Juxtaposing two ideas of India
Nonica Datta
Mahatma Gandhi regarded Dhingra’s act as cowardly, and his defence, immature and unconvincing. He thought Dhingra had broken all norms and rules while enacting the murder; the rules, which, according to Gandhi, even some of the worst criminals observe when they commit crimes
IN 1909, on his return journey from England to South Africa, Gandhi wrote the classic text, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule. This foundational text, as we know, offered the foremost trenchant critique of modern civilisation and modern state. Gandhi introduced the ideas of swaraj and satyagraha for the emancipation of India and the importance of passive resistance as a means to attain personal and political freedom. What is less known is that Hind Swaraj also offered, for the first time, Gandhi’s critique of violence as a powerful response to the early years of militant nationalism that had spread across the country, particularly in Punjab. Gandhi regarded the terrorist methods adopted by these early radical nationalists as a ‘suicidal policy’. Many of us would not know that his principal attack was towards Amritsar-born Madan Lal Dhingra, a man who had killed Sir William Curzon Wyllie on July 1, 1909, at the Institute of Imperial Studies, London. Sir Curzon was the political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Morley.
Responding to Dhingra’s action, Gandhi offered a critique of his action in Hind Swaraj:
“Do you not tremble to think of freeing India by assassination? What we need to do is to sacrifice ourselves. It is a cowardly thought, that of killing others. Whom do you suppose to free by assassination? The millions of India do not desire it. Those who are intoxicated by the wretched modern civilisation think these things. Those who will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy. Those who believe that India has gained by Dhingra’s act and other similar acts in India make a serious mistake. Dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. He gave his body in a wrong way; its ultimate result can only be mischievous.”
After killing Sir Curzon Wyllie, Dhingra, as the pioneering work of VN Datta tells us, asserted that what he had done was just the right thing to do. Dhingra believed that neither the British Court of Justice nor British public opinion, not even the leaders of Indian opinion, especially Gandhi, who condemned the use of violence for political ends, could really judge his act objectively. He maintained that his real judge in a matter like this was his own ‘conscience’, and some of his close associates in India House, London, like VD Savarkar, HK Koregaonkar and Harnam Singh, who had organised the ‘brotherhood-in-arms’ against the colonial state in India and were advocates of militant nationalism. In London High Court, Dhingra asserted that he was a patriot and indicted the British rule for its grave and horrific injustices perpetrated on the people of India. He read out the following statement:
“I do not want to say anything in defence of myself, but simply to prove the justice of my deed. As for myself, I do not think that any English law court has any authority to convict me or detain me in prison or to pass sentence of death to me. That is the reason I did not have any counsel to defend me. And I maintain that if it is patriotic in an Englishman to fight against the Germans if they were to occupy this country, it is much more justifiable and patriotic in my case to fight against the English; I hold the English people responsible for the murder of eighty million of my countrymen, Indians, I mean, in the last fifty years. And they are also responsible for taking away £100,000,000 every year from India to this country. I also hold them responsible for the hanging and deportations of my countrymen, who do just the same as the English people here are advising their countrymen to do; and an Englishman who goes out to India, and say, gets £100 a month, that simply means that he passes sentence of death on 1,000 of my poor countrymen. …Just as Germans have no right to occupy their country, the English people have no right to occupy India, and it is perfectly justifiable on our part to kill an Englishman who is polluting our sacred land. I am surprised at the terrible hypocrisy, force and mockery of the English people. They pose as champions of oppressed humanity — the peoples of Congo and the people of Russia, when there is much terrible oppression and horrible atrocities committed in India; for example, the killing of two million people every year and the outraging of our women. In case this country is occupied by Germans, and an Englishman, not bearing to see the Germans walking with the insolence of conquerors in the streets of London, goes and kills one or two Germans, then that Englishman is to be held as a patriot by the people of this country, then certainly I am a patriot too, working for the emancipation of my motherland.”
Dhingra welcomed the British decision to sentence him to death as he thought this would inspire and embolden his own countrymen to resist and dismantle the British rule in India:
“I made this statement not because I wish to plead for mercy or anything of that kind. I wish that English people should sentence me to death, for in that case, the vengeance of my countrymen will be all the more keen. I put forward this statement to show the justice of my cause to the outside world, especially to our sympathisers in America and Germany. That is all.”
Dhingra’s final statement entitled “Challenge” focused upon his martyrdom for his country. He justified violence as means to achieve freedom of India from the tyranny of British rule. He expressed no remorse or guilt. He was convinced and confident that militant nationalism was the only way to attain freedom from the violent shackles of colonialism:
“I admit, the other day, I attempted to shed English blood as a humble revenge for the inhuman hangings and deportations of patriotic Indian youths. In this attempt I have consulted none but my own conscience. I have conspired with none but my own duty.
I believe that a nation held down by foreign bayonet is in a perpetual state of war, since open battle is rendered impossible to a disarmed race. I attacked by surprise since guns were denied me. I drew forth my pistol and fired.
…The only lesson required in India at present is to learn how to die, and the only way to teach it is by dying ourselves. Therefore, I die and glory in my martyrdom.
My only prayer to God is may I be reborn of the same mother and may I re-die in the same sacred cause till the cause is successful, and she stands free for the good of humanity and the glory of God — Bande Mataram.”
Doubtless, Gandhi was among the severest of Dhingra’s critics. His denunciation stemmed from his ‘critique of violence’ propounded in the Hind Swaraj. Gandhi had gone to England with HO Ali in a delegation sent to protest the notorious “Black Ordinance” requiring the registration of Asiatics. During his short stay there, Dhingra’s case came up at the Old Bailey. He sent back to Natal for publication in the Indian Opinion his views on Dhingra’s assassination of Wyllie. Gandhi made copious notes on Dhingra’s act and ideology, and in his reading found nothing worthy in any aspect of his act of violence. He believed that his own deputation’s efforts to come to a political negotiation with the British received a serious blow due to Dhingra’s careless action. He feared it would alter the attitude of the British authorities from ‘sympathy into antipathy’. Gandhi was fearless in his analysis and what he found unacceptable and abhorrent was that Dhingra killed Wyllie when he was his guest. Gandhi wrote: “Wyllie was a guest of the Association. From this point of view Madan Lal murdered his guest in his own house and killed Dr Lalcaca who tried to interfere between them.”
According to Gandhi, Dhingra’s murder of Wyllie damaged the cause of India’s political future. He regarded Dhingra’s act as cowardly, and his defence, immature and unconvincing. He believed that Dhingra did not act on his own but was exploited by the machinations and ideologies of others like Savarkar; even the statement which he presented in the court was not his own — “someone else had written it”. Gandhi thought that Dhingra had broken all norms and rules while enacting the murder; the rules, which according to Gandhi, even some of the worst criminals observe when they commit crimes. Gandhi criticised Dhingra:
“His [Dhingra’s] defence is inadmissible. In my view he has acted like a coward. All the same one can pity the man. He was egged on to do this act by ill digested reading of worthless things.
His defence of himself too appears to have been learnt by rote. It is those who incited him to do so. In my view Dhingra was innocent. The murder was committed in a state of intoxication. It is not merely wine or bhang that make one drunk; a mad idea can do so. That was the case with Dhingra.”
Clearly, Gandhi was critiquing the tide of militant nationalism and radical ideologies endorsing violence as a means to achieve the political freedom of India. Gandhi raised the whole debate to a theoretical and political framework of futility and madness of violence. Dhingra’s lofty patriotism was informed by false reasoning and analogies, he said:
“The analogy of Germans and English is fallacious. If the Germans were to invade [Britain], the British would kill only the invaders. They would not kill every German or Germans, who are guests. If I kill someone in my house without a warning, someone who has done me no harm, I cannot but be called a coward. There is an ancient custom among the Arabs that they would not kill anyone in their own house; even if the person be their enemy. They would kill him after he had left the house and after he had been given time to arm himself. Those who believe in violence would be brave men if they observe those rules when killing anyone. Otherwise they must be looked upon as cowards.”
Gandhi was certainly not impressed by Dhingra’s facing the gallows as a consequence of his act. He conceded that though Dhingra may have been courageous in certain respects, his courage was expressed and employed in a wrong way. Gandhi argued:
“It may be said that what Dhingra did publicly and knowing fully well that he himself would have to die augurs courage of no mean order on his part. But as I have said above, men can do nothing in a state of intoxication and can also banish the fear of death. Whatever courage there is in this is the result of intoxication, not a quality of the man himself. A man’s courage consists in suffering deeply and over a long period. That alone is a brave act which is preceded by careful reflection. Those who believe in this madness are ignorant, who will rule in their place — murderers. India can gain nothing from this rule of murders. I am afraid some Indians will commend this murder. I believe they will be guilty of a heinous crime.”
Critiquing the use of violence as a political strategy, Gandhi wrote: “One of the accepted and time-bound methods to attain the end is that of violence. The assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie was an illustration in its worst and [most] detestable form of that method.”
Gandhi firmly believed that Dhingra’s sacrifice was futile, calculated to do immense harm to Indian’s political struggle. Gandhi was not willing to consider Dhingra a hero or a martyr. For him, Dhingra was a misguided youth, who under the influence of some ‘mad idea’, was incited and manipulated by ideologues designed to only destroy his own life for an inconsequential, ill-fated, futile pursuit. The ‘suicidal policy’ adopted by Dhingra, he maintained, disagreed with his own idea of India which was committed to personal, moral and political freedom, i.e. swaraj.
Gandhi constantly, throughout his political life, advocated and practiced the ‘futility of violence’ and juxtaposed the transformative possibilities of non-violence with the destructive potentialities of violence. This juxtaposition of violence and non-violence continued to shape and craft the Mahatma’s political language in the twentieth century. This difference also constitutes two alternative ideas of India in our own contemporary times.
— The writer teaches history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi