The Hindu : Means and ends

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003

Opinion

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Means and ends

By Rajmohan Gandhi

Gandhi and Savarkar both asked their followers to be ready to be killed for their convictions. But one of them also insisted, "kill not."

THE JUNE 6 announcement of the martyrdom conferred by the Akal Takht on Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale brought back to the public mind a figure who is a hero to sections in the Sikh community but remembered by others as architecting a campaign that terrorised and killed a large number of innocent citizens in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One explanation of the June 6 announcement was that it was designed to set at rest, once and for all, rumours that Bhindranwale was alive.

It is true that he was charismatic and had fervent followers, that his speeches and religious songs gripped audiences, and that he was killed in the Army's June 1984 operation in the Golden Temple. Yet, he preached murder.

Killing for political goals has had defenders in all ages, including in our own, but 9/11 made terrorism unsafe — it could invite the might of the sole superpower — and therefore less respectable. Yet, it is always possible, while deploring the killing of the innocent in general terms, to defend or explain killings executed on "our" behalf or against "our" enemies.

It is well known that some much-loved fighters for Indian independence felt that killing a member of the occupying race could be justified. No doubt some Iraqis feel similarly and the sentiment may also be found elsewhere, among, for example, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Hamas in Palestine.

During the discussion over the Savarkar portrait, some opposing its installation in the Central Hall of Parliament provided information that was new to me, including the apology to the British that secured his release from the Andamans prison.

Let me, however, touch on the encouragement for assassinating British officials that V. D. Savarkar offered until his long imprisonment in the Andamans, when he concluded that Muslims rather than the British were the Hindus' chief foes. As far as I know, Savarkar never disavowed that earlier encouragement. Now that Savarkar faces Gandhi in the Central Hall, it may be useful to recall the sharp differences between the two over the assassination on July 2, 1909, in London, of Sir Curzon Wyllie, ADC to Morley, the Secretary of State for India — differences relevant today to battles for birthrights. Gandhi, then approaching his 40th birthday, was on the high seas between South Africa and Europe when the killing occurred. Eight days later, he landed in London to acquaint Britain's rulers and citizens with the satyagraha of the Indians of the Transvaal.

Fourteen years younger than Gandhi, Savarkar was also in London, where he sought to enlist young Indians in the cause of Indian liberty and to train them in bomb-making. Fired by Savarkar's personality and plans, a band of Indian students became, in the words of one of them, T.S.S. Rajan, "a dreaded lot" in London. Also a student at the time, Asaf Ali, later the husband of Aruna, would recall that "a flaming ring of violent revolutionism" had been built around Savarkar, who was "by far the most arresting personality" among the Indian student community in London.

Wyllie, who had served in India, was invited to a reception hosted by the National Indian Association in a South Kensington Hall. There, he was shot and killed by Madanlal Dhingra, a young man inspired by Savarkar. Also killed was a Parsi doctor, Cawasji Lalkaka, who tried to interpose himself between Dhingra and Wyllie. After a swift arrest and trial, Dhingra was hanged on August 17. His ringing defence of the killing had been drafted by Savarkar. Some months later Savarkar, too, was arrested, and eventually sent to the Andamans, but not before making a dramatic leap into the sea and an unsuccessful bid for French asylum.

Gandhi and Savarkar had talked in London before the latter was arrested and both had also spoken at a dinner organised by Indian students. In his South African journal, Indian Opinion, and in talks with Indian students in England, Gandhi, who would claim that he "came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London," unreservedly denounced the Wyllie killing.

``It is being said in defence of Sir Curzon Wyllie's assassination," wrote Gandhi "that it is the British who are responsible for India's ruin, and that just as the British would kill every German if Germany invaded Britain, so too it is the right of any Indian to kill any Englishman... The analogy of Germans and Englishmen is fallacious. If the Germans were to invade Britain, the British would kill only the invaders. They would not kill every German whom they met. Moreover, they would not kill an unsuspecting German, or Germans who are guests.'' (Indian Opinion, August 14, 1909) Gandhi added that those inciting Dhingra were guiltier than Dhingra, who had committed his deed "in a state of intoxication". Assassinations would not expel the British from India. Moreover, "even should the British leave in consequence of such murderous acts, who will rule in their place? Is the Englishman bad because he is an Englishman? Is it that everyone with an Indian skin is good? India can gain nothing from the rule of murderers — no matter whether they are black or white. Under such a rule India will be utterly ruined and laid waste."

The Gandhi expressing these views in 1909 was, to use the scholar, Chandran Devanesen's words, no "weakling whose stomach was likely to turn at the thought of blood". By this time, as the head of ambulance teams, he had seen the Boer and Zulu wars from close quarters. He had also made a long and careful study of India's 1857 Rebellion. Some of his fellow satyagrahis had given their lives in South Africa's satyagraha, and there had been three violent attacks on his person. In short, his experience of blood and struggle was a good deal greater than that of London's excited band of Indian students.

A year earlier, in 1908, after a bomb aimed by Indian revolutionaries in Bihar at a British official killed two Englishwomen, Gandhi had said: "The bomb now thrown at Englishmen will be aimed at Indians after the English are there no longer."

The killing in Bihar, the later killing of Wyllie, and the conversations with Savarkar and others in London led to Gandhi's Hind Swaraj, which was written on the Kildonan Castle on Gandhi's return voyage to South Africa. In Hind Swaraj, he writes on ends and means: "If I want to cross the ocean, I can only do so by means of a vessel; if I were to use a cart, both the cart and I would find the bottom. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as between the seed and the tree. To use brute force, to use gunpowder, means that we want to force our opponent to do that which we desire but he does not. If such a use of force is justifiable, surely he is entitled to do likewise by us. Do you not tremble to think of freeing India by assassination? The millions of India do not desire it. Those who rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy."

From 1915, when Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, India saw a series of non-violent battles for freedom. There were also several violent bids. India's Independence came as a result of both strategies and world developments. But can we quarrel with Gandhi's prediction that after independence, bombs would kill fellow Indians? And can we deny that just as Savarkar triggered something in Dhingra in 1909, others have inspired killers in a hundred places on earth, including in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Sri Lanka? And in Punjab and Kashmir? Gandhi and Savarkar both asked their followers to be ready to be killed for their convictions. But one of them also insisted, "kill not."

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