Ghadar revolutionaries were nationalists, not Marxists or anarchists By: Anirban Ganguly Ghadar revolutionaries were nationalists, not Marxists or anarchistsBy 1910 and 1911 revolutionaries associated with the Jugantar group had fanned out internationally and had begun organising Indian diasporic groups. Bholanath Chatterjee of the Jugantar group, for example, visited Malay around 1910-1911 and Thailand in 1913 and ‘imbued the Indian settlers [there] with revolutionary ideas.’ There were many others too who were associated with the early nationalist movement in Bengal and went on to forge international linkages for furthering the Indian revolutionary movement abroad. Members of Jatindranath Mukherjee’s group, one of the leading revolutionary nationalist active in Bengal, had succeeded in developing an international network with the objective of overthrowing colonial rule in India. Deeply pious and religious Jatindranath, who had come early in contact with Swami Vivekananda and had been inspired to take to the revolutionary life by the monk, was deeply involved in laying the foundations of a revolutionary network all over the province. Jatin and his associates, except for a while MN Roy who had his brushes with Marxism, can hardly be called Marxists or anarchists. Coming back to the Ghadarites and to another veteran revolutionary Dr Tarak Nath Das (1884-1958), whom the article in question mentions, it may be relevant to argue that to assign neat labels of Marxist and anarchist to these figures is in fact unfairly trying to fit them into a strait jacket that they themselves may have rejected or abjured during their lifetime. A few examples from their thoughts and action would suffice to support our contention in the present discussion. Through his early writings, Hardayal emerges as the quintessential Indian nationalist imbued and immersed in the traditions of his land. In his Our Educational Problem (1922) in which Hardayal discusses the issue of national education in India and attacks the colonial education system and its aims as one which “de-Hinduises" us and causes the decay of our national institutions thereby hindering the growth of the feeling of Hindu unity and national life”, one sees him discussing at some length the benefits of Sanskrit for national integration. A few brief examples may be relevant. Hardayal made a demand which would make Indian Marxists see red. Recognising the need to develop Indian vernacular languages, he called for making Sanskrit the link language for India. Castigating himself for being incapable of communicating with his fellow countrymen in this ancient cultural language of his land he wrote: If I had followed nature, if our whole life had not been rendered ridiculous, artificial and miserable by this [colonial] education system, I should have written in Sanskrit to appeal to my countrymen in Bengal, Bombay or Madras, (an aspiration which has not altogether been abandoned) and in Hindi to address the people of my province. Hardayal also argued for the need to rework and preserve India’s national institutions – her “history, religion, languages, social life, literature – all living forces in a community which mould national character and aspirations.” He saw these being destroyed by the education imparted to Indian youth. For Hardayal the “desire to attain Swaraj” was meant for the “defence of these beloved institutions, the heirlooms which we have inherited from our ancestors.” He also talked of two national virtues – virtues which usually never find mention in the Marxist lexicon – that were missing in the imposed colonial education system, “Patriotism and spirituality – the two great character-making forces – are absent from this educational system,” he noted. In the chapter ‘Sanskrit versus English’, Hardayal argued that if English was declared the “language of unified India” then a united India would in effect mean a “denationalised India.” He called upon the Indian States, “the great semi-independent States” to act as “bulwarks of the national civilisation against the attacks of alien ideals.” The “illusion of Anglicisation” as he called it, from which India had been suffering for last few decades had to be destroyed and until that was done the “Brahma of national self-realisation” would be hidden from Indians. All of these terms and expressions, that were and remain quite alien to the anarchists-Marxists. Interestingly, contrary to Marxist positions, while discussing the need to seek national unity Hardayal emphasised that the “principle of Unity exists WITHIN [sic] a community and cannot be imported from WITHOUT. One sees another dimension of Hardayal’s nationalism in his discussions of the threats faced by India’s civilisational fabric from activities of missionaries in India. Nationalist thinker and ideologue, Ananda Coomaraswamy, in his essays on national idealism while discussing in great detail the intellectual and cultural effects that Christian missionaries were making in India cited Hardayal’s position in support of his contentions. In his assessment of the missionaries meddling with Indian culture, tradition and life Hardayal appears as a staunch nationalist; the following review could hardly be expected from a Marxist: The missionary is the representative of a society, a polity, a social system, a religion and a code of morality, which are totally different from our own. He comes as a belligerent and attacks our time-honoured customs and institutions, our sacred literature and traditions, our historical memories and associations. He wishes to give us a new name, a new place of worship, a new set of social laws. He has declared war to the knife against everything Hindu. He hates all that we hold dear. Our religion is to him a foolish superstition; our customs are the relic of barbarism; our forefathers are to him black heathens condemned to burn in the fires of hell for ever. He wishes to destroy our society, history, and civilisation. He looks forward to the time when the Smritis shall be unknown to the descendants of present day Hindus, and the Ram-Lila shall have become a meaningless word in their ears. Hardayal was intensely and primarily concerned with the fact that England was trying to destroy the ‘character’ of his people. This civilisational onslaught was what seemed to have disturbed him most. As he told the journalist John Barry, “England is not allowing us to develop according to our own nature. She is imposing her own civilisation from without.” From a survey of his above discussed writings and utterances, Hardayal emerges as a committed Indian nationalist, a speaker for Indian nationalism and an articulate voice of India’s tradition and culture who sought to ceaselessly analyse and tackle threats to India’s civilisational and cultural unity. The life and works of Tarak Nath Das in exile is a whole subject by itself but it would be useful to add to the discussion by briefly looking at some aspects of it. Closely associated with the early nationalist movement in Bengal, by 1905, Das was already involved in clandestinely spreading the message of the nationalist revolutionaries in other provinces of India and made a special impact in the south. In 1906, he went to the US and joined efforts at spreading the message of the Indian revolution. In his over five decades stay and struggle in the US, Tarak Nath Das emerged as a formidable rallying point not only for the Indian revolutionary movement in the West but also for the civil rights movement of Asians there. Through his struggle, advocacy and incarceration Tarak Nath proved to be one of the ablest advocates of India in the West. A veritable polymath, he also emerged as a prolific Asian intellectual of the epoch having earned a masters in 1911 in politics and international relations from the University of Berkeley and a doctorate in “international law and cooperation” from the University of Georgetown. Along with his intense work for mobilisation of opinion in favour of the Indian nationalists in the West, Tarak Nath also became a visiting professor at a number of leading western universities lecturing on international affairs and Indian culture and religion. In course of resurrecting and sustaining the international network of Indian revolutionaries, both Tarak Nath and Hardayal dealt with Marxists and anarchists but their roots lay in the Indian traditions and was something which they never seemed to have abandoned. Tarak Nath, whose primary inspiration was Jatin Mukherjee and through him Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, remained in touch with the latter throughout his life and sought his direction and help in his spiritual practices. When he visited India in 1952 after having toiled for 46 years in a distant land to spread the message of Indian nationalism, Tarak Nath’s public meeting in Calcutta, in which he called for the need to develop a collective discipline in our national life imbued by the revolutionary nationalist spirit, was disrupted by Communist student groups who called him an American agent. Surely, if he had been a committed Marxist, then these young disruptive left voices of India had failed to recognise him! These well-documented positions of the Ghadar revolutionaries and others thus, make it difficult to issue a conclusive verdict that their actions and visions were particularly and completely inspired by the Marxist and anarchist ideologies. It would be better, for the sake of balanced history writing and for the sake of preserving the deeds and words of these revolutionaries, to desist from trying to fit them into a left jacket. It would serve their memory best to call them Nationalists and not Marxists. The centenary celebrations of the Ghadar movement thus, may do well to project that as truth.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 20:28:39 +0000
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