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.

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[1] Gandhi, Mahatma – Collected Works, Volume 14, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1965, page - 440

[2] Kesari – 29 January 1918

[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