WHEN India achieved independence in 1947 from, the country had to recover from the disastrous impacts of two centuries of many-sided colonial exploitation and plunder. Worse, to ensure the continuation of this plunder the colonial rulers had tried at every opportunity to divide the people of India and pitted them against each other. In the last decade of their rule, the colonial regime unleashed horrible repression against freedom fighters, imprisoning the most respected leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Badshah Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru and felicitating those who created divisions. Using Indian soldiers and resources as fodder in the war effort, they killed and imprisoned freedom fighters in large numbers. Their inhumanity resulted in the Great Bengal Famine and other disasters which killed millions of people. Millions more were killed and displaced in the country’s partition which resulted from colonial rulers’ long efforts to divide the people.
This was the colonial legacy with which India was born, the legacy of millions of people dying in famines, poverty, repression, wars (of others), violence, and other disasters. Winston Churchill, the hero of the colonial rulers, had publicly proclaimed that Mahatma Gandhi, a beacon of hope based on peace for the entire world, should be crushed under the feet of an elephant!
Given this colonial past, India’s post-independence record is on the whole commendable, although it should have been much better. India has been able to avoid the kind of famines which regularly claimed hundreds of thousands of lives during British rule, even though millions perished in the Chinese famine of late 1950s as well as in other famines in other countries. India has held together despite many efforts to break the country made by several outsiders, including Western ones, while the larger part of neighbouring Pakistan became an independent country (Bangladesh) following a genocide that killed over a million.
Some critics have over-emphasised India’s failures, forgetting the large population, high population density, resource constraints, highly adverse colonial legacy and harmful foreign interference that India has faced. Despite all this, India has been able to achieve significant progress in almost all the human development indicators and in infrastructure. India achieved this significant progress despite continuing neo-colonial machinations and manipulations to exploit the country and to misdirect its efforts. Thus, most of what the West has provided in ‘aid’ and ‘help’ in agriculture and related areas has led to destruction of environment and biodiversity, harm to health and to accentuating crisis of small farmers by increasing their dependence and farming costs, while increasing the profits and control of Western corporate interests.
Instead of blaming all problems on others, I’ll be the first to admit that India has also made serious mistakes of its own and what is more, the Indian society lacks much in terms of its commitment to justice, equality, peace and protection of environment. My own record as a journalist and author over the past 50 years of covering India’s development and policy has been mostly as a critic, and I have worked mostly with social movements which are committed to a society that is based much more on equality.
Nevertheless, I feel strongly that the world should treat India more with sympathy rather than criticism in terms of what it has tried to achieve, as it has largely been a force of peace and progress at world level, while trying to protect its interests as best as it can in a deeply troubled world that has been moving away from what is really needed.
India must take care to remain firmly on the path of peace and justice at international level, while at the same time drawing inspiration from its legacy of freedom movement to create a country based on justice and equality for which it needs to do much more than it has done in the last 78 years.
India’s highly inspirational freedom movement had several streams, but in popular imagination this has been seen more in terms of two. The first, identified foremost with Mahatma Gandhi, represented the main part of the struggle involving tens of millions of people on a path of non-violent struggles. The second represented foremost by Shahid Bhagat Singh who did not hesitate in using violent methods and placed a lot of emphasis on actions of great courage which would awaken and inspire the masses to drive away colonial rule.
These two free-flowing streams often mingled happily with each other, contributing to the overall strength of the freedom movement.
While initiating highly innovative struggles based on non-violence for freedom from colonial rule, Gandhi was almost equally concerned with the serious social inequities of Indian society. So, he emphasised increasing equality for Dalits (oppressed castes) and women in particular, while giving his all for achieving inter-faith harmony. On a typical touring day he would insist on having meetings which would emphasise the presence and concerns of minorities, Dalits and women. He closely studied the problems of Indian society and initiated a programme of social reconstruction based on primacy and strengthening rural communities, their increasing self-reliance, justice for Dalits and women, and the avoidance of alcohol and all intoxicants.
Bhagat Singh and his associates were not against any of this, but placed added emphasis and provided a cutting edge to the steps to be taken for ending exploitation and injustice. Bhagat Singh would have lost no time in snatching from the rich to give to the poor, while Gandhi would have spent a long time trying to create some kind of a voluntary consensus for this, avoiding social strife but probably diluting the steps against inequalities at least to some extent.
What is not often recognised adequately is that Bhagat Singh also had a very strong commitment to world peace, and after getting rid of imperialism he wanted to create a world based on brotherhood of all people of world, which is very close to the thinking of Gandhi.
Just as the freedom movement drew strength from the frequent mingling and several confluences of these two streams, present-day India too must draw its inspiration from both to create a society and economy based on justice and equality, and to create a country committed firmly to world peace and protection of environment.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at: bharatdogra1956@gmail.com
