would not be found dead with a copy of Independent India, yet like
to know what Roy was thinking about things. It is rather that the truth
hurts, and hurts in particular all those who control public opinion in
India.
Spratt felt that Roy wrote for a limited circle who
understood his style of thought and his background of ideas, and did
not seem concerned about communicating more widely. Spratt argued that
following the Great Depression in the West, people now knew that
poverty and inequality were no longer inevitable, and that trouble lay
ahead of they were not abolished. A remedy for the instability of
capitalism might be the freezing of economic progress; Spratt wrote
that the Nazis, if they had conquered the world, would have preserved
stability by forcibly suppressing discontent. The Gandhian school, he
said, also aimed at stability, and proposed to achieve it by
ideological means, that is, by persuading people not to desire a higher
standard of life. Spratt felt that this could not succeed, and thus in
seeking a way forward in the world revolution under way, Gandhism in
its pure form “must be ruled out as a theoretically possible solution”.
Spratt held that it was clear from “Indian conditions”
that India was part of the world and involved in this revolution. Yet
he felt Roy’s mindfulness of this annoyed “the nationalists, who at
bottom, do not think of India as part of the world, but think India is
unique, that foreign or western ideas do not apply to the country and
presumably, therefore, that it happens to be having a private
revolution of its own”. This, he felt, was the nationalists’ way of
saying that they preferred to confine the revolution to its nationalist
aspect—“whereas Roy says that it is merely a small beginning, hardly
worth calling a revolution at all”. Spratt drew attention to the fact
that Roy had been saying this for more than 20 years. He had pointed
out in 1924 that after the 1914-1918 War, the export of British capital
to India fell, and had dropped to zero by 1923. This and other facts
led Roy to infer that in due course a peaceful transfer of political
power to Indian hands would take place—not through the magic of ‘soul
force’, nor out of the democratic convictions of the British ruling
class, but by virtue of a shift of economic power. And it followed that
as regards the real problems of the revolution, that the transfer of
power would mean nothing. The old order would remain; only the
personnel at the top would change.
Spratt records that Roy came to this view after serious
thought. He discussed it with Lenin, who disagreed, finally decided it
was true and stuck to it when probably nobody else in the world
accepted it. It became an essential part of his diagnosis of India’s
condition, and helped to shape his attitude to all subsequent problems.
In particular, it determined his stance during World War II, when after
Churchill became Prime Minister and Roy saw that the consummation he
had prophesied could take place at any time if the Indian National
Congress adopted a “responsible attitude to the War”. Roy felt that the
Congress opposition to the war was not principled opposition but more
what betting men call ‘hedging’, a provision against the eventuality of
an Axis victory. Roy argued that in view of the unacceptability of
fascism, it was obligatory for a sincere opponent of fascism to support
the Allied side in the war. Roy himself did so. Spratt was to remark:
Now that everything he predicted has taken place, and
the erstwhile incorruptible revolutionaries are cooperating to the
limit, it would be only decent if those who condemned his cooperation
would admit their error. But perhaps that is too much to expect.
In urging rejection of fascism, Spratt still drew
attention to the need to discuss how the fascist argument stood in
contradiction to the three desired conditions—peace, collectivism and
material well-being—posited as a stable outcome of the world
revolution. He pointed to Roy’s assertion that in our time all
nationalism is potential fascism, and fascism’s nationalist character
contradicts the first condition. The Congress was already working for a
fully nationalist policy. “Yet in plain contradiction to all this, it
professes Gandhism, and Mahatma Gandhi is still its active leader”.
Gandhi had only belatedly “ceased explicitly to defend landlordism and
castem” Spratt said.
ROY, highly critical of Gandhism from the start, had
never altered his opinion. He had said many penetrating things about
it. But Spratt noted that Roy’s approach to Gandhism “seems that of an
outsider, an unsympathetic foreigner”. He had failed to make his
criticism intelligible to the Indian reader. “He has never tried to get
under the skin of the Mahatma or his admirers, to see where that
extraordinary power comes from,” Spratt said. Spratt himself admitted
that in his own search for elements in Gandhism which could be used for
democratic and socialistic purposes, he had made the mistake of
overlooking the gulf between the theory and practice of Gandhism. It
was extraordinary, beyond almost any other movement in this respect,
“more often than not achieving the opposite of what it professes”. But
he noted that Roy did not accept this view, considering the dilemma to
be intolerable. Between fascism and communism, the latter was clearly
the better choice, but its success was unlikely. On the basis that any
solution to the world’s problems had to be socialist or collectivist,
Spratt argued for the socialist course, but said it must get away from
the lifeless, uninspiring formalism of the social democrats, and move
in the direction of bringing the rank-and-file voter into “intimate and
permanent contact with the administration”. more or less as the
original Soviets had done in Russia. Roy’s draft Constitution for India
suggested how this could be done. Roy’s proposition rejected the
illiberal doctrines and practices which had caused the Communists to be
so strongly opposed, and called for a really liberal but dynamic
socialism which could appeal confidently all classes except the few
remaining rich.
Roy’s draft Constitution implied one addition to the three necessary factors for the desired world solution. This was freedom.
Max Eastman distinguished three impulses behind the
socialist movement: freedom, fraternity and order. Roy pointed out a
fourth: the moral motive, the demand for a better order. This was
conspicuous in all the socialist movements and their thinkers.
Returning to Gandhi and his critics, several questions
remain. Why is it that he did not like to consult people outside his
circle, and even when intellectuals including his friends advised him,
to summarily reject such advice? Gandhi was used to being attacked by
both conservatives and radicals. Both ‘sanatanists’ and Dr Ambedkar
attacked him on untouchability. His systematic campaign against it
deeply alarmed the ‘sanatanists’, who feared his powerful hold over the
Hindu masses. Initially, they tried to convince him that untouchability
was integral to the Hindu religious and social order and denounced him
for subversion. When this failed, they mounted a campaign of leaflets
and articles to impugn his integrity and cast doubts on his private
life. Black flag protests, a bomb attack and an axe attack, and slogans
challenged his all-India anti-untouchability tour in 1934. On his part,
Ambedkar accused Gandhi of propping up the Hindu social order, with
only token concessions to untouchables.
Ambedkar’s ‘What Congress and Gandhi have done to the
untouchables?’ asked: “Do the untouchables regard Mr Gandhi as being in
earnest? The answer is in the negative” He charged Gandhi with
indifference to the anti-untouchability part of the 1921 Bardoli
programme, with practicing satyagraha for everything except against the
Hindus for casteism, with doing nothing more than to indulge in giving
sermons, with telling untouchables they could find salvation in the
Hindu fold, with failing to protest when in 1921 only a paltry sum from
the Tilak Swaraj Fund was allotted to untouchables and when the
committee to plan their uplift was uncere-moniously wound up. Gandhi
won praise from Hindus for his fast against the MacDonald Award of
1931, which granted the untouchables a separate electorate. Ambedkar
declared there was nothing noble in the fast; “it was the worst form of
coercion against a helpless people, to give up the constitutional
safeguards of which they had become possessed … and to agree to live on
the mercy of Hindus.” When Gandhi signed the Poona Pact, Ambedkar held
that it did not differ from the Communal Award, and Gandhi had only
signed it when he found his opposition would not succeed. Kanshi Ram,
who pioneered the Bahujan Samaj Party, was the most recent ‘Harijan’
leader to echo Ambedkar’s views.
In studying the internal logic of Gandhi’s campaign
against untouchability, it is necessary to examine the reasons why his
conservative and radical critics reached contradictory conclusions. The
way he formulated his critique, and planned his campaign was a source
of both his success and failure. It enabled him to undermine the moral
basis of untouchability, but prevented him from dealing with its
economic and political roots.
Was Gandhi fallible? And how are Roy and others who
questioned him to be judged? On February 5, 1950, at a seminar held
during the M.N Roy Centenary Year in 1987, Roy’s war thesis was being
discussed. A senior professor of political science stood up and claimed
that Gandhi was “more correct” and Roy “less correct.” The great
Gandhian ideologue Professor Amlan Datta was presiding over the
session. Many of us present were surprised that even he did not ask the
speaker to explain what he meant.
The author is a former editor of The Radical Humanist and erstwhile President, PUCL-Delhi; he edits the PUCL Bulletin.
Source by mainstreamweekly.net