smash-pacifism-zine

these outbreaks, touring riot-torn areas of the city, talking to
community leaders, issuing appeals, and, in one of his first
uses of this technique for political purposes, fasting for five
days to try to restore calm.”
(Gandhi, p. 124)
As many as 10,000 people may have been killed
during the Malabar revolt, primarily rebels repressed by a
brutal British military response which included imposing
martial law and deploying British and Gurkha regiments.
As many as 45,000 were arrested during the six month long
rebellion.
During the November riots in Bombay on
November 17, the khadi-clad demonstrators looted shops,
burned foreign cloth and wrecked automobiles, shouting, as
Gandhi himself witnessed, “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai”
[Victory to Mahatma Gandhi]. “Never,” he wrote later, “has
the sound of these words grated so much in my ears”
(Gandhi: A Life, p. 255).
In response to these rebellions, Gandhi wrote:
“Their violence is likely to alarm us, it impedes our
progress... I can see all the time that the most serious
obstacles in our path come not from the government
but from ourselves... The complete victory of nonviolent
non-cooperation will be possible only if we
conquer this enemy inside us.”
(quotes Collected Works of Mahatma
Gandhi, in India & the Raj, p. 225)
swooped on him and put him behind bars and this action
caused no ripple in the country.”
(History of the Indian Revolutionary Movement, p.
100)
“...many educated leaders believed that Gandhi had
acted impulsively and halted at the very point of success.
Jawaharlal Nehru later wrote: 'We were angry when we
learnt of his stoppage of our struggle at a time when we
seemed to be consolidating our position and advancing on
all fronts.'”
(Indian Nationalism, p. 286)
“To describe Gandhi's decision as a "national
calamity" was indeed right on the mark. To lay such stress
on non-violence - that too only three years after he had
been encouraging Indians to enroll in the British Army was
not only shocking, it showed little sympathy towards the
Indian masses who against all odds had become energized
against their alien oppressors.
“For Gandhi to demand of the poor, downtrodden,
and bitterly exploited Indian masses to first demonstrate
their unmistakable commitment to non-violence before
Clearly, even the messiah-like Gandhi could
not control the rebellious masses. In October 1921,
the British had expanded the level of repression
against the Non-Cooperation Movement with mass
arrests of INC members and banning their meetings.
Despite the spiralling violence, including the huge
riots of November, Gandhi still saw no need to end
the campaign. People were suffering in their quest
for justice, and that was the whole point of Gandhi's
doctrine.
Then, in February 1922, the remote village
of Chauri Chaura was the site of a massacre when
police opened fire, killing several demonstrators. As the
police withdrew to their station, a large mob surrounded it,
setting it on fire. 21 police were burned alive, some being
hacked to death as they attempted to escape.
Gandhi condemned the killings of police in a
statement entitled “The Crime of Chauri Chaura.” He urged
those who killed the police to fast for penance, and to turn
themselves in (none apparently did). He also urged others
to pressure those responsible for the killings to surrender.
The deaths of the police, and not the people, caused Gandhi
to unilaterally declare the campaign over:
“When Gandhi learnt of this, he stopped the
movement without even consulting his colleagues... As
soon as Gandhi withdrew the agitation, the Government
Chauri Chaura, 1922: the burnt corpses of cops killed when a large
mob set fire to their police station in retaliation for a massacre.
their struggle could receive with Gandhi's approval (just a
few years after he had unapologetically defended an
imperial war) was simply unconscionable. Clearly, Gandhi
had one standard for the Indian masses, and quite another
for the nation's colonial overlords. But this was not to be
the first occasion for Gandhi to engage in such tactical and
ideological hypocrisy.”
(“Gandhi - 'Mahatma' or Flawed Genius National
Leader or Manipulative Politician” South Asia Voice,
October 2002 Online edition)
“The... decision caused considerable dismay
among the Congress leaders, most of whom were in prison,
and left the rank and file disgruntled. Subjas Chandra Bose,
who was in jail... wrote afterwards that [the] chance of a
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