A Revolutionary History of Interwar India
Author- Kama Maclean
Publisher- Penguin, Rs499
Through this book, Kama Maclean has written a stirring tale of the courageous men and women who took on the British, and of the influences they diffused across India and among its opinion-makers, writes RAJESH SINGH
In 1964 came the film, Haqeeqat, based on the India-China war of 1962, with the moving lyrics,‘Kar chale hum fida jaano-tan saathiyon’, rendered by a clutch of first-rate singers. Those words can well be applied to the bravehearts of three-decades-and-more before the song became a national sentiment. They were a different kind of soldiers — without uniform, without the military mandate to live and die for the nation, and with an option to stay safe. These crazy but blessed men blew it up, brazenly challenging the colonial power that ruled their nation, smilingly marching up to the hangman’s noose, and ending their lives in the prime. They were the original revolutionaries of India, heroes largely unsung in the histories, official or otherwise, written over the decades since Independence. Even British historians chose to either ignore or downplay the contribution of these revolutionaries. It’s as if they never existed, or if they did, they were irrelevant to the larger freedom-struggle story.
The fate the martyred (and other) revolutionaries of the late 1920s and early 1930s met at the hands of later academics rooted to the Gandhi-Nehru narrative is not dissimilar to that which went to the likes of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, though in a different way. Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, Sukhdev and others, have become footnotes in historical works and their sacrifices deemed — although an act of courage — quite unnecessary. To a large extent, this belief was fashioned by Mahatma Gandhi’s positioning on the subject. The Mahatma, whose concepts of ‘non-violence’ often frustrated his closest aides such as Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, held a dim view of the path to violence that the revolutionaries had chosen to gain India’s independence. It’s a statement of the profound impact the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh and his fellow revolutionaries had on the country that even the Mahatma was compelled to admit that Bhagat Singh “was no coward”. And yet, the Congress’s conscience-keeper had his way when the Congress adopted a resolution which, while hailing Bhagat Singh and his fellow revolutionaries’ sacrifice as exemplary, also condemned the “murderous deeds” of the executed bravehearts.
In the eight decades and more gone by since the era of Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and their colleagues belonging to the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, most publications that have emerged through private efforts on their lives and struggles, have been either hagiographic or poorly researched, thus rendering them less than useful for serious academic mention. Additionally, these efforts have focussed on the individuals and less or not at all on the larger canvas the revolutionaries sought to redefine and their impact on the ‘mainstream’ political developments. In other words, it appeared that there were three strands of freedom-struggle: One led by Mahatma Gandhi, the other by Netaji Bose and the third by ‘hotheads’ such as Bhagat Singh and Azad. That the two processes could be complementing each other at below-the-surface level in ways intended and unintended, did not occur to most academicians. It is here that Sydney-based scholar of South Asian studies, Kama Maclean, has done path-breaking work with her book, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India. It’s as much a stirring tale of the courageous men and women who took on the British might in ways they considered appropriate as it is of the trends that their intrepidity shaped, and of the influences they diffused across the nation and among its opinion-makers.
Besides dwelling on the nationally recognised revolutionary freedom-fighters, the author focuses attention on relatively lesser known but equally significant players. She pays deserved tribute to Durga Devi Vohra, for instance. Durga bhabhi, as she was popularly known, was the wife of one of the revolutionaries who worked closely with the likes of Bhagat Singh and Azad and who himself was initially seen with suspicion because the revolutionaries were unsure of his commitment to their cause. Maclean’s account also reflects the gender challenges, with which we are confronted even today. Not many believed Durga Devi Vohra, a woman, could meaningfully contribute to the revolutionary cause. Besides, there were those in the movement who felt that marriage shackled a revolutionary. And so, while the author notes that “women were active on the fringes of the inner circle of the HSRA”, they were more exceptions than the rule.
Durga Devi Vohra disrupted the template and played a stellar role. On occasions she provided the perfect disguise to Bhagat Singh, accompanying him with her child and giving the semblance of a happy three-member family. Police personnel, always on the lookout for ‘unencumbered youths’ raring to commit sedition, would be thus soundly misled. Maclean informs that Durga Devi Vohra conducted even more daring deeds. She writes, “Few are aware that she was involved in a range of activities, and even led an action, shooting at a British policeman and his wife in October 1930.” Indeed, such had been Durga Devi Vohra’s courageous exploits that she ended up sharing at least a bit of popular public space with the greats of Bhagat Singh and Azad. Of course, the road was not smooth. The author says that “Durga Devi paid a price for her politics”, with people in lahore, where she was based, gossiping about her movement with menfolk and casting aspersions on her behaviour.
The role of women extended in other ways as well. Maclean quotes from a source which spoke of a HSRA member, while in police custody, deciding to turn a Government approver. When the HSRA member’s wife got to know of the betrayal, she told his mother to convey to him that she considered herself a widow. The mother, during her visit to the HSRA man in prison, gave the message and added that she (the mother) too considered her son dead. This rattled the man and he quickly retracted the statement to turn approver.
The significant contribution of women to the revolutionaries’ struggle and particularly the HSRA led to the organisation recalibrating its position. According to Maclean, “The HSRA came to a power of recognising ‘no artificial barrier between men and women’, with Bhagat Singh urging from jail the formation of a women’s committee whose primary duty would be to ‘revolutionise the womenfolk and select from them active members for direct service.’”
While the aim of the book, in the author’s words, is to “position the role of violence in the freedom struggle… by paying attention to a fusion of textual, oral, visual and other ‘unarchived’ histories”, what Maclean effectively also does is to demonstrate the impact the ‘violent’ revolutionary movement had on the more mainstream ‘non-violent’ drive led by Mahatma Gandhi and executed by the Congress. The anti-imperialism sentiment among the masses may have been effectively exploited by the Mahatma-led campaign but it had been embedded in public consciousness in the first place by the heroic deeds of HSRA members such as Azad and Bhagat Singh. One complemented the other, and yet, as the author points out, “Historians have come to see violence and nonviolence as rival forms of political action, remaining conspicuously reticent when violence intruded into later campaigns, such as the Quite India Movement.” She hits the nail on the head in suggesting that it is “far more productive to see all of these movements as parts of a single formation of anti-colonial nationalism”.
In a sense, thus, Maclean’s book is a major attempt not so much in rewriting the country’s freedom-struggle history but in viewing it anew, placed alongside the story of a revolutionary movement that left none untouched.