The Nitpicker’s Chronicle : Flip side story of Indian national movement
The Trojan Horse
In
1914, when the World War broke out, Gandhi took the command of Indian National
Congress and clamoured in favour of joining the British Armed Forces, brushing
aside his philosophy of ahimsha for
the time being. Gandhi argued, “To bring about such a state of things we should have the
ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use
them...If we want to learn the use of arms with the greatest possible despatch,
it is our duty to enlist ourselves in the army”[1].
Mahatma’s clarion call snuffed out 47,000 Indian lives in the battle field.
After his return from abroad, when
Gandhi was outpouring his unmatched loyalty to the British in their war effort,
a group of young leftist radicals, sitting abroad on the other side of the
fence, was hoping for an armed revolution to oust the imperialists from Indian
occupation forever. Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, along with Abdul Hafiz
Barakatullah went to Afghanistan to launch an armed struggle against the
British in India and to conquer India with the help of German army led by
General Von der Goltz. The German government decided to support the Indian
revolutionaries for an armed uprising and promised to supply arms for the final
onslaught. Germany assured to give financial assistance to the Indians in the
form of a national loan to be repaid after the nation was set free. It was also
decided that Turkey would be asked to join hands in order to draw the Indian
Muslims to take up arms against the British.
Barakatullah organised the Indian soldiers in German custody as POWs to
turn their arms against the Raj. Mahendra was a staunch believer of Marxist
philosophy and formed a provisional government in 1915, with Barakatullah as
the prime minister. The first Indian leftist movement ended futile before the
British agility, but the seeds of revolution for a total independent nation had
been sown by the revolutionaries on communist beliefs at the time when the
Bolshevik revolution (1917) had not found its place in human history.
Nearly a quarter of a century after the First War,
Britain once again locked horns with Germany. Soviet Russia, which severed her
relation with Germany, was trying to find a place next to Britain. The ‘nation
builders’ of India, still under British hegemony, were caught in a whirlpool of
dilemma stoked by events that were slowly unfolding. The same two political
identities with a common objective of making the nation free, found the Empire
in danger. One, who on the previous occasion recruited soldiers for Britain,
was now hell-bent on staying away from the war and ousting the British from
India in no uncertain terms. The other, who had connived with Germany against
the Raj earlier, now had a secret pact with the erstwhile enemy to support
their effort in the War. The drama enacted then was having a rerun now, but the
roles were reversed. In this political
play the dramatis personae were the same; the former was the Indian
National Congress represented by Mahatma and the latter was the Communist Party
of India, characterised by the Indian Marxists. Was it just a happenstance? Or
direct spin-off of an unadulterated perfidy? The volte-face eventually
had an ineffaceable influence on shaping of the polity of the country and may
be an interesting read.
The
October revolution and the unprecedented success of the Bolsheviks in Russia
left an indelible mark on socio-political thinking of the Indian icons from
Tilak to Nehru. Tilak was full of praise for Lenin and extolled him as
“advocate of peace[2]”. B.C. Pal
was often alleged as an agent of the Bolsheviks when he tried to inspire the
Indian workers on similar lines against British capitalism[3]. Tagore wrote, “The cry of Russian Revolution
is the cry of the world” in his Letter from Russia (1931), which was
banned by the British Government. Khilafatists in many conferences desired to
use Bolshevism as their weapon to fight against the British. Bolshevik
literatures were found in their headquarters. Bhagat Singh was deeply
influenced by Bolshevism and spent most of his time in jail reading Marx and
Lenin. C.R. Das argued in favour of organising the workers on Bolshevik line.[4]
Gandhi preferred to see Bolshevik revolution as Hindu ethical idea of
non-possession in the realms of economics. He would have no prejudice if such
economic renunciation could be achieved bloodlessly. Nehru too believed that he
could have socialism in India minus the Red Terror of Bolshevism[5].
From 1942 to
1945, for three long years, when all the Congress leaders were either in jail
or went underground and the patriotic wave was blowing over the nation as the
strongest tsunami, a golden opportunity came to the Indian Communists to take
control of the movement. But their
seditiousness and clandestinity at the most coveted moment pushed them into
political oblivion. The communists supported the British faithfully in their
war effort, which they termed as “people’s war”. CPI applied its
notorious ‘Trojan horse’ tactics from within, to split the Congress in their
favour. The Indian Communists can be best understood in the words of Soli
Batliwala, a former member of the Central Committee of Communist Party, who
dropped his first bombshell in a press interview on 22 February 1946. The volte-face eventually had an
ineffaceable influence on shaping of the polity of the country and may be an
interesting read.
(Releasing shortly
– Nitpicker’s Chronicles : Flipside story of Indian National Movement)
[1] Gandhi,
Mahatma – Collected Works, Volume 14, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1965, page - 440
[3] Pal, B.C – speeches published under The World Situation and Ourselves, 1919.
[4] Congress Presidential Addresses ...: First[-second] Series, Volume 2, published by G. A. Natesan & Company, 1935 for Indian National Congress, page 601
[5] Nehru, Jawaharlal - Soviet Russia: some random sketches and impressions, Allahabad Law Journal Press, 1928,page 117