An “Eventful” History of Hind Swaraj: Gandhi between the Battle of Tsushima and the Union of South Africa
On July 1, 1909, Gandhi was on board the liner Kenilworth Castle en route from Cape Town to Southampton. The prosperous Johannesburg lawyer had recently emerged as a noted figure in the politics of the British Empire, through his leadership of the satyagraha of Indian immigrants in the Transvaal. The union of the four self-governing British colonies in South Africa into a single state under white control was now under way and awaited ratification by the Westminster parliament. Gandhi’s aim was to lobby the British authorities for the protection of the interests of the immigrant Indian population within this new order. On the voyage, he spent some time talking to fellow passenger John X. Merriman, the English-born, liberal political leader of the Cape Colony, who gave him a sympathetic hearing. But Merriman was losing his battle with Afrikaner General Louis Botha to become prime minister of the new state ( Lewsen 1982: 300 – 301). And Merriman’s Gladstonian worldview was in any case a thing of the past. The white men of South Africa had cut a deal among themselves to create a racially defined nation, and Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government in Westminster, feeling guilty about the suffering of the Afrikaners in the Boer War and for the most part committed to defending the empire, wanted to allow them to implement it.
In London, during the evening of that day, an event occurred that was to be of pivotal importance in the writing of Gandhi’s book Hind Swaraj. At the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, a reception was being held. It was attended by Sir William Curzon Wyllie, aide-de- camp to Sir John Morley, the reforming secretary of state for India. As Curzon Wyllie descended the steps on his way out, he was approached by a student wearing dark glasses and a blue turban, by the name of Madan Lal Dhingra. Dhingra pulled out a revolver and fired twice at Curzon Wyllie. Curzon Wyllie fell to the ground and Dhingra fired several more shots, killing him. Doctor Cowasji Lalcala attempted to grab Dhingra’s arm and was instantly shot dead. On July 27 Dhingra’s trial commenced. He was repentant about the killing of Lalcala but not about that of Curzon Wyllie. His statement at the trial was a patriotic declaration that impressed even the home secretary, Winston Churchill. Sentenced to death, Dhingra was hanged at Pentonville Prison on August 17 ( Dhingra 2008; Herman 2008: 163 – 66).
By the time Gandhi arrived in London on July 10, the world of Indian nationalism was agog with the news. In the city, as around the world of the Indian diaspora and in the major centers of India itself, young, radical, educated Indians were electrified with excitement by Dhingra’s deed. Militants were hailing it as a defining moment for India.
During the next four months in England, Gandhi was saddened by the widespread adulation of political violence in the pan-Indian political world and disillusioned by the polite but ultimately negative response by senior British officials to his entreaties regarding the situation of South African Indians. When, in November, during his return to South Africa on the Kildonan Castle, Gandhi sat down to write his Gujarati draft of Hind Swaraj, it was largely with the purpose of countering favorable interpretations of Dhingra’s actions. He would instead, through the book, subtly seek to put forward his own political claims, based on the ideas developed in the peaceful militancy of the campaign in the Transvaal.
The ultimate success of Gandhi in dominating Indian nationalism has created something of an optical illusion in our view of that movement. It is popularly seen as essentially peaceful and tolerant, in the Gandhian mold (even though historians are aware of its frequent eruptions into violence, culminating in the partition catastrophe of 1947). But research over the past decade ( Silvestri 2000; Price 2005 ; Manjapra 2006; Fischer-Tine 2007 ; Heehs 2010) has come to highlight the strength of violent revolutionary currents within Indian nationalism. It is arguable that between 1905 and 1915, the “terrorist” political trend was the dominant one, reaching a climax in the Ghadar movement’s failed but impressive attempts, at the beginning of World War I, to return large groups of armed militants to India and to ferment revolt in the army. This makes it all the more remarkable that Gandhi was able to win political leadership by 1919. The publication of Hind Swaraj was a crucial moment in this story. It is best understood not as an abstract work of political philosophy but as a political intervention aimed at shaping the emerging culture of Indian nationalism in the specific context of the pre – First World War years. It was Gandhi’s manifesto for an ideology of Indian nationalism, which he was to pursue over subsequent decades.
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