Mass violence: India
Violent protests, riots
1942-2017
ANNIVERSARY OF QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT
Mahatma Gandhi gave a long speech on August 8, 1942, the eve of Quit India Movement, explaining to fellow Indians the meaning, method and motive behind the launching “do or die“ struggle to oust British from the country .
In the 27 years he had spent in India since coming home in 1915 from South Africa, Gandhiji had practiced and preached non-violence and selfless service to the country.His popularity and command over masses was unparalleled. But, did the masses remain non-violent during the Quit India movement?
With most of the Congress leadership arrested on August 9, 1942, the movement lost its way and fell into the hands of violent elements. Nearly 300 police stations and equal number of post offices were destroyed, large-sections of railway tracks were uprooted, telegraph and telephone lines were ripped. British reprisal saw use of machine gun mounted aircraft against riotous mobs.
The incidents of unprovoked looting and arson by riotous mobs in Gangetic plains in the name of Quit India movement and the consequent loss to Indian businessmen are meticulously recorded in several judgments of Patna and Allahabad high courts as well as the Supreme Court in the 1950s.
Gandhiji's speech of August 8, 1942 was in contrast to the course of action adopted by his followers. He had said: “A non-violent soldier of freedom will covet nothing for himself; he fights only for freedom of his country .“
Many took the opportunity to covet themselves with whatever they laid their hands on.
Gandhiji's two most endearing principles non-violence and communal harmony were thinning fast in the minds of people, faster than the strides India was taking towards Independence in 1947. The road of harmony towards India was severely potholed. Achieving Independence outweighed all other considerations for the Con gress leadership leaving Gandhiji a rather disillusioned man.
The last few miles of the road to Independence was described beautifully by Leonard Mosley in his book `The Last days of British Raj' (1961) “You do not need to be a chemist, nor do you need to be in India for long, before you realize that its widely disparate peoples have one thing in common: a remarkably low boiling point so far as political temper is concerned. Nowhere in the world does a mob respond so quickly or so savagely to a firebrand's call for action:“ “Between dawn on the morning of August 16, 1946 and dusk three days later, the people of Calcutta hacked, battered, burned, stabbed or shot 6,000 of each other to death, and raped and maimed another 20,000. This may not seem to be a considerable figure to students of India's recent history .Three million people died of starvation during the great famine of 1943 in Bengal alone.Close to three-quarters of million Punjabis massacred each other during the first days of Indian Independence in 1947.“
Since the Quit India movement, we Indians have seldom bothered to nurture and nourish communal harmony and non-violence. The politicians continue to play the game of power and unwittingly , we keep getting used as pawns on their chess boards.
We continue to uproot railway tracks during agitations, vandalise government and private properties and care little for communal harmony . The skulls of communal harmony hung deviously on the wall of shame in the shape of Ahmedabad riots (1969 512 dead), Moradabad riots in UP (1980 1500 dead), Nellie Massacre in Assam (1983 1819 dead), antiSikh riots in Delhi and Kanpur (1984 2733 dead); Bhagalpur riots in Bihar (1989 1161dead), Mumbai riots (1992 872 dead) and the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat (2002 1267 dead).
The political class has consistently defied what Gandhiji had said on August 8, 1942 “The Congress is unconcerned as to who will rule, when freedom is attained. The power, when it comes, will belong to the people of India, and it will be for them to decide to whom it placed in the entrusted... It will not be for you then to object saying, “This community is microscopic. That party did not play its due part in the freedom's struggle; why should it have all the power?“ In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all.“
The Supreme Court keeps reminding us about communal harmony . In Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo case [1996 AIR 1113], the SC had defined Hindutva as a way of life and warned against misuse of religion in elections by politicians. It had said: “Fundamentalism of any colour or kind must be curbed with a heavy hand to preserve and promote the secular creed of the nation. Any misuse of these terms must, therefore, be dealt with strictly .“
If British pursued the policy of dividing Indians on the religious line after the 1857 revolt and succeeded in dividing the nation on that line to create India and Pakistan, today's politicians in India use the caste-divide to the hilt to keep their vote banks intact.
After 75 years of Quit India movement, the country has changed drastically . Historical blunders have blurred into memory . But, events triggered by the political blunders continue to surface with uncanny regularity inflicting fresh wounds on commoners.It is time for us to introspect how we must behave to be counted as civilised Indians.
