Ramachandra Guha writing in the Hindustan Times, makes several interesting observations about our supposed “violent streak.” The essay is notable for its neat analysis of–mainly–the Left and the “Right” perspectives towards history, society and politics. Guha mostly tries to show that both the Left and the “Right” converge on violence as a means to achieving their respective political ends.

Guha uses some of the more famous freedom fighters as examples to prove his assertion.

Beyond Left and Right, there is the fascinating, intriguing, figure of Subhas Bose. Although he was stoutly secular and by no means a card-carrying communist, both the BJP and the CPI(M) have sought at various times to claim him.

The Left has a record of claiming as its own anybody as long as they suit its ideology. At one time, they claimed Swami Vivekananda! Somewhere amid their allegiance to ideology and theory, the Indian Left has for most of its history been dominated by Bengal. On a lighter note, this perhaps explains their claim over Bose and Swami Vivekananda, both Bengali colossuses.

Guha errs when he claims that Indians who admire the revolutionaries do so because

Savarkar, Bhagat Singh and Bose are akin in two crucial respects — namely, that both opposed Gandhi, and that both opposed him on the question of non-violence. It is in this that their continuing appeal lies. For many Indians believe that had freedom come at the price of our collective blood, it would have come sooner, and it would have been more comprehensive. What India needed, these Indians believe, was a real revolution — a revolution that would have swept away the cobwebs of colonialism, allowing the new nation to lay its foundations on principles altogether different from what the British bequeathed us.

This explanation is too simplistic. Had India obtained freedom after a bloody revolution, we wouldn’t entirely rid ourselves of both the good and the bad of colonialism. Especially after living under it for several decades. Several leading freedom fighters were men of erudition, balance, and wisdom. It would be farfetched to believe that they would actually reject all British principles in toto. Further, says Guha,

What we got instead — so the argument runs — was a derivative political system, borrowed uncritically from our erstwhile colonisers.

There’s really no argument. We have in fact, uncritically inherited an overwhelming portion of our political system from the British. A host of laws that we still retain were expressly designed to exploit than govern.

Guha presents Subash Bose as a

…curious amalgam, a mixture unique to himself, a mish-mash of ideologies both Western and Indian. He certainly favoured an assertive and interventionist State. His admiration for a strong State, however, was ecumenical. He began by praising Soviet Russia, but ended by allying with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Subash Bose naturally sided with Italy, Germany, and Japan because these nations challenged the might of the British in a short span and with spectacular success. It had more to do with liberating India than with any ideology that Bose was fascinated with. Bose was different than most other Indian freedom fighters in that he was convinced of the importance of military might to liberate India. On Bose’s call for blood, Guha remarks that

In his worldview there are also traces of Indian or more especially Bengali influence — the call for blood sacrifice, for example, must come from the traditions of Kali worship in his native province.

When you exhort thousands of people to war, it is natural to use “blood,” “kill,” “do or die,” etc. I’m not sure this connects with Kali worship. Hypothetically, had Bose been a Brahmin and called for “burning the Brits,” could we similarly conclude that it must have come from Bose’s traditions as a Brahmin who practised fire rituals?

Guha’s contempt for violence as a means to achieve independence is puzzling.

In the end, though, these varying traditions and ideologies are united precisely by that call for blood. Blood must be spilled, and plenty of it: whether to build a Hindu Rashtra, a Socialist Utopia, or a Bose-ian India. One’s own blood, and the blood of one’s enemies.

History records no freedom struggle where blood was not spilled, and this includes India. Guha also repeats the myth that Indian freedom was won “chiefly” by non-violent means. Non-violence played a significant part but several other factors had their own important roles to play. If anything, Gandhi had to sacrifice thousands of people for the upkeep of his non-violent struggle. In Sri Aurobindo’s words,

I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to the man’s nature when he takes to Satyagraha or non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject themselves to voluntary suffering, what happens is that their vital being gets strengthened. These movements affect the vital being only and not any other part. Now, when you cannot oppose the force that oppresses, you say that you will suffer. That suffering is vital and it gives strength. When the man who has thus suffered gets power he becomes a worse oppressor…. Gandhi’s position is that he does not care to remove violence from others; he wants to observe non-violence himself.

More importantly, Gandhi’s politics of non-violence brought about, again as Aurobindo prophesized in 1914:

Gandhi’s loyalism is not a pattern for India which is not South Africa, and even Gandhi’s loyalism is corrected by passive resistance. An abject tone of servility in politics is not ?diplomacy? and is not good politics. It does not deceive or disarm the opponent; it does encourage nervelessness, fear and a cringing cunning in the subject people….Our position is different and our aim is different, not to secure a few privileges, but to create a nation of men fit for independence and able to secure and keep it.

[Ed: Quoted from India's Rebirth]

Was Gandhi–who Guha calls the architect of our independence–or Nehru– the architect of Indian democracy–able to create that kind of nation? What the Gandhi-Nehru duo left behind was a nation of cowards and later, pygmies who yearned approbation from the West for every single act. The consequence is the abject lack of even the basics–an independent foreign policy.

Guha then makes both sexist and racist comments when he says the admiration for violent revolutionaries is a “macho thing” and is confined to

[It is] Hindu men and socialist men and Bengali (though not only Bengali) men who wish that one of those other men had lived long enough to have become India’s first Prime Minister or Chairman or Führer.

And no mention of the parallel movement to carve out Pakistan or the incessant calls to return India to the “Islamic paradise” under the Mughals. Anyway, Guha finds this phenomenon interesting because

…this adoration of violent revolutionaries by men who owe their political independence and their democratic freedoms to a bunch of (now mostly dishonoured) non-violent reformers.

Too simplistic and an outrageous falsehood. Every person who fights using means he chooses deserves this debt of gratitude. Not just a “bunch of people” claiming fealty to an ideology/method. To say we owe our freedoms to just the “non-violent reformers” is to do violence to the memories of the not-non-violent bunch.

Guha snugly fits the definition of an armchair critic who pontificates based on what he chooses to believe in, irrespective of facts, reality, or at the least, history. His abhorrence of violence is admirable but he abhors it for entirely the wrong reasons. Non-violence has no place in the political realm. Throughout history, every nation that was a great power used violence as one of the most effective weapons of containment. Something India has miserably failed to do in these 60 years.

In the end, Guha has done injustice not just to our freedom fighters; he has insulted our collective sensibilities by condemning millions of ordinary Indians who respect/revere violent revolutionaries as people with a “violent streak.” We do not need a Ramachandra Guha to tell us what we are.

Crossposted on Desicritics.