From Margin to Centre

THE GREAT WAR WAS OVER. BY THE second half of 1919, Gandhi’s political career had reached a low ebb because of his hectic recruiting campaigns. Remember, at the outbreak of war, his relations with the British government were friendly. He believed in extending wholehearted support to the British Empire during the War. Swaraj, for him, implied ‘partnership in the Empire’. ‘India could achieve her complete emancipation within and through the British Empire,’ he wrote. Hoping that after the war England would advance India towards self-government, Gandhi was eagerly waiting for an opportunity for new political action and to launch a movement. Paradoxically, the year of 1919 was exceptional. Large dark clouds appeared on the horizon. And yet, January to December, Gandhi showed exemplary grit, courage and resilience. He realised that the only way he could emerge from the periphery was via a new political strategy. The time was indeed ripe. 1919 proved to be Gandhi’s debut moment. From the shadows, he came into the limelight. From the margin he came centrestage.

And where else could he prove his métier more than in the Punjab, once a favourite of the British Empire and by now a troublesome province? World War I had profoundly transformed the Punjab. After all, it provided the largest number of soldiers. The Ghadar Movement had been severely crushed here. The seething rage of people, owing to the war-time crisis and the massive casualties of Punjabi soldiers, could not be contained. There were signs of discontent everywhere. The Punjab was in turmoil. Gandhi had never been to the Punjab before 1919. But he could foresee it as a province of promise and potentiality. Astute as he was. The Punjab could be his trump card.

Then came the draconian Rowlatt Bills. Gandhi seized the opportunity to craft his new script of action. Unwell in the early months of 1919, he gave a clarion call for the Rowlatt Satyagraha all over the country. The sense of outrage felt by Indians was what fuelled his strategy. Inaugurating the satyagraha, on March 1st, 1919, Gandhi warned the fight against the Rowlatt Bills was ‘probably the most momentous in the history of India’. As symbols of national humiliation, the Bills were ‘an unmistakable symptom of a deep-seated disease in the governing body’, Gandhi wrote. He wanted people to support the movement, which depended for its success entirely on ‘perfect self-suffering’. In his general instructions to satyagrahis, issued on March 23rd, 1919, he declared, ‘It is my firm belief that we shall obtain salvation only through suffering and not by reforms dropping on us from the English—they use Brute force, we Soul force.’ Drafting the satyagraha pledge, he set out to challenge the British government and conceived the idea of a nonviolent hartal across the country. One of the signatories of the satyagraha vow was Jawaharlal Nehru.

Gandhi’s idea of a general hartal, a formidable response to the regressive Rowlatt Act, was a masterstroke. He said, ‘We should call upon the country to observe a general hartal. Satyagraha is a process of self-purification, and ours is a sacred fight, and it seems to me to be in the fitness of things that it should be commenced with an act of self-purification. Let all the people of India, therefore, suspend their business on that day and observe the day as one of fasting and prayer.’ This was the beginning of Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience campaign. Yes, it was his moment. Really. And he forged and expanded his connections across the country. Moreover, as his eyes were set on the Punjab, he reached out to the local leaders there: Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal in Amritsar, Lala Duni Chand, Chaudhary Ram Bhaj Dutt and Lala Harkishan Lal in Lahore. The Rowlatt agitation thus rapidly gained ground in the Punjab and leaders like Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal played key roles in it. On April 3rd, Swami Satyadev was sent to Amritsar by Gandhi and he delivered a lecture on soul force.

Yet, cracks began to appear soon. In the Punjab, ‘Rowlatt’ (named after Sir Sydney Rowlatt) became synonymous with the Punjabi word ‘rowla sahib’. ‘Rowla’ was also invoked as a vindication for rows that broke out in the bazaars. Gandhi’s hartal and satyagraha didn’t cut much ice. Many luminaries remained aloof. Fazl-i-Husain, the most prominent and brilliant leader of the Punjab, was unwilling to resort to Gandhi’s ‘unconstitutional agitation’. Sunder Singh Majithia too was opposed to the movement. The Chief Khalsa Diwan urged Sikhs not to participate in Gandhi’s anti-Rowlatt satyagraha.

Yet, ironically, the Punjab came to be represented as the epicentre of the anti-Rowlatt agitation. The mainstream historical narrative, mainly crafted by the nationalist Congress, informs us that the agitation for the repeal of the Rowlatt Act reached a climax on April 6th, 1919. And one-third of the total hartals staged all over India, between March 30th and April 6th, occurred in the Punjab. Amritsar, Lahore, Jullundur, Lyallpur, Multan and Ferozepur were the principal arenas of protest. The Punjab was portrayed as being more politically astir than the rest of India. The widespread agitation is presented as a direct response to the Rowlatt Act. But the point is that this draconian legislation applied to the whole of India and the Punjab was no exception.

Moving beyond the nationalist frame, we discover a different reality. The satyagraha movement did not really inspire the people of the Punjab. Only a dozen of them had taken the satyagraha vow. The nonviolent message of Gandhi’s agitation could not attract the martial and combative Punjabis, who were inspired by the revolutionary Ghadar ideas and movement. Their heroes were ghadari babas and local revolutionaries. The Mahatma was unable to fire their imagination. The Tribune of March 8th, 1919, conveyed people’s reaction towards the satyagraha movement: ‘For the other provinces it was easy to resort to passive resistance but for Punjab, it was more difficult.’ This might explain why the leadership in the
Punjab remained localised and confined to the cities. There were hardly any big provincial leaders, who would convey Gandhi’s message to the masses in the province.

And yet, the Punjab was turbulent. Agitated. Disturbed. But not because of the Mahatma. Gandhi’s satyagraha did not foment and exacerbate the political unrest in Punjab. Then how do we explain the ‘Punjab disturbances’ that the Raj was so paranoid and incensed about, if the satyagraha movement did not enflame the majority of people? The answer is that the Punjab had its own reasons to be incendiary and resistant. The province had been hit by acute shortages and rising prices during the War. The impact of the coercive recruitment campaigns, followed by massive demobilisation, was most intensely felt here. The province was ripe for a popular political upheaval. Moreover, the tyrannical administration under Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, had alienated Punjabis. Seizing the opportunity, Gandhi changed his rhetoric and focused on O’Dwyer, holding him responsible for the 1919 disturbances: ‘… it is clear to me that, despite incitement by any number of educated and clever men, the violence which broke out would never have broken out were it not for the serious errors of Sir Michael O’Dwyer.’

Sensing the volatile climate in the Punjab, Gandhi was determined to target his new theatre of action. And this happened to be the Punjab. As luck would have it, his visit to Amritsar was interrupted at Palwal on April 9th, as he was arrested and turned back to Bombay. He stood his ground and declared, ‘My arrest makes me free.’ Gandhi’s Punjab agents, Dr Kitchlew and Dr Satyapal, were deported from Amritsar. Though absent from the scene, Gandhi and the events following the arrests of his cohorts shaped the nationalist narrative of 1919. And he, as a result, assumed a commanding position in the country.

Gandhi’s nationalist narrative came to centre around the anti-Rowlatt satyagraha. It highlights that, as a result of the political agitation, local leaders were arrested in Amritsar and the tide of anti-colonial protest engulfed the Punjab. Sadly, this narrative hides many other parallel narratives. Challenging Gandhi’s message of nonviolence and self-suffering, the city had, in fact, become a scene of rioting and mob violence from April 10th. The angry mob had little to do with satyagraha. The colonial authorities crushed the mob. The firing by British mounted soldiers led to the killing of about 20 locals. In retaliation, the leaderless people reportedly killed five Europeans, raided post offices and looted banks. The ‘savage’ mob attacked Miss Sherwood while shouting ‘Victory to Gandhi’, ‘Victory to Kitchlew’. They raised the cry ‘She is dead’. This was in the name of Gandhi and nonviolence. Surely, these people had not taken Gandhi’s vow of passive resistance.

There is more to this complex story. The assault on Miss Sherwood provided the principal context for General Reginald Dyer’s calculated and rational shooting at Jallianwala Bagh. So it was not Gandhi’s satyagraha pledge that triggered colonial violence.

The nationalist prose, penned by Gandhi, hardly recognises that the people of the Punjab became victims of a racially motivated onslaught. The discourse glosses over the local connection between April 10th and 13th. We know that a furious and determined Dyer wanted to teach the people of Amritsar a lesson for their actions on the 10th. His shooting of an innocent crowd on the 13th April in Jallianwala Bagh was calculated to ‘make a wide impression throughout the Punjab’. Gandhi’s mainstream saga, however, does not acknowledge that the crowd that assembled in the Bagh was not politically inspired. Nor does it recognise that it was not a political meeting. We know that prominent Congress leaders were absent. Hans Raj, a local Congress representative, later proved to be an agent provocateur.There was also tension between the mainstream Congress leadership led by Gandhi and the local leaders of Amritsar and Punjab, who were brushed aside.

Absent from Punjab, Gandhi masterminded the entire plot. When he saw the nonviolent movement turning violent, he quickly withdrew and said that he had committed a ‘Himalayan blunder’. The gains were enormous and much to his advantage. As a master storyteller of the nationalist narrative after the Rowlatt satyagraha, he inserted the ‘Punjab atrocities’ in the novel script of noncooperation with the government.

WHEN THE HUNTER COMMITTEE began its investigation, Gandhi and the Indian National Congress demanded the release of all persons who had been convicted and imprisoned in connection with the disorders. The authorities refused to release them. Consequently, under Gandhi’s influence, the Congress boycotted the Hunter Committee and a parallel non-official inquiry committee was constituted of which Gandhi, CR Das, Abbas S Tyabji, MR Jayakar and K Santanam were members. Accompanied by CF Andrews, Gandhi visited various places in the Punjab where disturbances had flared up. He played the most decisive and critical role in the preparation of the report (published on March 26th, 1920). Gandhi’s Congress Inquiry Committee report pointed out emphatically: ‘The Jallianwala massacre was a calculated piece of inhumanity towards innocent and unarmed men, including children, and unparalleled for its ferocity in the history of modern British administration.’ He added: ‘All I wish to say here about it is that there is not a single conscious exaggeration in it anywhere, and every statement made in it is substantiated by evidence.’

Despite Gandhi’s confession of a factual and rigorously objective reportage, the Congress report was not free from exaggeration, bias and mythology. The Congress narrative stated thousands were killed and the dead included women and children. The accurate estimate suggests that 700 were killed, and women and children were not part of the crowd.
As the principal author of the Congress report, Gandhi was carving out a new space for himself in national politics. Indeed, it was Jallianwala Bagh and the ‘Punjab wrongs’ and ‘Punjab troubles’ that propelled the Mahatma to assume the centrestage. His astute leadership brought the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy into the grand saga of Indian nationalism and shaped the contours of a robust anti-colonial struggle. The violence of Jallianwala Bagh encouraged him to launch his nonviolent movement. In a way, the enactment of violence sharpened his stance and strengthened his stand and stature.

Gandhi wouldn’t leave the Punjab in 1919. Even after the withdrawal of the Rowlatt Satyagraha. He held the Congress session in Amritsar the same year in December. He said: “I must regard my participation in Congress proceedings at Amritsar as my real entrance into Congress politics.”

Jawaharlal Nehru hailed the Amritsar Congress as the first ‘Gandhi Congress’. It was in 1919 that the young Jawaharlal became Gandhi’s lieutenant and organised relief work in the Punjab. Thus began one of the most critical and longest political partnerships of modern India that continues to profoundly influence contemporary Indian politics.

Gandhi became the real Gandhi in 1919.

AmritsarBritish imperialismCongressfreedom struggleJallianwala BaghMahatma GandhiPunjabRowlatt Act